The Importance of Being Earnest 1143definition seems to twist and turn, often proffering
opposite solutions to the same problem. Jack, Algy,
Gwendolen, and especially Lady Bracknell define
success according to their own unique values, but in
the end, it is Oscar Wilde’s unique wit that exposes
all of their foibles.
For Jack, success is marrying Gwendolen.
Brought up from obscurity, the ward of a man who
found him, literally, in a handbag at Victoria Station,
Jack has managed to maintain his inherited wealth
through investments, a reflection of his social and
business savvy. By most standards, he is a resound-
ing success—respected, wealthy, and honorable. Yet
he is poignantly and constantly aware of his single
shortcoming: He has no provenance. He does not
know who his parents were, nor does he know his
social or class identity. He knows only that the
kindness of a stranger allowed him an upbringing
that led to his better fortunes. He has overcome and
mastered fate, business, and social and public per-
ception, except for the most strident of prejudices:
For all his achievement, he has not succeeded in
becoming “upper class,” that unique semi-nobility
of the financial upper crust that characterizes the
landowning class in English society—the lords and
ladies of the manor. The last step to success for Jack
is a social progression through marriage into a noble
family (to which Gwendolen happens to belong). It
is unfair to characterize Jack’s affection for Gwen-
dolen as social gold digging as he seems to care for
her as genuinely as any other aspect of Wilde’s light
comedy is genuine; however, for Jack, to be good
enough to marry into the nobility, to have achieved,
maneuvered, and positioned his fortunes so as to
move from the merchant to the noble class, is the
highest mark of success.
Algy sees success as living life through no effort
of his own. Already a member of an upper-class
family, he desires little more than to be comfortable
and live a life of strident leisure. He begins by milk-
ing the system, finding socially “appropriate” ways
to welsh on tabs and feign a kind of social irony. He
is a spendthrift who ducks his creditors. He lives
largely off the family money and the generosity of
his aunt, Lady Bracknell. It is finally in Cecily that
Algy finds his success. Wooing and marrying her
represents the ideal achievement for his station.
Young, beautiful, and carrying a substantial dowry
(£130,000—equivalent to several million dollars in
today’s money), the romantic and dreamy Cecily
is the perfect match for the profligate and care-
less Algy. Without social or monetary restrictions,
they can both live together blissfully ignoring the
constrictions of the real world, which can only be
labeled an unfettered success.
Gwendolen marks success by her indifference
to any meaningful thought. At every turn, and at
every opportunity, she prides herself on her ability to
think against the standards of logic, being perfectly
irrational. At several points in the play, she asserts
her sensibility in order to achieve her ends. She and
Cecily desire to suss out the reasoning of Algy and
Jack’s manipulative noms de plume, and Gwendolen
feeds Jack a rationale for his inventing a brother,
Ernest: “In matters of grave importance, style, not
sincerity, is the vital thing. . . . Was [your decep-
tion] in order that you might have an opportunity
of coming up to town to see me as often as pos-
sible?” “Can you doubt it?” he responds. “I have the
gravest doubts upon the subject,” she retorts. “But I
intend to crush them.” Her world is dependent on
its conformity to her vision of it, and to succeed, she
must manipulate it through a conscious abstention
of reason.
Lady Bracknell, though, knows that success does
not come from a handbag; she knows that success is
born from privilege, and opportunity is provided by
your social connections. One is born for success or
not. The self-made man does not exist. One must
have means, of course, and charm and grace. One
must have property and lineage. One must have
manners and style. Substance and education is of
little use, though the veneer of them cannot hurt.
But what one earns, what one achieves, and what
one builds is not a measure of success. Success is a
title, at birth or by fiat.
Of course, they are all wrong. Jack can never
become noble, regardless of title. He will forever be
self-made, the product of being found at Victoria
Station, and one cannot be noble if he has achieved
success by his own merit. (This is an irony caused
by British class expectation.) Algy will never find
enough money or enough joy to satiate his endless
yearning for new pleasures, even if Cecily is game to