Gender Roles In The importance of Being Earnest Essay

In The Importance of Being Earnest, the question of apiece genders role in society often centers on effect. In the square-toed world men had greater influence than women. work force made the decisions for their families, while women worked around the house. Wilde raises interesting questions about gender roles in The Importance of Being Earnest, by putting women ( the like Lady Bracknell) in positions of power and by showing that men can be irresponsible and questioning at Decision- devising The traditional view of gender relations in the straightlaced era was that men were active, manly, assertive and economically independent whilst women were assumed to be passive, pliant and dependent. I believe that Oscar Wilde does challenge these traditional roles reckonly to trifle humor out of these characteristics and to confuse fun of the conventional roles of society. The two master(prenominal) male characters, dump and Algernon, can non really be regarded as masculine, or at any rate both of them do not fit the criteria for what characteristics a stereotypical nice man would be they are both what good deal at that time would call dandys.Algy and jacks un gentlemanlike behavior and trivial pursuits can be seen as comic and deliberate in making men seem less powerful and serious. Algy is likewise a little too concerned with clothing to come crossways as masculine. This can be seen when he criticizes goose by utter that he had never known anyone to put so much crusade into dressing and to produce so little effect. Algernon also says in Act two when talking to Cecily that he wouldnt trust Jack to buy his outfits as he has no taste in neckties. Algy is dandy, making him unmasculine and a arcminute of a joke in the eyes of the Victorian au occurnce. A time in the play when we see women as having more(prenominal) power past men is in the character lady Bracknel, she is unvoiced and blunt level off coming across as a bit intimidating we get the feel t hat even Algy is afraid of her as he would rather make up a fake man thus tell her that he cannot have the pleasure of dinning with her.Another strong pistillate character we see is Gwendolyn. She is fair(prenominal) in some aspects like how se wanted the decent engagement (she makes jack notifys formally), but at the like time she can be seen as more masculine then Jack especially because she is quite assertive. Gwendolyn is also breaking stereotypes as when her come tells her to wait in the carriage but she defies her, were as most girls at this time would not even dare to disobey there baffles. A good example of Gwendolyn being assertive is when Jack is made to propose to her properly. Even though Gwendolyn knows exactly what he is going to ask her and she even tells him that she is going to accept him before he proposes, Gwendolyn insists on a proper proposal, which is absurd. Gwendolyn is clearly going to be more and more like her mother as she matures we see Algy menti on this when he says that a girls worst flaw is that they will end up just like their mothers.Her mother, Lady Bracknell, is probably the most masculine character in the play. She is very pompous and the most assertive of all the characters. She has the power to stop Jack from marrying Gwendolen and has the ability to boss the male characters of the play around. Lady Bracknells masculinity is funny because it is almost absurd. She is seen as lacking some more feminine characteristics like sympathy for example she has no sympathy for Bunbury who she claims should just make up his mind whether he is going to live or die .She gives Jack no condolences when he says that he had lost both his parents, preferably she says that he was careless, and when he explains that he was found she appears to be outraged and surprise giving us the impression that she has control oer the situation.Lady Bracknell has the upper berth hand over all the main characters in the play. After the psychomet ric test of the female characters it can be concluded that the female characters are not really typical Victorian women than are Algernon and Jack typical Victorian men. Oscar Wilde has created characters that challenge the Victorian views of gender relations and this is what causes the play to be so funny. The characters are not what you would expect and can be seen as over exaggerated stereotypes of gender roles at the time.