What is epigram? Discuss the epigrams used in The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
Epigram is a brief and
witty statement which is apparently self-contradictory. For example, ‘Our sweetest songs
are those that tell of saddest thought’ –
(Shelley: “To a Skylark”). Also, ‘I can resist everything except temptation’ – (Oscar Wilde). S.T. Coleridge defined epigram
as he wrote one:
“What is an Epigram? a
dwarfish whole,
Its body brevity, and wit
its soul”
The Importance of Being Earnest
is Oscar Wilde’s most enduringly popular play which is full of epigrams and
through these epigrams, Wilde satirizes upper Victorian society. In this play,
Wilde touches on many things like women’s education, inheritance of property,
marriage, illegitimacy, class distinctions in society, the role of the
aristocracy, baptism, food, money etc. and makes fun of almost everything that
the society of his time regarded as sacrosanct. It should, however, be conceded
that the success of this play is not because of its plot or theme but because
of its brilliant and sparkling dialogues, its witticisms, its amazing variety
of epigrams and paradoxes.
Epigrams and aphorisms such as, ‘The truth is
rarely pure and never simple’; ‘The only way to behave to a woman is to make love to her, if
she is pretty, and to someone else, if she is plain’ shock us out of
complacency. Sometimes, a profusion of them tire us particularly when all the
characters speak in an identical language.
For instance, Algernon gives a witty
turn to some of the well-known sayings – ‘marriages are made in heaven’ is
amended by him as: ‘Divorces are made in heaven’. The saying that ‘two is company and three is
none’ undergoes a change and takes the following shape: ‘In married life three is company and two is
none’, which has a naughty implication. Algernon shows his talent
for paradox when, instead of using the phrase ‘washing one’s dirty linen in
public,’ he speaks of ‘washing one’s clean linen in public’. Conversation
with Jack, he says – ‘The very essence of romance is uncertainty’; ‘girls never marry the men they flirt with. Girls don’t
think it right’; ‘the amount of women in London who flirt with their own
husbands is perfectly scandalous’.
Conversation
with Lady Bracknell, Algernon says, ‘if one plays good music, people don’t listen, and if one
plays bad music people don’t talk’. Algernon
says to Jack in the reference of the chance of Gwendolen becoming like her
mother – ‘All
women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s
his’ is also very epigrammatic. In the dispute with Jack about
Bunburist, he says – ‘one must be serious about something, if one wants to
have any amusement in life’.
Jack is also a witty man. When Jack
meets Algernon, he answers Jack in his question that why he is in town, ‘When one is in town
one amuses one’s self. When one is in country one amuses other people’.
On inquiries of Algy about ‘From little
Cecily with her fondest love’ – he answers to Algernon – ‘Some aunts are tall, some aunts are not
tall... You seem to think that every aunt should be exactly like your aunt’. In
the observation of civilized life, Jack says to Algy, ‘I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is
clever nowadays… I wish to goodness we had a few fools left’ is also
interesting. He also says to Gwendolen and Cecily – ‘it is very painful for me to be forced to
speak the truth. It is the first time in my life that I have ever been reduced
to such a painful position, and I am really quite inexperienced in doing
anything of the kind’.
Gwendolen contributes to the play a
fair number of remarks which are paradoxical and witty. Here are some of those
remarks: ‘The
old-fashioned respect for the young is fast dying out’; ‘Algy, you always adopt a strictly immoral attitude towards
life. You are not old enough to do that’; ‘If
you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life’. She
says Cecily in the reference of the duties of man and women – ‘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’. Moreover,
she says to Cecily – ‘In matter of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is
the vital thing’.
Cecily makes a witty and paradoxical
remark when she says: ‘Whenever one has anything unpleasant to say, one should
always be candid’. Here is another such remark from her: ‘When one is
going to lead an entirely new life, one requires regular and wholesome meals’.
Lady Bracknell too overflows with
wit. Examples of her wit are her remarks about Mr. Bunbury, her disapproval of the
modern sympathy with invalids in this line – ‘Health is the primary duty of life’
and her description of Jack’s ignorance during her interrogation in ‘Ignorance is
like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone’. In
case of the female’s age, Lady Bracknell says – ‘no woman should ever be quite accurate about
her age’; ‘thirty-five is a very attractive age. London society is
full of women of the very highest birth who have, of their own free choice,
remained thirty-five for years’.
Miss Prism, too, gives evidence of a
sense of humour and a capacity to make witty observations. In the discussion of
literature, she says to Cecily – ‘The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is
what Fiction means’ bears the paradoxical meaning. Her remarks to
Rev. Chasuble prove her wit: ‘No married man is ever attractive except to his wife’; ‘young woman are green’. She
draws the latter metaphor from fruits.
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