Block, 4.29 & 30 - We Should Be in Earnest Today

• 3PO
• Finish TIBE (review assignment due next Tues)
• Monday: wear your college gear! It's "Sport–your–school–gear Day"

HW:

1. As you read each act (there are three), identify one quote (or snippets of dialogue) that you think satirize (comically criticize) Victorian values and/or institutions (total of three quotes).
   1. Context (Who are the characters?) What is/are the character(s) saying?
      1. EX. Jack: "Gwendolen, it is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth. Can you forgive me?"
      2. Here, Jack is oddly asking forgiveness for having deceived Gwendolen with the truth about his Christian name, a dramatic irony.
   2. What do you think the playwright (Wilde) is possibly saying through the quote?
      1. (Remember that irony is a discrepancy between expectations and reality.) Although Jack ironically deceived Gwendolyn with the truth, it was a deception nonetheless, for he was deliberately deceiving her with what he perceived to be a lie. His inadvertent "truthfulness" was null and void, since it was his intent to deceive. Wilde uses this comical irony to illustrate the sad reality that relational deception (and often infidelity) was all too common between Victorian couples.  Wilde reveals the ubiquity of Victorian duplicity by making trivial what would otherwise be a dark deception.