Mind map
The Importance of Being Earnest - Oscar Wilde
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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"
- Algernon
- The Dandy figure
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"
- Lady Bracknell- "to marry into a cloakroom and form an alliance with a parcel"
- 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"
- 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"
- Lady Bracknell- "Mr Worthing! Rise, sir, from this semi-recumbent posture. It is most indecorous"
- 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
- 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"
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"
- Gwen and Cecily speaking together- "your Christian names are still an insuperable barrier"
- Miss Prism- "people who live entirely for pleasure usually are [prism]"
- 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"
- Jack- "then I have a brother after all, I knew I had a brother, I always said I had a brother"
- 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"
- Algernon- "one has the right to bunbury anywhere on chooses, every serious bunburyist knows this"
- 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"
- 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"
- 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)
- Gwen- "your Christian name has an irresistible fascination, the simplicity of your character makes you exquisitely incomprehensible to 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"
- Algernon- "im going bunburying"
- Mr Bunbury made up his mind whether he was going to live or die
- 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 "
- Jack- "my name is ernest in town and Jack in the country"
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"
- 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?"
- 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"
- 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"
- Jack- "you know what I have got to say to you", Gwen- "yes but you don't say it"
- Algernon- "Girls never marry the men they flirt with, girls don't think it right"
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
- Lady Bracknell- "i had no idea that there were any families or persons whose origins was a terminus"
- Cecily- "it has always been a girlish dream of mine to love someone whose names was 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 "
- Algernon- "more than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read"
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- Mind Map on The Importance of Being Earnest - Oscar Wilde, created by Laura Roche on 15/05/2015.
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- Laura Roche
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