home study :how did Oscar Wilde explore hypocrisy

the importance of being earnest is a very trivial play ,it is farcical comedy protagonists maintain fictitious personae in order to escape burdensome social  .Oscar Wilde does this but creating various characters of different purposes ,like Algernon having a second secrete identity (bunbury) and John being (earnest) .this is very eccentric from what is usually presented of  a Victorian man ,in that sort of society and time, secrete identities weren't that easy to maintain or to even have ,so the play writer uses this  to show us how that could be used to criticize what society at that time were meant to be .


Oscar played with the idea of what was normal and acceptable in society by creating these characters living in the Victorian society and having those same attitudes and values we see how the upper class and middle class view societies norms .One of the closely related subjects in the play was marriage and how each of characters saw it e.g in act 1 scene one gwendolen says 'the old fashion respect for the young is fast dying out .what ever influence I ever had over mamma ,i lost at the age of three ' .By this we see how Oscar Wilde twists what society thinks ,like in that era it was known for the child to have lost respect for the old and not the other way round .it is a formation of value , respect,and the play writer turns it round to make us look at the play as yet again trivial  (not fitting in to the known beliefs and expectations of Victorian society .


Further more , Wilde explores in depth what it means to have dual identity in Victorian society ,although algernon may have negative beliefs on a that very dual identity ,he ends up having one himself .The hypocrisy from this is  highlighted  numerous times  when conversations of marriage do come up for e.g if it wasn't for bunburys extrodinary bad health ,for instance ,i wouldnt be able to dine with you at Willis to night ,for i have really been engaged to aunt Augusta '.We view there being hypocrisy in the strong points of marriage the audience thought algernon had.


His also an insight because it lets us know that some of the characters of the play claim to have stable beliefs of what is known as (a high position in society) .A good example of this is when lady Bracknell had the conversation with John about gwendolen ,the topic of parents was aparently irrelevant to her .however when John stated he didn't quite know whom his biological parents it was a sudden shock for lady Bracknell ,how could this be if it were irrelevant ? throughout this scene we here lady Bracknell's outtake on Victorian society and respectability  ,but the characters seem to be quite deceiving in there choices of values in that current era ;Oscar Wilde explores this by showing us how the characters may have opposing views to certain occupation  in morality ,and how in the end ,their views turn out to be loosely based on there situation e.g algernon and his engagement to aunt Augusta .