An analysis of the play called importance of being earnest with feminist perspective

Year 2015, , 637 - 640, 01.04.2015

Çağlar Demir

https://doi.org/10.24289/ijsser.106470

Abstract

Victorian Era is characterized with the power men held in the society. Patriarchal social structure always tended not to let women take positions in the workplace, and social organizations. Victorian England didn’t take the women, their education, attitudes and feelings into consideration. The women were only the docile servers at home for Victorian men. However,  some intellectual women and male writers wrote striking novels and plays to attract the public and authorities’ attention to this mere discrimination. Oscar Wilde was one of those who held this issue. He could affect the public opinion with his delightful and satirizing plays. In this study,  Oscar Wilde’s well-known play, Importance of Being Ernest was analyzed in terms of feminist point of view. The male and female characters of the play, the patriarchal society, attitudes of characters towards marriage were examined under the light of the approaches of some feminist philosophers, such as Simone de Beavoir, Kate Millet, Susan Bordo and Betty Friedan.

 

Keywords

Patriarchy, women, Victorian era, feminism

References

• Bordo, S (2001). The Body and Reproduction of Femininity. Northon Anthology of Theory and Criticism: New York: W.W.Northon & Company.
• Catharine A.MacKinnon (2005). Women's Lives, Men's Laws. USA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
• De Beauvoir, S. (2001) The Second Sex, Northon Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York: W.W.Northon & Company.
• Eltis, S. (1996). Oscar Wilde. Anarchist, Socialist, and Feminist, Series. UK: Oxford English Monographs.
• Friedan, B. (1993). The Feminine Mystique. New York: Dell.
• Millet, K. (1990). Sexual politics. New York: Simon & Schuster.
• Wilde, O. (1994). Importance of being Earnest. UK: Penguin Books.