The Importance of Being Earnest

Grade Levels

Excerpt

Theme Revealed Through Character Foils:

This lesson plan focuses on Gwendolen Fairfax and Cecily Cardew as character foils. Students will define "character foils" and identify similarities and differences between Gwendolen and Cecily, considering each character’s attitude towards courtship, marriage, and gender roles. Students will also determine what each woman’s response to social obligations says about the play’s position on keeping up appearances. By studying Gwendolen and Cecily as character foils, students will be better able to describe how their traits and behaviors advance some of the play’s key themes and major ideas, especially regarding traditional Victorian family values and gender roles.

Learning Objectives: 
By the end of this lesson, students will be able to

• define and explain literary foils and describe Gwendolen Fairfax and Cecily Cardew as character foils; 
• compare and contrast Gwendolen’s and Cecily’s feelings, thoughts, and behaviors at key points in the play; 
• identify and describe major themes that emerge from Wilde’s characterization of Gwendolen and Cecily.

Skills: close reading, character analysis, contrasting, drawing themes from the text, collecting evidence through internal research

Common Core Standards: RL.1, RL.3, SL.1

Introductory Lecture:

When The Importance of Being Earnest debuted on Valentine’s Day in 1895 at the St. James’s Theatre in London, Oscar Wilde was already a popular playwright. The play was his fourth hit in three years, and one of his earlier plays was still selling out the Haymarket Theatre a few streets away.

Allan Aynesworth, the actor who played Algernon Moncrieff, said he “never remembered a greater triumph.” The audience, dressed in the height of fashion, raved about The Importance of Being Earnest. However, the play would only run for 83 performances. Wilde, who was already suspected of carrying on an affair with a man, was arrested for gross indecency on April 5th. Homosexuality was a criminal offense in England in the late 19th century, and Wilde’s scandalous reputation prompted the play’s closing on May 8th. Wilde was sentenced to two years of hard labor and was jailed from 1895 to 1897. He died suddenly in 1900 after an ear infection developed into meningitis.

The Importance of Being Earnest was well-received by critics, all of whom noted the play’s success in making audiences laugh. The play, like other farcical comedies, features a number of extravagant, absurd, and implausible situations. The plot follows Jack Worthing, a seemingly respectable landowner and justice of the peace who owns a country estate in Hertfordshire. When Jack was a baby, he was discovered in a handbag at a railway station in London by the late Mr. Thomas Cardew. Now, Jack is the guardian of Mr. Cardew’s orphaned granddaughter, Cecily. Despite being an upstanding member of his community, Jack feels the social pressures of his position and occasionally escapes to London under the guise of helping his irresponsible younger brother, Ernest. In reality, Jack does not have a brother; he assumes the name “Ernest” while in London, where he stays with his best friend, Algernon Moncrieff. Assuming a different identity in the city allows Jack to maintain his pristine reputation at home.

From the beginning, Wilde satirizes marriage, gender roles, and upper-class snobbery to criticize Victorian England’s rigid social rules. Jack is in love with Algernon’s cousin, Gwendolen, but must meet trivial standards—including actually being named Ernest because of the word’s lofty connotations—in order to be considered worthy by Gwendolen and her mother, Lady Bracknell. Meanwhile, Algernon falls in love with Cecily Cardew, whose vivid and romantic imagination has caused her to fall in love with Algernon because she believes he is Jack’s exciting and wicked brother, Ernest. The importance of being named Ernest becomes a serious problem when Jack’s and Algernon’s future marriages are complicated by their true identities. The play ultimately questions the extent to which pervasive Victorian ideals, such as the emphasis on social position and respectability, are actually necessary.

The Importance of Being Earnest focuses primarily on Jack and Algernon as character foils to suggest that many strict Victorian ideals encourage superficiality and dishonesty. However, the play’s subtle questioning of gender roles, especially in the context of marriage, is played out in Gwendolen Fairfax’s and Cecily Cardew’s characters. Gwendolen, who is fashionable, practical, and overly concerned with public perception, symbolizes Victorian society. Cecily, who is imaginative, romantic, and impulsive, symbolizes the aesthetic movement championed by artists like Wilde. Despite their differences, both women are strong-willed and spirited, unlike most female characters represented in Victorian literature. Comparing and contrasting Gwendolen and Cecily thus invites further examination of the limitations of culturally defined gender roles in Victorian society. Ultimately, most of the Victorians’ rigid social rules—including restrictive gender roles—are exposed as pointless and hypocritical.

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Our eNotes Lesson Plans have been developed to meet the demanding needs of today’s educational environment. Each lesson incorporates collaborative activities with textual analysis, targeting on discrete learning objectives. We've aligned all of these lessons to particular Common Core standards, and we list the specific standard met by each lesson. The main components of each plan include the following:

Each of these lesson plans focuses on promoting meaningful interaction, analytical skills, and student-centered activities, drawing from the Common Core Standards for English Language Arts and the expertise of classroom teachers. Each lesson includes an instructional guide on how to present the material, engage students in an activity, and conclude the class.