... Wilde1 While it is possible to declare Oscar Wilde's play "The Importance of being Earnest" as pure nonsense with the only aim to entertain, a closer look reveals its sobriety. Oscar Wilde wrote a comedy of manners, mistaken identity and social conventions.2 The story is set in the English society of the 1890's, the society against whose aristocracy, artificiality and clinging to ... thing for a men to find out."20 After all the trouble caused by the dishonesty and misidentity realises Jack "for the first time in my life the vital importance of Being Earnest."21 Wilde depicted here that...

• Word Count: 1589
• Approx Pages: 6
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... servant, Really, if the lower orders don't set us a good example, what on earth is the use of them? They seem, as a class, to have absolutely no sense of moral responsibility' (Act 1, page 2) In the final act of The Importance of Being Earnest, Jack Worthing says of Miss Prism (who he mistakenly believes to be his long-lost and unmarried mother) "Who has the right ... other 1890's society comedies, Lady Windermere's Fan and An Ideal Husband are serious dramas about the intractability of sexual double-standards and the personal costs of respectability. Issues that Wilde appears, possibly,...

• Word Count: 1627
• Approx Pages: 7
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School