Opus 30: Oscar Wilde as a Satirist: Part V
The Serious and the Trivial
Given the fact that we are reading The Importance of Being Earnest as a social documentary on Victorian high society's decadence into absurdity, as caused by the social and economic influence of the capitalist ideology, we cannot safely say that this is Wilde's intention. Wilde certainly did not consider as a satirist, like Pope or Swift; he only states that morality and virtue are necessary ingredients of great art. Hence the first two sections of this essay are non-authorial interpretations of the text. But the last part element of satire - reversal of the serious and the trivial - does seem to have authorial grounding in the play. From the text we explicitly can determine Wilde's two major concerns: the value of human life and the value of art.
The serious issue of the value of human life is reversed in the play with the trivial humour of food consumption. We can quickly note that there are actually quite a few "deaths" in the play: "Ernest", "Bunbury" and a few of Lady Bracknell's friends' husbands died. However, nobody really seems to care if anybody dies; in fact, all of these deaths are rejoiced and celebrated. Chasuble and Miss Prism definitely shows no concern for the death of "Ernest"; Lady Bracknell congratulates Bunbury for making the correct choice with "medical assistance" and is happy for his death; all the ladies whose husbands died seem to get younger and live "entirely for pleasure". These are all humourous but obvious signs of a society where human life is no longer significant. The focus is shifted to the trivial pleasures of life: food. Algernon is touchy about his cucumber sandwiches (which has no cucumber in it) and obssessed with Jack's muffins. Gwendolen is a lover of bread and butter. Jack comments that Cecily "has got a capital appetite" (and one can notice the language of Wilde reflecting the influence of capitalism). This kind of reversal of values is unacceptable for a moral artist like Wilde, and it is made absolutely ridiculous by Wilde's staging. The most serious conversations are interrupted by the consumption of food, as in the beginning of the play, when Jack is talking about marriages and picks up a sandwich. The battle for "Ernest" in the Second Act (who at that point is already supposedly killed by Jack) between Gwendolen and Cecily is fought metaphorically with food. At the beginning of the Third Act, the ladies think that the boy's eating muffins is a sign of repentance. Wilde chooses to use humour to engage his audience with the problem of reversal of values, and it is done very effectively.
Perhaps a more important reversal of values Wilde wants to point out to his contemporary audience is the reversal of artistic values. What he considers as true artistic values are abandoned by his society; instead people buy into trivial novels and diaries, magazines and music. Wilde would not be the first one to criticize, in George Eliot's words, "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists", but in the play, through the diaries of Gwendolen and Cecily, the novels are shown to be just plain, trival and stupid. The educational or aristic constitution of other characters also manifest Wilde's concern for a lack of artistic grounding of his contemporary society. For example, Algernon cannot play the piano correctly, and instead excuses himself as a sentimentalist. Algernon also points out that literary criticism right then is done by people who have not attended universities - in other words, uneducated people. Chasuble, probably the most intellectual character of the play, does not publish a single work, and hence we are led to question his intellectual abilities. When Chasuble alludes to mythology, we see that Miss Prism entirely missed the allusion. We also see that Cecily abandons her German studies, and German is a highly intellectual language, with many famous poets such as Goethe, Schiller and Heine. Gwendolen is a subscriber to "expensive monthly magazines", which talks about things like displaying affections publicly. Nowhere in the play do we find any traces of artistic sparks; everywhere is signs of triviality. Lady Bracknell's last line, "you seem to be displaying signs of trivality", is most certainly ironic - the entire play is a sign of the trivality of the high society, its lack of cultural grounding, its artistic decadence.
Given the fact that we are reading The Importance of Being Earnest as a social documentary on Victorian high society's decadence into absurdity, as caused by the social and economic influence of the capitalist ideology, we cannot safely say that this is Wilde's intention. Wilde certainly did not consider as a satirist, like Pope or Swift; he only states that morality and virtue are necessary ingredients of great art. Hence the first two sections of this essay are non-authorial interpretations of the text. But the last part element of satire - reversal of the serious and the trivial - does seem to have authorial grounding in the play. From the text we explicitly can determine Wilde's two major concerns: the value of human life and the value of art.
The serious issue of the value of human life is reversed in the play with the trivial humour of food consumption. We can quickly note that there are actually quite a few "deaths" in the play: "Ernest", "Bunbury" and a few of Lady Bracknell's friends' husbands died. However, nobody really seems to care if anybody dies; in fact, all of these deaths are rejoiced and celebrated. Chasuble and Miss Prism definitely shows no concern for the death of "Ernest"; Lady Bracknell congratulates Bunbury for making the correct choice with "medical assistance" and is happy for his death; all the ladies whose husbands died seem to get younger and live "entirely for pleasure". These are all humourous but obvious signs of a society where human life is no longer significant. The focus is shifted to the trivial pleasures of life: food. Algernon is touchy about his cucumber sandwiches (which has no cucumber in it) and obssessed with Jack's muffins. Gwendolen is a lover of bread and butter. Jack comments that Cecily "has got a capital appetite" (and one can notice the language of Wilde reflecting the influence of capitalism). This kind of reversal of values is unacceptable for a moral artist like Wilde, and it is made absolutely ridiculous by Wilde's staging. The most serious conversations are interrupted by the consumption of food, as in the beginning of the play, when Jack is talking about marriages and picks up a sandwich. The battle for "Ernest" in the Second Act (who at that point is already supposedly killed by Jack) between Gwendolen and Cecily is fought metaphorically with food. At the beginning of the Third Act, the ladies think that the boy's eating muffins is a sign of repentance. Wilde chooses to use humour to engage his audience with the problem of reversal of values, and it is done very effectively.
Perhaps a more important reversal of values Wilde wants to point out to his contemporary audience is the reversal of artistic values. What he considers as true artistic values are abandoned by his society; instead people buy into trivial novels and diaries, magazines and music. Wilde would not be the first one to criticize, in George Eliot's words, "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists", but in the play, through the diaries of Gwendolen and Cecily, the novels are shown to be just plain, trival and stupid. The educational or aristic constitution of other characters also manifest Wilde's concern for a lack of artistic grounding of his contemporary society. For example, Algernon cannot play the piano correctly, and instead excuses himself as a sentimentalist. Algernon also points out that literary criticism right then is done by people who have not attended universities - in other words, uneducated people. Chasuble, probably the most intellectual character of the play, does not publish a single work, and hence we are led to question his intellectual abilities. When Chasuble alludes to mythology, we see that Miss Prism entirely missed the allusion. We also see that Cecily abandons her German studies, and German is a highly intellectual language, with many famous poets such as Goethe, Schiller and Heine. Gwendolen is a subscriber to "expensive monthly magazines", which talks about things like displaying affections publicly. Nowhere in the play do we find any traces of artistic sparks; everywhere is signs of triviality. Lady Bracknell's last line, "you seem to be displaying signs of trivality", is most certainly ironic - the entire play is a sign of the trivality of the high society, its lack of cultural grounding, its artistic decadence.
posted by Tristan at 5:34 p.m.
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