The Relationship between Gender in Earnest and Other Writers of the Period

DVo’s Blog Entry #2
The Relationship between Gender in Earnest
and Other Writers of the Period

In the play, “The Importance of Being Earnest,” Oscar Wilde focuses intensely on the role of gender. Throughout the study of drama, the role of gender has been used to portray how women influence society, and as the play unfolds, the significance of this influence is revealed. The two main male characters, Algernon and Jack, live their lives in a fake manner, and both characters are willing to do anything to be wsith their love interests.
Here, Wilde portrays how women influence men and society. By utilizing their role as females, Gwendolen and Cecily are able to ultimately make their men do whatever they please. This is important to Victorian Culture as a whole because it was during this time that significant changes in society were being made. The Victorian era largely marked the end of traditional female roles in society. As a result of the mass education of the middle class, they had a variety of opportunities to provide a better life for themselves.
This is also portrayed in George Gissing’s In the Year of Jubilee. Both Wilde and Gissing emphasize the significance of gender in their texts, although in Jubilee, the liberation of the female identity is not as celebrated as it is in Earnest. However, both works stress that many significant changes were taking place near the end of the Victorian period, a paradigm shift that would see the emergence of many new ideas and the increasing power of the Woman.