NON — AFRICAN DRAMA
OSCAR WILDE: THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST
Examine Miss Prism’s importance in the play.
Explanation
When casually observed, Miss Prism is simply a minor character. On close examination. however, she is seen as playing a most revealing role, particularly at certain defining moments.
Her actions initiate the various mistaken identities that dominate and largely shape the course of events in the play. But it is also through her that the raging confusion is finally and happily resolved.
Her actions and their ripple effects begin to manifest when she is Jack's nanny. Jack is then christened `Ernest John'. At one time this nanny absent-mindedly drops the toddler in her bag instead of in a pram, at Victoria Railway Station luggage room in London. The bag is mistakenly given to one Mr. Thomas Cardew on his way to Worthing. Mr. Cardew arrives home, adopts the "abandoned" baby and names him Jack Worthing. The baby grows up to be known as Uncle Jack for about 29 years. And for that long, Miss Prism inadvertently obscures his true identity.
It is Jack's obscured identity that makes him and Algernon, his younger biological brother, to think that they are ordinary friends. The same mistaken identity makes his aunt - Lady Bracknell, believe that he is a poor commoner; unworthy of her daughter's love. It is a fall-out of Miss Prism's absent-mindedness that leads Jack to pledge to convert his name to Ernest to please Gwendolen when in fact he is named Ernest at birth. These situations that give rise to instances of mistaken identities and dramatic irony that are directly or indirectly set in motion by Miss Prism's apparent slip of memory.
However, there is nothing of a slip of memory in her relationship with Casuble. She will not be out done by the other characters in the choice of a partner and in her deliberate, calculating secretive manner, she succeeds in getting married to the Parson. •
But it is also Miss Prism that comes to cut the Gordian knot (unravel the mysteries) in a most dramatic way. This comes at a time when the proposed marriage between Jack and Gwendolen is facing the mother's stiffest opposition. As the mother sights Miss Prism and casts her mind back on an earlier event, she calls for explanation. Miss Prism readily obliges and, true to what her name seems to symbolize, She sheds the necessary light on Jack's true identity. There and then all other issues of mistaken identity are resolved in what turns out to be a comedy of errors.