Lord Bracknell (the Importance of Being Earnest)
- Pages: 3
- Word count: 603
- Category: Gender The Importance of Being Earnest
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Order NowGwendolenâs father, Lord Bracknell, never appears in the play, yet Lady Bracknell mentions him often. What picture of his life and marriage do we get from the things she and Gwendolen say about him?
In âThe Importance of Being Earnestâ, Lady Bracknellâs offstage marriage is one of the playâs running gags, and Lord Bracknell is an instrument for Oscar Wilde to joke about marriage and the roles of the sexes. In the following essay, we shall examine Lord Bracknellâs personal life and marriage based on what we learn from his wifeâs and daughterâs vague, off-hand references to his social life.
Lord Bracknell seems to be the victim of a kind of abstract domestic abuse â ignored, unconsidered, hidden away, and relegated to the status of an invalid child. When Lady Bracknell tells Algernon that his absence from the dinner party will require her husband to âdine upstairsâ and âhe is accustomed to thatâ, the audience learns that Lord Bracknell seems to lead the life of a recluse and to have taken refuge from his domineering wife and daughter in a chronic invalidism.
When Gwendolen and Cecily first meet in Act 2, Gwendolen introduces herself to Cecily, but Gwendolen does not actually tell Cecily about her own identity but instead her fatherâs, saying âthis might be a favorable opportunity for my mentioning who I am. My father is Lord Bracknellâ. This tells the audience that family connections asserts oneâs rank and though Lord Bracknell never seems to be present at social functions, the audience learns that men do matter when it comes to social standing and respectability, and can be extended to the marriageability of their daughters as well.
Gwendolen tells Cecily that âoutside the family circleâ he is âentirely unknownâ and thinks âthat is quite as it should beâ. The image of the offstage Lord Bracknell, faint though it is, seems in keeping with the playâs depiction of gender roles, which posit a reversal of the Victorian expectations of the two sexes: women are competent whereas men are passive creatures, to be warehoused.
When Lady Bracknell reenters the scene in Act 3, she is âgladâ to tell Jack that Gwendolenâs âunhappy fatherâ is âunder the impression that she is attending a more than usually lengthy lecture by the University Extension Scheme on the Influence of a Permanent Income on Thoughtâ. As Lady Bracknell uses unnecessary flowery language and complicates things, the audience finds this impression Lord Bracknell is under ridiculous, and determines that he is gullible and ineffectual. Lady Bracknell manipulates her husband as well, as she considers it âwrongâ to âundeceive himâ and says she has ânever undeceived him on any questionâ, conveying to the audience that women have a huge impact on men and can hide many things from the weak and powerless men.
Later on Lady Bracknell speaks of her own marriage. When she âmarried Lord Bracknellâ she âhad no fortune of any kindâ but has ânever dreamed for a moment of allowingâ her lack of a dowry to stand in her way because she does not âapprove of mercenary marriagesâ. Lady Bracknell claims the credit for herself and does not acknowledge Lord Bracknellâs willingness to marry a woman with âno fortune of any kindâ. This reinforces the idea that women take leading roles in a marriage and men, represented by Lord Bracknell are subservient on the contrary.
In summary, Wilde presents to the audience the character and life of Lord Bracknell through depicting womenâs attitude to families and the contrasting roles of men and women in the conservative Victorian society.