Being Earnest Oscar Wilde's Play, Essay

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Sincere -- or earnest -- is, it appears, the worst thing that one can be in Victorian England. Being sincere means that one has to be true to who they are and must not try to deceive anyone. That is to say that being sincere could perhaps mean being boring, smug, or solemn. These are precisely the qualities that Wilde saw as the distinguishing elements of the Victorian character. Oscar Wilde's story about double lives in trying to conform to ideals of a culture have of course been attributed to his own dealings with being homosexual in Victorian society (Woods 1999). It can be surmised that Wilde himself knew much about having to...

...

Revising Wilde: Society and subversion in the plays of Oscar Wilde. New York:
Oxford

The Independent. (2009). "Greg Kinnear -- 'We all lead double lives.'" the Independent.

Accessed on March 4, 2011: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/greg-kinnear-we-all-lead-double-lives-1643711.html

Wilde, O. (1998). The Importance of Being Earnest and other plays. New York: Oxford

Woods, G. (1999). A history of gay literature: the male tradition. Yale University Press.

Sources Used in Documents:

References

Eltis, S. Revising Wilde: Society and subversion in the plays of Oscar Wilde. New York:

Oxford

The Independent. (2009). "Greg Kinnear -- 'We all lead double lives.'" the Independent.

Accessed on March 4, 2011: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/greg-kinnear-we-all-lead-double-lives-1643711.html


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Being Earnest This Play Is
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Jack proceeds to let the audience know "…the vital importance of Being Earnest." Distortion, Moral Conduct, and Restoration Comedy Of course, deception and frivolity are part of a farce, and the way that Wilde has written the play characters switch identities as a way for the theme to be deliberately distorted. So this bothers critic Mary McCarthy, who complained that the play has the character of a "…ferocious idyll" and insists