To what extent does Wilde use the conventions of comedy to offer a powerful critique of Victorian society? In my opinion, in his famous play 'The Importance of Being Earnest', Wilde uses the conventions of comedy to a great extent in order to offer a critique of Victorian society. It is not a secret that people enjoy laughing, laugh allows people to be more open to hear and perceive new ideas and different views. Thus, Wilde uses the genre of comedy to approach the audience more easily and to explore
Importance of Being Earnest written by Oscar Wilde revolves around two English upper-class men who use pseudonyms for their clandestine pleasure. This play was first performed in 1985 and it contains various literary techniques like irony, inversion of idioms and paradox to mock the social conventions of the upper class in the Victorian Era by portraying the elite as unrefined to subvert the norm and express Wilde’s modern views towards the upper-class society. Wilde depicts the younger upper-class men
Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) provides an example of the late Victorian upper class life. Wilde does an exceptional job of using humor to criticize the false morality and artificial sophistry of the Victorian era. The three women, Cecily, Gwendolen, and Lady Bracknell are characters that portray the consumer and materialistic culture of the Victorian era and in some sense, the dangers associated with it. While the characters of The Importance of Being Earnest are extreme examples