The Importance of Being Ernest

867 Words4 Pages
The play: “The importance of being Earnest” is one of the greatest work of Oscar Wilde. There are many factors to create the successful writing and the imagery is an indispensable aspect. Therefore, the three main theme of the play “the importance of being earnest” written by Oscar Wilde: society’s real values , the gender’s role with social status and the fiction is clearly amplified by the imagery. society’s real value is not evaluated by the truly standard from the inside but almost based on the unreal identity and people life style. The food scene between Gwendolen and Cecily shows that people assume the way they eat and drink can tell how much fashionable and worthy they are. When Cecily offered Gwendolen sugar and cake, she responds that sugar is “not fashionable any more” and “Cake is rarely seen at the best houses nowadays.” Gwendolen asks for tea with no sugar and bread with butter because all the elite people prefer it. “food” and how to use food is used as an ideal imagine to make up a judgement on other people’s value The personal name becomes society’s typical standard to consider ones value. The imaginary “Earnest” created by Jack is highly appreciated by society, especially young girls. Interestingly, the magic of this name comes from the similar sound between Ernest and the actually “earnest”. Society totally trusts and respects the person name Ernest only because “in that name that seems to inspire absolute confidence”. As Cecily said that without the name “Ernest”, she could admire Algernon’s character but not be able to give him her undivided attention. Clearly, the individual personalities seem to be less important than the name according to society at that time. The imagery also amplify the second theme of the play: the gender’s role. In the previous scene, “food” represents for the trend of fashionable lifestyle. At this point, the
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