The Importance of Being Earnest: The Texture of Wilde's Irony

The Importance ofBeing Earnest: The Texture of Wilde's Irony L. A. POAGUE • THE LIMITED SCHOLARLY DEBATE OVER The Importance of Being Earnest has been a particularly sane one, critics now generally agreeing that the play is indeed comedy (as opposed to farce) and serious in its triviality (rather than trivial altogether).1 One important yet frequently slighted aspect of the play, an understanding of which goes far towards explaining previous critical misconceptions, is the dense texture of its irony. Of course, Wilde's famous wit is generally acknowledged as the outstanding feature of his work, but it has been for the most part simply acknowledged and not seriously studied. While previous writers have certainly not ignored Wilde's use of irony (see Bentley, Reinert, Foster, and Gregor), the close study of his style has generally been given the back seat in favor of structural or character analysis. I propose to give style the front seat, and to offer here a brief survey of Wilde's ironic devices, with the hope that the reader will expand or modify as needs be the basic structure I have set forth. I find five specific types of irony at work in The Importance of Being Earnest, ironies of (1) situation, (2) reversal, (3) comparison, (4) truth, and (5) the literal mind. Each type relies upon a displacement of meaning, a resonance between statement and implication, which requires intellectual exertion on the part of the reader or spectator who wishes to comprehend the satiric and ironic point being made. The first two ironic devices, i.e., situation and reversal, are closely allied in method, in that they both depend upon context for their effect. The essential difference is one of degree - situational irony depending upon the larger dramatic context while the irony of reversal carries its context along with itself. A good example of the former is the first two lines of the play. 251 252 L. A. POAGUE ALGERNON. Did you hear what I was playing, Lane? LANE. I didn't think it polite to listen, sir.2 Lane's reply would simply not be funny out of context. We might expect such a rejoinder had Algernon been engaged in private conversation, but there is a certain false propriety in Lane's deferential attitude, and it is this sense of propriety out of all proportion that the play is about. Another species of situational irony is ironic comment, which frequently involves contradictory statements by a single character. Early in Act I Jack admits that his name is "Ernest in town and Jack in the country," but then he immediately turns around and upbraids Algernon: "My dear Algy, you talk exactly as if you were a dentist. It is very vulgar to talk like a dentist when one isn't a dentist. It produces a false impression." Jack's condemnation of "false impressions" is ironic in reference to his own previous statement and behavior. Again we see a character urging propriety, and again situational irony calls propriety into question. Where situational irony refers beyond itself, the irony of reversal needs only refer within itself. Thus, when Algernon proclaims that "Divorces are made in Heaven" (Act I), we really need not rely on context to perceive the ironic incongruity between the moralistic tone (inherited from the original proverb) and the reversed and amoral content. Again the effect is to call conventional morality into question by turning it upside down and reversing its implications. If divorces are made in heaven, marriages are made in drawing rooms by status-conscious dowagers with checklists, and it is indeed almost a matter of divine providence that Lady Bracknell finally does endorse what is essentially a love-match. The third ironic device is deflation by comparison, which works either by undercutting (comparison downward) or by overstatement (comparison upward). In both cases the serious or the important is equated with something trivial, and no matter in which direction the equation moves, it functions as a perspective device, placing its objects at a distance, and allowing or suggesting correct evaluation of their relationships. A representative example of undercutting occurs in Act I. Jack expresses his everlasting devotion to Gwendolen, and she replies...