Essay on "the importance of being earnest

In Shakespeare’s famous play Romeo and Juliet, Romeo and Juliet can not marry with each other in the world due to family enmity. Then they give up their wealth, family names and lives in order to stay together. In other words, family names and family backgrounds become the barriers that stop the lovers from marrying with each other. While in Victorian society, people see names and family backgrounds as the necessary requirements of marriage. By describing a comedy happens in Jack’s family, Oscar Wilder satirizes that in Victorian society, since women lack education, their point of view of marriage is materialism which contains both money and family background.

In Victorian society, lacking of education, women marry with rich and aristocratic men in order to get finance help. An article about feminist overview “Women’s Issues Then Now” written by Melissa Moore shows “Women were left uneducated in many areas of life.

English: Still photograph from Act 1 of the origin...

Oscar Wilde in 1889

Cecily Placing Towers

They had no control over their education and were taught about domestic duties only” (“Women’s”). Few women study in Victorian society, so they do not have any knowledge on jobs and can not live alone. Also, Melissa Moore concludes that the living and financial pressures force them to find wealthy aristocratic husbands who can feed them and “advance their social status” (“Women’s”). In addition, Pauline Weston Thomas, the auther of “A Woman's Place in C19th Victorian History” mentions that a wealthy wife wears luxury clothes, talks to friends and eats nice food in daily life. In contrast, a poor wife’s clothes are “fifth hand”, food is rancid and they have to work as servants as well (“A Woman’s”). Clearly, wealthy women’s lives are idle and easy, but poor women’s lives are laborious and hard. Thus, women in Victorian society marry with men who are wealthy and have social states in...