Algernon's Appetite: Oscar Wilde's Hero as Restoration Dandy

17 ALGERNONS APPETITE: OSCAR WILDE'S HERO AS RESTORATION DANDY By James K. Ware (Califonnia State Polytechnic College, Pomona) Without doubt The Importance of Being Earnest Is Wilde's best comedy, but not all students of modern drama agree about the nature of the achievement. Whether the play is best appreciated as farce, satire, parody, or comedy of manners Is the subject of an interesting debate1 - a debate that will continue as long as we use formal categories that overlap. Earnest invites eclectic criticism, and this essay Is not intended to demonstrate at the expense of other readings that the play Is in essence a comedy of manners. It Is intended to show merely that Algernon's hunger is reminiscent of appetite-satisfaction motifs found in several Restoration comedies of manners, and that Wilde returned in this play to the tone of the purest - that is, Etheregean comedy of manners. A "pure" comedy of manners is not fretted with romantic »dealism: nor Is it burdened with a great deal of moral earnestness. Without histrionics and without dogmatism, a civilized hero satisfies his natural appetites. Such comedy is written by insiders, by dandies who are able to dramatize (because they have experienced) the charms and deficiencies of a coterie's way of life. It is axiomatic that we know best what we love best, and the dramatist who Is on intimate terms with polite society is able to find a subtle tone midway between satire and sentlmentallsm; his criticism is affectionate. In Algernon's inverted cliche, "I hate people who are not serious about meals. It is so shallow of them," we have almost a compendium of the ambiguity of Earnest. He puts "shallow" and "serious," the earnest man's touchstones, in a hall of mirrors. Perhaps it Is shallow to put meals before "serious" matters as Algernon does, but serious people who mask their Inability to enjoy life with a virtuous disdain for the Algernons of the world are, we must agree, shallow. The delight of Earnest Is this hall-of-mirrors disorientation , but the question that always comes to mind is. How serious is comedy of this sort? The Importance of Being Earnest dramatizes a pun, which is at the expense of the notion that frivolity and earnestness are mutually exclusive, and the whimsicality of the play separates its appreclators into two groups, those who are amused by its nonsense and those who, while enjoying its farcicality, find in it a sensible attitude toward human nature. Algernon, being both shallow and serious, should be taken the same way we take Dorimant, the fulltime Bunburylst of The Man of Mode. Both are artificers whose artifacts are their own lives. Within the frivolity of both are 18 thoughtful observations on social foibles. A rake's wit usually cuts both ways. Whereas the conventions of Philistines pretend our anlmality does not exist and deserve no more than public conformity, the freedom of a rake and his circle is shallow too. Nonetheless, a dandy, because he Is more honest and less earnest that the phillstine, will not frustrate himself by trying to live like an angel; at least he can manage his self-indulgence with discretion. He can go to Bunbury. When Wilde created a foolish Algernon, the frivolous world that he burlesqued was the object of his affection. Like Etherege, Wilde was an ambivalent participant in aristocratic society, and the opening scene of Earnest announces Algernon's kinship with Dorimant. Algernon Is a farcical reincarnation of the hungry Restoration dandy, who is bent on satisfying his appetites, a figure who appears, as we shall see, In several of the bestknown comedies of manners. In Etherege's The Man of Mode (1676),2 Dorlmant is a casual maniabout-town who Is-Tond of quoting Waller's verses. His taste in poetry Is significant, for he has Cavalier aplomb. Cavalier poets carry their emotions and talents gracefully, Whatever the tone of a Cavalier lyric - whether it is aloof, cynical, gay, or melancholy - always it Is polished and controlled. In a carpe diem poem the painful consciousness of time's pursuit of beauty is made to seem a burden, certainly, but not one that can...