Gender in comedy Flashcards
Jack Worthing and masculinity
Masculinity
-Undermines usual stereotype of hero – Jack is an ingenue – innocent in complex and controlled society.
-Always bettered in argument by Algy, contrast of Algy’s self-satisfaction vs Jacks disconcertion:
-End act 1: Jack ‘looks indignantly at him and leaves the room’ Algy gleefully ‘reads his shirt-cuff’.
-End act 2: Algy happily munches aways jack ‘groans, and sinks into a chair’.
-accepts bread and butter ‘And very good bread and butter it is too’.
-Motif of eating food when women are mentioned – displacement activity for sex – repressive society – coded joke throughout play.
-Loses control – Gwendolen’s boldness takes control of his destiny. Speaks to her ‘nervously’ ‘looks at her in amazement’.
Algy and Jack in opposition to the ideal Victorian man
The Victorian Ideal Man
-Sportsman, well educated (Oxbridge), successful in his professional life, independent, wealthy, the type who could govern a colony successfully.
-Opposed to Wilde’s views – characters of Algy and Jack mock Victorian ideals.
-Speaks languidly, to idle to work, tires him doing nothing, mocks those who play the piano accurately, fails to discipline servants and is hard up, self-indulgence and Buburying.
-Squabble childishly, nervous wrecks about women they love, and depend on their forgiveness.
-They embody Wilde’s ideal man: can perpetually transform himself, appreciates true beauty, faithful to aesthetic standards
-language is: ‘perfectly phrased’, imagination to create fictional life – resourcefulness to sustain them for a time.
-Play shows ideal Victorian man to be outdated and irrelevant – those who can imagine win the days ‘style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.’
Gwendolen and Cecily - Gender
Gender
-Determined young ladies, able to run rings around the men – achieve what they want.
-However – in the context of Victorian society – role of women is restricted (wives and mothers).
-Rebellious – Gwendolen defies her mother – Cecily defies conventions.
-Maker their own choices control own destinies – using fictionalized versions of their world and their diaries.
-Audience aware – society will ultimately force them to accept traditional roles, reality that it is ‘absurd to talk of equality of the sexes’.
-Gwendolen – sophisticated city woman – structurally balanced against Jack.
-Cecily diary – fictionalized her world – achieve semblance of authority over her life.
-Aware of current trends in literature her diary is ‘a very young girl’s record of her own thoughts and impressions… meant for publication’.
Gwendolen and Cecily ‘New Women’ - context of Constance (Wilde’s wife)
New Woman
-Traditionalists – woman’s place in the home, dependent and obedient.
-Wilde supported his wife Constance – active in the promotion of women’s rights.
-‘New Woman’ – contemporary phrase – woman who demanded equal rights in education, career, vote – establishment – hostile to these aims – lead to moral and social decline.
-Rational Dress Society – equality – less constricting clothes for women – Constance involved in this – in original four-act version – Wilde had Cecily give a speech about rational dress.
-Gwendolen refers mockingly to new women debate saying ‘The home seems to me to be the proper sphere for the man’ – subverting norms.
-New women – defies mother, visits Jack without a chaperone – pretensions to intellectualism – ‘metaphysical speculation’, ‘Modern and ancient history’ etc.
-Cecily – well educated ‘capital appetite’.
Masculinity and Femininity
-Female characters appear more powerful than male characters.
-direct reversal of conventional power relations between men and women.
-Lady Bracknell has the masculine power - not Lord Bracknell.
-The men appear comparatively effeminate “dandies”.
-Part of the plays social satire.
-Context: Age of the empire, the ideal of the real man, had a responsible and well paid occupation in additton to a private income. Worked hard played hard - wide knowledge and experience “man of the world”. Strong sense of social responsibility and deep-seated morality.
-Jack and Algy do not have these traits.
-Lady Bracknells assumptions of what constitutes manliness reverse audiences assumptions of manliness.
-To her qualities that are not measurable at the dinner-party do not count as qualities at all.
-The young men in this play are not manly.
-Inverts power balance of sexes.
Algernon: All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That is his.
Dig at stereotypical masculinity, perhaps men would benefit from acquiring some of the attitutes and beliefs of their mothers.
Dr Chasuble: Were I fortunate enough to be Miss Prism’s pupil, I would hang upon her lips.
-Comical sexual undertones expressed with embarrassment due to strict Victorian propriety.
-Spinsters flirting is comical due to their rigid and uptightness. -Female power, although mainly sexual, she has the control.
-However, mainly mocking their romance – so not that powerful.
-Theme of Romance.
Gwendolen: ‘It’s absurd to talk of equality of the sexes!’
-Irony, exclamatives - absurd - reifnorces how absurd inequality is.
-Ironic, so much inequality – it must be discussed. -Mocks upper class view that there is no need for equality.
-Wilde suggests the power of the upper-class men should be challenged.
-Creates formidable woman – Lady Bracknell – silencing patriarch Lord Bracknell.
-New women shown in Cecily and Gwen.
Gwendolen: The home does seem to be the proper sphere for the man. Once a man begins to neglect his domestic duties, he becomes painfully effeminate.
Page 69.
-Direct subversion of the separate spheres debate – comical to a contemporary audience due to its unlikeliness – seemingly absurd.
-Language of contemporary debate - sphere - domestic duties - all associated with women.
-Ironic reversal of gender roles.
-Abverb painfully - ironic - man mean in the home would be effiminate at the time.
Cecily: No, men are so cowardly, aren’t they?
-Rhetorical question, perhaps to make the reader think about this statement.
-Ironic Reversal of gender roles.
Jack: Who has the right to cast a stone against one who has suffered? Cannot repentance wipe out an act of folly? Why should there be one law for men, and another for women? Mother, I forgive you. (Tries to embrace her again.)
Serious reading/message
Serious message:
-Biblical allusion - Jesus speaks to a mob about to stone woman - “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”
-Wilde protests against the sexual double standard - in which women are punished for sex outside of marriage and men are not.
Jack: Who has the right to cast a stone against one who has suffered? Cannot repentance wipe out an act of folly? Why should there be one law for men, and another for women? Mother, I forgive you. (Tries to embrace her again.)
Farcical reading
-Mocks Melodrama
Farcical:
-humor due to mismatch in how each character is reading the situation - Jack sees himself as being generous and progressive, but all he’s doing is offending Miss Prism - suggesting she had a child out to wedlock.
-Rhetorical questions - Jack thinks he is being profound and progressive - questioning society - Wilde mocks the melodrama.
-Stage directions - paralinguistic humor - she does not want to be hugged.
