The Importance of Being Earnest Themes



Victorian eraThe Victorian era of British history (and that of the British Empire) was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death, on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence for Britain.Definition of Victorian Literature. Literature that emerged in England during the reign of Queen Victoria (1837–1901) was diverse in many ways, and defined to a large extent by the historical era rather than any other characteristic.Major Writers of the Victorian PeriodArnold, Matthew (1822-1888)Bront?, Charlotte (1816-1855)Bront?, Emily (1818-1848)Browning, Elizabeth Barrett (1806-1861)Browning, Robert (1812-1889)Carroll, Lewis (1832-1898)Carlyle, Thomas (1795-1881)Dickens, Charles (1812-1870)Doyle, Arthur Conan (1859-1930)Eliot, George (1819-1880)Hardy, Thomas (1840-1928)Hopkins, Gerard Manley (1844-1889)Housman, A. E. (1859-1936)Kipling, Rudyard (1865-1936)Landon, Letitia Elizabeth (1802-1838)Rossetti, Christina (1830-1894)Rossetti, Dante Gabriel (1828-1882)Stevenson, Robert Louis (1850-1894)Swinburne, Algernon Charles (1837-1909)Tennyson, Alfred (Lord) (1809-1892)Thackeray, William Makepeace (1811-1863)Wells, H.G. (1866-1946)Wilde, Oscar (1854-1900)Yeats, William Butler (1865-1939)The Importance of Being Earnest SummaryIn the entire Wilde canon, no play better exemplifies the author’s art-for-art’s-sake stand than The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People. The play is completely trivial, revolving around the fact that Jack Worthing, who loves Gwendolen Fairfax, cannot marry her, initially because Algernon Moncrieff, her cousin, refuses to sanction the marriage until Worthing resolves the mystery of Cecily, about whom Algernon knows because of an inscription on Worthing’s cigarette case. Worthing reveals that Mr. Cardew, who adopted him after he had been found in a handbag in the parcel room at Victoria Station, appointed him guardian of Cardew’s granddaughter, Cecily Cardew, who always knew him as Uncle Jack. For Cecily’s benefit, Jack has maintained an air of moral restraint in her presence. To escape from this atmosphere, he has assumed, during his frequent visits to London, the name and generally reprobate behavior of an imaginary brother named Ernest. Worthing’s love for Gwendolen is complicated by the fact that Gwendolen cannot love any man who is not named Ernest. In an often bewildering plot, in which identities are often difficult to follow, Lady Bracknell refuses to acknowledge Jack’s engagement to Gwendolen because she learns that Jack was found as an infant in a handbag in Victoria Station. Meanwhile, both Jack and Algernon are individually consorting with Dr. Chasuble to have their names changed to “Ernest.” Algernon, too, is in love—with Cecily, who has also revealed a desire to love someone named Ernest. In the course of the play, the name of Cecily’s tutor, Miss Prism, is introduced. Lady Bracknell knows the name and insists that Miss Prism be brought to her. It is revealed that, years before, Miss Prism had been nurse to a family to which Lady Bracknell was connected. One day, Miss Prism, in a state of confusion, thoughtlessly placed the manuscript of a book that she had written in the bassinet of the baby in her care and absent-mindedly placed the baby in the handbag that should have held the manuscript. She deposited the handbag in the parcel room of Victoria Station, and the baby was never restored to its rightful family. Jack, now thinking that Miss Prism is his mother, embraces her, but Lady Bracknell reveals that Jack’s mother was really her sister, Algernon’s mother, Mrs. Moncrieff. Algernon and Jack are brothers, but better still, Jack’s real name is Ernest. The play ends with Algernon and Cecily and Jack/Ernest and Gwendolen poised on the brink of happy lives together, in what is really a mock-Dickensian ending. The play, which opened in London on St. Valentine’s Day, 1895, evoked incessant laughter from the first-night audience and lavish reviews from most critics. A few, such as George Bernard Shaw, found it wanting in meaning and castigated Wilde for the play’s triviality. Yet triviality of the sort that Wilde discussed in “Criticism as Art” was precisely what he sought to achieve in this production. The Importance of Being Earnest succeeded, not in spite of its unbelievable characters, its improbable situations, its stilted dialogue, and its trivial ideas, but because of them. In this play, Wilde accomplished par excellence what he interpreted as Walter Pater’s credo, denying at the same time that part of John Ruskin’s credo that placed upon art a moral responsibility. This play has been the most enduring of Wilde’s dramas, still delighting audiences with the sort of childlike unreality found in the stories that constitute The Happy Prince, and Other Tales (1888). There is a real kinship between the two works despite their obvious differences and the differences of their intended audiences. The Importance of Being Earnest Summary (Critical Survey of Literature for Students)Algernon Moncrieff, nephew of the aristocratic Lady Bracknell, is compelled by necessity to live a more or less double life to avoid being completely at the mercy of his Aunt Augusta. To escape from her dull dinner parties, he invents a wholly fictitious friend named Bunbury, whose precarious state of health requires Algernon’s absence from London whenever his aunt summons him to attendance. Algernon’s friend, Jack Worthing, is forced into a similar subterfuge for quite a different reason. He has under his care a young ward named Cecily Cardew, who lives at Jack’s country estate in Hertfordshire under the care of a stern governess, Miss Prism. Jack thinks it necessary to preserve a high moral tone in the presence of Cecily and her governess. To escape from this restraint, he invents an imaginary brother named Ernest, who is supposed to be quite a reprobate and whose name and general mode of behavior Jack assumes during his frequent trips to London. To complicate matters, Jack falls in love with Gwendolen Fairfax, the daughter of Algernon’s aunt, Lady Bracknell. Gwendolen returns his love, but in particular she falls in love with his name, Ernest, of which she is very fond. When Lady Bracknell learns of his intentions toward Gwendolen, she naturally wants to know something of his family history, but he can supply nothing more definite than the fact that he was found in a leather bag at the Victoria Railway Station, and that he was raised by a benefactor. Given that his parentage is unknown, Lady Bracknell refuses to consider his marriage to her daughter. Jack realizes that the time has come to put an end to Ernest. He even goes so far as to appear at the manor house in Hertfordshire in deep mourning for his brother Ernest. His friend Algernon, “Bunburying” as usual, precedes him, however, posing as Ernest. Cecily takes an immediate interest in this supposed brother of her guardian. When Jack and Algernon come face to face, Jack promptly announces that his brother Ernest was unexpectedly called back to London and is leaving at once. Algernon, however, having fallen in love with Cecily, refuses to leave. Cecily, in turn, confesses that it has always been her dream to love someone named Ernest. Algernon, realizing that his hopes of marrying Cecily depend on his name, decides to have himself rechristened Ernest. For that purpose, he calls on the local clergyman, the Reverend Canon Chasuble, but Jack precedes him with a like request. Dr. Chasuble thus has an engagement for two christenings at five-thirty that afternoon. Gwendolen arrives at the manor house in search of Jack. Because both Gwendolen and Cecily believe that they are in love with the same man, the nonexistent Ernest, their initial politeness to each other soon gives way to open warfare. When Jack and Algernon appear together, the real identities of the two pretenders are established. Both girls are furious. At first Jack and Algernon upbraid each other for their mutual duplicity, but they finally settle down to tea and console themselves with muffins. Cecily and Gwendolen at last decide to forgive their suitors, after Algernon admits that the purpose of his deception was to meet Cecily, and Jack maintains that his imaginary brother was his excuse to go to London to see Gwendolen. Both girls agree that in matters of grave importance—such as marriage—style and not sincerity is the vital thing. Lady Bracknell, arriving in search of her daughter, discovers her nephew engaged to Cecily. Afraid that the girl, like her guardian, may possibly have only railway station antecedents, Lady Bracknell demands to know Cecily’s origin. She is informed that Cecily is the granddaughter of a very wealthy man and the heiress to 130,000 pounds. When Lady Bracknell willingly gives her consent to the marriage, Jack refuses to allow the match, pointing out that Cecily cannot marry without his consent until she comes of age, and that, according to her grandfather’s will, is when she turns thirty-five. However, he says he will give his consent the moment Lady Bracknell approves of his marriage to Gwendolen. Lady Bracknell’s objection to Jack as a suitable husband for Gwendolen remains, but the mystery is cleared up to Lady Bracknell’s satisfaction when it is revealed that Miss Letitia Prism, Cecily’s governess, is the nurse who left Lord Bracknell’s house with a perambulator containing a male infant that she placed in a leather handbag and left in the cloakroom of the Victoria Station. The infant is the son of Lady Bracknell’s sister, a circumstance that makes Jack Algernon’s older brother. Jack’s Christian name turns out to be Ernest. The Reverend Chasuble is relieved of his two christenings that afternoon, and Gwendolen is happy that she is actually going to marry a man named Ernest. The Importance of Being Earnest ThemesThemesMorals and MoralityMuch of The Importance of Being Earnest's comedy stems from the ways various characters flaunt the moral strictures of the day, without ever behaving beyond the pale of acceptable society. The use of the social lie is pervasive, sometimes carried to great lengths as when Algernon goes "Bunburying" or Jack invents his rakish brother Earnest so that he may escape to the city. Another example is Miss Prism's sudden headache when the opportunity to go walking (and possibly indulge in some form of sexual activity) with Canon Chasuble presents itself.Love and PassionOne of Wilde's satiric targets is romantic and sentimental love, which he ridicules by having the women fall in love with a man because of his name rather than more personal attributes. Wilde carries parody of romantic love to an extreme in the relationship between Algernon and Cecily, for she has fallen in love with him—and in fact charted their entire relationship—before ever meeting him. She writes of their love in her diary, noting the ups and downs of their affair, including authoring love letters to and from herself.Culture ClashThe play's action is divided between the city and the country, London and the pastoral county of Hertfordshire. Traditionally, locations like these symbolize different attitudes toward life, contrasting, for example, the corruption of urban living with...(The entire section is 507 words.)The Importance of Being Earnest CharactersCharacters Discussed (Great Characters in Literature)Algernon (Algy) Moncrief Algernon (Algy) Moncrief, a young man of fashion and considerable worldly charm. He is a confirmed Bunburyist; that is, he uses an imaginary sick friend’s name and condition as an excuse to leave London when he finds his aristocratic aunt, Lady Bracknell, too domineering or her dinner parties too dull. He delights in the artificial, the trivial, and the faddish, and he employs them for his own amusement, the only thing about which, as he insists, he is ever serious. Out for a jape, he poses as John Worthing’s fictitious brother Ernest to court his friend’s ward, Cecily Cardew. Although genuinely in love, he never abandons his pose of reckless pretense or his cynically amusing observations on country and city life, manners, fashions, and relatives. John (Jack) Worthing, J.P. John (Jack) Worthing, J.P., Algernon Moncrief’s friend, who poses as Ernest to win the hand of Algy’s cousin, the Honorable Gwendolyn Fairfax, Lady Bracknell’s daughter. Also a Bunburyist, he has invented a fictitious brother Ernest, a reprobate who is always getting into scrapes, as an excuse for his frequent visits to London. Jack is serious about most things, especially love. He was a foundling, brought up by a wealthy man who made Jack the guardian of his benefactor’s granddaughter, Cecily Cardew. When Jack proposes to Gwendolyn, he arouses Lady Bracknell’s displeasure because he cannot trace his family tree. All he knows is that he had been found abandoned in a leather bag left at Victoria Station. Finally, his parentage is traced, and he learns that he is the long-lost son of Lady Bracknell’s sister, that Algy is his younger brother, and that his Christian name really is Ernest. This last fact is the most pleasing, for Gwendolyn could not possibly love him under any other name. Lady Augusta Bracknell Lady Augusta Bracknell, Algernon Moncrief’s aunt, a strong-willed woman of fashion who lives only by society’s dictates. The hostess at numerous dinner parties to which her nephew is always invited but that he seldom attends, she dominates the lives of all about her in the same compulsive fashion that makes her move only in the best circles. Although Jack Worthing is an eligible young bachelor of means, she rejects his suit of Gwendolyn and advises him to find some acceptable relatives as quickly as possible. Although witty in her pronouncements, she never deviates into good sense about the artificial world she inhabits with other snobs and pretenders. Her sense of social superiority is punctured when she learns that her daughter’s rejected suitor is her own nephew. The Honorable Gwendolyn Fairfax The Honorable Gwendolyn Fairfax, Lady Bracknell’s daughter. She is in love with Jack Worthing, whose name she believes to be Ernest. Although she moves in the same conventional snobbish social world as her mother, her outlook is whimsical and rebellious. Determined to marry the man of her choice, she is pleased to discover that Worthing, once his parentage is revealed, can offer her not only the right name and devotion but also family connections and wealth. She accommodates herself to her good fortune. Cecily Cardew Cecily Cardew, an eighteen-year-old given to romantic dreams and a diary of fictitious events. She is the ward of Jack Worthing, who had been adopted by her eccentric grandfather. Lovely, determined, and rusticated, she is seemingly without guile, but she is in reality as poised as her newly discovered friend, Gwendolyn Fairfax. As the dupe of her guardian’s story that he has a wicked brother named Ernest in the city, she is charmed and won when that supposed roue, as impersonated by Algy Moncrief, appears in the country. She is also pleased that the man she intends to marry is named Ernest. After learning the truth, she decides that she still loves him, in spite of his having such a name as Algernon. Miss Letitia Prism Miss Letitia Prism, the forgetful authoress of a sentimental three-volume romance, the governess of Cecily Cardew and, earlier, of Jack Worthing. Bent on marriage herself, she contrives to keep her charge’s mind on the serious business of learning inconsequentials. In the end, she is revealed as the absent-minded nurse who twenty-eight years earlier had placed the infant Ernest Moncrief in a leather handbag deposited in the cloakroom at Victoria station and the manuscript of her novel in a perambulator. The Reverend Frederick Chasuble, D.D. The Reverend Frederick Chasuble, D.D., an Anglican clergyman who is amenable to performing any rite for anyone at any time, in much the same way that he fits one sermon into many contexts. Delightful in his metaphorical allusions, he meets his match in Miss Prism, whose allusions contain direct revelation of matrimonial intent. The Importance of Being Earnest Essay - The Importance of Being EarnestThe Importance of Being EarnestOscar Wilde, the literary representative of the so-called Yellow Nineties, stood at the end of the nineteenth century and jeered at the Victorian age. He ridiculed Victorian values most particularly in The Importance of Being Earnest, probably his most popular work. Turning on the play of words in the title, the drama also satirizes the very idea of earnestness, a virtue to which the Victorians attached the utmost significance. Wilde not only satirizes hypocrisy and sham virtue, he also mocks its authentic presence.Wilde mocked the high society of his time, and he paid a high price for it. Within weeks of the first production of The Importance of Being Earnest, Wilde’s career came to a scandalous and tragic end. He sentenced to two years hard labor for homosexuality scandal. After serving the full sentence, he went at once to France. He did not set foot again on English soil, and he died in Paris two years later, a broken man. During Queen Victoria's more than half-century reign, tremendous economic, social, and political changes rocked Great Britain. The Agricultural Revolution dislocated rural populations, forcing people to leave the countryside for cities. There, those people became workers in the factories created by the Industrial Revolution. While, over the long term, the British nation as a whole benefited from these changes, individuals often suffered greatly. These details are closely connected with the art of Wilde and with The Importance of Being Earnest, a play in which a number of the characters lead double lives. The play’s characters, too, let truths slip out while pretending to be engaged in social chitchat. They are adroit at saying and doing two opposing things at once, and they are virtuosic in their use of language. Nearly all the humor in the play depends on these devices.The two main male characters, Algernon Moncrieff and Jack Worthing, constrained by the rigid conventions of the Victorian upper class, have been leading double lives. Algy’s alter ego is “Bunbury,” while Jack has invented a fictitious brother named Ernest, whose loose behavior he claims to control but which he actually emulates. Jack falls in love with Gwendolyn Fairfax, Algy’s cousin, and Algy falls in love with Cecily Cardew, Jack’s ward. Each of these ladies, moreover, is attracted to her respective beauty on the assumption that his name is Ernest. Gwendolyn’s mother, Lady Bracknell, is dissatisfied with Jack’s account of his origins--he was an orphan--and thus forbids the relationship. Meanwhile, in order to marry Cecily, Algy makes arrangements to be rechristened Ernest. The interaction of these four characters produces many delicious complications turning on the question of who is truly Ernest. Reversing her previous position when she learns the size of Cecily’s fortune, Lady Bracknell consents to Algy’s match. Jack, however, withholds his agreement considering Lady Bracknell’s opposition to his match with Gwendolyn. The impediment to this alliance finally dissolves when it emerges that Jack is actually Algy’s older brother and, moreover, named Ernest. This multiple co-incidence resolves the differences between all parties. This delightful comedy uses the devices of farce and cheerfully empty repartee to satirize the emotional shallowness of the English ruling class in the late nineteenth century. The elevation of style over substance, of words over reality, of earnestness over honesty of feeling, exposes the tendency toward triviality and pomposity in high society everywhere. Love and PassionOne of Wilde's satiric targets is romantic and sentimental love, which he ridicules by having the women fall in love with a man because of his name rather than more personal attributes. Wilde carries parody of romantic love to an extreme in the relationship between Algernon and Cecily, for she has fallen in love with him—and in fact charted their entire relationship—before ever meeting him. She writes of their love in her diary, noting the ups and downs of their affair, including authoring love letters to and from herself.Culture ClashThe play's action is divided between the city and the country, London and the pastoral county of Hertfordshire. Traditionally, locations like these symbolize different attitudes toward life, contrasting, for example, the corruption of urban living with...The Importance of Being Earnest Essay - Critical EssaysCritical EvaluationOscar Wilde, the literary representative of the so-called Yellow Nineties, stood at the end of the nineteenth century and jeered at the Victorian age. He ridiculed Victorian values most particularly in The Importance of Being Earnest, probably his most popular work. Turning on the play of words in the title, the drama also satirizes the very idea of earnestness, a virtue to which the Victorians attached the utmost significance. To work hard, to be sincere, frank, and open, and to live life earnestly was the Victorian ideal. Wilde not only satirizes hypocrisy and sham virtue, he also mocks its authentic presence. Wilde mocked the high society of his time, and he paid a high price for it. Within weeks of the first production of The Importance of Being Earnest, Wilde’s career came to a scandalous and tragic end. He sentenced to two years hard labor for homosexuality scondal. After serving the full sentence, he went at once to France. He did not set foot again on English soil, and he died in Paris two years later, a broken man. These biographical details are closely connected with the art of Wilde and with The Importance of Being Earnest, a play in which a number of the characters lead double lives. The play’s characters, too, let truths slip out while pretending to be engaged in social chitchat. They are adroit at saying and doing two opposing things at once, and they are virtuosic in their use of language. Nearly all the humor in the play depends on these devices. At times, it is not quite clear if the characters intend to imply another, usually hidden (because socially dangerous) meaning or if they are quite unconscious and even inept. This shimmer between intention and its opposite is constant throughout the play, making the play a parade of cognitive dissonance. Reading or watching the play is to observe the unconscious of the society of Wilde’s day. Indeed, Wilde’s popularity stemmed from the fact that his society loved the experience of watching its own unconscious on display. The Importance of Being Earnest, in particular, was immensely popular, its run cut short only by the real-life scandal that overtook the playwright. The man who exposed secrets so subtly in his writing had exposed his own altogether too explicitly. The four young characters of the play have an engaging insouciance about them; they are defiant in their frankness and lovable for their vulnerability. At the same time, they represent a very distinct character type. Algernon, Jack, Gwendolen, and Cecily show intelligence, wit, and taste, but they also reveal the shallowness, frivolity, and hypocrisy of their kind. Indeed, they can strike an audience as downright idiotic at times, a reminder of the author’s final joke: a marriage pending between first cousins, the kind of union that society condemns for its possible consequences. The jibe at the inbred nature of polite society remains implicit, but it is all the funnier for being so. An intellectual glow emanates equally from all the characters. The formidable and overbearing Lady Bracknell is given such wonderful lines that the audience grows fond even of her. The plain, uptight Miss Prism and her pompous lover, Canon Chasuble, would have been two-dimensional characters in anyone’s treatment but Wilde’s. However, he gives them things to say that are every bit as puzzling and funny as what the wittier characters say. Wilde’s humor is so intriguing because it is not clear whether what is said is meant to suggest all that it does suggest. It is the kind of humor that often requires a double take. The plot of The Importance of Being Earnest hinges on mistaken identity, as many plots do, though not many do so to such comic effect. What is funny about the play is that the audience realizes that the characters could easily be someone quite other than who they seem. It is no wonder that audiences continue to love the play: Its humor is intoxicating, and its critique of society is breathtaking. The Importance of Being Earnest Essay - Critical OverviewTwo major issues predominate much of The Importance of Being Earnest's criticism. First, while audiences from the play's opening have warmly received it, Wilde's contemporaries questioned its seeming amorality. Playwright George Bernard Shaw (Major Barbara), after seeing the original London production, attacked the play's "real degeneracy" in an article reprinted in Oscar Wilde: A Collection of Critical Essays. Shaw described Wilde's repartee as "hateful" and "sinister." A second and related concern arises about Earnest's dramatic structure, which exhibits elements of the farce, comedy of manners, and parody. Critics often disagree as to how the play should be categorized.On the play's morality, critical opinion remains divided. In his book Oscar Wilde, Edouard Roditi, for example, believed that Wilde's comedy never rises above "the incomplete or the trivial." Because none of the characters see through the others or critique their values, Roditi believed the play lacks an ethical point of view. Eric Bentley, in The Playwright As Thinker, raised similar issues, concluding that because of its "ridiculous action," the play fails to "break . . . into bitter criticism" of serious issues.For Otto Reinert, writing in College English, Wilde's comedy results in "an exposure both of hypocrisy and of the unnatural convention that necessitates hypocrisy." As a consequence, "bunburying," the reliance on white lies that keeps polite society polite, "gives the plot moral significance." For example, when Lady Bracknell criticizes Algernon for caring for his imaginary friend, Bunbury, who should decide "whether he was going to live or to die," she voices the conventional belief that "illness in others is always faked [and] . . . consequently sympathy with invalids is faked also."Though Lady Bracknell respects convention, Reinert wrote, "she has no illusions about the reality her professed convention is supposed to conceal." She assumes that both Algernon and Bunbury are "bunburying," and her behavior "exposes the polite cynicism that negates all values save personal convenience and salon decorum."Nor is Lady Bracknell immune from her own lapses in earnestness. Stating her disapproval of mercenary marriages, she admits, "When I married Lord Bracknell I had no fortune of any kind." That is, though she opposes marrying for money, she had no money when she married a...(The entire section is 1044 words.)he Importance of Being Earnest Essay - Essays and CriticismEssays and CriticismWilde's Play and Victorian Concepts of "Earnestness"To modern theatre audiences, the title of Oscar Wilde's most popular play, The Importance of Being Earnest, seems a clever play on words. After all, the plot hinges on the telling of little—and not so little—white lies, while the title suggests that honesty (earnestness) will be the rule of the day. The title also implies a connection between the name and the concept, between a person named Earnest and that person being earnest. The narrative action does not bear out this assumption but rather its opposite. Audiences who saw the play when it opened in London in 1895 would have brought to it more complex associations with "earnestness," a word which historians, sociologists, and literary critics alike see as, at least in part, typifying the Victorian mindset.The word "earnest" has three related meanings: to be eager or zealous; to be sincere, serious, and determined; and to be important, not trivial. During Queen Victoria's more than half-century reign, tremendous economic, social, and political changes rocked Great Britain. These were caused by earnest actions and their consequences required, indeed demanded, earnest responses. The Agricultural Revolution dislocated rural populations, forcing people to leave the countryside for cities. There, those people became workers in the factories created by the Industrial Revolution. While, over the long term, the British nation as a whole benefited from these changes, individuals often suffered greatly.Even the wealthy were not immune to the changing economy's negative impact on land values. In The Importance of Being Earnest, this becomes clear when Lady Bracknell inquires into the finances of Jack Worthing, Gwendolen's choice for a husband. When Jack indicates that he has suitable income, she is pleased it comes from stock rather than land, for the declining value of "land . . . gives one position, and prevents one from keeping it up."By the mid-nineteenth century, discussions concerning issues of economic disparity came to be known as the "two Englands" debate. People considered what would happen to Britain if economic trends continued to enrich the few while the majority of the population worked long hours in dangerous factories, underpaid and living in squalor.Writers and intellectuals as well as evangelicals and politicians earnestly engaged in this debate. Poets and novelists such as Elizabeth Barrett Charles Dickens and Elizabeth Gaskell, created literary works which portrayed the lives of the underprivileged. Writings such as these ultimately contributed to changing public attitudes—and more importantly—public policy toward practices like child labor and public executions. Reforms in hospitals and orphanages, prisons and workhouses, schools and factories can all be traced to debates initiated or fueled by writers. The earnestness of all these reformers—artistic, intellectual, religious, and political—improved the quality of the life in Victorian Britain.Earnestness did not characterize only those who addressed social evils, however, but also those whose activities created social problems in the first place. The farmers, investors, and manufacturers whose actions dislocated rural populations and resulted in the squalor of factory towns like Manchester, were also "earnest" about their actions. They believed they were improving the quality of peoples' lives and, in some ways, they were.Overall, the country produced more abundant, cheaper food and better quality, affordable mass produced goods like clothing. Indeed, historian Asa Briggs termed the middle of the nineteenth century "The Age of Improvement" (a phrase he employed as the title of his book on the subject), because of the rising living conditions but also because of the concern to improve the quality of life, to ensure that each generation lived better than the last.Like British farmers and industrialists, British colonial administrators also justified the nation's imperial ambitions because they "improved" the lives of "uncivilized" peoples, giving them Christianity British cultural values, and higher living standards. This attitude came to be know as, in author Rudyard Kipling's words, "the white man's burden."Many of those enriching themselves in this way would acknowledge that their actions caused suffering as well as benefits. They justified their actions based on the utilitarianism of thinkers like John Stewart Mill. Utilitarians determine the rightness of an action by asking if certain actions produce the most good for the most people. If people in general benefited, the suffering of a few specific people could be tolerated as the price paid for progress. While this approach may...(The entire section is 1942 words.)Places Discussed (Critical Guide to Settings and Places in Literature)Moncrieff’s flat Moncrieff’s flat. Elegant London flat of the bachelor Algernon Moncrieff in which the first act of the play is set. The flat is complete with butler and other accoutrements of a life of leisure. This milieu provides the backdrop for Algernon’s insouciance, wit, and idle life. The drawback to his lovely home is its proximity to the home of his aunt, Lady Bracknell, a dragon lady and master of the non sequitur. Her incursions into Algernon’s life often force him to flee to the country to care for his invalid friend, Bunbury, whom he has invented for this purpose. Manor House Manor House. Hertfordshire home of Algernon’s friend Jack Worthing, who also has a London home. This house provides the setting for the second and third acts of the play. Worthing is the guardian of Miss Cecily Cardew, who is instructed in the German language by her governess, Miss Prism, and in religion by the Reverend Canon Chasuble; they all reside in this rural retreat. Worthing escapes to London by receiving phone calls from an imaginary brother whom he must rescue from scrapes. While Algernon escapes London to care for his imaginary sick friend Bunbury in the country, Worthing escapes from the country by looking out for his imaginary brother in the city. The two worlds of the play collide and make for comic results when Algernon comes to the Manor House posing as Worthing’s brother Ernest. The arrival of Lady Bracknell leads to exposure of the imaginary friendships and identities and makes possible true love among the young people. ................
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