Zusammenfassung der Ressource
The Importance of Being Earnest - Oscar Wilde
- Gender identities
- The Dandy figure
- Algernon
- as far as the piano is
concerned sentiment is
my fort. I keep science for
life
- Jack to Algernon- "why such reckless
extravagance of one so young"
- Algernon- "good heavens, why are there no
cucumber sandwhiches, I ordered them especially"
- Algernon reads Jack's cigarette case
he received from Cecily- Jack: "it is a
very ungentlemanly to read a private
cigarette case"
- Class
- Algernon- "if the lower orders
don't set us a good example what
on Earth is the use of them, they
seem as a class to have absolutely
no sense of moral responsibility"
- Lady Bracknell- "Mr
Worthing! Rise, sir,
from this
semi-recumbent
posture. It is most
indecorous"
- Lady Bracknell- "to be born, or at any rate, in a
handbag, whether it had handles or not, seems to me
to display a contempt for the ordinary decencies of
family life that reminds one of the worst excesses of
the French revolution"
- Lady Bracknell-
"to marry into a
cloakroom and
form an alliance
with a parcel"
- lady Bracknell- "never
speak disrespectfully of
society, Algernon, only
people who cant get
into it do that"
- when Jack says he smokes Lady
Bracknell- "...a man should always
have an occupation of some kind,
there are far too many idle men in
London as it is"
- Lady Bracknell- "fortunately in
England, at any rate, education
produces no effect whatsoever if it did
it would provide a serious danger to
the upper classes"
- Algernon- "relations are
simply a tedious pack of
people who haven't the
remotest knowledge on how
to live not the smallest instinct
about when to die"
- Algernon- "its awfully hard work doing nothing"
- Gwen to Algernon-
"you always adopt a
strictly immoral
attitude towards life"
- Gwen- "in matters of grave importance, style not sincerity is the vital thing"
- Gwendolen - "whenever people
talk to me about the weather I
feel quite certain they are talking
about something else and that
makes me so nervous"
- We live, Mr Worthing, as I hope you now in a
world of ideals"- Gwendolen
- doubleness
- Jack- "my
name is
ernest in
town and
Jack in the
country"
- Gwen- "your
Christian name
has an irresistible
fascination, the
simplicity of your
character makes
you exquisitely
incomprehensible
to me "
- Cecily- "I have never met
any really wicked person
before, I feel rather
frightened, I am so afraid
he will look just like
everyone else" (enter
Algernon, very gay and
Debonair)
- Cecily- "i hope you have not been
leading a double life, pretending
to be wicked and being really
good all the time, that would be
hypocrisy" ...Algernon-"...I've been
very bad I my own small way"
- Miss Prism-
"people
who live
entirely for
pleasure
usually are
[prism]"
- Gwen and Cecily speaking together- "your Christian names are still an insuperable barrier"
- Lady Bracknell, all
engagements- "give
people the opportunity
of finding out each
others characters before
marriage"
- Algernon- "Bunbury doesn't live here, Bunbury is something else at present, in fact Bunbury is dead"
- Bracknell-
"we live, I
regret to
say, in an
age of
surfaces"
- Cecily- "This is no
time for wearing the
shallow mask of
manners" (To Gwen-
she thinks she's lying
about whose she's
marrying)
- Jack- "i have
no brother
Ernest, I have
no brother as
all, I never had
a brother in
my life...[or]
the intention
of ever having
one in the
future...never
not of any
kind"
- Algernon-
"one has the
right to
bunbury
anywhere on
chooses,
every serious
bunburyist
knows this"
- Jack- "I have no
brother, I never had a
brother and that I
don't intend to have a
brother, not either of
any kind"
- Jack- "then I
have a brother
after all, I knew
I had a brother,
I always said I
had a brother"
- Jack- "I have
now realised,
for the first
time in my
life, the vital
importance
of being
Ernest "
- Jack "Gwendolen, it
is a terrible thing for
man to find out
suddenly that all his
life he's been
speaking nothing but
the truth, can you
forgive me"
- Bunburying
- Mr Bunbury
made up his
mind whether
he was going
to live or die
- Algernon- "im
going bunburying"
- Jack- "your
friend
Bunbury will
get you into a
serious scrape
one day"
- Gwendolen- "it
suits you
perfectly, it is a
divine name, it
has music of its
own, it produces
vibrations"
- Jack- "this
bunburying as
you call it has
not been a great
success for you
"
- Setting
- Algernon's flat- "luxuriously and artistically furnished"
- Jack- "when one is
in town one amuses
oneself, when one is
in the country, one
amuses other
people"
- Women
- Algernon- "Girls never marry
the men they flirt with, girls
don't think it right"
- Gwednolen- (after talking
about immediate marriage)-
"i adore you but you haven't
proposed to me yet, nothing
has even been said at all
about marriage."...jack:
"well may I propose to you
now?"
- Gwen- "how absurd to talk of the equality of the sexes
where questions of self-sacrifice are concerned men are
infinitely above us"
- Gwendolen- "and I pity any woman who is married to
a man called John, she would probably never be
allowed to know the entrancing pleasure of a single
moments solitude, th eonly really safe name is Ernest"
- Jack- "you know
what I have got to
say to you", Gwen-
"yes but you don't
say it"
- Lady Bracknell- "an engagement should
come on a young girl as a surprise,
pleasant as the case may be, it is hardly a
matter that she could be able to arrange
for herself"
- Algernon- "all
women become
like their
mothers,that is
their tragedy,
no man does
that's his"
- Jack- "the truth
isn't the sort of
thing one tells to
anice sweet
refined girl"
- Art and morality
- Mr Prism
(Cecily's
teacher)-
"the good
ended
happily
and the
bad
unhappily,
that is
what
fiction is"
- Identity
- Algernon- "you are the most
earnest looking person I
ever heard in my entire life.
Its perfectly absurd saying
that your name isn't ernest"
- Gwendolen- "I am told and
my ideal has always been
to love someone of the
name of Ernest, there is
something in that name
that inspires absolute
confidence...I knew I was
destined to love you"
- Cecily- "it has always been
a girlish dream of mine to
love someone whose
names was Ernest"
- Lady Bracknell- "i had no
idea that there were any
families or persons whose
origins was a terminus"
- Jack- "it is ernest after all, I
mean it naturally is Ernest" -
Jack finds out his name is
actually Ernest
- Jack- "but you
don't really
mean to say that
you couldn't love
me if my name
wasn't Ernest"
- Gwendolen-
"Jack?...no
there is very
little music
in the name
Jack...no
vibrations"
- Society
- Algernon- "more than
half of modern culture
depends on what one
shouldn't read"
- Cecily- "you
would have to
choose
between this
world, the
next world
and Australia
"