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The Importance of Being Earnest

John Worthing leads a double life, using the fictitious brother "Ernest" as an excuse to travel between the country and London. In London under the name Ernest, John wins the love of Gwendolen, but struggles to ask for her hand from her mother Lady Bracknell. It is revealed that John was found as a baby in a handbag at a train station. Meanwhile, Algernon also claims to be Ernest and falls for John's ward Cecily. When the women arrive, it is discovered that Cecily's governess Miss Prism was the one who lost the baby, revealing John's true identity and allowing the couples to unite.

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456 views2 pages

The Importance of Being Earnest

John Worthing leads a double life, using the fictitious brother "Ernest" as an excuse to travel between the country and London. In London under the name Ernest, John wins the love of Gwendolen, but struggles to ask for her hand from her mother Lady Bracknell. It is revealed that John was found as a baby in a handbag at a train station. Meanwhile, Algernon also claims to be Ernest and falls for John's ward Cecily. When the women arrive, it is discovered that Cecily's governess Miss Prism was the one who lost the baby, revealing John's true identity and allowing the couples to unite.

Uploaded by

Flavia Munteanu
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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The importance of being earnest

by Oscar Wilde
John Worthing, a carefree young gentleman, is the inventor of a fictitious brother, “Ernest,”
whose wicked ways afford John an excuse to leave his country home from time to time and
journey to London, where he stays with his close friend and confidant, Algernon Moncrieff.
Algernon has a cousin, Gwendolen Fairfax, with whom John is deeply in love. During his
London sojourns, John, under the name Ernest, has won Gwendolen’s love, for she strongly
desires to marry someone with the confidence-inspiring name of Ernest. But when he asks for
Gwendolen’s hand from the formidable Lady Bracknell, John finds he must reveal he is a
foundling who was left in a handbag at Victoria Station. This is very disturbing to Lady
Bracknell, who insists that he produce at least one parent before she consents to the marriage.

Returning to the country home where he lives with his ward Cecily Cardew and her governess
Miss Prism, John finds that Algernon has also arrived under the identity of the nonexistent
brother Ernest. Algernon falls madly in love with the beautiful Cecily, who has long been
enamored of the mysterious, fascinating brother Ernest.

With the arrival of Lady Bracknell and Gwendolen, chaos erupts. It is discovered that Miss
Prism is the absent-minded nurse who twenty years ago misplaced the baby of Lady Bracknell’s
brother in Victoria Station. Thus John, whose name is indeed Ernest, is Algernon’s elder brother,
and the play ends with the two couples in a joyous embrace.

Character List

John (Jack/Ernest) Worthing, J.P. - The play’s protagonist. Jack Worthing is a seemingly
responsible and respectable young man who leads a double life. In Hertfordshire, where he has a
country estate, Jack is known as Jack. In London he is known as Ernest. As a baby, Jack was
discovered in a handbag in the cloakroom of Victoria Station by an old man who adopted him
and subsequently made Jack guardian to his granddaughter, Cecily Cardew. Jack is in love with
his friend Algernon’s cousin, Gwendolen Fairfax. The initials after his name indicate that he is a
Justice of the Peace.

Algernon Moncrieff - The play’s secondary hero. Algernon is a charming, idle, decorative
bachelor, nephew of Lady Bracknell, cousin of Gwendolen Fairfax, and best friend of Jack
Worthing, whom he has known for years as Ernest. Algernon is brilliant, witty, selfish, amoral,
and given to making delightful paradoxical and epigrammatic pronouncements. He has invented
a fictional friend, “Bunbury,” an invalid whose frequent sudden relapses allow Algernon to
wriggle out of unpleasant or dull social obligations.

Gwendolen Fairfax - Algernon’s cousin and Lady Bracknell’s daughter. Gwendolen is in love
with Jack, whom she knows as Ernest. A model and arbiter of high fashion and society,
Gwendolen speaks with unassailable authority on matters of taste and morality. She is
sophisticated, intellectual, cosmopolitan, and utterly pretentious. Gwendolen is fixated on the
name Ernest and says she will not marry a man without that name.

Cecily Cardew - Jack’s ward, the granddaughter of the old gentlemen who found and adopted
Jack when Jack was a baby. Cecily is probably the most realistically drawn character in the play.
Like Gwendolen, she is obsessed with the name Ernest, but she is even more intrigued by the
idea of wickedness. This idea, rather than the virtuous-sounding name, has prompted her to fall
in love with Jack’s brother Ernest in her imagination and to invent an elaborate romance and
courtship between them.

Lady Bracknell - Algernon’s snobbish, mercenary, and domineering aunt and Gwendolen’s
mother. Lady Bracknell married well, and her primary goal in life is to see her daughter do the
same. She has a list of “eligible young men” and a prepared interview she gives to potential
suitors. Like her nephew, Lady Bracknell is given to making hilarious pronouncements, but
where Algernon means to be witty, the humor in Lady Bracknell’s speeches is unintentional.
Through the figure of Lady Bracknell, Wilde manages to satirize the hypocrisy and stupidity of
the British aristocracy. Lady Bracknell values ignorance, which she sees as “a delicate exotic
fruit.” When she gives a dinner party, she prefers her husband to eat downstairs with the
servants. She is cunning, narrow-minded, authoritarian, and possibly the most quotable character
in the play.

Miss Prism - Cecily’s governess. Miss Prism is an endless source of pedantic bromides and
clichés. She highly approves of Jack’s presumed respectability and harshly criticizes his
“unfortunate” brother. Puritan though she is, Miss Prism’s severe pronouncements have a way of
going so far over the top that they inspire laughter. Despite her rigidity, Miss Prism seems to
have a softer side. She speaks of having once written a novel whose manuscript was “lost” or
“abandoned.” Also, she entertains romantic feelings for Dr. Chasuble.

Bibliography

https://www.bard.org/study-guides/synopsis-the-importance-of-being-earnest

https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/earnest/characters/

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