Expectations of, and Undermined Triviality in, The Importance of Being Earnest - Research Paper Example

Annotated Bibliography Triviality and Expectation in The Importance of Being Earnest Archer, William. “The Importance of Being Earnest.” Oscar Wilde: The Critical Heritage. Ed. Karl Beckson. London: Taylor & Francis E-Library, 1974. pp. 217-218. Web. A contemporary review of Earnest calls it “barren and delusive”, claiming that although it is beautifully written and fun to watch, it is completely devoid of meaning. I will use this review to demonstrate contemporary criticism of Earnest, which will be disproved through other sources. Other contemporary reviews are included in this book which may also be referenced. Costa, Maddy. “Handbags at dawn.” The Guardian 23 January 2008. Web. A modern review of Lady Bracknell includes interviews with women and men who have played the most formidable character in Earnest. I will use this article to show how Earnest has accumulated meaning over time. Gagnier, Regenia. Idylls of the Marketplace: Oscar Wilde and the Victorian Public. Stanford: University Press Stanford, 1986. Print. This book talks about the 'truth' of Earnest, which will add a different angle to my discussion of expectations both internal and external to the play. It also talks about the popular reaction to Wilde's downfall, shortly after the play opened, which will be of use as my paper will examine not only Earnest but also its playwright. Gillespie, Michael Patrick. Oscar Wilde and the Poetics of Ambiguity. Gainesville: University Press Florida, 1996. Print. Gillespie's book talks about Earnest in terms of expectations: contemporary expectations of Wilde, of young men, and of the play genre. This is something I would like to investigate further, and with this book's help I will show how studied triviality and Wilde's reputation interacted with expectation in Earnest. Kohl, Norbert. Oscar Wilde: The Works of a Conformist Rebel. Trans. David Henry Wilson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Print. The chapter on Earnest begins by declaring that before its first opening, audiences expected that Wilde's new play “would offer the very opposite of what was promised by the stolid-sounding title”. I find this interplay between title, content and expectation very interesting – with Earnest, was Wilde subverting expectations or living up to them? Prewitt Brown, Julia. Cosmopolitan Criticism: Oscar Wilde's Philosophy of Art. Virginia: Virginia University Press, 1997. Print. Prewitt Brown argues that Earnest “reflects the national myth of the century”, that an orphan can achieve great things in spite of uncertain origins. I will use her examples to ask whether Earnest was at all trivial, or if Wilde's calculated superficiality is little more than a veneer. Sweet, Matthew. Inventing the Victorians. London: Faber & Faber, 2002. Print. Sweet's book offers a comprehensive new look at the Victorian era, and is very useful for subverting our expectations of Wilde's time. I will use this book to help create the background for my paper, placing us in Wilde's world rather than a modern misconception of Victorian Britain. Taylor, George. Players and Performances in the Victorian Theatre. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989. Print. In this book George Taylor looks at Victorian drama as a whole, examining how actors felt about their art. I hope to use this as a standard of expectation and seriousness by which to compare Earnest. The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde's last play and penultimate piece of literature before his untimely death in 1900, is pivotal in the life of its playwright because it was first performed in 1895, just a few short months before Wilde was sentenced to two years' hard labor in prison for his homosexual liaisons. The play is part of Wilde's carefully cultivated persona as a dandy, creating a tone of studied triviality which was lapped up by an audience “engaged in a continuous search for bigger and better thrills” (Sweet, xi). However, in spite of contemporary reviews condemning the play as “barren and delusive” (Archer, in Beckson, 217), The Importance of Being Earnest intersects with a complex web of expectations and hence, inadvertently perhaps, is full of meaning. Over time it has gained the heft of a period drama; to its original audience, it would have reflected absurd social mores which were indeed dispensed with not too long afterwards. This essay will look at expectations of Wilde and of the genre of Victorian drama itself to show that the triviality Wilde worked so hard to maintain in The Importance of Being Earnest was undermined by its very existence. In 1890s Britain and America, Wilde was a celebrity of idleness – it has been suggested that even his homosexual tendencies were little more than a pretence to 'exoticize' himself. At the opening of his first play, “neglecting no opportunity of turning the limelight on his own doings” (Harris, 62), Wilde got up on stage and addressed the audience in a typically epigrammatic fashion. His reputation as a “personality” (Kohl, 3), by 1895, preceded him, and people expected that The Importance of Being Earnest “would offer the very opposite of what was promised by the stolid-sounding title” (Kohl, 255). Despite the irony of the title, the contemporary audience expected an evening of mindless, though clever, entertainment, and Wilde obviously delivered: a reviewer called it “extraordinarily funny”, saying that it was a long time since he had “heard such unrestrained, incessant laughter from all parts of the theatre” (Anonymous, in Beckson, 215). Although it had as much structure and purpose as “a paper balloon” (Anonymous), The Importance of Being Earnest immediately earned itself a place in the nation's heart. However, other contemporary reviews expressed disappointment in Wilde for his complete lack of seriousness. Although Taylor argues that a “sense of enjoyment … was the overriding purpose of all Victorian entertainers” (vii), in 1895 the theater critic Archer deplored Wilde's play for “raising no meaning” (Beckson, 217). George Bernard Shaw called the play “really heartless” and “essentially hateful”; laughter which came at the expense of unsympathetic characters was “destructive” (Kohl, 256). These two conflicting opinions, taken together, suggest that the radical Wilde was growing complacent as the fateful climax of his life unknowingly approached him; Kohl's analysis of the dandy is a “conformist rebel” is apt. Living to subvert social mores, Wilde was happy to be stereotyped, and to play along with the expectations that people had of him. If the public went to the theater to see beautifully-penned Wildean triviality, that was what the renowned “poser” (Kohl) would give them. That said, it is undeniable that The Importance of Being Earnest has earned meaning over the century since its first performance; for one thing, its status as the legendary final Wildean play has imbued it, in hindsight, with ominous predictions. When Dr Chasuble condemns the fictional Ernest's “desire to be buried in Paris” as “hardly pointing to any very serious state of mind at the last” (Act II), a modern audience is reminded that Wilde himself is buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris – and was just five years after the opening of his last play. In the original four-act version, Algernon's threatened bankruptcy has echoes of Wilde's actual bankruptcy. Jack's statement that “it a very ungentlemanly thing to read a private cigarette case” (Act I) foreshadows the use of engraved cigarette cases as evidence at Wilde's trial. The performers of The Importance of Being Earnest themselves believe that the play is more significant than its playwright would have had it. An interview with modern actors who have portrayed Lady Bracknell reveals that this character is believed to be “a woman of her time”; she is “immaculate” and “simply right” (Costa). The weight of history has transformed The Importance of Being Earnest into a period piece; through its skewed and stylized lens we can see the rigid society manners of late Victorian England. Although Prewitt Brown argues (fairly) that the characters of The Importance of Being Earnest can be compared to “children acting up in the nursery” (88), their actions are nonetheless imitations of grown-up customs. Exaggerated the play may be, but – for example – Cecily's and Algernon's ridiculous engagement, beginning “three months” (Act II) before their first meeting, reflects the real, contemporary danger of committing one's life to someone about whom one knows nothing at all. Gagnier goes on to say that Wilde “fetishizes” (113) the truth; depth of character was unimportant when the audience could be shown the hypocrisy of appearance. Beyond that, The Importance of Being Earnest fails to “develop the social and moral problems at which it hints” (Kohl, 256). Cecily and Algernon are lucky enough to fall in love anyway, and to avoid the matrimonial horrors which were a reality for a large section of their original audience. This is linked to the concept of political literature as a burden on the Victorian intellectual classes (Welsh, 122) – Wilde did not want to be appropriated as a leader of any Cause (McKenna, 267). He had no desire to politicize his work, so his criticisms of society are silly: gluttony is represented by Algernon's fondness of “cucumber sandwiches” (Act I), snobbery by the difference between the two sides of a railway station, and the downside of marriage by the 'tragic' fact that “in married households the champagne is rarely of a first-rate brand” (Act I). The play's very “familiarity” (Gillespie, 100) to a twenty-first century audience, after having seen so many reruns and having heard so many of its most quotable epigrams, means that we can look past the “Ernest/Earnest pun” (Gillespie, 101) and find meaning in it. Where a contemporary viewer would see Ernest, we can understand earnestness. Basically, it is impossible for any piece of literature to be meaningless. Literature does not exist in a void – even nonsense pieces of art, like Lewis Carroll's poem Jabberwocky (1872), or John Cage's musical piece 4'3'' (1952), suggest something about their composers and about the time in which they were created. If Wilde truly wanted to create a moment in literature which was beautifully meaningless, he was doomed from the beginning. The force of literary criticism is so vast that even Wilde, writing a play based on the absurd confusion of a baby and a manuscript, remains unable to withstand it. His studied triviality is undermined by relentless meaning. Works Cited Anonymous. “Reception of The Importance of Being Earnest.” Oscar Wilde: The Critical Heritage. Ed. Karl Beckson. London: Taylor & Francis E-Library, 1974. p. 215. Web. Archer, William. “The Importance of Being Earnest.” Oscar Wilde: The Critical Heritage. Ed. Karl Beckson. London: Taylor & Francis E-Library, 1974. pp. 217-218. Web. Costa, Maddy. “Handbags at dawn.” The Guardian 23 January 2008. Web. Gagnier, Regenia. Idylls of the Marketplace: Oscar Wilde and the Victorian Public. Stanford: University Press Stanford, 1986. Print. Gillespie, Michael Patrick. Oscar Wilde and the Poetics of Ambiguity. Gainesville: University Press Florida, 1996. Print. Harris, Frank. Oscar Wilde, His Life and Confessions. Hertfordshire: BiblioBazaar, 2007. Kohl, Norbert. Oscar Wilde: The Works of a Conformist Rebel. Trans. David Henry Wilson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Print. McKenna, Neil. The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde. London: Arrow, 2004. Prewitt Brown, Julia. Cosmopolitan Criticism: Oscar Wilde's Philosophy of Art. Virginia: Virginia University Press, 1997. Print. Sweet, Matthew. Inventing the Victorians. London: Faber & Faber, 2002. Print. Taylor, George. Players and Performances in the Victorian Theatre. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989. Print. Welsh, Alexander. George Eliot and Blackmail. Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1985. Wilde, Oscar. The Importance of Being Earnest. Project Gutenberg, 29 August 2006. ProjectGutenberg.com. Accessed 25 April 2011. Read More