Serious Triviality : A Serious Societal Critique in a Trivial Setting in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest

Sammanfattning: In the late Victorian era, the British upper-class seemed to have set up their own standard of morals where truthfulness and religious conviction gave way for manners and appearance. Oscar Wilde was an outspoken socialist and talented author who shared his critique towards the ills of this society within his literary works. In his play The Importance of Being Earnest - A Trivial Comedy for Serious People from 1895 he uses humour to shine light upon and criticize the absurdity of the upper-class hypocrisy. The play follows two upper-class bachelors on their quest for romance and renders much confusion and laughter as they rely on their fictional alter egos to help them to finally get married. This essay explores Wilde’s use of binary opposites and rendered ambivalence in the structure of the play’s narrative and how it affects the identification bond between the audience and the characters. These structuralist features are investigated in the light of the following themes: morality, gender, religion, class and seriousness.