Sample Essay On Bunburyism In The Importance Of Being Earnest

Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest derives much of its comedy from the farcical errors and the skewering of traditional Victorian society and values, which place an emphasis on continental materialism and class-related snobbery. In amongst the romantic entanglements and issues of identity, the entire world of Victorian England is shown to be the kind of silly world where ‘Bunburying’ (i.e. creating fictional characters to get out of social situations) is shockingly the norm in such a shallow society. While the major characters (like Jack Worthing/Ernest, Gwendolen and others) provide the main thrust of the plot, the minor characters that fill out the world of Wilde’s play perform a vital role in selling the social commentary and cultural critiques of the Victorian society Wilde is skewering. When looking at these characters, the necessity of ‘Mr. Bunbury’ becomes clear – in a world that controls people’s behavior using many different tactics, the only real way to be able to express who you are and what you want is to escape that society altogether by lying about who you are. The characters of Lady Bracknell, Miss Prism and others reveal exactly the kind of people for whom Bunburying was made – the arrogance of upper-class society, the dryness of intellectualism and the hypocrisy of religion.
Lady Bracknell is a nosy, authoritative, overbearing and self-righteous representation of the class-based elitism that Victorian society held most dear. Her very first line in the play shows her asking if people are behaving well, which she notes is different from feeling well (Wilde 19). This first interaction illustrates the hypocrisy of Victorian society; people must behave according to set patterns and rules set out and regulated by the rest of society, even though it may cause them unhappiness or misery. Bracknell herself is obsessed with climbing the social ladder and maintaining the traditions of society, regulating her daughter’s behavior and marriage choices as a means to secure property rather than an expression of love. Bracknell constantly berates others for behaving in boorish or emotional ways, and frequently mentions that people in the upper class do not go through these issues, for they are not fashionable (Wilde 145). For Lady Bracknell (just as with many others in Victorian society), the primary goal in life is to gain powerful relationships through marriage so that one can remain financially and politically secure so you can be accepted in society (Wilde 38). Unlike many of the other characters in the play, she is of the upper class, and so she has a vested interest in keeping things the way they are; without her social class, she could not look down upon characters like Prism and Rev. Chasuble, or maintain her sense of authority and control over others. Unlike many of the other minor characters, Bracknell is exactly who she appears to be – as she already has social and economic power, she does not need to hide who she is to get what she wants.
Rev. Chasuble, the vicar of the town, showcases the ignorance and boorishness of religious figures in Victorian towns, Wilde emphasizing the silliness of ministry and strict moral values. The minister represents the repressive and overbearing nature of religious clergy, acting as the moral center of the town but behaving hypocritically. When people express a lack of interest in religion, or behave in ways anathema to the church, Chasuble is disturbed, particularly when he claims to have gone over the sinful nature of these transgressions in exhaustive detail; he is clearly someone who values the social clout that being a clergyman gives him, or at least the self-righteousness of following the rules of Victorian religious society. Even in his first appearance, Reverend Chasuble espouses the virtues of hard work, devotion to God, and more, decrying Mr. Worthing’s avoidance of his social obligations as him being solely concerned with personal pleasure (Wilde 60). Despite Chasuble’s ostensible moral fortitude and strict adherence to the religious texts, Wilde shows him to be just as human and fallible as everyone else; this is especially clear when he talks to or refers to Miss Prism, for whom he clearly has a deep lust, often giving asides to himself where he will allude to wanting to be intimate with her (Wilde 60). The reverend is considered to be the most respectable, religious figure in the play’s Victorian setting, which makes these sudden reveals of his lasciviousness all the more revealing of the hollow core at the center of Victorian society.
Miss Prism, meanwhile, is another character closely related to the Reverend Chasuble, in that she offers the literary side of intellectualism. She focuses on writing and poetry, becoming obsessed with success writing romantic novels, and so she is unduly focused on temptation and desire despite her prim and proper surface. Miss Prism derides young women for being immature and susceptible to temptation, but seemingly does so as a way to prove that she is mature and ready for love (Wilde 69). She judges people just as much as the reverend does; however, while Chasuble has the Bible as his basis, she uses academia and intellectualism to essentially remove the joy out of all her activities. The aspect of Victorian society she values is proper, ladylike behavior and the intellectual pursuit of knowledge; both of these things are shown to be empty pursuits meant to keep everything the same and discourage change. Both she and the reverend flirt with each other incessantly, and she even gets together with him by the end. In this way, both of them find ways to escape the trappings of Victorian moral panic and let go of their hang-ups, becoming honest in their affection for each other and their desire for pleasure.
The minor characters surrounding the main subjects of The Importance of Being Earnest illustrate the value of Bunburying by pointing out the flaws of upper-class authority and breeding, intellectualism and religious dogma. By showing just how shallow and absurd Victorian society is, the practice itself is shown to have value by allowing people to check out of a way of living they find useless and without value. The Bunburying shown by Worthing is deeply important to these readings not just in an historical sense, but a contemporary one. In many ways, we exhibit a great deal of Bunburyism in our real, modern world, as we increasingly use technology such as cell phones and laptops to escape the real world. Whether it is due to the need for a greater sense of privacy, or a genuine dislike of the people around us, we will often find ways to avoid the people we are surrounded with. In Wilde’s context, this type of behavior is rewarded and even laudable, given the strange, hypocritical and shallow nature of characters like Lady Bracknell, Miss Prism and the reverend. Wilde used these cartoonish, broad characters to highlight the failings of Victorian society at the time, using them to highlight these flaws and offer a way out through Bunburying.

Works Cited

Wilde, Oscar. The Importance of Being Earnest. 1895,