Triviality vs Seriousness and absurdity Flashcards
Gwendolen and Cecily - triviality vs Seriousness
Triviality vs Seriousness
-Fictionalized diaries used to give insight into their lives – no soliloquies or other – diaries used to indicate their ideals and values.
-Gwendolen ‘one should always have something sensational to read in the train’ – about her diary.
-Subverts normal use of diaries – self-reflection – Gwendolen just wants to read about herself – what she already knows – entirely self-centered.
-Serious criticism of a society in which a woman brought up inside an aristocratic home has no knowledge of the larger world – forced to be trivial.
-Perhaps why Gwendolen does not use dialogue to express inner feelings – her language becomes meaningless/trivial. Talk rather than communication ‘I nearly always speak at the same time as other people’.
Jack: I hate people who are not serious about meals. It is so shallow of them.
-Ironic – being serious about meals is shallow.
-Satire of the upper class.
-Headonism.
-Ironic use of adjective shallow - points ot hypocrisy.
Gwendolen: In matters of great importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.’
Serious and trivial are made equal and reversed.
-aesthetic values.
-sibilance - smoother - adds to beauty of the sentence.
-Satire - upperclass all shallow/surfaces.
“I never change, except in my affections.”
-Ironic, what else can you change in - non-sequiter.
Lane: “There were no cucumbers… Not even for ready money”
Algy: “One has the right to Bunbury wherever one chooses”
-Phallic symbol of cucumber.
-covert reference to homosexual prostitution.
- ‘ready money’ needed to pay a prostitute.
- ‘Bunbury’ humorous word – potentially connotes hiding homosexual activities.
-Perhaps suggest social change – more tolerant of sexuality.
Lady Bracknell: My nephew, you seem to be displaying signs of triviality.
Jack: On the contrary… I’ve now realized for the first time in my life the vital Importance of Being Earnest’
-Pun on earnest, is he being earnest about being Ernest? -Binary opposition ‘trivial’ and ‘earnest’
-presents the dichotomy between the upper class confusing the serious with the trivial – such as the name ‘Earnest’ being of importance.
Algy: Every serious Bunburist knows that. Page 76.
-juxtaposition of the word serious and bunburist. Bunburying is not a serious activity.
-Satirising how the upper class do nothing of importance – live for pleasure, closest thing to a career is the Bunbury.
-Farcical.
Algy: The most earnest-looking person I ever saw in my life.
-Pun on name Ernest.
Nominative determinism.
-no reason to assume person whose name is Ernest has qualities of earnestness.
-For example ‘Leticia’ - Miss Prism christian name - means joy.
