Satire Within The Importance of Being Earnest Comedy is normally intentioned to be engaged in theatrical plays to develop a significant message. In witty, comical plays like “The Importance of Being Earnest”, the author, Oscar Wilde’s key objective is to create comedy in a number of situations creating ridiculous occurrences and absurd characters. Wilde presents the character(s) in the comedy play to obtain weaknesses, conceits, and lack of insight so that their acts can be easily compared between real life and form a sense of humor within the audience. Comedy of matters is a category of play suitable to uncover the superficial values of the dominant class in society written in a satirical but natural way. Wilde satirizes the values of the Victorian higher class using the characters Jack, Gwendolen, Algernon, Cecily, and Lady Bracknell. There are many examples from “The Importance of Being Earnest” that depict comedic and satire elements through themes like marriage and triviality. The nature of marriage, critique of marriage as a social tool, is a theme that is portrayed throughout Wilde’s play. It is also the most valuable during the Victorian era and to most of the characters especially to Lady Bracknell. She represents the predictable fascinations of the Victorian name such as social class, income, and an acceptable character. She views marriage as a financial business and does not approve of Jack to marry her daughter, Gwendolen, and simply because he is an orphan. “Lady Bracknell: …You can hardly imagine that I and Lord Bracknell would dream of allowing our only daughter—a girl brought up with the utmost care—to marry into a cloak-room, and form an alliance with a parcel? Good Morning, Mr. Worthing!” (Wilde 476). Lady Bracknell contemplates that women should marry honorable men in order to develop her social status and speaks badly about Jack because he does not know who his parents are and has no decent connections. This becomes one of Jack’s weaknesses, as he cannot marry Gwendolen because his social class is clearly unknown. Lady Bracknell develops the same concept for Cecily however Lady Bracknell discovers the amount of fortune sitting in her Funds and instantly Cecily becomes more interesting to her. In addition, Gwendolen is satisfied to learn that Jack is an orphan and Cecily is thrilled by Algernon’s supposedly wicked reputation as well as both love the beauty and share the desire to marry an honorable man by the name of Ernest and pity any women who does not. This idea states “morality is a matter of upper class convention, and such hardened propriety is indeed almost outdated, having been established long enough to infect even the backward provinces…completes the deflation of Victorian values” (Poauge). In other words, Wilde causes the Victorian values to become ridiculed as young members of within that society confess their desire to marry someone because of their name and not from the original significance of Victorian ideals. Another theme that is also portrayed throughout Wilde’s play is triviality. This brings comedy to the play as the characters have little understanding recognizing the difference between the significant beliefs and the triviality. There are times where the characters treat their issues properly but most of the times they tend to exaggerate unimportant matters into serious ones and vice versa. Wilde's uses the reversal of what is serious and insignificant to mock the standards and morals of the Victorian Society. A few examples would be something like death, which is a serious issue, is taken pretty light in the play. Jack states that he will kill his brother if Gwendolen accepts to marry him, then he adds that he will kill him in any case because Cecily has become a little to much interested in Ernest. When Lady Bracknell learns from Algernon that his friend, Bunbury, has died from an explosion she replies, “he is well punished for his morbidity… And now that we have finally got rid of this Mr. Bunbury… ” (Wilde 499). In addition to death being treated trivially, the act of “bunburying” is another subject. Jack and Algernon chose to present themselves as Ernest, as someone else, and this act contains dishonesty and fraud and both characters carry out this act without any worries about consequences or any remorse. The fact there is complete disregard to penalties and no feelings involved with death reveal how the characters handle this important concern trivially. Gwendolen and Cecily also address trivial matters in a serious way. As mentioned before, the name Ernest is the key to Gwenloden and Cecily’s primary idea of love. Both women illustrate that there ideal marriage and love is shared with a man of the name Ernest. The name denotes sincerity, which mirrors the attitude the characters have in respect to the name; both Jack and Algernon wanting to change their name to Ernest. Though, a name does not express someone’s values, morals or personality but in the play the name is taken out of context and treated seriously. To conclude, Wilde’s play, “The Importance of Being Earnest,” is written to expose the phony values of the upper class in society in a humorous but natural way, which means the play, is a comedy of matters. He ridicules Victorian standards and morals by stating the satire and hypocrisy toward marriage and how few of the characters don’t exactly follow the idea of getting married to develop and strengthen their social status. He also uses comedic elements to mock the play's Victorian society by reversing serious issues to be treated trivially, and unimportant issues to be treated seriously in order to create humor. At the same time allowing Wilde to mention the illogicality nature of Victorian morals and values.