ChoralSoft Learn
The Importance of Being Earnest: study guide
By Oscar Wilde. A spoiler-light guide with themes, characters, vocabulary and questions to discuss.
The Importance of Being Earnest
Oscar Wilde · 1895 · public domain
The story
Two young men, Jack Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff, each invent a fictional identity to escape social obligations. When both fall in love with women who insist they can only love someone named Ernest, the lies pile up in a comedy of mistaken identity.
This summary avoids the ending, but later sections of a guide can spoil details.
Main themes
- Double lives
- Satire of Victorian society
- Sincerity versus triviality
- Marriage as a social contract
Characters
- Jack Worthing
- A respectable country gentleman who calls himself Ernest in town.
- Algernon Moncrieff
- A witty bachelor who “Bunburys”, using an invented friend as an excuse.
- Gwendolen Fairfax and Cecily Cardew
- The two young women who are fixated on the name Ernest.
- Lady Bracknell
- Gwendolen’s formidable mother, the guardian of social standards.
Words worth knowing
- epigram
- a short, witty saying, a Wilde specialty.
- satire
- using humor to criticize people or customs.
- Bunburying
- Algernon’s word for inventing an excuse to escape obligations.
- earnest
- sincere and serious, with a pun on the name Ernest.
Questions to discuss
- What does the title’s pun on “earnest” and “Ernest” say about sincerity?
- Which Wilde epigram do you find the sharpest, and what does it criticize?
- Why does Wilde call the play “a trivial comedy for serious people”?
- How do the two men’s double lives differ?