hi there! I'm a new member. I live in Barcelona (Spain) and work as a private English teacher although I still have a lot to learn. I have a degree on English Philology but I have never lived abroad so I still make a lot of mistakes in English. I hope all of you can help me improve it. thanks in advance and here is the essay I need you to take a look.
The Importance of Being Earnest
In this play, written by Oscar Wilde, we find different views on marriage. At the very beginning, for example, we see Algernon and his servant Lane talking about this topic. This conversation is what makes Algernon reach the conclusion that marriage is nonsense. According to him, the best thing is not to marry, on the grounds that after getting married, all romantic essence is lost. However, he changes his mind once he meets Cecily. He falls in love with her and shows it by changing his name for the name Earnest just to please her since this is, according to her, the ideal name for a husband.
On the one hand, we find characters such as Jack, Cecily’s guardian, who definitely believe in romanticism, marriage and true love. As his friend Algernon, Jack is capable of being christened Earnest in order to satisfy Gwendolen, who sees marriage as a compulsory stage in the life of any Victorian woman. She devotes herself completely to Jack, and disobeys her mother by being with him. In the play, we also find Cecily’s point of view about marriage. She is a young girl full of innocence, who cannot resist Jack’s charm so she accepts to marry him without hesitating. Matrimony is, for her, the best way to confirm their love and make their relationship official
On the other hand, Lady Bracknell, Gwendolen’s mother, considers marriage a business, in which her daughter has to be benefited. For this reason, she interrogates Jack about his financial situation and familiar background. Although at the beginning she opposes this marriage, she accepts him as her son-in-law, once she realizes her daughter and Jack are really in love.
Chasuable and Miss Prim express their point of view too. The first one does not believe in marriage, since he thinks that when someone gets married, nothing changes, so it does not help us at all; whereas the second one believes in it and thinks it is something everybody needs to do.
In conclusion, all the characters in the play have their own opinion about marriage, even though in some cases they change their mind as the play goes on. We could distinguish three main positions: those who believe in love but not in marriage, those who believe in marriage but not in love and those who simply believe in none of them.
|