TIOBE (quotes) the art of deception: fact v. fiction Flashcards
(ACT 1, PART 1)
jack describing his dual identities in the city vs. the town
JACK: “When one is placed in the position of guardian, one has to adopt a very high moral tone…in order to get up to town I have always pretended to have a younger borther of the anem of Ernest…who gets into the most dreadful scrapes.”
meaning:
Jack explains to Algernon that as a guardian, he must maintain a “high moral tone.” In order to enjoy the antics of bachelorhood in the city, he invented a younger brother named Ernest, so that the repercussions of his actions would not be traced to Jack the serious guardian. Like Algernon’s condemnation of Lane’s marriage views, the tension between Jack’s beliefs and his actions reveal the hypocrisy of the young and wealthy. Both young men do whatever they please, and get away with it, because they have the influence and means to ensure that their less-than-proper antics are not linked to their upper-class identities—and indeed, their hypocrisy is seen as almost entirely comic.
ACT 1, PART 1
algernon introducing ‘bunburying’
ALGERNON: “I have invented an invaluable permanent invalid called Bunbury, in order that I may be able to go down into the country whenever I choose.”
meaning:
Algernon reveals that he, too, uses a made-up identity to escape to the country: he pretends that he has a friend named “Bunbury” who is very ill and lives outside of the city. Whenever Algernon feels that life in the city has become unbearable, he pretends to have received news that Bunbury is on death’s doorstop, and that he must be by his side at once. He brands Jack’s practice of inventing a brother named Ernest as “Bunburying.” As bachelor members of the upper class, both Jack and Algernon want to do things that are considered “immoral” but fear social repercussions if found out by their families and peers. This leads to a “do as I say, not as I do” attitude that renders them both hypocritical in many of their actions. It is only due to their wealth and status in society that they are able to maintain such extravagant lifestyles—really, two each—and not get caught.
ACT 2, PART 1
miss prism and cecily discussing fiction
MISS PRISM: “The good end happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.”
meaning:
This statement is partly humorous because in claiming that “the good end happily, and the bad unhappily” is a rule of fiction, it’s suggested that this rule must be mostly untrue in real life—where indeed, one’s fate seems unrelated to one’s morality. Wilde here also pokes fun at the ways in which strict Victorian society rules often invaded other aspects of cultural life, such as works of literature. These rules on practiced morality largely stemmed from the Church, so when Miss Prism states that the “good end happily, and the bad unhappily,” she refers to the idea that those who sin are punished, and those who behave responsibly are rewarded.
ACT 2, PART 1
cecily talking to algernon and hoping he is not ‘wicked’
CECILY: ‘If you are not [wicked], then you have certainly been deceiving us all in a very inexcusable manner. I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.’
meaning:
In this quote, Cecily tells Algernon (whom she believes to be Ernest, Jack’s immoral brother) that she would be disappointed if he turned out to be a good person rather than the “bad” one she has heard so many stories about. This statement is an instance of dramatic irony, in which the audience knows that Algernon is pretending to be someone who technically doesn’t exist, and is in this moment living a “double life.” In a way, however, by assuring Cecily that he is in fact the “bad” Ernest, Algernon is partly telling the truth about his own hypocrisy—he acts rather foolishly in the city, and pretends to have a dying friend in order to escape to the country. However, he is mostly just lying, because Ernest does not even exist; his antics are really those of Cecily’s “responsible” guardian Jack. Here, Wilde further exposes the ridiculous rules of Victorian society, in which it is perhaps better to be truthful about living a life of sin than to be lying and to actually be a person of upstanding morals.
ACT 3, PART 1
lady bracknell’s response to cecily’s trust fund
LADY BRACKNELL: “Few girls of the present day have any really solid qualities, any of the qualities that last, and surfaces…There are distinct social possibilities in your profile. The two weak points in our age are its want of principle and its want of profile.”
meaning:
When Jack tells Lady Bracknell of Cecily’s large trust fund, available to her when she comes of age, Lady Bracknell immediately becomes more interested in the prospect of Algernon marrying the young girl. In this quote, she inspects Cecily’s face, suddenly very taken with the girl (of course, the audience knows that this change of opinion is because she now knows that Cecily is rich). Here, the “lasting qualities” that Lady Bracknell alludes to are not looks, as she hopes to imply, but money. She pretends to have taken interest in Cecily because of her sudden astonishment with her beauty, but the “profile” she is really intrigued by is her socioeconomic profile, not her chin. In the last sentence of the quote, Wilde’s signature witty puns come into play with the phrase “want of profile,” which at “face” value means “lack of a chin,” but here really means “lack of proper social and financial status.” Finally, Lady Bracknell has found someone whose beauty is surpassed only by her bank account—a partner she wholly approves of for her bachelor nephew.
- links to marriage as an economic exchange, which was prevalent in the Victorian era.
ACT 3, PART 2
Jack telling Gwendolen after realising the truth of his life
JACK: “Gwendolen, it is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth.”
meaning:
When Jack finds his birth father’s name in the Army list, he realizes that he has indeed been truthful when calling himself Ernest in the city—he is actually named Ernest Moncrieff Jr. In this quote, Jack is responding to Gwendolen’s delight at discovering that Jack’s name really is Ernest, as she believed it to be when she fell in love with him. Jack, however, is almost disappointed at the fact that he is really named Ernest, because he felt very clever in creating the identity of a sinful brother who lived in the city. As men of wealth and leisure, Algernon and Jack essentially do and say whatever they like without fear of repercussions, particularly thanks to their double identities in the city and country. Jack is shocked to realize that, when he believed himself to be lying in the city, he was really telling the truth in both the city and country—in aristocratic society he is technically the son of Ernest Moncrieff and is, by christening, Ernest Moncrieff Jr., while in the country he is John Worthing, the adopted son of Thomas Cardew. Regardless of his location or identity, or whether or not he was aware of it, Jack has been telling the truth all along—he is both Ernest and the most earnest of the characters.
