Notes on "Notes on Love and Marriage"

Notes on “Notes on Love and Marriage”

An Analysis 

By

Hans Freiwald

July 3, 2012

In this blog I will discuss the web article “Notes on Love and Marriage” by Michael Vance.  In this article Michael Vance dissects “The Importance of Being Earnest” by first comparing it to its author, Oscar Wilde, which he refers to as someone “for whom the regular rules for society don’t apply” (“Notes on Love and Marriage”).  He often refers to “The Importance of Being Earnest” as a satire, which he states “can be compared to a caricature in its ability to point up flaws and distinctive features by enlarging and expanding upon them to the point where they dominate the portrait and give it a distinctly comic dimension” (Vance).  So what is it that Vance states Oscar Wilde is making a “caricature” out of?  Well, It’s in the title of his article, “Love and Marriage.”  Is this true?  I would say that yes, it absolutely is.

Already, in the first scene of “The Importance of Being Earnest,” Wilde begins to analyze the institution of marriage in Algernon’s discussion with his manservant Lane.  Wilde writes:

Algernon: Why is it that at a bachelor’s establishment the servants invariably drink the      champagne?  I ask merely for information.

Lane: I attribute it to the superior quality of the wine, sir.  I have often observed that in married households the champagne is rarely of a first-rate brand” (“The Importance of Being Earnest” 6).

Essentially what Wilde is saying is that after marriage the romantic love no longer exists.Why purchase cheap champagne?  Because you no longer posses the desire to impart upon your partner the “finer” things in life (and of course this would also imply that through the loss of love for the other, you’ve also stopped loving yourself- you also now drink cheap champagne).  Though Vance doesn’t point out this dialogue specifically, he does point out other examples that come to this same conclusion.

Vance references Lady Bracknell’s visit to a woman who was recently widowed, and how she looked “altered.”  We then read on to find out that “altered” in this instance refers to looking better and even appearing younger.  So Wilde is satirizing marriage by stating that without it we can actually posses more youth and virility.  Finally, Wilde makes satire from the mere idea of proposing marriage.  Vance states that “for both women, marriage to anyone with another name would have been inconceivable even though they freely professed great love for the men who had asked them for their hands” (“Notes on Love and Marriage”).  With this I believe Wilde was showing the flaws in what society deemed were important factors in choosing whom one should Marry, and Vance is pointing out that this was Wilde’s intent.

Works Cited

Vance, Michael.  “Notes on Love and Marriage: Perspectives from Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Ernest an analysis.”  May 2000. Web. 3 July 2012.

Wilde, Oscar.  “The Importance of Being Earnest.” New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc., 2006. Print.