Chapter Synopsis of The Importance of Being Earnest - Study Guide by Oscar Wilde

Even Chasuble’s name has a double meaning – both an ecclesiastical vestment worn at Mass and, in its pronouncement, ‘chase-able’, a suggestion that the Rector is capable of being chased very successfully by women. Though John the Baptist was beheaded at the end if Salome, Dr Chasuble simply admits to himself that he is attracted to Miss Prism and embraces her.

Miss Prism is the embodiment of Victorian middle-class codes of morality and duty. She insists that fiction must preach morality – an attitude that especially irritated Wilde. She once wrote a novel in which "the good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means". However, her preoccupation with this means that is reality she lost a baby that she had been entrusted with.

She is also attracted to Dr Chasuble, but, unlike Gwendolen and Cecily, hides her sexual feelings, though this leads her to make parallel slips of the tongue. Suggesting a mature woman for the Rector, she says: "Maturity can always be depended on. Ripeness can be trusted. Young women are green". She means an intellectual ripeness, but her words can be taken to refer to a sexual ripeness, which is how the Rector interprets them. In many ways she is the female counterpart of Dr Chasuble.

The butler Merriman enters to announce the arrival of Mr Earnest Worthington. Actually, the person who has arrived is Algernon, who has assumed the name and identity of Jack’s fictitious brother in order to meet Cecily. Having met, they converse for a while, and then enter the house. They share the same attitude to life, cocooned and cushioned, adverse to any work. When Cecily asks him if his hair curls naturally, he replies: "Yes, darling, with a little help from others".

Immediately afterwards, Miss Prism and Dr Chasuble return to the garden. Then Jack enters, clad in black, and sadly announces that his brother has died in Paris the night before. The situation becomes more hilarious when Cecily re-emerges from the house to joyfully announce to Jack that his brother Earnest awaits his in the dining room. Algy appears, Jack is furious with him, and Cecily insists on reconciliation between the two ‘brothers’.

Alone with Algy, Jack demands his immediate return to London, but Algy has fallen in love with Cecily. Algy then proposes to Cecily only to discover that he has already been engaged to her for three months. Cecily, it seems, fell in love with him when she learned how wicked he was and moreover has always dreamt of loving someone by the name of Earnest. Algy does not protest, but runs off to see Dr Chasuble about being re-christened Earnest.

Algy’s manipulation of reality for his own ends easily, then, finds a match in that of Cecily. She stands reality on its head and inverts truth to return to childhood play through nonsense. When Algy informs Cecily that they must now part for a very short space of time she responds as follows:

"CECILY: It is always very painful to part from people whom one has known for a very brief space of time. The absence of old friends one can endure with equanimity. But even a momentary separation from anyone to whom one has just been introduced is almost unbearable."

The idea, as outlined in The Picture of Dorian Gray and "Lord Arthur Saville’s Crime", that no-one has any free will is dissolved into nonsense here as Algy discovers what his life has been like:

"ALGERNON: Darling! And when was the engagement actually settled?

CECILY: On the 14^th of February last. Worn out by your entire ignorance of my existence, I determined to end the matter one way or another, and after a long struggle with myself, I accepted you under this dear old tree here. The next day, I bought this little ring in your name, and this is the little bangle with the true lovers’ knot I promised you always to wear.

ALGERNON: Did I give you this? It’s very pretty isn’t it?

CECILY: Yes, you’re wonderfully good taste, Earnest."