A Business Proposal

Marriage seems to be the sole debate throughout the play The Importance of Being Earnest, and the question of whether it is a matter of business or pleasure. The characters have varying opinions of whether marriage is pleasant or unpleasant and how one should “go about it”. One could infer that “marriage” is really a symbol for life and art, and Wilde simply found another way to infuse the production with the main values of the Aesthetic Movement. It is absurd to suggest that marriage could be simply a social obligation and whether or not it is enjoyable is a trivial matter, just as it is preposterous to say that art and life are equally obligatory.

This “issue” is addressed promptly in the opening Act of the play. In the first part, Algernon and his butler, Lane, toy with the idea of the “nature of marriage”, and when he and Jack discuss the issue of leading a double life while married, Algernon claims, “Nothing will induce me to part with Bunbury, and if you ever get married, which seems to me extremely problematic, you will be very glad to know Bunbury. A man who marries without knowing Bunbury has a very tedious time of it.” While Jack feels that he will no longer need “Ernest” when he is married to Gwendolen, Algernon retorts that married men are the ones who need an escape most of all. This first part of the Act opens the debate of the “nature of marriage” and whether it is a matter of business or pleasure, but the second part of the Act deals more with how one should “go about it”.

Jack’s proposal to Gwendolen certainly shied away from convention. While Victorian society portrayed women as passive, fanciful, and innocent, while men were supposed to be direct and take charge, Jack stammered out his feelings for Gwendolen until she took matters into her own hands. After realizing she virtually proposed to herself, Gwendolen pulled herself together and insisted that Jack re-do the entire presentation properly. This, combined with Gwendolen’s obsession with the name “Ernest”, produces the question of the honesty behind Victorian propriety. Characterized by Gwendolen’s Victorian values, we see that it is more concerned with appearances than the truth behind actions. The proposal was already ruined, and yet Gwendolen needed it to be done properly simply for show, just as she “cannot” marry someone without the name Ernest, even if they obtain more earnest values than contained in Jack’s big toe.