The Importance of Being Earnest..?

Question

Can anyone please tell me some information on the character "Gwendolen" I have alreay looked and got some basic things so please do not go "go on google yourself to do you homework" because I HAVE, but if anyone knows any extra facts or even worthless trivia about her it wouldnt be worthless to me =)

So yea, thanks =)

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Answer 1

There are a lot of obvious elements in Gwendolen's character. She represents the primary goal of the primary protagonist, Jack/Earnest. She is very much a city girl, embedded with the social prejudices of her time. She creates the major problem for Jack as she states she will only marry an "Earnest". She allows herself to be subjected to her mother and so is far from independent.

Her scene with Cecily in Act 2 is one of the best written scenes in theatre. As the scene takes place in Cecily's "rural" world we find that Cecily constantly gains the upper hand in the "discussion". The scene comedically explores the way women relate to each other and seek to gain the upper hand.

She is a spoiled brat but very beautiful and seemingly sophisticated. If the play weren't so outrageous we would ask ourselves why Jack is in love with her.

Answer 2

You've read the play, right? And I'm hoping that you already looked at the Sparknotes about it, too? If you've done that, then you're not likely to find much more about the character without burrowing around in a lot of heavy, dry literary/dramatic criticism of Wilde's work. If you've got access to databases (like JStor at so on- if you do it'll probably be through your school) start looking there for articles about Wilde and his work. If not, then head for the library and hit the catalog looking for literary criticism about Oscar Wilde. If you can (and you're not already a university student yourself) look in local university libraries- they tend to have a lot of that kind of material. And try GoogleBooks- go to google, and at the top of the page where the search options are, click "more" and set it to books. You'll have to have a Google/Gmail account (which is free) to access a lot of it, but you can find good-sized chunks of a LOT of scholarly texts on there. One of my professors swears by it for his own research. Sorry I can't get more specific, though. Good luck with it.