The Importance of Being Earnest Act I

The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde is quite different from his other works that we read such as The Picture of Dorian Gray. The Picture of Dorian Gray was a very dark and serious book, which is the exact opposite from The Importance of Being Earnest. The Importance of Being Earnest is a very funny comedy in which Wilde makes serious things seem like jokes and small things seem very serious. Wilde does not waste any time breaking out the jokes or his sarcasm; since the first line of the play he uses his unique style of contradictory phrases and puns to make fun of society. The opening conversation between Lane and Algernon is about Algernon playing the piano and he makes the funny remark “I don’t play accurately anyone can play accurately but I play with wonderful expression. As far as the piano is concerned, sentiment is my forte. I keep science for life”. This already presents a contradiction because usually the goal of most people is to play accurately but here Algernon tries to make it sound like a bad thing. He then says “speaking of the science of Life, have you got the cucumber sandwiches cut for Lady Bracknell”, which shows that he does not take science very seriously either. Both science and art are very important subjects in society and in the first line Algernon already makes a joke out of both of them. This idea of making important things seem dumb continues throughout the entire first act. Wilde also uses Algernon to play with the ideas of pleasure and business. When Jack comes in and talks to Algernon he says that he has “come up to town expressly to propose to her”, and Algernon replies “I thought you had come up for pleasure?... I call that business”. Usually your love life and business life are separate aspects of your life but here Wilde states that marriage is a part of your business life, which sheds a very poor light on marriage. Wilde not only makes important things seem simple but also takes small things and makes them a big deal. For example when Gwendolen is talking to Jack about why she loves him she says “The moment Algernon first mentioned to me that he had a friend called Earnest, I knew I was destined to love you”. Gwendolen is clearly putting way to much importance on the name Earnest which is very ironic because his real name is not Earnest but it is actually Jack. The problem that this creates is part of the reason the play has its title. The title is a very ironic pun on Earnest which means very serious, when in fact nothing important seems to be taken seriously and Earnest as a name because without the name Earnest, Jack would lose the love of his life. So far the play is full of these funny puns and contradictions and is quite a humorous satire. The play may however get confusing because it is hard to predict what the characters will actually think is important and not important.

Significance of Emma

The book Emma by Jane Austen was a very uniquely styled book because it did not seem to have a lot of action in it, and it seemed to be only about everyday life. This unique style of plot seemed to bring up a lot of questions about what the literary significance of a book that simply talked about the love life a rich girl and a bunch of her local friends. When you analyze the book further however it is a lot more than just a chick novel about girl gossip. In reality the novel actually uses the interactions between all the characters to reveal human fallibility and how all humans are wrong and often in considerate. To show how these traits are present in all the characters Austen creates a special character that is kind, considerate, thoughtful, and usually right as a comparison to reveal their flaws. This character is Mr. Knightley. Mr. Knightley is often seen correcting Emma on all her assumptions to show how she is way to overconfident and wrong most of the time. This trait of overconfidence can be attributed to the majority of the human population. Her over confidence gets her into a lot of trouble and we often see Mr. Knightley there to warn her before it begins and in the end to say I told you so. Despite the countless fights and arguments that Mr. Knightley and Emma have he always forgives her and tries to make it right. Forgiveness is another ideal quality that humans often lack. We saw many times Emma hold pointless grudges against people that never really did anything to her and yet she hated them anyways. Jane is a great example of this, and so is Mr. Elton. Another poor quality of man kind is that we find our selves much too often doing things that are most beneficial to us and disregard how it will affect other people. At the ball that Frank and Emma planned Mr. Elton and Harriet are the only ones left with out dance partners and Mr. Elton refuses to dance with her because he doesn’t want people to think that he has feelings for someone of the lower class. When Harriet is left embarrassed it is know surprise that Mr. Knightley is the one to sweep by save the day. Mr. Knightley doesn’t even like dancing and yet he disregards his own feelings so that Harriet wont feel left out or embarrassed. This again shows how he is used as a comparison to show the flaws of Mr. Elton, who exemplified that social standards and guidelines are more important to us than what we think is morally right. Another example of this is when Emma makes Harriet decline Mr. Martin even though she is obviously happy with him and wants to be with him. She insist she go for Mr. Elton because then she would be right and could rub it in to Mr. Knightley. From interactions like these it is clear that all of the characters besides Mr. Knightley exemplify traits of human fallibility, which makes the significance of the book a lot more easy to find and understand.

Conclusion to Emma

Although the book Emma had many twist in it that I did not see coming I must say that the ending was very predictable. Of course Emma ended up marrying none other than Mr. Knightly. He was an obvious match for her because he seemed to be the only one that could match her in wits and was also the only one who dared to argue with her. Throughout the book almost all the characters admire Emma or at least fail to challenge her very often; it is only Mr. Knightly who ever challenges her opinions and proves her wrong multiple times. This is a very important trait of Mr. Knightly because it makes him superior to all the other men that grow fond of Emma. Mr. Knightly serves as the father figure that Mr. Woodhouse is unable be due to his lack of control over Emma. By challenging all of Emma’s crazy assumptions and proving her wrong Mr. Knightly brings Emma back into reality from the fantasy world that she seemed to be living in. Ironically when she finally gave up the fantasy role that she was playing as the match maker who was too good for everyone else she finds that settling down and admitting love for Mr. Knightly proved to be better than the fantasy that she created. Another predictable conclusion at the end of the book was Harriet’s sudden reunion with Mr. Martin. In volume one it was very clear how much Harriet really liked Mr. Martin even when it seemed that Emma had brain washed her into thinking that she is much too good for him. Emma attempted to set her up with Mr. Elton which would obviously not work out because of what Mr. Knightly pointed out which was that he would only marry someone who was wealthy. Emma then tried to get Harriet with Frank even though she actually had feelings for Mr. Knightly. It is a very funny relationship between Harriet and Emma because Emma is constantly trying to set Harriet up with someone who would be very good for her, and finally when Harriet finally decides that she loves Mr. Knightly Emma doesn’t want her to be with her. All these mismatches made it obvious that Harriet was not right for a relationship with any of these people from the higher class, so obviously in the end she must end back up with Mr. Martin. One relationship that did surprise me however was that of Frank and Jane. Frank did a really good job of selling his affections for Emma as well as talked poorly of his own fiancée. It is no wonder that in order to trick the reader from guessing that he is secretly with Jane that he had to act crazy enough to almost lose Jane. It seems that in the end everyone finally found their soul mate and lived happily ever after; however what made this book good was that the happy ending was not one you would usually expect throughout the book.