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.