Hypocrisy Already?

"The Importance of Being Earnest" is already off to a rousing start. One extremely strong theme that has already been established is hypocrisy. As the play opened, I found Lady Windermere to be an interesting character with strong opinions on men and the reliability of marriage and familial standards. She becomes quite headstrong on the situations in which men cheat on their women and make rash decisions. This leads to a quote that caught my eye, "Do you know that I am afraid that good people do a great deal of harm in this world." Lord Darlington has a point that prestigious and high class beings can make detrimental decisions.

Through this conversation, I felt that Lady Windermere and Lord Darlington were smart people with strong heads on their shoulders. It also seemed that they had a relationship brewing due to Lord Darlington being so smitten with her. The tables turned for me when the Duchess of Berwick entered the house. She provided scandal and drama to the scene by first, revealing that Lady Windermere was married. I was extremely shocked to find this out and found her conversation with Lord Darlington to be extremely hypocritical. She reprimanded women and men for cheating on their spouses and being unfaithful and yet she was quite flirty and even invited Lord Darlington to her birthday soirée. This would be an important result of foreshadowing.

The Duchess of Berwick seems to be quite the gossip. She stirs the pot in drama and comes to warn Lady Windermere of her husband's infidelity and seems to prompt that he is unfaithful to her. It is shocking considering Lady Windermere was just speaking about how "vile" infidelity was. Nonetheless, she continues to cause drama by snooping around her husband's pocket books. This seems to be sneaky and hypocritical to me. When Lord Windermere seems to prompt that he is simply helping his "mistress" to get back on her feet within society. When Lady Windermere refuses to invited her to the birthday party, I changed my opinions on her. She seems to be extremely hypocritical and only looks out for herself.

I am extremely interested to see how this pans out considering I changed my opinions on Lady Windermere quite quickly within the first act.