LLCE Anglais : How relevant is Wilde’s Play today ? ( Play = The Importance of being Earnest )

Légende alternative :

name of "Earnest", and who is in love with Gwendolen Fairfax. And Algernon, his friend, who also pretends to be "Earnest" to marry Cecily Cardew. A double life that caused a lot of confusion throughout the play. This play is for Oscar Wilde a subtle way to criticize the Victorian society in which he lived, and even ridicule it with a lot of irony, parody, and social satire. Moreover, it aimed at highlighting the dubious virtues of the self-proclaimed perfect society, especially of the Upper classes, which, according to him, were characterised by their hypocritical attitudes. Finally, this famous play is a timeless play which is still read today. How relevant is Wilde's play today? Firstly, we will see that this play is complex. And then, that it is possible to make a parallel between the themes tackled by Wilde in his play and current topics. The Importance of Being Erneast is a play that seems simple on the surface; even superficial. Indeed, if we are not careful, we may believe that it is simply a work based on several misunderstandings due to the first name Ernest and the pun around it. However, when we look deeper into it, we realise what is at stake in the play and the themes that the dramaturge deals with. This is the genius of the play; the multitude of themes that directly concern Victorian society paint an inglorious picture of it and emphasise their hypocritical side, the double life that most of them live in secret and their tendency to be dishonest. There are many subjects in the Wilde's play that are of paramount importance. It is true that nowadays, we do not have exactly the same point of view as the author because since his time, society has evolved and suffered many changes that have shaped the society we know today. And yet, some things have not really changed. Indeed, there are still what can be called "elites" in our society, the upper and wealthy classes, for whom although society has progressed, they have preserved aristocratic habits from Oscar Wilde's time in various areas such as arranged marriages, the way of behaving with others or the hypocrisy proper to Victorian society. Firstly, in his play, Oscar Wilde expresses his perception of marriage through the character of Algernon Moncrieff. He describes it as something without real interest, and even compares it to "imprisonment". That is not a very positive view, but it is not complicated to understand it when we observe Oscar Wilde's personal life. He was a married man with children, even though he was homosexual. His marriage was like a perpetual "jail". In his day, this view may have seemed forward-looking because marriage has always had a sacred meaning, the union of two people before God. According to Wilde's opinion, marriage is an act that is much less common today, with people searching alternatives or not getting married. Nevertheless, this is not the only thing that Wilde does through this topic. Indeed, he openly criticises the concept of arranged marriages, without love and with a purely economic purpose between two families to satisfy their standard of living. Today, there are still some countries in the world such as India where arranged marriages are the norm to maintain one's place in society. Secondly, the topics of the "constraints of morality", "The Importance of not being Earnest" and even "Hypocrisy" are still relevant today because we live in a society in which not everyone is honest. Whether it is to be nice, not to hurt the people's feelings, or for our own benefit, we sometimes lie. It is a human reflex and behaviour, which we sometimes do without even realising it. Just as Algernon or Jack who lie about their true identity to seduce their respective lovers, we lie to get what we want. Thus, we are quite similar from this point of view. Moreover, hypocrisy is a manner to preserve our relationships with other people which is comparable to the situation in the play. For example, we can cite the scene in which Cecily has tea with Gwendolen. Indeed, although they hate each other they smile at each other in a silly way during the first part. They are insincere and hypocrite. To conclude, The Importance of being Earnest is a play that I liked despite a few passages that did not seem very interesting or relevant. However, it is a play that is worth reading or watching because, in addition to being well written, it plays on a multitude of comics, makes good use of irony, and social satire. Then, I appreciated the fact that through this play, Oscar Wilde paints a sometimes exaggerated but on the whole correct portrait of the Upper class and their bad behaviour. Which gives a more accurate picture of the Victorian society and more precisely of the upper classes. Moreover, without realising it, Wilde has written a play that can almost be described as "timeless" because it has a lot in common with the society, we live in. The themes of the play can be contrasted with current themes that persist in certain upper classes such as arranged marriages or that are common to all human beings, regardless of the social rank such as hypocrisy, lies...