Worthing and she are engaged, Lady Bracknell retorts, "Pardon me, you are not engaged to anyone... I, or your father... will inform you of the fact." Then, she pulls out a notebook of prestigious names that she has pragmatically recorded and informs Jack that he is

"...not down on my list of eligible young men, although I have the same list as the dear Duchess of Bolton has."

Further, she interrogates Worthing about his place of birth and his parentage. When Jack replies that he has lost his parents and was "found" in a handbag at Victoria Station, Lady Blackwell is appalled. She demands that he "acquire some relations as soon as possible and make a definite effort to produce at any rate one parent...." Also, she forbids any communication between Gwendolen and him, since he is unworthy of her daughter.    

Lady Bracknell represents the Victorian upper-class, born into wealth and status and obsessed with its maintenance. She is the image of the period’s fascination with propriety, and her primary concern during the play is ensuring that her daughter Gwendolyn makes a match that can be considered favorable for their class and her connections. When it is discovered that Jack has no such connections (and in fact, that he was a discovered orphan with no known parentage), Lady Bracknell gives a firm no.

To illustrate how her character is a satirized version of her class, you must look for quotes that reveal an exaggerated concern with either propriety or status. This is usually presented ironically—an inversion of one’s typical expectations for how one should feel or react. One example is in Lady Bracknell’s treatment of Bunbury in the first scene. Rather than show concern for Algernon’s ailing friend, Lady Bracknell is annoyed because his illness prevents Algernon’s presence at her event and ruins the way she’s organized her table settings.

I should be much obliged if you would ask Mr. Bunbury, from me, to be kind enough not to have a relapse on Saturday, for I rely on you to arrange my music for me.

While humorous, this also shows the social perception that this particular Victorian class was concerned only with their own well-being. Another example of Wilde exaggerating Lady Bracknell’s concern with status comes when she pulls out a notepad and a pencil to interview Jack as a potential suitor for Gwendolyn. Any parent would grill a prospective son-in-law, but few take it down on paper in such a formal manner.

Finally, we can see that Lady Bracknell is not above manipulation to achieve her goals, especially when that goal is to maintain a clean, high-class image, even to her own husband. After Gwendolyn runs away in pursuit of Jack, she lies to him to protect her daughter’s reputation:

Her unhappy father is, I am glad to say, under the impression that she is attending a more than usually lengthy lecture by the University Extension Scheme on the Influence of a permanent income on Thought. I do not propose to undeceive him. Indeed I have never undeceived him on any question. I would consider it wrong.

All in all, Lady Bracknell’s character is a hyperbolic representation of the Victorian upper-class, and her most scandalous moments reveal an exaggerated concern for self-preservation, image, status, and propriety.

Lady Bracknell possesses the moral ambiguity evident in several members of the upper class in the play. When she first arrives at Algernon's, she says that she hopes he is "behaving very well." When he replies, saying that he feels well, she says that these are not the same thing, "In fact the two things rarely go together." Therefore, she claims that doing right and feeling good are almost mutually exclusive, implying that doing wrong is a surer path to personal happiness than moral behavior is. In this way, she satirizes the upper class's propensity towards immoral behavior and a rather hypocritical pair of beliefs that doing bad is the only way to feel good and doing good will not have the same effect.

Lady Bracknell is likewise unfeeling and cold when it comes to others. She declares that Algernon's (fictitious) friend, Bunbury, ought to make

up his mind whether he was going to live or to die. This shilly-shallying with the question is absurd. Nor do I in any way approve of the modern sympathy with invalids [. . .]. Illness of any kind is hardly a thing to be encouraged in others.

She is unkind and lacks compassion for people who are ill or convalescing, which is a decidedly heartless position to take. In this case, she satirizes the upper class's lack of feeling for the poor or less fortunate. For Lady Bracknell, nothing is more important than her social obligations and that includes another man's life.

Lady Bracknell is Algernon Moncrieff's aunt and the mother of Gwendolyn, Jack Worthing's love interest.  Also, at the end of the play, we find out that Jack and Algernon are actually brothers who were separated when Miss Prism, Jack's governess, accidentally abandoned him in a handbag in the cloak room at Victoria Station.  This means Lady Bracknell is actually Jack's Aunt Augusta as well as Algernon's, making Jack and Gwendolyn cousins. 

She is a member of the upper class, although it doesn't sound as though that was always necessarily the case.  She claims that though she had no money when she met Lord Bracknell, she didn't let that prevent her from marrying him.  Lady Bracknell is incredibly intimidating and overbearing, making life for Gwendolyn less enjoyable than it could be and making Gwendolyn and Jack's courtship more difficult than it should be.  She also very much values wealth, as shown by her treatment of Cecily.

Lady Bracknell could probably be labeled the antagonist of the Oscar Wilde's play The Importance of Being Earnest. She is the force standing in the way of Jack and Gwendolen's marriage. As Gwendolen's mother, Lady Bracknell seems to be the deciding factor in her daughter's future (Lord Bracknell is referred to but never appears in the play). When she learns that Jack is interested in marrying her daughter, Lady Bracknell interrogates Jack in an absurd interview that reveals a lot about her character.

Lady Bracknell proves herself to be haughty and arrogant. She is very sure of herself and feels superior to seemingly everyone else and especially to Jack once she finds out he does not know the identity of his parents. She reveals that she very much wants to hold on to her power as a member of the aristocracy when she tells Jack that the common folk should not become educated, as it would be dangerous to the upper class's status. She also demonstrates her snobbery when she looks down upon Jack's London address as on "the unfashionable side." Her advice to him is ridiculous: to find at least one parent as soon as possible. She has no sense of reality and takes herself very seriously (though the audience definitely is laughing at her).

When Lady Bracknell returns in the final act of the play, she learns her nephew Algernon wants to marry Cecily, who Lady Bracknell does not know. However, when she finds out that Cecily is due a huge inheritance from her grandfather, she suddenly sees Cecily as an attractive partner for Algy. This proves that all she really cares about is money, power, and reputation.