The Importance of being Earnest

Like a number of our short stories, The Importance of Being Earnest is overly concerned with the issue of identity. Should we take Wilde's discussion of identity seriously, or does his humor conceal critical ideas regarding how we know who we are?
___________________________________________________________________
I enjoyed reading The Importance of Being Earnest. The wit and sarcasm behind many of the ideas is what kept me interested throughout.

I do not think that Wilde’s humor conceals critical ideas. I think (much like Homer’s Iliad and Milton’s Paradise Lost) that Oscar Wilde expresses very hot-button issues in his work. In the same way that these epic poems had to have relatively concealed messages in order to be permitted, The Importance of Being Earnest was likely written in the way that it was so that it could be published and reasonably shared with his contemporaries.

For example, consider Jack and Algernon and the schemes that they devised for themselves in order to be free from the constraints of society. They both created separate lives for themselves early on in Act I and they maintained this level of dishonesty and added to the web of lies throughout the entire play. To watch this was very entertaining but it also spoke volumes to the theme of identity. These two men were unhappy living as the men they were supposed to be and so they found new ways to re-create themselves and live out their fantasy lives. This is a very introspective analysis on identity, even among modern-day analyses. Although this book is full of humor, the theme of identity often outshines this wit and satire and gives a very in-depth rendering to the concept of identity and reinventing oneself.

Taming the Shrew

“Thus in plain terms: your father hath consentedThat you shall be my wife, your dowry ‘greed on,And will you, nill you, I will marry you.Now Kate, I am a husband for your turn,For by this light, whereby I see thy beauty— Thy beauty that doth make me like thee well— Thou must be married to no man but me,For I am he am born to tame you, Kate,And bring you from a wild Kate to a KateConformable as other household Kates.Here comes your father. Never make denial.I must and will have Katherine to my wife.”
(II.i.261–272)

The relationship between Petruccio and Katherine is one that generates unexpected humor many times throughout the play. The above words are the words of Petruccio, expressing his intention to “tame” his love interest. At the beginning of the play, Kate has an awful temper and terrible manners. She is absolutely against her expected gender roles and the way that she is supposed to aim to please her suitors and admire her father. Given her difficult and abrasive nature, Petruccio’s trying to mold her into a gentle maiden is often humorous.

For example, in Act II, Scene I, Petruccio and Katherine get into a battle of wits. The sharply call each other names and sarcastically make fun of each other until they’re blue in the face. When Katherine asks Petruccio where he learned all this “goodly speech” and when he says that it is from his “mother-wit” she responds “a witty mother! witless her son.” Petruccio also makes fun of her abbreviated name “Kate,” and adds insult to injury by calling her the “prettiest Kate in Christendom.”
Oddly enough, the culmination of all of these arguments is a marriage between the two of them. The play ends with Katherine’s expressing her complete turnaround and the new viewpoint that she has regarding men.