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In researching the ideas and themes behind Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, I stumbled upon numerous questions and underlying themes which I plan to dissect thoroughly in the following body of this paper treating each question individually and in an abstract manner. The questions I encountered ranged from the incestual tendencies of Lady Bracknell in relation to the gothic genre to Wilde's use of food as a weapon and a means of demonstrating one's power.
Before diving into the questions in mind it is crucial to the betterment of one's understanding of the play to understand what each character in the play represents. More than any other character in the play, Jack Worthing represents conventional Victorian values: he wants others to think he adheres to such notions as duty, honor, and respectability, but he hypocritically flaunts those very notions. Indeed, what Wilde was actually satirizing through Jack was the general tolerance for hypocrisy in conventional......

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Approximate Word Count: 2150
Approximate Pages: 9 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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