Gwendolen:Outside the family circle, papa, i am glad to say , is entirely unknown.I think it is quite as it should be.The home seems to me to be the proper sphere for the man.And certainly once a man begins to neglect his domestic duties he becomes painfully effeminate, does he not?And i don't like that.It makes men so very attractive.Cecily,mamma whose views on education are remarkably strict , has brought me up to be extremely short-sighted;it is part of he system;so do you mind my looking at you through my glasses?
Cecily: Oh! Not at all , Gwendolen , i am very fond of being looked at.
The importance of being Earnest is a play that has been written in 1895 by Oscar Wilde throughout Victorian Period.In this play Oscar Wilde uses different ways, to skewer the aristocracy and attitudes towards different things by the use of inversions and many other devices.
When Gwendolen says to Cecily:'Outside the family circle , papa , i am glad to say , is entirely unknown'.The first's impression of the reader is the wrong placement of the words in the sentence which could also be referred as syntax.The word 'unknown' is used in the end of the sentence instead of being normally placed in the middle in a standard sentence.The reason for this is Wilde is trying to build tension and give away the purpose of the sentence at the end to create an ambivalent response of the audience which is confusion and then make them laugh.At this particular moment , the word unknown is an adjective , which is an attribute and gives extra information about the subject which is the father.This line could also be interpreted as an inversion.The reason for this is , that Gwendolen seems to have a reluctant demeanor towards her father, however throughout the Victorian periods, fathers were the foundation of a family, and lead the family by having full respect.Consequently, this is an inversion of a normal society of the Victorian period.Tension is one the most prominent facet of drama , and Wilde utilizes it in an scrupulous way to get the response he is looking for.Gwendolen is also very opinionated , she gives her own opinion, which could be a good way for Wilde to lampoon her judgmental attitudes and therefore skewer the fact that she has been raised in a background where the members of her family are aristocrats.Furthermore , the quotation mentioned above is a complex sentence.This means it contains both a dependent and an independent clause.The quotation's dependent clause is 'Outside the family circle.' and the independent clause is 'is entirely unknown.'Moreover Gwendolen comes across as the dominant speaker in this dialogue, because it is apparent that she speaker more than Cecily which signify that she is in control of the topic or subject.Wilde once again could use this to criticize the fact that she is similar to her mother that i don't really appreciate'Lady Bracknell'.
Oscar Wilde employs another inversion throughout the dialogue, this is when Gwendolen says:'The home seems to me be the proper sphere of the men.'This firstly seems to make the audience bewildered as normally people have a propensity to believe the opposite.Once again , Gwendolen seems very opinionated which could give the reader a negative image of Gwendolen and maybe of even women in the play , as Lady Bracknell too makes us sense a feeling of dislike.Some would believe she could come across as sexist. Furthermore , She brings the idea of girl's being in control of the society which enhance Lady Bracknell's overpower in all decisions made.An association between her and her mother is directly drawn.There is also a possibility that this could be linked with the title'The importance of Being Earnest'In this case , she gave her opinion , and she is most likely to be honest.Honesty is an important aspect of Earnestness in my own belief , hence the Title could be interpreted in different ways.If referring to the context of the play , in Victorian periods , women were normally classified as less prominent than men.One example was they were allowed to be beaten by their husbands.By utilizing an inversion , Oscar Wilde portrays the society to be the other way around and therefore to be a society of craziness.
Oscar Wilde uses different way to criticize the attitudes of the society throughout the dialogue between Cecily and Gwendolen.Wilde uses inversions at numerous times throughout it , which makes it apparent at each time that the Victorians carried themselves in a different way that his descriptions.
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