“The Importance of Being Earnest” is full of characters living double lives. The play opens with John Worthing in London, Jack, posing as his brother Ernest in order to pursue Algernon’s young ward, Cecily Cardew. We learn that he has invented an imaginary invalid friend named Bunbury who suffers from chronic indigestion and requires Jack to visit him in the country whenever he is feeling ill. Algernon Moncrieff also lives a double life: though we first see him at his London home, Bunbury Park, he later describes himself as living “a bachelor existence” at his (fictitious) address in town, Algernon’s Lodging.
The most interesting double life, however, belongs to Lady Bracknell who despite being married to Oscar Wilde’s mother’s brother has elected not to live with her husband but to have a set of rooms in the Albany where she keeps her lover Miss Prism.
These three primary characters are all trying to deceive others about their identities. The dichotomy between what Bernard Shaw called the “essential” and the “persona” self is at the center of Oscar Wilde’s comedy. The conflict between these two selves results in much of the play’s humor—in particular, Algernon’s struggle to reconcile his persona with his essential self and Jack and Algy’s shared fear that their double lives will lead to a climax of Bunburying.
The audience, on the other hand, never finds out about Miss Prism’s relationship with Lady Bracknell; we simply see her as Oscar Wilde describes her: “A more resolute lady treads not our stage . . . she has a foot like a chessboard…her face is impenetrable.” She turns down Algernon without explanation when he first proposes to her, telling him that he is too young. When he later visits her for advice about whether or not to propose to Cecily, she tells him that “It would be madness for you to marry now” but then seeks an explanation from Lady Bracknell who responds by calling Algernon “a little freckled shriek.” Oscar Wilde writes:
She was a curious woman . . . with a yellow face and a turned-up nose, and evidently belonged to the tribe of Jews. I think every one was astonished when they heard that Lord Bracknell had actually discovered such a thing as common sense in the female sex, and most people were very much amused; at any rate it afforded sufficient subject for conversation, and the day was spent in discussing Lady Bracknell, her dress, her complexion, and her nose.
When Algernon meets Cecily for the first time she tells him that “I am devoted to simple pleasures .” Oscar Wilde paints Miss Prism as a woman who has chosen this path; however, while she spends much of her time reading philosophy Oscar Wilde states that she doesn’t believe any of it: “She would not listen to [Schopenhauer’s] doctrine that Works are justified by their results; because it seemed to her preposterous to suppose that one day a Plato or Shakespeare would be judged by contemporaries simply on his ability to turn them out like sausages.”
Oscar Wilde follows up this observation with an example: “She would not admit that we see things in a telescope the better to observe them, or in a microscope the better to examine them. She was never tired of dwelling on the fact that such-and-such a man spent years and years of his life in devising an instrument which should be of no earthly use to anybody.” Oscar Wilde’s description foreshadows Cecily’s later declaration that she worships John Worthing because he possesses an umbrella with a particularly ingenious mechanism for closing it:
The way [the umbrellas] spring open is quite wonderful. It makes one feel as if one were flying . . . I am devoted to outdoor sports and exercise; I adore archery! And with a good aim, I dare say I should be quite deadly . . . My attitude is the correct one for shooting. Mr. Worthing, of course, being a gentleman, has not studied ladies’ education very closely, otherwise, he would have taught me how to shoot.
He follows this observation with Oscar Wilde’s description of his own “double life”:
In one [life] I lived openly with a boy lover called Jimmy; we were so poor that sometimes we had to go without either dinner or supper: in the other [life] I led a double existence, and spent my days in begging money from people who had more of it than I had – and my evenings at home pretending to read philosophy books which I could no longer understand. In two worlds simultaneously existing; in one of them I was a branded outcast; and in the other I was Oscar Wilde, little Mr. Oscar Wilde, with a coat of arms and an income of £80,000 a year: how small and stupid it all seems now [emphasis OscarW].
Oscar Wilde uses this description to show that Lady Bracknell possesses more than her share of “the correct attitude for shooting,” but also to illustrate his double life through Algy’s observations about Jack both before and after he learns about Cecily’s engagement:
Algernon. My dear fellow! What on earth is the matter? You’re not going to marry Miss Prism? Jack. Yes . . . Algernon. Well, my dear boy, I really don’t see what you are waiting for. Jack. There are moments in life, Algy, when the deepest love that the human heart can know is absolutely necessary . . Algernon.
And Oscar Wilde uses this to illustrate Jack’s double life: “Jack was by no means an ordinary young man. People who saw him at Oxford or in London society were full of his praises.” Oscar Wilde continues with Oscar Wilde’s description of Lady Bracknell’s double life before concluding with his observation about Cecily’s two lives:
But when he came down again and started living at home, she found out pretty soon that beneath this wainscoting of Mr. Worthing’s [position] there beat a passionate, fiery soul, capable of loving poetry and adventure. It was just for this reason that she could never love him as much as she loved his brother Ernest. Oscar Wilde describes Jack’s double life with Oscar Wilde’s description of Cecily’s two lives: “She had loved one man passionately and been engaged to him ; but he had thrown her over, and married somebody else . . .”
Oscar Wilde continues by stating that Oscar Wilde considered marrying an actress until Oscar Wilde met Lord Alfred Douglas at which point Oscar Wilde “became so carried away by the sheer beauty” of their relationship Oscar Wilde abandoned the idea noting that Oscar Wilde would have only brought them unhappiness; however, he goes on to state that “if ever I get married, it will be to Oscar Wilde” [emphasis OscarW]. Oscar Wilde uses this example of Lady Bracknell’s double life to show that Cecily “had married somebody else,” but Oscar Wilde is still willing to marry her. Oscar Wilde concludes with Oscar Wilde’s final observation about Jack and Algy:
They were called the new men and the younger sons and sometimes they were the bachelors. But they were never quite Rooks or any other bird in particular; and on some foggy evenings when they drifted along Pall Mall, one might perhaps fancy them a kind of feathery mice, very gracefully lighted up by gaslight as they passed along looking at the shop windows.
