Author: custom-essay

Discuss the Importance of Being Earnest Response

Comment:
This is a reading response for my English literature class, for Wilde\’s \”The Importance of Being Earnest\”
Choose one or two questions below and answer them. Two-thirds of the page, or 2 paragraphs, will be your answers. Then the last third of the page, or one paragraph, will be a personal response, what did you find interesting, surprising, or difficult about the work?
1. In what way does Wilde ridicule conservative notions of gender and the division between the public sphere as the realm of men and the private or domestic sphere as the realm of women?
2. How does Wilde portray food as both a weapon and as a means of demonstrating one\’s power?
3. According to critic Karl Beckson, \”Central to Wilde\’s life and art was the idea of the dandy as the embodiment of the heroic ideal as well as of the aesthetic temperament hostile to bourgeois sentiment and morality.\” Which of the characters in the play embodies this aesthetic principle, and how?
4. Wilde suggests that his Victorian contemporaries should treat trivial matters with greater respect and pay less attention to what society then regarded as serious. Discuss how Wilde expresses this philosophy and comment on how he presents his \”message\” with regards to the following topics: death, politics, money, property, food, sexual double standards, or marriage.
5. In order to escape the rigid expectations of upper-class Victorian society, both Jack and Algernon invent imaginary characters that allow them to take on an alternative identity. Discuss the way that the false morality beneath the surface of Victorian culture is the target of Wilde\’s blatant criticism of \”proper\” behavior.