Earnest Analysis

I am going to talk about Oscar Wilde's play The Importance of Being Earnest. Throughout Wilde's play, the trivial was deemed as more important than the serious matters. A trivial matter such as someone's name effected who they would get engaged to. Jack and Algernon almost lost the love of Gwendolyn and Cecily, due to the their lies about their names. Yet, when Jack discovered that his name was truly Earnest, he got overjoyed and got engaged to Gwendolyn. Both Gwendolyn and Cecily placed emphasis on the importance of being named Earnest, since they both wanted to be married to a man named Earnest. A person's name, which is such a trivial matter almost changed two engagements, whereas a serious matter of lying about one's identity had no effect at all. Lying about one's identity should have been enough to break the engagements of Algernon and Jack. yet, Cecily and Gwendolyn easily forgave them after they gave halve-hearted reasons, since they gave stylish responses. So, style, although trivial, was very important in the play, which helps further prove the importance of trivial matter over serious ones.  Algernon Moncrief, one of the main characters throughout the play, believes that liquor tastes worse while married. Furthermore he believes that women act indecent towards their husbands and flirt inappropriately with them. In addition, Algernon believes that men need to create a false persona to get away from their wives or else the wives will do the same. Algernon believed that a marriage proposal was like a business engagement, so marriage as a whole is viewed quite negatively. Marriage seems to bring the perception of dullness, since the wives make the champagne taste worse, and the proposal is business. Yet, Algernon gave up those beliefs easily after seeing Cecily's unorthodox behavior, which shows that something serious such as someone's beliefs are not really important at all. So, serious matters are further portrayed as insignificant and trivial. In addition, Lady Bracknell  originally forbade Gwendolyn from marrying Jack, because of his origins, even though he is a rich and kind gentleman. Yet, when Jack's true origins are revealed, Lady Bracknell easily approves of his engagement to her daughter. So, the trivial was further portrayed as very important. I believe that Oscar Wilde made the trivial seem so important, because he wanted to show that everyone takes things too seriously, so he made a comical play to make fun of that.