Bestknown is his masterpiece The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). Although the play purports to deal with trivialities (Wilde actually subtitled the play “A trivial comedy for serious people”), it deftly satirizes institutions and characteristics of the era—from social class, marriage, and morality, to hypocrisy, social conformity, and the desire for respectability.
The importance of earnestness. Above all, Wilde’s play satirizes “earnestness,” a peculiarly Victorian quality usually associated with sober behavior and a serious turn of mind. The concept of “earnestness” had its origins in several nineteenth-century phenomena: the outbreak of revolutions in Europe; the subsequent reevaluation of political and social attitudes; the growing reaction of the rising middle class to the selfish hedonism of the aristocracy; and the Evangelical Movement of the Anglican Church, which had advocated worthy causes (such as the abolition of slavery), had favored the observance of a strict code of morality, and had rigorously censured worldliness in others. “Earnestness” also carried multiple meanings:
To be in earnest meant intellectually is to have or to seek to have genuine beliefs about the most fundamental questions in life, and on no account merely to repeat customary and conventional notions insincerely.
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