Q: Do you think the women were really as foolish in love as they appeared to be with men by the name of Ernest?
A: Yes, I actually do. Though we are never really give a reason why these women are so smitten by men by this name, we do see that they're angry with one another when they hear that the other is to marry Ernest. Their instant friendship fizzles and a cat fight quickly ensues.
Q: Do you think Wilde had ulterior motives with his characters leading double lives?
A: I really can't tell. It's not too uncommon for literature to immitate life. I do think that he was trying to hint at how easy it is for a person to not necessarily decieve someone, but for people to not know someone as deeply as they think they do.
Q: Do you think the alter ego named Ernest is the reason the play was given it's title or was it just a name that was randomly picked?
A: I think it's a fairly obvious play on words and it was cute at the end.
My greatest difficulty was trying to figure out who each person was. If there are too many characters and/or names mentioned in a play, I generally tend to lose track of who's who.
I just liked how silly and carefree the play was. It was light and pleasant and there was depth, but not enough that made it overly serious. There was lots of mischief, which added a relatively cute part whenever it became "intense."
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5 comments:
I absolutely do - in some cases. Women can be quite silly when it comes to being in love - and in that time women were notorious for it.
I definitely believe that Wilde had ulterior motives. He himself was living a double life because society could not accept who he really was. I think that was the biggest point in the play.
I think the women are foolish in love too. I would have used the cat fight between them as an example as well. The two were completely fine with eachother before they knew and after they figured it out. The cat fight was actually one of my favorite parts of the play.
I would also agree with the answer to your second question. I think Wilde may have been hinting at the idea of an alter ego for himself through writting this. It is sad that he had to go throuh such inner struggles and then to have to face the public. I can see Earnest/Jack through Wilde. Jack had to struggle with not knowing who the real "him" was just as Wilde felt he had to hide his real self.
Your next question about the title is similar to one of my own questions on my blog. I do think ernest was used becuase of its parallel between the definition of being ernest and the name Earnest, but I think the title was formulated from the last line of the play.
There were a lot of names in this play, but not too many characters. That did make it a bit confusing at first, I agree.
I also liked the play of the title name with the name Ernest being used in the play. I liked the satire as well and thought that overall the play was extremely clever. I do think that Wilde was using the characters as an allusion to the fact that he had to keep facets of his life hidden from the public.
I agree that overall this play was very enjoyable. It did have some underlying themes, but in the end it was mainly just a fun comedy. I think that the women in the play are in love with the name Ernest primarily as a plot device, and also as a satirization of how shallow we all can be. All the characters in the play are pretty shallow, but then most people in general are pretty shallow and make decisions about others based on the most trivial things. I think Wilde was illustrating absurdity by being absurd.
I agree that Wilde purposely planned the title of the play to go with its contents. I think that it was very clever how he tied the name Ernest with the word earnest. I also enjoyed the ending when everything was tied together with the name and the title, it was very enjoyable.
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