When reading Alice in Wonderland and The Importance of Being Earnest, I couldn't help but notice the authors differing uses of logic and sense. As in, they concocted their tales with the exact opposite: illogic and nonsense. Understandably, the Victorian audience was not expecting such convoloted uses of rhetoric, so for the vast majority of the audience, they failed to comprehend that the authors were in fact, making fun of their lifestyles. In Carroll's experience, even good old Queen Vic failed to grasp that he was challenging the monarchy and its indiscretion by making of light it, as exemplified by the Queen of Hearts. Wilde, however, chose to dissect society in general; this included the marriage market, gender, homosexuality, the education system, etc.
Carroll uses nonsense to enhance the reader's understanding of common sense, as opposed to what the government deems sensical (i.e., the trial scene in the novel). He uses Alice to guide his reader's through the novel with their various prejudices while ever so slowly dismantling them. Wilde uses his characters (in all their exaggerations) as various archetypes for his audience to sympathize with. Their various turns of character and their snap decisions cause the audience to peer into a mirror of themselves. Whether they choose to recognize this, or not is completely up to their discretion.
What I found interesting with The Importance of Being Earnest is that it uses the same sort of ridiculous wordplay as Carroll's Alice did. You could take most of the dialogue from Earnest and inject it into Alice's world and it would be the same style of exaggeration. To me, Lady Bracknall's nonsense about society is just as silly as whatever the Dutchess in Wonderland is spewing.
ReplyDeleteIts interesting that both authors managed to write the same sort of parody of social commentary for such different audiences and in such very different worlds.
I think the Audience needs a little more credit in Victorian theater. These types of social commentary plays were nothing new and in fact kind of formulaic. Wilde interpretation I think was taken differently because there was no moral message at the end. If it would have been written by someone else, the end would have seen the characters redeeming themselves somehow for their immorality. I think the audience understood that they were being made fun of, but where uncomfortable when that was it. There was no "oh, but for all their faults, bless them, they are a cut above." It was more... you kind of suck. The End.
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