The Inside Doesn't Really Count in Victorian Society

          Victorian society is often distinguished by its strict rules regarding morality, propriety, and sex… all of which are satirized by Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. The play centers on Algernon and Jack – two young bachelors who engage in the practice of “bunburying.” As defined by Algernon, Bunburying is the practice of creating an elaborate deception that allows one to misbehave while seeming to uphold the very highest standards of duty and responsibility. In other words, it is the practice of leading a double life in order to escape responsibility, while maintaining your street cred as a prim and proper component of Victorian era society. Just as a child may create an imaginary friend, Jack and Algernon create imaginary loved ones: a brother named Earnest and a chronically-sick friend named Bunbury. While a little kid’s imaginary friend may serve as the child’s trusty companion and secret-keeper, Earnest and Bunbury’s existences are manifestations of Jack and Algernon’s secret deceit.

In The Importance of Being Earnest Wilde utilizes the pseudo-moralic – and highly deceptive – actions of Jack and Algernon to satirize the importance of public image in Victorian era society. For example, it was quite fashionable for people belonging to the upper-middle classes to do their “public duty” by visiting the poor and the sick. By telling people that he is tending to his loosey goosey brother named Earnest, Jack projects an image of moral responsibility for others that is completely fabricated. And when Algernon tells others that he must leave the city in order to care for his invalid friend, Bunbury, he displays a sense of Christian charity. In this way, Jack and Algernon are able to mask their personal impurities with airs of benevolent duty to the public good.  By showcasing characters who exploit values of unselfish morality to the benefit of their public image, Wilde provides a definitive contrast between public appearance and personal identity (this is comparable to both the “seems vs. is” motif in Hamlet and the “public vs. personal identity” motif in The Age of Innocence!).  

            Moreover, the role of food in Wilde’s play is symbolic of the discord between personal identity and social protocol. Judging from the two Acts that we’ve read in class, food seems to be a source of tension between Algernon and Jack. This is highly atypical in the upper class society of the Victorian era, seeing as eating was a common scenario in which people were expected to act courteous and proper. Instead, Algernon consumes food frequently and exaggeratedly, in a highly unsophisticated manner.To make matters even stranger, Algernon seems to do this more when the food belongs to someone else (i.e. the cucumber sandwiches that were intended for Lady Bracknell). This could be an indication of the gender role reversal that pervades Wilde’s play. Men of Algernon’s social class were expected to be the hospitable providers for their guests and the women in their lives. Algernon, on the other hand, is always receiving food from the women in his life, rather than providing for them. It is possible that Algernon’s unruliness in his highly gendered social sphere mirrors Wilde’s personal defiance of traditional gender roles. 

Truck Drivers and Preachers and Holy Spirits Galore in The Grapes of Wrath

Although they may seem disconnected at first, many of the major and minor characters in The Grapes of Wrath complement one another beautifully. Jim Casy and the truck driver – both of whom are introduced in the novel’s beginning chapters - are no exception to this charge.

The truck driver represents the clash between capitalism and innate human kindness. Although the truck’s sign reads No Riders, the driver gives Tom Joad, a total stranger, a ride anyway. In doing so, he displays the altruistic behavior of humans during the miserable conditions of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. Yes, the unnamed truck driver is suspicious of Tom, but that suspicion is overruled by the pity he feels for this stranger. Moreover, the action of truck driving serves as a metaphor for the steady, relentless nature of the dust and heat during the Dust Bowl. The driver chews as “rhythmically, as thoughtfully as a cow” (Chapter 2), thus mimicking the dull, perpetual motion of the truck and dust.  

Now, Jim Casy’s pensive wandering is a strong juxtaposition to the truck driver’s forward motion on the highway. Jim wistfully explains to Tom that even turtles have the intention of “goin’ someplace. Me – I don’t know where I’m goin’” (Chapter 4). In doing so, Jim implies there are the two options for people who have lost everything to the Dust Bowl, like Jim and Tom have: 1. Do not leave your land and stay stuck, wandering, in your past. 2. Choose to move tirelessly forward/westward in search of opportunity.

Furthermore, Jim serves as the novel’s Scapegoat (by definition, a sacrificed animal or human who takes on the sins and punishment for others). In this way he is closely linked to the “martyr” archetype or Jesus figure that appears often in literature. The first, and most obvious, piece of evidence for this is that Jim Casy and Jesus Christ share the same initials. Jesus began his mission after a period of withdrawal into the wilderness for meditation and consecration; Jim parallels this action when he leaves preaching, wanders the wild country, and muses over traditional ideas of God, holiness, and sin (Chapter 4). Also like Jesus, Jim Casy takes upon himself the sins of others.

The pivotal moment – the moment that cements Jim’s role as the “spiritual martyr” of The Grapes of Wrath – is when Jim sacrifices himself when Tom is about to be arrested. Between the policemen, Jim “sat proudly, his head up and the stringy muscles of his neck prominent. On his lips there was a faint smile and on his face a curious look of conquest” (Chapter 20).

Finally, Jim plays the part of Jesus when he rejects an old religion and tries to replace it with a new gospel. The rejection occurs when Jim recalls the days when he would preach Christianity. He is frustrated with the traditional principles of sin and guilt that made him feel wicked and despicable when he slept with women. Entirely fed up with traditional virtues, Jim exclaims, “The hell with it! There ain’t no sin and there ain’t no virtue. There’s just stuff people do. It’s all part of the same thing” (Chapter 4). Instead of simply talking about his frustration, Jim takes definitive action by replacing the religion he has rejected with one he has devised himself. Jim Casy’s new religion is an interpretation of Ralph Emerson’s concept of an ‘Oversoul.’ It states that God exists in the soul of each person, and that the souls of all people are connected in the “Holy sperit…the human sperit” (Chapter 4). Casy knows that these ideas defy traditional worship. Though he halts his career and lifestyle as a preacher, Jim continues to spread his teachings of transcendentalism, humanism, and socialism. 

Women = Sex ; A Closer Look at the Role of Women in Hamlet

While Hamlet Jr. may be the star of Hamlet, he would seem far less vibrant without the help of his supporting actors. Characters who are roughly the same age as him – Ophelia, Laertes, and Fortinbas – serve as foils to Hamlet. While Laertes, Fortinbras and Hamlet all wish to avenge their fathers’ deaths, Ophelia parallels Hamlet in a more subtle, yet more arguably more powerful, way. Like Hamlet, Ophelia encounters “madness”….but only after her father, Polonius, is murdered and her lover, Hamlet, tells her he never loved her. While Hamlet’s madness consists of perpetual scheming and connivery, Ophelia’s madness is more piteous and innocent. She has an air of genuineness that Hamlet lacks, making her madness seem more reasonable and her eventual suicide more justifiable. “Madness” is a key element of Hamlet in the sense that each character has it, but no character reacts in the same fashion to it. The variety of actions and emotion – grief, anxiety, lunacy, childishness, plot-making, and hallucinating – serve as extensions of the sensations real people encounter after tragedy, making Hamlet one of the most relatable and enduring works of all time.  

Ophelia’s madness consists of singing nonsensical songs and drowning the world out…and eventually drowning herself. Of course, Ophelia was not always crazy; she entered lunacy as a response to the many outside forces that acted against her. From the very beginning, she is severely passive and obedient. When Ophelia’s father instructs her to stop seeing Hamlet, she automatically heeds his orders; when Hamlet scathingly commands her to “get thee to a  nunnery,” she does not lash back with cruel words of her own; and when she finally falls into the water, she does not resist the weight of her clothes, but compliantly succumbs to death. Her passive death is extremely significant in the context of Hamlet, seeing as the play’s male characters tend to correlate death with passion, fervency, vengeance, and deep sorrow. By welcoming death with such agreeability, Ophelia validates the role of women in this play as complacent objects rather than real, sentient people.

Furthermore, Ophelia’s madness is a direct result of her desire to please others. For years, she tolerated domination and abuse by the male figures in her life – Polonius, Laertes, and Hamlet. In Act I, Ophelia’s brother attempts to call the shots on his sister’s body, as he advises her not to get physical or too involved with Hamlet. By claiming that a non-virgin is a woman with damaged goods, Laertes implies that Ophelia will lose her worth if she has sex before marriage. Time and time again, Ophelia is treated as an object of sexual desire rather than a person with intricate thoughts and feelings. She has no control over her body, relationships, or decisions, so it comes as no surprise that she finally snaps under the pressure she has endured her whole life. By remaining voiceless in the presence of men, she loses her sanity when her actions fail to please the men – Hamlet, Polonius, and Laertes – who assign worth to her.

Even when she goes mad in the final Acts, Ophelia maintains a girlish, childish, and innocent appearance. Instead of plotting to kill or honoring the death of her father, she regresses into her youth. She sings songs, she acts like a toddler…but she also gives away flowers. This is a literal “deflowering” that represents her singular role to men as a sex object, no matter the state of her mind; it signifies that no matter how tortured she is, her thoughts will always meaningless to those around her.