Witty and sharply satirical, it pokes fun at marriage, class, morality and Victorian seriousness.
The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde is a play set for IGCSE and International GCSE Literature (Cambridge International 0475). The board decides the set texts and the years they are examined, and your school confirms them. Our teachers teach whichever text your child sits.
What it is
Jack Worthing lives in the country and invents a troublesome brother called Ernest as an excuse to visit London, where he is known as Ernest. His friend Algernon Moncrieff, in turn, has invented an invalid friend named Bunbury to avoid unwanted obligations. Jack wishes to marry Gwendolen Fairfax, but her formidable mother, Lady Bracknell, objects to his unknown parentage.
When Algernon visits Jack's country estate pretending to be Ernest, he falls for Jack's ward, Cecily, who has long imagined a wild romance with Ernest. Both women declare they can only love a man named Ernest, and the deceptions collapse in farce, leading to a surprising revelation about Jack's origins.
Themes and ideas to track
Deception and double lives
Both men lead double lives to escape duty, and the comedy comes from the unravelling of their lies. Wilde suggests that society itself runs on pretence.
Marriage and social ambition
Marriage is treated as a business and a social contest. Lady Bracknell's interview with Jack satirises the use of wealth and rank to judge a husband.
Class, wealth and hypocrisy
Characters preach morality while behaving frivolously. Wilde exposes the gap between respectable appearance and actual conduct.
Seriousness and triviality
The play treats trivial matters with great seriousness, and serious matters lightly. This inversion is the engine of its humour.
How the writer builds it
Wilde's dialogue is famous for epigrams, paradox and wordplay, and characters often speak in elegantly balanced phrases. Situational comedy, mistaken identities and coincidences drive the plot, and the tight three-act structure delivers a farcical climax and a neat resolution. Irony runs throughout, as characters state absurd opinions with total conviction.
Pay attention to the stage directions and the gap between what characters say and what they do. The title's pun on 'earnest' is a central joke.
How to write about it in the exam
Identify the comic technique at work, whether epigram, paradox, irony or farce, and explain what social target it hits. Choose scenes such as Lady Bracknell's interview and analyse how dialogue reveals attitudes.
Avoid listing jokes; argue about what the comedy is for. Short quotations are fine for this public-domain text, but analysis should lead.
A teacher can practise essay planning on The Importance of Being Earnest with your child in a one-hour trial.
An exam-style question to practise
How does Wilde use humour to criticise Victorian society?
Plan three points before you write, with a short quotation for each. Then check your plan against the mark scheme section below.
More question angles
- Explore the ways Wilde presents marriage in the play.
- How does Wilde present the characters of Jack and Algernon?
- Discuss how Wilde uses language to create comedy.
How this maps to the mark scheme
Examiners mark Literature answers against assessment objectives. These are the skills the paper rewards. For Cambridge International 0475, the objectives are summarised on our qualification page.
- AO1: Show detailed knowledge of the content of literary texts in the three main forms (drama, poetry and prose), supported by reference to the text.
- AO2: Understand the meanings of literary texts and their contexts, and explore texts beyond surface meanings to show deeper awareness of ideas and attitudes.
- AO3: Recognise and appreciate ways in which writers use language, structure and form to create and shape meanings and effects.
- AO4: Communicate a sensitive and informed personal response to literary texts.
- The four assessment objectives carry equal weight, about 25% each.
For The Importance of Being Earnest, build your argument around “Deception and double lives” and “Marriage and social ambition”. Support each point with a short quotation. Then analyse the writer's method, using the section above.
Keep context about Oscar Wilde brief and tied to the words on the page.
Read the text alongside these notes. This page is our own analysis and original teaching material. Where we quote this public-domain work, it is a short, attributed phrase.
Where to go next
Plan your essay with our guide to planning a literature essay, then see a worked answer in our literature essay structure model response. Browse more set-text notes or read about Literature in English tuition.
When you have written an answer on The Importance of Being Earnest, a paid one-hour trial lesson lets the teacher who would continue mark it with you.