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| The Important of being Earnest - Oscar Wild
Algernon shows up as an aesthetic by the "artistic" style of his room and by the sentimental of hie piano playing. "I play with wonderful expression, as far as the piano is concerned, sentimental is my forte." Lane: "I have had very little experience of it myself up to the present, I've only been married once¡K..a misunderstanding between myself and a young person" Lane's view toward marriage is very strange, because he sounds that he hopes he can marry more than once and he considers his marriage as a misunderstanding. Jack: "When one is in town one amuses oneself, when one is in the country one amuses others." He means that the country is excessively boring. However, Jack is much serious than Algy. Although he claims to seek pleasure but who is actually rather serious and plans to propose marriage to Gwendolen. Algernon: " The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility! Here it actually wants to say that the truth is always complicated therefore modern life is colorful and so modern literature can be completed. " The amount of women in London who flirt with their husband is perfectly scandalous. ~ They should flirt with other men and looking for romances instead. "In marriage life three is company and two is none." Algernon tends to have love affair after married. : I hate people who are not serious about meals, it's so shallow of them." He doesn't seem to look marriage as holy and serious thing, but he looks a trivial thing so important. Lady Bracknell: "I hadn't been there since her poor husband's death. I never saw a woman so altered. She looks quite twenty years younger." How can it be possible? After her husband's death, she became even more attractive? ~ We can see the social value of the Victorian society here. Gwendolen and Cecily love Jack and Algernon only because they have the name of Ernest. Gwendolen: " My ideal has always been to love someone of the name of Ernest, there's something in that name that inspire absolute sonfidence." Cecily: "Uncle Jack first confessed to us that he had a younger brother who was very wicked and bad, you of course have formed the chief topic of conversation. A man who is much talked about is always attractive.~ Cecily loves Ernest because she thinks he is a wicked man, and it's very romantic to love a wicked man. " I never met any really wicked person before, I feel rather frightened. I an so afraid he will look just like everyone else." Both of the girls seems to fall in love with their own ideal, imaginary men. Lady Bracknell: " I don't approve of any thing that tempers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. " The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever." ~ She thinks that only the upper class can be educated, and if the people are all educated, they may ask for their rights, and it's no good for upper class. " To lose one parent, may be regarded as a misfortune, to lose both look like carelessness." ~ She doesn't seem to have any sympathy. Gwendolen: "¡K. But although she may prevent us from becoming man and wife, and I may marry someone else, and marry often, nothing that she can possibly do can alter my eternal devotion to you. " She thinks that it's very romantic not to get marry with Jack, because having love affair with him is even more romantic. Algernon: "I love scrapes, they are the only things that are never serious." He takes life easy, and with a playful mind. Both Cecily and Gwendolen keep diary. Miss Prism: "No married man is ever attractive expect to hie wife¡K¡Kyoung women are green¡K¡K"~ It contains sexual connotation, the last line, it means mature and experienced are better. "As a man sows so let him reap." " After we had all been resigned to his lost, his sudden return seems to me peculiarly distressing." Here we can see the similarity between Miss Prism and Lady Bracknell~ doesn't have any sympathy for others. Cecily in the second act, is resisting the lessons of Miss Prism, and keeping diary for her fantasy life, Miss Prism admits that she wrote a novel but lost. Miss Prism aspires to marry Dr.Chausible. Cecily reveals that she has been conducting an imaginary courtship with Earnest in her diary ever since she knows the name of Ernest. Algeernon hurried to christen with that name when Gwendolen arrived. Gwendolen says to Cecily: " I like you already more than I can say. My first impression of people are never wrong." "Disloyalty would be as impossible to Ernest as deception, but even men of the noblest possible, moral character are extremely susceptible to the influence of the physical charms of others¡K¡K" After they find that they both engaged to Ernest, they begin to fight in verbal, Cecily also treated Gwendoln badly by adding a lot of sugar in her tea. Their words are sharp however they are quite polite still. Cecily: "This is no time for wearing the shallow mask of manners, when I see a spade I call it a spade. Gwendolen: "I'm glad to say that I have never seen a spade. It's obvious that our social spheres have been widely different. ~ She's laughing at Cecily is a country girl, and Cecily is laughing at Gwendolen that she wears the shallow mask of manners. Gwendolen: " From the moment I saw you I distrusted you. I felt that you were false and deceitful. My first impressions of people are invariably right." We can see that they pay no responsibility for what they've said before. After they discovered Jack and Algy's deception, they soon became sisters again.~ very ironic. They ask them if they have a brother called Ernest~ since the girls only want to marry the man who called Ernest. Both Cecily and Gwendolen vowed they'll be cold to Jack and Algy, both men volunteer to be christened with the name Ernest to please their ladies. However Lady Bracknell arrives, and rejects the engagement. She consent Cecily's after she heard that Cecily is heiress to a substantial fortune, but she objects to Jack because he lacks family status. Jack then denies permission for his ward Cecily to marry Algernon. At the end of the story, Miss Prism turns out to be the absent-minded nurse who had misplaced Jack as an infant, putting the manuscript for her novel in the baby carriage. Jack is the nephew of Lady Bracknell: " I'm not in favor of long engagement, they give people the opportunity of finding out each other's character before marriage."~ It's really funny, because she sounds to prefer blind marriage. It's a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking not but the truth.- Jack. |