The Importance of Being Earnest - Oscar Wilde - So You Haven't Read

literature gives us the opportunity to experience lives perspectives and worlds different from our own though remember friend a good story has many readings and this is but one who knew living a double life could be so fun at your country estate you're an upright moral citizen but when you travel to the city you assume a fictional identity and indulge in degenerate behavior and it's quite thrilling because if your secret is ever revealed you're at risk of losing everything no i'm not talking about dr jekyll and mr hyde not yet at least i'm talking about jackworthing the title character of oscar wilde's the importance of being earnest because jack is also earnest though ernest doesn't actually exist except he kind of does actually now that all made perfect sense for anyone who's already familiar with the play but i can tell from the look on your face that you're not in that camp not to worry zoe and i will help you untangle this deceit woven web [Applause] [Music] thanks so much to brilliant for continuing to support our passion for lifelong learning so you haven't read the importance of being earnest by oscar wilde oh i envy you i mean i wish i could jump back in time just so i could experience it again for the first time wilde was a master of wit and word play and earnest is arguably his greatest achievement subtitled a trivial play for serious people on its surface the play is as light as whipped cream but once you've savored that delicious topping you'll discover a pretty savage takedown of victorian era hypocrisy so strap on your spats we're heading to 1890s london you are jack worthing an outwardly perfect victorian gentleman on your large country estate you strictly adhere to appropriate morality duty and decorum but you know being moral all the time can be a terrible bore so you've invented a fictional brother named ernest and whenever you need to blow off a little steam you tell everyone at your estate that you have to go bail ernest out of trouble then travel to london where you pretend to be earnest this has worked out great for you except for a few problems first back at your estate your ward cecily is so enthralled with your stories about your fake brother that she's kinda starting to fall for him okay well maybe it's time to forego that double life and kill off your fictional sibling before this gets out of hand huh well easier said than done because in london when you're pretending to be earnest you've fallen for a woman named gwendolyn and in your infinite wisdom you decide to propose to her to which she immediately agrees but she makes it clear that the main reason she wants to marry you is because your name is ernest as she feels the name inspires absolute confidence i guess because the name earnest sounds like being earnest or something i don't know so you're spinning a lot of plates furthermore gwendolyn's cousin named algernon is your good friend who lives in london and he's found evidence of your double life and refuses to give you permission to marry gwendolyn unless you spill the tea about being earnest so you confess it all but then to make things even more hectic algernon becomes fixated on the detail that your ward cecily whom he adores has taken a romantic interest in the fictional earnest regardless of that little fixation now that she revealed the truth to algernon he happily supports your engagement but then unfortunately her mother lady bracknell refuses to offer her consent until you can answer a few questions about your parentage however you confess you never met your real parents your adoptive father found you abandoned in a handbag at a london rail station oh that could have gone better ah well you return home to your country estate determined to put an end to this foolishness and report that ernest has died but just after you've told the household about ernest's tragic demise algernon appears with cecily turns out he arrived before you did and claimed that he was your brother ernest and now there's no way you can reveal the truth without confessing your double life now being stuck with a double life was something that oscar wilde knew a bit about because while he was a well-respected married writer he was also a gay man who had to hide his sexual orientation because homosexuality was against the law in england and while the 1895 debut of the importance of being earnest was the zenith of his career it also marked the moment where his carefully kept secret started to unravel on opening night the marquee of queensberry the father of wild's lover lord alfred douglas accused the writer of being gay wishing to preserve his reputation wilde decided to sue the marquis but during the trial strong evidence of wild sexuality was revealed he ended up being convicted of the crime gross indecency and was sentenced to two years hard labor which effectively ended his days of literary success and it wasn't until 2017 that wilde along with thousands of other unjustly convicted men were posthumously pardoned in the wake of the passage of the touring law in the uk over a hundred years too late to do him any good mind you and again not until 2017 and while wild's legal infamy led to victorian audiences turning their backs on the importance of being earnest the play is today celebrated as a masterpiece speaking of celebrating back in the play cecily has agreed to marry algenon three though primarily because she thinks his name is earnest also ironically believing the name inspires absolute confidence i mean my name's matt but that doesn't mean i'm a small rug you know what never mind but when gwendolyn arrives unannounced at your estate she and cecily meet and come to believe they're both engaged to the same man in the process of clearing up this confusion it's revealed that neither you nor algernon are actually named ernest and your paramours leave in a huff but before you can make amends lady bracknell arrives in pursuit of gwendolyn oh no but lady bee's attitude towards you softens once she sees your considerable estate oh yeah plus the ladies don't stay mad at you for long though lady bracknell still refuses to allow the marriage because of your unknown social status of course that is until through a supremely unlikely coincidence it's revealed that you and algernon are in fact long-lost brothers your upper class after all and what's more a little bit of research reveals that your birth name actually was earnest so the fictions you've been living both about having a brother in london and about being named ernest both turn out to be completely true then gwendolyn happily agrees to forgive you for being totally honest with her the whole time and you finally see the importance of being earnest a large underlying theme of wild's play is that victorians cared more about the appearance of morality than actual morality jack can't maintain his reputation in the country if he behaves like he does in london under his real name but that bad behavior isn't nearly as much a strike against him as his unknown parentage in the end jack may be a liar and a hypocrite but he's an upper class liar and hypocrite so to lady bracknell and by inference london society that's all that really matters in his lifetime wilde wasn't able to restore his own reputation as he died in self-exile in paris just a few years after being released from jail so even though the importance of being earnest purports to be a trivial play it also reveals the very serious consequences that people faced if they lost their reputation a heavy message to be sure but wild sharp dialogue absurd situations and broad characters make it a hilarious romp seriously there's so much sugar on this spoon that you might not even notice the medicine at all if you're not paying attention so you should head down to your library or check out your local theater listings to experience the importance of being earnest for yourself because i think it goes without saying at this point it's a truly brilliant novel which does dovetail nicely into something else i'm earnestly wild about our friends over at brilliant as i'm sure you know by now tons of us in the ec community are super passionate lifelong learners but who also prefer to learn on our own schedule which is why we think brilliant the interactive learning environment focusing on the whole stem set you know science technology engineering and mathematics is perfect for learning at your own pace in a fun and interactive way replacing traditional lectures with hands-on lessons complete with visual examples and a storytelling approach that is super engaging in fact this last week jeff took a break from reviewing fundamentals in foundational computer science to take a course on solar energy because he wanted to know exactly how those things on his roof work and because a few upcoming scripts got me thinking about some mathematical concepts i didn't know too much about i decided to dive fully off the deep end and learn about the concepts of knowledge and uncertainty themselves after all if i know the math behind uncertainty that would mean i know how to get rid of it huh so if you're a curious learner just starting out or at the height of your career you can check out brilliant to level up your learning by going to brilliant.org extra credits and signing up for free not to mention the first 200 people that go to that link will also get 20 off an annual premium subscription which added bonus really does help out our channel in the process ah look at you being all smart and kind at the same time thanks for that oh i didn't see you there kyle murgatroyd joseph blame dominic valenciana casey muscha archlight games angelo valenciana alicia bramble and ahmed ziad turk y'all are the best [Music] foreign

Channel: Extra History

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Keywords: Classics (Field of Study), So you Haven't Read, Education (TV Genre), The Importance of Being Earnest (Book), Humanities (Field Of Study), Literary Criticism (Field Of Study), Book Review (Award Discipline), Classics (Field Of Study), Literature (Media Genre), Literature Review (Literature Subject), animated, summary, explained, Analysis (Quotation Subject), reading, book recommendations, drama, booktok, book, booktube, popular books, jack worthing, The Importance of Being Earnest (Book

Id: OvJz1KbdLhc

Length: 9min 9sec (549 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 08 2022