Morality and hypocrisy Flashcards
Lady Bracknell - Victorian Morality
Victorian Morality
-Custodian of Victorian morality – static figure.
-obsessed with decorum and convention.
-Unsympathetic to Bunbury’s alleged illness, unmoved by news of death glad he ‘that he made up his mind at the last to some definite course of action, and acted under proper medical advice.’
-Obsession with reputation shown to be absurd and paranoiac.
-missing trains ‘might expose us to comment on the platform’.
-Good form – no gossip should sully her social reputation.
Jack: When one is in town one amuses oneself. When one is in the country one amuses other people. It is excessively boring.
-Comedy of Manners.
-They are polite about stupid things but not about the things that matter.
-Typical of Victorian upper class to do things to keep up appearances.
-Headonistic behaviour of the upperclass.
-Shows how Jack seeks escape from the moral code and restrictions that bind him to duty and manners.
-Epigram - satire social norms.
Algy: The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
-Mocks pomposity and superficiality of high society.
-Aesthetic theory: demonstrates dominance of verbal style over substance.
-Epigram - foreshadows the confusion that occurs throughout the play due to the ironically unpure truth ‘Earnest’.
Lady Bracknell: High time that Mr. Bunbury made up his mind whether he was going to live or to die… Nor do I in any way approve of the modern sympathy with invalids…
-Ironic – one does not choose whether to live or die.
-Cold heartedness of upper class is satirized.
-Artificial world of the play/upper-class.
-Highly formalised conversation.
-speech of an elite social group - style of greater importance than substance.
-Very proper - utterly heartless.
-Concern is for social niceties, no regard for conventional morality.
-Concerned only that his illness might disrupt her social schedule.
-overturns our assumptions about illness.
-Comically see illness as a moral question - susceptible to choice.
-Comically formidable woman.
-Inversion of power relations between the sexes.
-Perhaps serious – suggest need for social change
Bracknell: She looks quite twenty years younger.
Algy: I’ve heard her hair has turned golden with grief.
-Subverts Cliche “turned grey with grief”- emphasised by the similar alliteration of ‘golden with greif’.
-Suggests society is incapable of original thought so resorts to trivial/ empty forms of language.
-Reverses humane values, callousness/lack of sympathy.
-simultaneously condemns characters attitudes/values and wins approval of audience via their elegance and wit.
-critiques marriage as a loveless institution - arranged marriages.
They have been eating muffins. That looks like repentance.
Hedonism and over-indulgence of upper class and their. twisted views of living - how is indulging in muffins repentance rather than merely self - fulfillment and pleasure?
- shows how willing they are to imagine the extent of the mens’ sincerity to appease their own desires.
- Ironic.
Miss Prism: The good end happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.
-Claiming that it’s a rule of fiction suggests its untrue of real life.
-Wilde mocks how Victorian society’s rules often invaded aspects of cultural life e.g. literature.
-Idea stems from Christian judgement,
-Miss Prisms morality prompted by religion, whilst Lady Bracknell’s is influenced by society and aristocracy.
-Truth and fiction.
I have never met any really wicked person before. I feel rather frightened. I am so afraid he will look just like every one else.”
-Sexual undertones ‘wicked’, comically transgressive in uptight Victorian society.
Miss Prism: As a man sows, so shall he reap.
-Repetition of this line. Biblical metaphor.
-cold-hearted nature mockes - comical due to its directness.
-Strictly religious Victorian society.
Cecily: “When I see a spade, I call it a spade”
Gwendolyn: “I am glad to say I have never seen a spade. It is obvious out social spheres have been widely different”
-Comedy of tea-time battle is the fact that they have been well brought up - practised members of polite society - forced to insult each other indirectly or Periphrastically - talking around subject rather than expressing it directly.
-The shallow mask of manners is slipping.
-Both very witty - shame their inteligence is wasted due to the oppression of women.
-Cecily uses spade metaphorically - Gewndolen wittly turns it into a literal spade - to demonstrate their differing social spheres - country vs city.
Cecily: “Flowers are common here, Miss Fairfax, as people are in London”
-Homographic pun on common - meaning many and meaning simple/poor.
-Periphrastically insulting Gwendolen - cannot say so directly.
-Formality and exagerated good manner s- emphasised by formal mode of address ‘Miss Fairfax’.
