IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST
This blog is in response to the blog task given to us by Dr. Dilip Barad sir based on the classical play The Importance of Being Earnest. In this blog I am going to discuss Wilde's changed subtitle of the play and one of the female characters from the play.
Brief about the play:
The importance of being Earnest, A trivial comedy of serious play was first performed on 14 February 1895 at the St. James Theatre in London. This play is a farcical/ absurd/ laughable comedy. Genre of this play is Social comedy; comedy of manners; satire; intellectual farce. It is set in the 1890s in London (Act I) and Hertfordshire, a rural county not far from London (Acts II and III). In this play the characters maintain imaginary personae to escape from the burdensome social obligations.
Characters of the play:
Jack Worthing (Ernest)- a young gentleman from the country, in love with Gwendolen Fairfax.
Algernon Moncrieff- a young gentleman from London, the nephew of Lady Bracknell, in love with Cecily Cardew.
Gwendolen Fairfax- a young lady, loved by Jack Worthing.
Lady Bracknell- a society lady, Gwendolen's mother.
Cecily Cardew- a young lady, the ward of Jack Worthing.
Miss Prism- Cecily's governess.
The Reverend Canon Chasuble- the priest of Jack's parish.
Lane- Algernon's butler.
Merriman- Jack's servant.
In brief the central act of play:
In the play we see that the protagonist named Jack Worthing maintains a fake person named Ernest in the town as a younger brother who always creates some troubles and because of that he has to visit the town from the countryside again and again. The main aim to visit town was to meet his beloved. Along with, he was a guardian in the town, he was a responsible person, an authority in town so to get out of that authority mark and have a burden less time he used to visit town. Same was with another protagonist Algernon Moncrieff, he also maintained a fake person named Bunbury to rest out from his burdensome life. Once Algernon surprisingly visited the country house of John when he was going to end the story of Ernest. Going there he lies that he is Ernest and falls in love with Cecily, ward of John. where Cecily was already in love and engaged to the person named Earnest, who in front of her is Algernon. Gwendolen, beloved of John, was in love with John but only if he had the name Earnest. Gwendolen and Cecily met and in conversation realized that they both were in love with a person named Earnest but there was no one with real name Earnest. And to fulfill the wish of their beloved both male protagonists were going to christened with the name Earnest. Moving towards the end of the play the mystery comes out that John was the lost child of Mrs. Bracknell’s poor sister, he was brother of Algernon Moncrieff and his name was baptized from the first name of his father and that was Earnest.
Title and Subtitle explanation:
Looking at all these incidents of the play somewhere inside we realize how can someone be so insane. How can any female demand such things like name or how can anyone think to maintain fake persons to move out of their burdensome life. But this play is satire and criticism of the society of the Victorian era. Now it would be easier for us to understand the title and why Wilde is putting such words like trivial and serious in the title. The importance of being earnest: after reading the central act of the play we realize how important it was for the male protagonist to have a name Earnest. They required the name Earnest to marry their beloved. If we look at the literal meaning of the word earnest then it means showing sincere and intense conviction; serious minded. And somewhere in the male protagonists we lack the literal meaning of that word because if they would have been serious minded they would have never done such a trivial act of making an imaginary person to get away from regular life and also the decision to change their names to Earnest.
We notice that Wilde has originally subtitled the play 'A Serious Comedy for Trivial People' but then changed it to 'A Trivial Comedy for Serious People.' We already know that the play was a farcical play, it is a comedy of manners. The play is fun and a comedy of triviality. The literal meaning of the word ‘trivial’ is something of less importance, cheap. if we look the meaning in Guajarati language then it is તુચ્છ,મામૂલી. If the subtitle was ‘a serious comedy of the trivial people’ then the audience would have self- prejudiced that they are already being judged and are given no importance and no audience would gather to watch the play. Comedy is for fun and people are an important part of society and in comparison of these two things if more importance would have been given to comedy by telling it to be serious and people to be trivial, the audience would not accept it. The importance of being earnest is a satire to the people of Victorian age. The satire is to ridicule ideas, conditions, or social conventions with which the audience is familiar (or even practices and supports) without making the audience feel estranged. If Wilde openly and publicly insulted them by referring to them as 'trivial people,' they would not attend. Perhaps, so Wilde interchanged the words and subtitled as ‘A trivial comedy of serious people’ and gave importance to people and named comedy to be trivial. This is my one interpretation.
This change of subtitle can also be interpreted keeping the characters of the play in the center. We already read about the insane actions of the male protagonist and the insane need of the female protagonist in their husbands. The actions are completely trivial. Whenever we are watching a movie or a play we always compare ourselves with the protagonist of the play. At the very first watching of the play we just compare ourselves with them; we do not or cannot find the flaws or cannot criticize them. We get connected to them. If the direct subtitle indicates that the characters and their actions are trivial, people after feeling connected to them will realize that the writer is calling them trivial and on the spot they will start criticizing the writer and would not accept any argument of the writer. So instead of telling characters to be insane and trivial, the writer himself is telling comedy means his own writing to be trivial and makes people feel that it is only for fun. The subtitle ‘a trivial comedy of the serious people’ shows that characters are serious and good enough but the comedy the fun they are making is trivial, characters are correct at their place.
Further in this blog I am going to discuss the female character Miss Prism as I personally found her attractive.
Miss Prism is Cecily's governess at Jack's house in the country. As such, her position is that of a social anomaly in that her status is greater than that of an ordinary servant, but less than that of a member of her employer's family.
Miss Prism was an independent woman. She's the character of the Victorian era novel where marriage was very strongly prevailing. In that era she was a strong independent woman who was earning on her own instead of being dependent on any male figure like father or husband. On the other hand, working as a governess in a private home was a low-paid occupation, it was at least respectable.
Also, Miss Prism was an intellectual woman, that too in a literary way. She is a creative writer. We get to know this when she brings out the truth of Jack. She is working as a governess and guardian of Cecily. She is guardian of Cecily's education and her virtue. She was the one to inspire Cecily to write a diary which can be published later as a novel. Perhaps it was a dream of Miss Prism which didn't come true. She makes constant moral judgments. We can know this through Her reaction on the news of dead Ernest "As a man sows, so shall he reap."
Miss Prism is an appropriate character to uncover Jack's true history. When Mrs. Bracknell visited Jack's country behind her daughter who was in love with Jack. She met Miss prism; everyone was shocked at how they knew each other. Mrs. Bracknell showers questions on Miss Prism.
“Prism! Where is that baby? Twenty-eight years ago, Prism, you left Lord Bracknell’s house, Number 104, Upper Grosvenor Street, in charge of a perambulator that contained a baby of the male sex. You never returned. A few weeks later, through the elaborate investigations of the Metropolitan police, the perambulator was discovered at midnight, standing by itself in a remote corner of Bayswater. It contained the manuscript of a three-volume novel of more than usually revolting sentimentality. But the baby was not there!”
To this Miss prism answered- “ admit with shame that I do not know. I only wish I did. The plain facts of the case are these. On the morning of the day you mention, a day that is for ever branded on my memory, I prepared as usual to take the baby out in its perambulator. I had also with me a somewhat old, but capacious hand-bag in which I had intended to place the manuscript of a work of fiction that I had written during my few unoccupied hours. In a moment of mental abstraction, for which I never can forgive myself, I deposited the manuscript in the bassinette, and placed the baby in the hand-bag.”
Here we see that Miss prism was writing a novel of her own. And we can interpret that she was so much lost in the writing and reading of the novel that she didn't realize about the baby to not be there in the perambulator and when she realized she had already lost the baby. Later, the story opens in a way that Jack was the same baby who was lost. Jack is discovered as the elder brother of Algernon with the baptized name Ernest. He was discovered in a handbag in the cloakroom of Victoria Station by an old man who adopted him and subsequently made Jack guardian to his granddaughter, Cecily Cardew.
I found Miss Prism an attractive character because the Victorian era was the time when women were not given independence of reading and writing, they didn't have equal opportunities as men in the literary writing space. Instead women were asked and forced to concentrate on family and children thinking that if she also starts writing and reading every woman would make mistakes like Miss Prism as they will stay lost in their own world but Miss Prism is being a women representative in the novel who is writing her own novel. And today women are having equal opportunities in the literary and education world.
Comparing it in the contemporary time. Today women and girls are stopped from using mobiles and getting off social media accounts. Here also they have the same argument that if women will start spending time on mobile phones their children and family will fall. These all incidents are also taking place in real life which we keep on reading in newspapers. But we foresee that as women have made their place in the education world they will also make equal space in the digital world.
[words- 1944]
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