The Big Reveal

As “The Importance of Being Earnest” comes to a close, Jack’s double life is largely reconciled.  He acquires the name Ernest and gains the troublesome younger brother in Algernon he had previously invented as an excuse to travel into London on the regular basis.  Remarkably, he has fulfilled Lady Bracknell’s suggestion that he “acquire some relations as soon as possible”(I,565).   In doing so, one can assume he has earned the right to marry Gwendolyn, which he repeatedly asserts is key to his happiness.

This surprising turn of events is very interesting when thinking of the play in terms of its messages about performance.  The resolution of the play is dependent on the restoration of the natural identity of Jack/Ernest.  The conflation of the conclusion of the play with the restoration of original identity suggests that it is impossible for contingent, “unnatural” identities to last.  In the end, no one does form an alliance with a parcel.  Origin is established and the romance coloring Jack’s early years is revealed as merely an accident and there is a sense that everyone is destined “to be who they are” or adhere to some natural, inherent identity.

Nevertheless, the fact that Jack performs an identity of his own design and ultimately legitimately attains the life he has been acting out also can be read as a suggestion that performance creates reality, a concept that has been discussed at length in several of the critical articles we have worked with thus far. Jack’s natural identity is ultimately what he chose for it to be, insinuating natural identity may be nothing more than an allusion. This reading picks up on a message that was likely quite transgressive at the time the play was published.  Wilde was clearly negotiating between social acceptability and transgression by trying to popularize his potentially threatening fiction and it seems completely possible the room for these two interpretations was part of this effort.