The document discusses several themes from Oscar Wilde's play "The Importance of Being Earnest" including lies and deceit, marriage, respect and reputation, society and class, gender, versions of reality, love, and foolishness. It notes that characters frequently lie to avoid social obligations, marriage is portrayed as a social duty rather than romantic, and the upper classes are preoccupied with maintaining their status and respectability through pretense.

1. THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST
THEMES
Lies and DeceitLies and Deceit
MarriageMarriage
Respect and ReputationRespect and Reputation
Society and ClassSociety and Class
GenderGender
Versions of Reality: RomanceVersions of Reality: Romance
LoveLove
Foolishness and FollyFoolishness and Folly

2. LIES AND DECEIT
The most prevalent reason characters in The
Importance of Being Earnestlie is to get out of social or
familial duties and do something more enjoyable.
Not surprisingly, few characters hold honesty in high
regard. However, we see how hard it is for them to set
things straight once they’ve lied about them. As the
situation gets increasingly complicated, characters must
weave more complex lies to get out of the tangles of their
previous lies. Eventually they reach the point where lies will
no longer work and the truth is revealed. Perhaps the most
striking thing is that none of the characters ever shows true
remorse or guilt about lying.

3. MARRIAGE
The big question The Importance of Being Earnest raises is
whether marriage is pleasurable... or a restrictive social duty.
In general, the older generation thinks of marriage as a means to
an end, a way of maintaining or bettering your social position. If
you want to get married, you submit to an interrogation: "State
your name, rank, and serial number." The number that matters in
this case, however, is your income; you'd better have bank.
You also need to have an acceptable title, along with the
parents to prove it. The hot-blooded youngsters think they are
interested in love. One of the huge ironies in the play—and what
makes it a satire of Victorian society—is that, in the end, nobody
really breaks the rules. They color within the lines, and marry
exactly the type of person their society expects them to.

4. RESPECT AND REPUTATION
In The Importance of Being Earnest, the upper classes
care about being respectable—so much so that they do a lot
of lying about it.
In general, Victorian upper-class society holds slightly
different expectations of men and women. Men need to be
upstanding, rich, and from a good family. Women need to be
upstanding, rich, from a good family, and chaste. Any
deviation from the rules (being born poor, or being found in
a handbag, in Jack's case) may prevent a young person from
making a good match, and continuing his noble line.

5. SOCIETY AND CLASS
The Importance of Being Earnest reveals the differences
between the behavior of the upper class and that of the lower
class. Members of the upper class display a great deal of pride
and pretense, feeling that they are inherently entitled to their
wealth and higher social position. They are so preoccupied with
maintaining the status quo that they quickly squash any signs of
rebellion.
In this play, Wilde satirizes the arrogance and hypocrisy
of the aristocracy. The lower classes in Earnest are less
pretentious and more humble... but equally good at making
jokes.

6. GENDER
In The Importance of Being Earnest, the question of
each gender’s role in society often centers on power. In the
Victorian world of this play, men have greater influence than
women. Men make the political decisions for their families,
while women work around the house, quietly taking care of
the children.
Men are valued for their intellect and judgment, while
women are attractive to men for their beauty and chastity.
However, Wilde raises interesting questions about gender
roles in The Importance of Being Earnest by putting women
(like Lady Bracknell) in positions of power and by showing that
men (i.e., Jack and Algernon) can be irresponsible and bad at
decision-making.

7. VESIONS OF REALITY:
ROMANCE
In The Importance of Being Earnest, pampered young
women have a skewed sense of reality, inspired by romantic
novels. When real life gets too boring, these women decide to
take matters into their own hands by recording their fantasies in
diaries.
Potential lovers enter the picture and provide an
opportunity to act out the fantasies, but the women’s
expectations of courtship often prove too whimsical and
idealistic for reality. There’s no tragic disillusionment here,
though. Just marriages, and lots of them. Earnest is a comedy,
after all.

8. LOVE
In The Importance of Being Earnest, it is often hard to
distinguish Wilde’s notion of romance from that of real love.
Readers must settle for a decidedly un-modern definition of
love. For example, in Earnest physical beauty—both female
and male—can initiate and sustain a love affair.
Forgiveness is an ingredient of love as well. Both
women forgive the men for their earlier deceptions when they
discover the good intentions behind their crimes. It seems that
the definition of love in this play is not so much an
unconditional and self-sacrificing love, but a general attitude of
good intentions, admiration, and honest affection.

9. FOOLISHNESS AND FOLLY
In The Importance of Being Earnest, the characters’
foolishness is the core of the comedy. Often, we don’t know
whether a character says something contradictory or
random in a serious way, or if the character is just joking.
This ambiguity in tone makes readers both slightly
uncomfortable and prone to laughter.
Wilde shows his characters’ folly in a number of
ways: spinning something that is out of human control as if it
were a simple matter of mundane choice, inverting
aphorisms so that they mean the opposite of what common
sense dictates, and simply juxtaposing random things so that
they create an absurd situation.

10. FOOLISHNESS AND FOLLY
In The Importance of Being Earnest, the characters’
foolishness is the core of the comedy. Often, we don’t know
whether a character says something contradictory or
random in a serious way, or if the character is just joking.
This ambiguity in tone makes readers both slightly
uncomfortable and prone to laughter.
Wilde shows his characters’ folly in a number of
ways: spinning something that is out of human control as if it
were a simple matter of mundane choice, inverting
aphorisms so that they mean the opposite of what common
sense dictates, and simply juxtaposing random things so that
they create an absurd situation.