THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST

Discuss how the characters Gwendolen and Cecily break gender roles.  

The play “The Importance of Being Earnest” is characterized by playing with words. There no much action in the play, the characters just talk and eat all the time. The triviality of the Victorian age’s upper class is very well shown with humor, and the author criticizes them. He creates very comic figures to represent this class and he exposes their real feelings. During the play, Wilde discusses about how the upper class at that time treats the marriage, death, and how much worth the status for them. The characters are presented as models of the class they represent, but the inversion of values is current in all of them.

Gwendolen and Cecily are not different from this pattern, they are very beautiful young girls, perfect models of their class. Both of them are obsessed with the name Earnest, as we can see in the following lines.

‘GWENDOLEN: …and my ideal has always been to love some one of the name of Earnest.’

‘CECILY: You must not laugh at me, darling, but I had always been a girlish dream of mine to love some one whose name was Earnest.’

 But they are also bossy with their pretenders, whom are very complacent. Gwendolen and Cecily take charge of their own romantic lives, which was not a common behavior for Victorian girls.

GWENDOLEN: I adore you. But you haven’t proposed to me yet. Nothing has been said at all about marriage. The subject has not even been touched on.

JACK: Well…may I propose to you now?

GWENDOLEN: I think it would be an admirable opportunity. And to spare you any possible disappointment, Mr Worthing, I think it only fair to tell you quite frankly beforehand that I am fully determined to accept you.

ALGERNON: Darling! And was the engagement actually settled?

CECILY: On the 14^th of February last. Worn out by your entire ignorance of my existence, I determined to end the matter one way or the other, and after a long struggle with myself I accepted you under this dear old tree here. The next day I bought this little ring in your name, and this is the little bangle with the true lovers` knot I promised you always to wear.      

They suppose to be foolish, innocent, submissive girls, but they aren’t. With these two characters breaking gender roles, Wilde shows with humor and irony how hypocrite was the upper class at Victorian era, and what they treat the marriage, it was just business. After the girls find out that their pretenders’ real names weren’t Ernest, they promptly forgave them without any resistance after some very foolish excuses. But they still remain irreducible about to get married with some one which name is not Earnest, but they don’t care if he is earnest or not.

CECILY: That certainly seems a satisfactory explanation, does it not?

GWENDOLEN: Yes, dear, if you can believe him.

 CECILY: I don’t. but that does not affect the wonderful beauty of his answer.

 GWENDOLEN: True. In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity is the vital thing. Mr Worthing, what explanation can you offer to me for pretending to have a brother? Was it in order that you might have an opportunity of coming up to town to see me as often as possible?

JACK: Can you doubt it, Miss Fairfax?

GWENDOLEN: I have the gravest doubts upon the subject. But I intend to crush them. This is not the moment for German scepticism. [Moving to CECILY.] Their explanations appear to be quite satisfactory, especially Mr Worthing’s. That seems to me to have the stamp of truth upon it.

CECILY: I am more than content with what Mr Moncrieff said. His voice alone inspires one with absolute credulity.

GWENDOLEN: Then you think we should forgive them?

CECILY: Yes. I mean no.                    

GWENDOLEN and CECILY: Your Christian names are still an insuperable barrier. That is all. 

In some cultures, blue roses traditionally signify a mystery, or attaining the impossible. They are believed to be able to grant the owner youth or grant wishes. Historically, this symbolism derives from the rose’s meaning in the language of flowers common in Victorian times. In Chinese folklore, the blue rose signifies hope against unattainable love.

Jim only noticed Laura at high school because she was always late for singing classes because of her physical problem. After she misses some classes, when she came back he asked her what happened and she said she had pleurosis, but he understood “blue roses”, so he started calling her after that. The nickname fitted on her because she was so fragile, shy and she kept herself in her own world, alone. He knew she was different, but he didn’t know much about her. After dinner he realized that the nickname was in some way related to her. She was dependent on Amanda and Tom.

That night after dinner, Jim talked to Laura for a while and he noticed how fragile she was and she had inferiority complex. Even so he played with her feelings, he kissed her and then he told her he was engaged with another girl and he would not be back there. This act shows that he didn’t care about her at high school, and he didn’t change at all at dinner night. To him she is just blue roses, something that don’t exist.

            Yes, she is as guilty as Macbeth or maybe she has the biggest part of the guilt. She was the one who plotted the murder and we can say that she forced him to execute the plan.

            Even though Macbeth had already thought about the possibility to kill to have the throne, this idea was something horrible to him. Like we can see in lines 149 to 156, Act. I Sc. III:

                                Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair

                                And make my seated heart knock at my ribs

                                Against the use of nature? Present fears

                                Are less than horrible imaginings.

                                My thought, whose murder yet is but

                                 fantastical,

                                Shakes so my single state of man that function

                                Is smothered in surmise and nothing is

                                But what is not.   

            As soon as Lady Macbeth got the letter she started plotting Duncan`s murder, and she knew that Macbeth was not capable to do it by himself without her influence. She was stronger, more ruthless, and more ambitious than her husband; although at the beginning she was naive about the consequences of the crime she would take part. And probable Macbeth would not kill the king without Lady Macbeth’s influence. Act. I Sc.VII- lines 34 to 38.

                                We will proceed no further in this business

                                He hath honored me of late, and I have bought

                               Golden opinions from all sorts of people,

                               Which would be worn now in their

                               newest gloss,

                               Not cast aside so soon.

            Lady Macbeth’s sense of guilt can be confirmed by her mental condition, and at the end she seems to be more affected than Macbeth himself. She got very disturbed. She had a imaginary bloodstain in her hands that she could not wash it out, and she could not deal with this. And this mental condition maybe leaded her to the suicide. 

                               Act. V. Sc I – lines 31 & 32 

                              Out, dammed spot! out, I say!  One; two. Why

                              then ’tis time to do’t. Hell is murk.

                              Act. V. Sc. I – lines 34 & 35

                              Yet who would have thought the old man to have

                              had so much blood in him?

                              Act. V.  Sc. I – lines  46 & 47

                              Here’s the smell of the blood still. All the

                              perfumes of Arabia will not  sweeten this little

                              hand. Oh, oh, oh!

                             Act. V Sc. VIII – lines 79 to 82

                             Producing forth the cruel minister

                             Of this dead butcher and his fiendlike queen,

                             Who (as ’tis thought) by self and violent hands

                             Took of  her life-this,

To Counter Malthus

By Margaret Avison

None us in this so

burdened earth has known

how to live, let alone

who is too many.

Presence, each day

afresh, you give a

purifying signal to

sting us alive.

Vast territories and seashores

still bear these thronging

strangers. May none die

without somebody caring.

To know even one other is

costly. And being known.

Alive, among so many

more now? a concern…

Hunger makes men desperate, threatens

to congeal the quandary. Yet

Presence abides untouched

in the churn of Quantity.

In the first stanza, Avison goes against Malthus belief which says that starvation and disease have to exist to control the population growth. And she shows her unconformity because this “control” is not for everybody, but for those whom are weak.  

In the second stanza she expresses her gratitude for God, because he does not let us forget that we are not alone and our faith keeps us alive. The expression between commas shows that God gives his signals constantly for us in order to remember us that we are not alone.  

In the third stanza Margaret Avison made me think about those people, strange for me, but important for those who love them. People who die in misery, reinforcing Malthus hypothesis and separating men from God. This miserable part of the world, mostly below equator line, that does not have the same chances to survive. But they are part of this world.  

In the fourth stanza Avison expresses her concern about how to live together. The problem is not how many people there are, but what we have done to live with others without repress and kill “let die” in order to survive. 

In the last stanza we can notice that the men have been living with the same thought that the Malthus had, only concerning about when these miserable strange people will take a bite in my piece food. And God’s way is different; his concern is why the men can not live together helping each other. And the poet thinks in the same way and she is strongly against Malthus and his followers’ way of life. 

Africans has been destroyed by hungry, aids, and wars supported by rich countries. China represses itself killing children and enslaving their own people to maintain west’s futile way of life. The Middle East has expressed their angry for poorness using God as an excuse to kill. The poor part of Americas has poisoned the rich world with their drugs. And the rich countries have had a parasitic relation with the others, not a symbiosis. So, where has someone known how to live in this so burdened earth?       

 ˘     ‘      ˘          ‘      ˘         ‘        ˘         ‘     ˘       ‘

A/mo/ment/ the/ wild/ swa/llows/ like/ a/ flight                

  ˘     ‘        ˘          ‘            ˘            ‘           ˘    ‘     ˘        ‘

Of/ wi/thered/ gust-/caught/ leaves/, se/re/nely/ high        

    ˘       ‘     ˘        ’        ˘        ‘       ˘       ‘        ˘          ‘
Toss/ in/ the/ wind/rack/ up/ the/ mu/ttering/ sky. 

In these first three lines we can feel in the poet’s voice a mix of fear, or at least respect, and admiration when he sees the thunderstorm comming quickly (like a flight) and the leaves flying serenely and the sky whistling. The poet can hear the sky muttering. When he says ‘the wild swallows’, we can imply that is getting dark, and withered leaves imply light brown or yellowish color.  

         
The leaves hang still. Above the weird twilight,                   
The hurrying centres of the storm unite                           
And spreading with huge trunk and rolling fringe,            
Each wheeled upon its own tremendous hinge,                
Tower darkening on. And now from heaven’s height,

In these lines the poet draws a beautiful and strong image of the twilight being blocked by the leaves, those are hanged by the twister with a dense center and the fringes seems to wheel slowly, but it is part of the huge trunk. Yellowish or light brown from the leaves, red and golden from the twilight contrasting with black and dark from the twister are the colors there. The sight is the sense here. 

      
With the long roar of elm-trees swept and swayed,         
And pelted waters, on the vanished plain                       
Plunges the blast. Behind the wild white flash

Here the poet describes how the blast, coming from somewhere in the sky, toss the trees and how the rain hits the fields helped by the wind. He feels the touch of the wind, hears the roar from the thunders and sees the wind tossing the trees. The heaven’s height implies dark color because it is raining as well the vanished plain and the elm-trees imply green.   

                
That splits abroad the pealing thunder-crash,                
Over bleared fields and gardens disarrayed,                  
Column on column comes the drenching rain.

In the last four lines the poet intensifies his words to show that the thunderstorm is getting stronger. We can imagine the damages it causes to the fields and gardens and how dense the rain is to drench. The vision of the white flash splitting implies a very brief moment of intense light. The sight of the bleared fields and the messed gardens increase the feeling of dark. The hearing from the thunder-crash pealing and the touch of the rain coming very strong with the wind are some of the senses here.                

Rhyme scheme is  a b b a a c c a d e f f d e

We were a people taut for war

We fought, and were always in

Our kings died, or they were slain

Our bards perished, driven from the halls
Of nobles by the thorn and bramble
By the old treachery at the ford

And mud houses were a proof
Of our ineptitude for life

We were a people wasting ourselves
In fruitless battles for our masters

The poet describes a poor and hopeless past. 

In these lines the poet show us that they do not have much to be proud of in their past. They fought a lot but not for them, they betrayed themselves when they let their kings die and their bards perish and they were poor not only materially but spiritually.

And how is the present described? What adjectives and descriptive phrases are used? What will the Welsh have to stop doing in the present to have a future? Change, yes, but what small things must they stop valuing and how is this attitude described by the poet?

We were a people bred on legends,
Warming our hands at the red past

We were a people, and are so yet

They must live the reality and they must value themselves to live decently, so they could be proud of their present. The poet does not say that they have to forget the past, but they have to know what is real and what is not.

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