The Importance of Being Earnest

1895
Oscar Wilde
The Importance of Being Earnest
A-

 
Not just Wilde's best play, but my all time favorite play, this remains laugh-out-loud hilarious, whether on page or stage.  (The collection of plays averages out to C+, thanks to Salome.)  The 1952 film is also a lot of fun, although I loathe the 2002 version.  This play has only nine characters, and everybody but Merriman (Jack's butler) gets funny lines.  (Algernon's manservant Lane not only insults him politely but later says that cucumbers were unavailable, "not even for ready money.")  Nearly every line in this play is quotable, and some of the best are about economic class, like the one about the "charity sermon on behalf of the Society for the Prevention of Discontent among the Upper Orders," and the one about the middle class failing to be good role models.  Wilde's wit also weighs in on love, marriage, widowhood, and family, as well as education, literature, art, music, and fashion, among other things. 

While the first two society plays examined the double standard, Jack here defends his supposed unwed mother, Miss Prism, and demands, "Why should there be one law for men, and another for women?"  Yet, she isn't his mother, so he looks ridiculous in his earnestness.  The play is about the impotence of being earnest; it's a serious plea against seriousness. 

In the end, Jack turns out to have accidentally been telling the truth about being called Ernest and having a younger brother.  Gwendolen promises to forgive him, "for I feel that you are sure to change."  But what of poor Cecily?  She's not given any lines about her opinion of the situation.  Algernon is still Algernon.  And it's unlikely that he's going to give up Bunbury, exploded or not.

In its reversals of cliches, of both plot and phrasing, this play reminds me of P.G. Wodehouse.  As Bertie Wooster would say, "Aunts aren't gentlemen," and that's particularly true of Algy's (and Jack's) Aunt Augusta.  I also think of Alice in Wonderland, because Algy's line about not being able to eat muffins in an agitated manner, because the butter would get on his cuffs, reminds me of the argument at the tea party about butter in the watch.  The play definitely is in the proud tradition of British absurdity delivered with a straight face.

I have to say that the line I appreciate more than ever, after surviving so many long Victorian novels, is "I believe that Memory is responsible for nearly all the three-volume novels that Mudie sends us."  With the exception of a few nonfiction works, the books of the 1900s are going to be a lot shorter than Middlemarch and Anna Karenina.  Well, until we hit the 1980s anyway.  (Mists of Avalon, I'm looking at you.)  On the other hand, there are going to be a lot of 20th-century works.  So from here on out, I'll be labeling the books by decade rather than century.

We'll start with a couple books from 1900, technically the 19th century, technically the Victorian period.  (The queen died 22 January 1901.)  But since they both shaped my identity, I'm going to count them as honorary 20th-century novels.