The Importance of Being Earnest suggests that men had more of a greater influence than women did. Men held the house down with the decision-making as women cooked and cleaned for there families. Wilde brings in intriguing questions about the gender roles portrayed throughout the play by putting women in the positions of power and how men make all of the decisions in the family. I believe Wilde portrays comedic humor through the characters to mock the roles of society.
The two main female characters Gwendolen and Cecily are depicted as hopeless romantics who are upper class young women that are fixated on only marrying a man with the name of Earnest. As Gwendolen admits, “my ideal has always been to love someone of the name Earnest there is something in that name, that inspires absolute confidence,” she is portraying the high standards that upper class victorian women had to follow. Through reinforcements of the stereotype that women are mercurial in nature, Wilde suggests that us women are quick to change our minds over the most trivial things. Once Gwendolen and Cecily first meet, they were great friends until a slight mishap of “falling in love with the same guy” had struck them apart. After Gwendolen and Cecily found out that the men they “fell in love with” have been lying to them, they come to realization of how much power they have towards men. “The fact that they did not follow us at once into the house, as anyone else would have done, seems to me to show that they have some sense of shame left,” providing evidence on now that they have all of this power not knowing what to do with all of it, humorously the girls come up with numerous tactics to overpower the boys. Wilde’s depiction of indecisiveness in women conveys that women shouldn’t be given any real power.
