Satire of Society in Oscar Wilde's the Importance of Being Earnest

Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People establishes its satirical tone from the beginning, through its subtitle. The serious people that this comedy is for, is the Victorian society and the triviality that it refers to is the frivolous representation of important matters throughout the play, which are used as satirical device. The characterization of the leads, along with satirical devices such as irony, travesty, sarcasm and farce are used to ridicule the society on matters such as marriage, money, morality, and education.

Throughout the play Wilde explores the idea of marriage, especially as a social tool. Lady Bracknell has married into high society and wishes for her daughter Gwendolen to have an equally ‘suitable' marriage. The involvement of parental approval and the social standing and lineage of potential suitors is an obstacle in the marriages of the play, as Lady Bracknell believes that "An engagement should come on a young girl as a surprise, pleasant or unpleasant, as the case may be. It is hardly a matter that she could be allowed to arrange for herself"(Wilde 1.410-12). Through this, Wilde is revealing and mocking the Victorian notion of marrying for political and social reasons rather than love and affection.

Cecily and Gwendolen have highly romantic notions of marriage, which are based on their idea of what it should entail. Both women have fixated on the importance of marrying someone called Ernest. The fact that the name is more important than anything else demonstrates Wilde's attitude to the superficiality of Victorian morals around marriage. This is enhanced by the use of the joke around the name Ernest, when the two men pretending to be called Ernest are not being earnest. The theme of marriage is also used to parody the romance dramas of the time, which always ended in a marriage. In this play, there are three couples preparing for marriage instead of the usual