Melodramatic Politics and Economics

One thing that stuck out to me as I was reading The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde was the subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) digs that Wilde would make on the people of his society. In Act 2, there is a brief moment where Miss Prism and Cecily are talking about the Political Economic book and I remember Miss Prism’s quick commentary about how Cecily should just omit the chapter about the fall of the rupee (India’s currency) because “it is somewhat too sensational” and “even these metallic problems have their melodramatic side”. This comment made me somewhat uncomfortable and I decided to bring it up in our group discussion in class today. My group’s topic was politics and parliamentary reform, and although we had a tough time connecting the plays themes to this topic, I thought that this moment in the play could still somehow relate. Even though it wasn’t Wilde’s way of criticizing their own politics and reform at the time, this scene in the play did shine light on how people viewed foreign politics. India’s economic downfall was not important to them in the least bit. It didn’t affect their everyday life and comfort; therefore it was just a melodramatic chapter in a book to them. I believe that Wilde was saying a lot with this scene. It was a satire on the self-centered world that most people lived in, and he reflected that in this brief conversation between Miss Prism and Cecily.