The Importance of Being Earnest 1141that he had a friend called Ernest,” she concludes,
“I knew I was destined to love you.” Perhaps, had
The Importance of Being Earnest been a real-world
account, one could marvel at the providence of Mr.
Worthing’s alias. However, Wilde’s play shows its
author’s hand early on, and this hand transparently
manipulates the moments of peripeteia, Aristotle’s
term for a sudden change of fortune, throughout
the work.
Wilde’s theory of “art for art’s sake,” or aes-
theticism, stretches the boundaries of the reader’s
willingness to believe. The fantastic and improbable
is necessary if art exists only for its own enjoyment.
The Importance of Being Earnest is certainly a satire
of society, placing an inordinate and unsustainable
value on heritage and background when the most
worthy of the characters, Mr. Worthing himself, is
stigmatized only for his problematic provenance,
even if he is otherwise socially acceptable. Moreover,
it is a satire of sensibility, of common sense, and
of meaningfulness. Logic is overturned time and
again for the sake of expediency, and insincerity is
the standard behavior. Gwendolen perhaps sums it
up best when she announces: “In matters of grave
importance, style, not sincerity is the vital thing.”
Striving to confound expectations of realism and
probability, Wilde frequently turns to style to move
the plot along. When Jack and Algy are exposed as
frauds, the victims voice the apology for the con-
spirators: “What explanation can you offer me for
pretending to have a brother? Was it in order that
you might have an opportunity of coming up to
town to see me as often as possible?” With the two
men immediately forgiven for their fraudulence, the
plot moves quickly forward to the arrangement of
matters with Gwendolen’s mother, Lady Bracknell.
While the women’s flighty and insubstantial moral-
isms prove humorous in context, it does not reflect
any relationship with reality. That the “sacrifice” of a
christening should be considered a strenuous physi-
cal endeavor is an evident absurdity, and though
it again plays well, the characters are sincere only
through the author’s facetiousness.
Finally, the plot closes with an impossible sce-
nario centered on the name Ernest. Gwendolen
has sworn only to marry a man by the name of
Ernest. While Cecily has relented and agreed to
Algernon’s proposals, and Lady Bracknell, after
hearing the story of Jack’s fate from Miss Prism,
the governess, has consented to the arrangement,
Gwendolen remains convinced of the worthiness of
only the name Ernest. Jack and Gwendolen cannot
consummate their relationship. It is here that the
author again steps in with the hand of extraordinary
improbability. Since Jack’s name is, in fact, not his
given name, the author is free to “discover” that he
is, in fact, named Ernest Moncrieff—Gwendolen’s
“Ernest” after all. Such a move resolves the play
as a classical comedy, with three offstage (implied,
in this case) marriages. Jack and Gwendolen, Algy
and Cecily, and Canon Chausuble and Miss Prism
close the play engaged to wed, and all ends well.
Such an end is apparently and intentionally forced,
engineered by the author to serve his larger aes-
thetic goal. As a “light comedy,” this ending is
expected, but Wilde’s formula breaks the suspension
of disbelief by telegraphing the necessity of a deus
ex machina, or seemingly divine plot intervention
(in this case, the Army List, which contains Jack’s
father’s name). Without the improbable resolution
of Jack’s fictional identity being his actual name,
the plot is scuttled by the double bind of Gwendo-
len’s resolution and Jack’s lie.
Wilde begins by creating a scenario in which the
hand of the author, the arbiter of fate in the world
of fiction, must intervene in order to follow the con-
ventions of his genre and resolve the plot. Without
the transparent insertion of the authorial imposi-
tion, the plot remains unresolved. In this case, they
would be (as Jack says) condemned to “a passionate
celibacy,” impotent and unsatisfied. It is through the
author as the hand of fate and the imposition of the
improbable that fortunes are won, loves are lived,
and the ending is happy after all.
Aaron DruckerInnocence and experIence in The
Importance of Being Earnest
The contrast between innocence and experience is
the subject of great fun in The Importance of Being
Earnest. In the play, the conflict plays out between
the men’s romantic intentions and the women’s flir-
tatious reception of those intentions. Cecily is the
apparently naive victim, and her paramour, Algy, is