The Importance of Comedy

Comedy plays an important factor in the crucial criticisms of society’s flaws, and this role of comedy can be seen without difficulty in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. Within this play Wilde uses various shenanigans and conventions of comedy in order to satirize and poke fun at a pretentious and imperfect world. 

One of the most satirized aspects of this era is the significance of one’s name and status in life. Both Jack and Algernon fall in love with women who have fundamentally flawed views on who a man should be. Of most consequences to these affluent women was the name Earnest. They believed not in the virtue of the man, but in the virtue of a man’s name. In this case the name Earnest is seen by these ladies as highly desirable, and showing the characteristics of someone whom they could truly and deeply love. But of course one of these men is named Jack and the other is Algernon, neither is Earnest. The comical aspect of this play revolves around the struggle that these men undergo in order to gain the love of their chosen woman, a struggle that drips with satirical judgement on the way these women go about life and view love. 

Wilde also pokes fun at the serious business of what makes a man suitable for Victorian society. In a scene with Lady Bracknell, the experienced and opinionated woman outlines her most important factors for the proper Victorian husband. Topping that list is ‘does he smoke’. Obviously this exemplifies the idea that the characteristics valued by this society were not the ones of most significance, the were mundane and incredibly trivial. Wilde uses this to his advantage several times and sheds light on a skewed and somewhat twisted group of people. 

By satirizing the values and beliefs of a society that he disagreed with, Wilde is able to comically impart his own judgement and views. Comedy can play a key part in social progress, as this play shows, by simply pointing out how ridiculous and utterly absurd many of society’s rules truly are.