Throughout The Importance of Being Earnest, the characters construct a world that is filled with exaggeration, irony, and absurdity; this world's humor casts a spell on the audience, which paradoxically is created through an exaggeration of the very world the Victorian audience lives in. Thus, Oscar Wilde's social criticism is made doubly ironic; his criticisms include those of the Victorian ideas of marriage, class, morality, and the appearance of respectability.
             Wilde's main criticism in the play is with the institution of marriage. For although it is continually criticized by the characters, especially Algernon who calls it "demoralizing," marriage is in fact what all the action of the play moves toward. For instance, Jack continually tries to secure Gwendolyn's hand in marriage and Algernon tries to get Cecily to marry him. Throughout these attempts absurdities frequently arise. For instance, when Algernon is pretending to be Ernest, Jack's younger and more mischievous brother, Cecily informs him that they have been engaged for approximately three months, even though this was the first actual meeting between the two. Another oddity is that all the main characters are aware that marriages in Victorian England are problematic, yet they proceed to move towards the institution anyway. For instance, Lane, the butler who was married once before, calls his marriage a "misunderstanding," while Lady Bracknell, a married aristocrat, never seems to express any form of interest in her husband when his name arises in conversation. These tribulations present in marriage cause Algernon to proclaim that, "Divorces are made in heaven." Wilde's criticisms of marriage seem to deride both Victorian Literature, which often has marriage as its central issue, and English society, which, as Wilde asserts, "treats all the serious things of life wi
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