Oscar Wilde's most famous comedy about good manners, The Importance of Being Earnest, is farcical while also being critical of regard to Victorian society. Wilde invites us to find meaning in the play even in the title with the word “importance”; in this absurd world that Wilde has created, what is really important? Is our reality really so far from the version that Wilde designed for the dramatic physical realities that Wilde gives to many characters with light humor, but is it fair to say that Wilde's "masterpiece" has no substance or moral sense? Wilde uses Lady Bracknell to introduce his satire of Victorian attitudes toward marriage in the first act by having Lady Bracknell treat Jack's proposal to her daughter Gwendolen Fairfax as a well-thought-out business proposal combining social status, lineage, and wealth. Much like the reality of Victorian society, Wilde describes marriage as an ordeal that in no way involves the love or opinion of the bride-to-be, but rather a decision made entirely by the bride's father. However, rather than Gwendolen's father having the power, Wilde chooses Lady Bracknell, Gwendolen's mother, as the dominating figure to create joyous humor through incongruity and reversal of gender roles. After an almost clinical and cold cross-examination of Jack which removes any empathy the audience feels towards Lady Bracknell and therefore leads us to like the other characters even more, she decides that Jack cannot marry Gwendolen until he tries “to acquire relations as soon as possible” (1.2.215). This shows that even Lady Bracknell, a member of the wealthy upper class, realizes that the inheritance is not really important but is fashionable and may just be there for show , without her caring, she just follows the trend. Here Wilde undermines the...... middle of paper ......o demonstrates the lengths to which the Victorians had to go to free themselves from the stifling moral repression brought on by a society obsessed with conformity to the upper class . ideals. Algernon symbolizes the wild and unrestricted side of Victorian society. In the final analysis, it is unfair to suggest that The Importance of Being Earnest is a superficial farce that bears no relation to the historical context in which it was created; However, Wilde's references to the crucial issues of his time are usually overshadowed by his characters' own petty concerns, leaving criticism a disappointment that is easily ignored. The overwhelming evidence indicates that the play is a complex and undeniably intelligent assessment of Victorian life, which leads me to be unable to agree with Archer to the extent that The Importance of Being Earnest n 'has no substance or moral sense in any way..