The main characters do use their double lives to escape social regulation, although in differing ways and on each character different social pressures are acting. The women live alternative mental lives through fantastical journals whereas the men, due to their comparatively greater social freedom, are able to create alternative physical lives. Jack pursues a double life due to the pressures of rural, family responsibility. Algy does the same due to the authoritarian influences of his relatives and his financial troubles. ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ was written in the tradition of the ‘well-made play’, fast paced and almost farcical plays peopled by stock characters, as described by Peter Raby; “two pairs of young ‘romantic’ lovers, a pair of older ‘grotesques’, separated orphan brothers and a ‘blocking’ parent.” The heroes were conventionally brave and possessed `earnestness’, valued very highly in Victorian society, encompassing all the aspects of an ideal man who had family piety, was in control of his expenses and had no debts, kept pace with society yet had solemn responsibility. The female characters have a parallel set of values; subservience, family piety, innocence and the limited role of women in the male dominated Victorian society. Jack and Algy, who are nearly polar opposites to the conventional Victorian hero wish to escape the demanding social expectations. Cecily wishes to escape her stock role as an innocent, protected ingenue and attempts this through the far more eventful whirlwind romance of her diary. Gwendolen, who lives a life of social convention supervised by a repressive mother, wishes to jettison this influence and in her diary lives a `sensational’ life otherwise disallowed.
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Algy is trivi…
…ricted and protected at all costs.
I believe that all four characters are using their various forms of Bunburying to escape the social restrictions of their sex. The ladies need to find entertainment and liberation from the frustrating limitations of their sex; both are chaperoned and hemmed in by annoying maternal figures. For the men this means liberation from imposed responsibility and their relatively pressured positions as figures in a male dominated society. Both heroes also use their alternative lives to pursue the object of their desires however; this is not the pressure of society and in this respect the statement is not correct. Although they do find relief they never achieve a real escape as all of them must return to reality. Therefore Bunburying is more of a temporary release from the characters’ rigidly controlled existences than true liberation.
