The Importance of Being Earnest was written in 1895 by the famous playwright Oscar Wilde. On the surface, it seems to be a happy play about a group of silly upper-class idealists living in the midst of Victorian society, who create for themselves the wildest of conflicts and even wilder solutions to those conflicts. But at its core it is a play that makes satire out of what society considers ideal, and mocks the concept of idealism, conflating it with the intangible, the unrealistic, and the fictional. In this essay, I intend to prove how Wilde uses the concept of idealism within the play to comment on the superficiality of the Victorian Upper-Class culture. In order to prove this, I will examine the character of Cecily Cardew, and how she interacts with idealism within three separate contexts within the play, and the consequences that follow thereafter. 

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The first example we must examine is the romance between Cecily and her fiancé, “Ernest”. As she tells Algernon in act two, Cecily loves Ernest dearly, and had been engaged to him for three months. She tells him happily about waiting for him to propose, and then exasperatedly making the first move herself. She shows off the ring he got her proudly, as well as a box full to the brim with love letters. Every notable moment throughout their engagement she documents painstakingly into her personal diary, including the day she broke off their engagement, stating proudly:

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“It would hardly have been a really serious engagement if it hadn't been broken off at least once. But I forgave you before the week was out.”

(Pg. 33)

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Cecily has every moment of her courting period down to a beautiful, romantic science. Every part of her engagement has been perfect, all except for one small detail: “Ernest” does not exist. He is an invention, a lie created by Cecily’s Uncle Jack, as an excuse to travel to town and briefly escape responsibility. Cecily has never met him face to face, nor has she ever received anything from him: every gift, every letter was sent or created for herself, by herself. But this has not stopped Cecily from loving Ernest, or rather the idea of him: the perfect man, mysterious, passionate, with a vague, handsome face and a willingness to change his wicked ways to be with her. She has assigned so much emotional weight to this fantasy, to the name Ernest itself, that the moment she meets Algernon (who is pretending to be “Ernest” to annoy his friend Jack) she falls in love on the spot. 

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Cecily:

You dear romantic boy. [He kisses her, she puts her fingers through his hair.] I hope your hair curls naturally, does it? 

Algernon:

Yes, darling, with a little help from others. 

Cecily:

I am so glad.

(Pg. 33) 

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Note Algernon’s response. “Yes, with help,” really means no, but either Cecily does not notice or does not care. As long as “Ernest” has good hair and is passionate towards her (or, in other words, is fashionable and meets the social ideal) she is happy to marry him.

 

This idealized relationship is both the most realistic and most superficial aspect of The Importance of Being Earnest. For many young women of the time it would be better than most could hope for. Love matches, though commonplace now, were few and far between in an upper-class society built on marriages of alliance, where land holdings, money, and vague ideals (such as beauty, clothes, or an affinity for fashionable hobbies) were far more crucial to a union than love. While plays of the time are expected to show real love matches, in order to give real life debutantes a shred of hope for a happy marriage, The Importance of Being Earnest mocks the falseness of such attractions, pointing out the unsound foundations such idealistic courtships can make, and alluding to the turmoil it may cause later on.

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The next example we must study is the turbulence between Cecily and Gwendolyn. The two girls meet when Cecily’s Uncle, Jack Worthing, invites Gwendolyn to his home in the country, where he plans to “kill off” the fake Earnest via a cold, get himself stealthily christened as Earnest, and secure his romance with Gwendolyn all in one fell swoop. Neither woman knew about the other beforehand, and with no one to introduce them to each other, the two women begin to socialize using the standard manners and social cues of the time and, in doing so, slipping into a handful of different socially accepted platonic relationships. 

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First comes polite introductions. The two women give their names speaking politely enough with each other to cultivate a pleasant acquaintanceship. All is happy smiles and compliments, but underneath the cheerful façade both women are subtly sizing each other up. The conversation quickly turns towards family connections, who each girl is and their purposes for being at the Worthing estate. When Gwendolyn enquires more about Cecily’s relation to Earnest, she brings up, not unkindly, Cecily’s good looks, and says candidly that she wishes Cecily was much older.

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Gwendolyn:

“[…] Ernest has a strong upright nature. He is the very soul of truth and honor. Disloyalty would be as impossible to him as deception. But even men of the noblest possible moral character are extremely susceptible to the influence of the physical charms of others. Modern, no less than ancient history, supplies us with many most painful examples of what I refer to. If it were not so, indeed, history would be quite unreadable.”

(Pg. 36)

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Gwendolyn begins her comment with compliments. The man they both know (or that they think they both know) is upright and honorable, and would not be easily tempted by Cecily living in his house. But, she says subtly, even the greatest men in history could sometimes be tricked by beauty. In saying this, Gwendolyn is delicately asking Cecily whether her stay at the estate has stayed above board, and by extension, whether or not she will be an obstacle in her pursuit of Earnest. This is a genius social play on Gwendolyn’s part, because it is pointed enough to shame Cecily if her assumption is correct, while also being vague enough to not offend Cecily if she is wrong. In fact, Cecily is able to politely correct the misunderstanding with a few good-humored explanations, and the conversation continues amicably. 

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Or, it would, if another misunderstanding did not come to pass. Cecily tells Gwendolyn that she is to marry Ernest, the polite corrections begin anew, and when a search of both ladies’ diaries reveals that both women are going to marry Earnest, the two settle into a very different platonic relationship: polite hatred. 

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Gwendolyn [Meditatively]:

If the poor fellow has been entrapped into any foolish promise I shall consider it my duty to rescue him at once, with a firm hand.

Cecily [Thoughtfully and Sadly]:

Whatever unfortunate entanglement my dear boy may have got into, I will never reproach him with it after we are married.

Gwendolyn:

Do you allude to me, Miss Cardew, as an entanglement? You are presumptuous. On an occasion of this kind it becomes more than a moral duty to speak one’s mind. It becomes a pleasure.

Cecily:

Do you suggest, Miss Fairfax, that I entrapped Ernest into an engagement? How dare you? This is no time for wearing the shallow mask of manners. When I see a spade a call it a spade.

Gwendolyn [Satirically]:

I am glad to say I have never seen a spade. It is obvious that our social spheres have been widely different.

(Pg. 37)

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Notice how subtle each quip is: no direct insults, no cursing. On the surface level, both women give simple, thoughtful reflections on the unfortunate situation Ernest seems to have gotten himself into, paired with proclamations to love him regardless. But they are each barbed with implications. Cecily calls the situation an entanglement, and Gwendolyn calls it an entrapment, and so both accuse the other of forcing Ernest into engagement. Gwendolyn’s final quip about spades is almost a final straw: she is implying that Cecily is of a lower class than her.

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The animosity builds to a head for several pages, until the arrival of both Jack and Algernon reveals the truth: that there is no Ernest to be married to at all. This surprise drives the girls to take on the final evolution of their relationship: they become “friends close as sisters.”

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Gwendolyn:

My poor wounded Cecily!

Cecily:

My sweet wronged Gwendolyn!

Gwendolyn: [slowly and seriously]

You will call me sister, will you not? [They embrace. Jack and Algernon groan and walk up and down.]

(Pg. 39)

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All of these changes, from pleasant to cordial, then from vicious to sisters, have come to pass over the span of less than six pages. This could very well imply that both girls have a vast emotional range and very quick processing times, but it may also indicate that a sense of apathy and detachment is present in their relationship as well. While there is nothing preventing such a relationship from eventually forming sometime in the future, neither girl has truly reached the sisterhood phase (they met all of ten minutes ago). 

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The third example we must examine is the one Cecily has with the play itself. The Importance of Being Earnest is a romantic comedy, which means that it’s characters must fall into the generic roles the audience, and society, expects them to. Most plays of this sort will have two or so layers of this: First, there is the primary romantic couple, which consists of the main character and their love interest. These are the characters that drive the main plot, so it’s most common to see their problems be solved at the climax of the play, usually in a grand twist of fate. Then there is the secondary romantic couple, usually made up of the main character’s friend and their love interest. They drive the side plot, which can be interwoven with the first. When their plot is resolved, it happens by consequence of the main plot’s resolution. (As an example, in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Helena and Demetrius, the secondary couple, get their happy ending by consequence of Hermia and Lysander, the primaries, getting theirs.)

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Ideally, the same should be true in The Importance of Being Earnest: Cecily (alongside Algernon) is in the role of the secondary couple, and so her conflict should be solved at the same time that Jack and Gwendolyn’s is. Instead, the play almost seems to sweep her under the rug, attempting to forget about her completely. After Jack and Algernon tell the girls that they will both change their names (on page forty-four), Cecily’s lines dry up. She does not speak for herself beyond a “Yes Lady Bracknell” or “Yes Aunt Augusta” for five pages, afterwards the first words she says are this: 

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Cecily:

Algy, could you wait for me till I was thirty-five?

(Pg. 49) 

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Though she had stated earlier on in the play that she would not marry Algernon if his name was Algy, and despite still expecting him to change it, she somehow does not mind using his name here. The play employs no sub-plot about her accepting his name for what it is (that would be too realistic). Instead it simply pretends that Cecily’s conflict is solved and moves on. It is also notable that at the ending of the play, when all the “lovers” cry out in joy, Cecily’s voice is absent entirely. 

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Jack:

My own one! 

Chasuble [to Miss Prism]:

Laetitia! [embraces her] 

Miss Prism [enthusiastically]:

Frederick! At last! 

Algernon:

Cecily! [embraces her] at last! 

Jack:

Gwendolyn! [embraces her] at last!

(Pg. 54) 

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I believe this was an intentional move by Oscar Wilde, same as all the other “ideal” social interactions within this play. The ideal romantic comedy has been a constant in English-speaking pop culture for centuries, and within that time it has told the same story to its viewers over and over again: conform to the ideals of upper-class society, and you will get your Happy Ending. The Importance of Being Earnest both masquerades as and mocks these sorts of plays. In pretending to provide a happy ending for all its characters, it sheds light on how unrealistic the genre’s expectations truly are. 

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In conclusion, The Importance of Being Earnest presents the lives of its characters as a neatly finished story, where the characters live by a code of ideals rather than a sense of reality. Cecily reacts to the world around her, as well as the relationships in her life, in a way that at first glance seems substantial (the play’s tone and mood portray her struggles as ending successfully for her), but on closer inspection, the opposite seems to be far truer: Cecily’s conflict resolutions tend to lead her towards relationships and happiness that are superficial at best, intangible at worst. Her claimed sisterhood with Gwendolyn is based on little more than a few moments worth of bonding, most of which was spent throwing thinly-veiled insults at one another, and her romance with Algernon is founded on a fiction she made up in her own head. These relationships are not cohesive by the end of the play. It is good to make a friend out of your in-laws and have a husband with cool hair, but it takes a lot more than that to build a successful relationship. On top of that, when the play silences her in the final act, resigning her to be, more or less, a voiceless prop for the other characters in the scene, it shows that even the story she exists in has been flattened, reduced to nothing more than a superficial tale, detached from the consequences of reality. In this way, Wilde satirizes an upper-class society that is both founded on ideals and superficial to its core, filled with people who are unlucky enough to live in a world founded in reality.