Opus 30: Oscar Wilde as a Satirist, Part II
Satire as Mirror
To what extend can we view The Importance of Being Earnest as an accurate miniature of Victorian high society? If "[a]ll art is at once surface and symbol", then the comical characters in Importance are surprisingly representative of the different types of players in high society. While I do not possess the exact and specific details of how Victorian high society is like, Wilde writes that "[i]t is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors." With this in mind, we can safely say that Wilde is indeed describing the reality of society. Each character in the play can be seen as a representation of a class or group of people; each event, a minumized actuality; each prop, a symbol of the material reality. Importance is a most carefully constructed play; it illustrates very clearly how each type of person is affected by the dominance of capitalism and the social, class and gender forces that are effected by capitalism.
Algernon: "He has nothing, but he looks everything."
One of the most striking characteristic of the high society is its obsession with appearances. The appearance of being wealthy, educated, tasteful, kindhearted and moral are the necessary assets for the survival of people in high society in general. This fundamental obsession comes from the philosophy of capitalism, which puts its emphasis on business transaction and individual satisfaction. Algernon is the kind of young high class man who internalizes this "capitalist mentality". He thinks that money can solve problems, so when Lane fails to buy cucumbers, he is "greatly distressed...about there being no cucumbers, not even for ready money." If money solves all problems, then for Algernon, the object of his life is to acquire as much money as possible, with as many means as he can find. His life becomes a business depot, constantly weighing profits and losses. Familial relations, personal relationships or even morality becomes "duties"; as long as he appears to be dutious, he will survive. Hence he will entertain Aunt Augusta and various familial dinners; he would have taken money from Jack for the cigarette case had Jack offered it; he requires a Mr. Bunbury for him to properly escape society for personal fun. Lady Bracknell comments that Algernon is full of debts, but that is perfectly fine because he does not appear so. As for personal fun, he admits that getting into trouble is his personal enjoyment; the truth of "Ernest"'s identity, what Jack calls "a ghastly state of things" is "a perfectly wonderful Bunburying" for Algernon. Algernon subconsciously understands that a man like him, who appears to be everything, will never get into real trouble, for his ways of actions are in exact conformity with the dominate forces of capitalism. Hence he can always sit back, relax, and tell Jack at the end of Act II that he hasn't "quite finish [his] tea yet! and there is still one muffin left."
Gwendolen and Cecily: "I am very fond of being looked at."
The two young ladies have also internalized some aspects of capitalist mentality. But specifically for women, the system of capitalism, aided by the patriarchal thinking from antiquity, requires women to fit into their "feminine" role of the beautiful ornament. The perfect young women are to be objects of value; at the same time, they are also conscious of their own objectivity and accept that as ideality. The French feminist Luce Irigaray once wrote: "men look at women; women look at themselves being looked at." This holds true in Victorian high society. Throughout the entire play, dramatic actions and dialogues, Wilde tells us the requirements of the "perfect" lady in his time. Actually, both Gwendolen and Cecily can be considered as models of the perfect lady. A lady of good society should be educated, but not properly: we can see that Gwendolen knows the word "metaphysics", but does not know how to use it, as she ironically becomes "metaphysical" in her next line; or that Cecily's lessons do not get anywhere, as Miss Prism said at the beginning of Act II, "We will repeat yesterday's lesson." She should be humble: Gwendolen hopes that she is not perfect, for "It would leave no room for developments". She should appear polite and insult politely: Cecily's cutting a large piece of cake for Gwendolen when Gwendolen requested butter and bread is an example of refined, polite forms of expression. She should as many connections with high society as possible: Gwendolen follows her mother day in and out of parties; she has enough "fame" to win an entire list of men who are willing to marry her. She should keep a diary to record her thoughts, regardless of their factuality, since it proves them cultured and educated; both Cecily and Gwendolen keep diaries. She should be loyal to her man (or at least appear loyal in public); Cecily and Gwendolen are quick to become friends, but as soon as they realized they are apparently after the same "Ernest", they quickly turn against each other, guarding their possession; or again, at the beginning of Act III, the girls give up their "dignified silence" and readily submit to their men. Most importantly, all of these feminine qualities must be public; they are intended for the gaze of the male: both Cecily and Gwendolen are beautiful girls; both intend to publish their diaries; both submit to their men in their presence. The femininity of ornamentation is nothing aesthetic; rather it is a powerful method of the capitalist patriarchy to subdue and control the female sex.
Lady Bracknell: "I hope you are behaviouring very well."
As we have seen previously, one's social and economic power has huge influence upon one's morality. Not only does one have to appear moral; rather, morality is a kind of commodity which can be bought through the acquisition of social and economic status. This is the case for high society people like Lady Bracknell, who possesses enormous wealth and huge networks of connections. Her economic and social positiongives her a power to judge and condemn others morally. She has high control over the conduct of Algernon and Gwendolen (restricting their marriages, for example), and she has the power to condemn Jack and Cecily. Inevitably, she condemns Jack not for moral reasons but for a lack of social position. She compares Jack to "the worst excesses of the French Revolution" and tells him "to try and acquire some relations as soon as possible", for no "affectionate mother" would allow her only daughter "to marry into a cloak room, and form an alliance with a parcel". On the other hand, in Act III, as soon as she realizes that Cecily has a hundred and thirty thousand pounds, Lady Bracknell is no longer a skeptic, and Cecily, immediately "a most attractive young lady." Predictably enough, nobody complaint of Lady Bracknell's own hypocrisies. She congraduates on the death of Mr. Bunbury, saying that he has made the right choice with the doctors; she scolds the boys' christening as "grotesque and irreligious", but adds that Lord Bracknell will be disappointed in the christening's wasting of time and money (the wasting of "time and money" are hardly irreligious; it is, however, not economical). Lady Bracknell often mentions the pleasing life of all the older ladies whose husbands died gives the impression that she too wants her sick husband to die so that she can always look thirty-five. The ladies of high society are the ones who are truly "grotesque and irreligious"; but since they are at a position of social and economic (and therefore moral) power, nobody dares to condemn them, and they go in happily in their wasteful lives. Their assumptions as moral judges are aggrevatingly ironic; Lady Bracknell's line, that feeling well and behaving well "rarely go together", applies as much to Algernon as to herself.
To what extend can we view The Importance of Being Earnest as an accurate miniature of Victorian high society? If "[a]ll art is at once surface and symbol", then the comical characters in Importance are surprisingly representative of the different types of players in high society. While I do not possess the exact and specific details of how Victorian high society is like, Wilde writes that "[i]t is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors." With this in mind, we can safely say that Wilde is indeed describing the reality of society. Each character in the play can be seen as a representation of a class or group of people; each event, a minumized actuality; each prop, a symbol of the material reality. Importance is a most carefully constructed play; it illustrates very clearly how each type of person is affected by the dominance of capitalism and the social, class and gender forces that are effected by capitalism.
Algernon: "He has nothing, but he looks everything."
One of the most striking characteristic of the high society is its obsession with appearances. The appearance of being wealthy, educated, tasteful, kindhearted and moral are the necessary assets for the survival of people in high society in general. This fundamental obsession comes from the philosophy of capitalism, which puts its emphasis on business transaction and individual satisfaction. Algernon is the kind of young high class man who internalizes this "capitalist mentality". He thinks that money can solve problems, so when Lane fails to buy cucumbers, he is "greatly distressed...about there being no cucumbers, not even for ready money." If money solves all problems, then for Algernon, the object of his life is to acquire as much money as possible, with as many means as he can find. His life becomes a business depot, constantly weighing profits and losses. Familial relations, personal relationships or even morality becomes "duties"; as long as he appears to be dutious, he will survive. Hence he will entertain Aunt Augusta and various familial dinners; he would have taken money from Jack for the cigarette case had Jack offered it; he requires a Mr. Bunbury for him to properly escape society for personal fun. Lady Bracknell comments that Algernon is full of debts, but that is perfectly fine because he does not appear so. As for personal fun, he admits that getting into trouble is his personal enjoyment; the truth of "Ernest"'s identity, what Jack calls "a ghastly state of things" is "a perfectly wonderful Bunburying" for Algernon. Algernon subconsciously understands that a man like him, who appears to be everything, will never get into real trouble, for his ways of actions are in exact conformity with the dominate forces of capitalism. Hence he can always sit back, relax, and tell Jack at the end of Act II that he hasn't "quite finish [his] tea yet! and there is still one muffin left."
Gwendolen and Cecily: "I am very fond of being looked at."
The two young ladies have also internalized some aspects of capitalist mentality. But specifically for women, the system of capitalism, aided by the patriarchal thinking from antiquity, requires women to fit into their "feminine" role of the beautiful ornament. The perfect young women are to be objects of value; at the same time, they are also conscious of their own objectivity and accept that as ideality. The French feminist Luce Irigaray once wrote: "men look at women; women look at themselves being looked at." This holds true in Victorian high society. Throughout the entire play, dramatic actions and dialogues, Wilde tells us the requirements of the "perfect" lady in his time. Actually, both Gwendolen and Cecily can be considered as models of the perfect lady. A lady of good society should be educated, but not properly: we can see that Gwendolen knows the word "metaphysics", but does not know how to use it, as she ironically becomes "metaphysical" in her next line; or that Cecily's lessons do not get anywhere, as Miss Prism said at the beginning of Act II, "We will repeat yesterday's lesson." She should be humble: Gwendolen hopes that she is not perfect, for "It would leave no room for developments". She should appear polite and insult politely: Cecily's cutting a large piece of cake for Gwendolen when Gwendolen requested butter and bread is an example of refined, polite forms of expression. She should as many connections with high society as possible: Gwendolen follows her mother day in and out of parties; she has enough "fame" to win an entire list of men who are willing to marry her. She should keep a diary to record her thoughts, regardless of their factuality, since it proves them cultured and educated; both Cecily and Gwendolen keep diaries. She should be loyal to her man (or at least appear loyal in public); Cecily and Gwendolen are quick to become friends, but as soon as they realized they are apparently after the same "Ernest", they quickly turn against each other, guarding their possession; or again, at the beginning of Act III, the girls give up their "dignified silence" and readily submit to their men. Most importantly, all of these feminine qualities must be public; they are intended for the gaze of the male: both Cecily and Gwendolen are beautiful girls; both intend to publish their diaries; both submit to their men in their presence. The femininity of ornamentation is nothing aesthetic; rather it is a powerful method of the capitalist patriarchy to subdue and control the female sex.
Lady Bracknell: "I hope you are behaviouring very well."
As we have seen previously, one's social and economic power has huge influence upon one's morality. Not only does one have to appear moral; rather, morality is a kind of commodity which can be bought through the acquisition of social and economic status. This is the case for high society people like Lady Bracknell, who possesses enormous wealth and huge networks of connections. Her economic and social positiongives her a power to judge and condemn others morally. She has high control over the conduct of Algernon and Gwendolen (restricting their marriages, for example), and she has the power to condemn Jack and Cecily. Inevitably, she condemns Jack not for moral reasons but for a lack of social position. She compares Jack to "the worst excesses of the French Revolution" and tells him "to try and acquire some relations as soon as possible", for no "affectionate mother" would allow her only daughter "to marry into a cloak room, and form an alliance with a parcel". On the other hand, in Act III, as soon as she realizes that Cecily has a hundred and thirty thousand pounds, Lady Bracknell is no longer a skeptic, and Cecily, immediately "a most attractive young lady." Predictably enough, nobody complaint of Lady Bracknell's own hypocrisies. She congraduates on the death of Mr. Bunbury, saying that he has made the right choice with the doctors; she scolds the boys' christening as "grotesque and irreligious", but adds that Lord Bracknell will be disappointed in the christening's wasting of time and money (the wasting of "time and money" are hardly irreligious; it is, however, not economical). Lady Bracknell often mentions the pleasing life of all the older ladies whose husbands died gives the impression that she too wants her sick husband to die so that she can always look thirty-five. The ladies of high society are the ones who are truly "grotesque and irreligious"; but since they are at a position of social and economic (and therefore moral) power, nobody dares to condemn them, and they go in happily in their wasteful lives. Their assumptions as moral judges are aggrevatingly ironic; Lady Bracknell's line, that feeling well and behaving well "rarely go together", applies as much to Algernon as to herself.
posted by Tristan at 7:29 p.m.
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