Third Act. The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde

SUMMARY

John and Algernon are worried because their name isn’t Ernest, and Cecily and Gwendolen feel deceived and disappointed for the same. The boys’ only solution is getting re-baptized. While they are thinking about that, Lady Bracknell arrives in search of her run-away daughter. She forbids her to be engaged to John. Then Algernon informs her aunt that he’s engaged to Cecily, and in the end aunt Augusta gives her approbation; but, unfortunately, they can't get married until John, Cecily’s guardian, gives his consent, and that will be when Lady Bracknell gives hers to him. While they are debating this, Miss Prism appears; Lady Bracknell recognizes her, and, thanks to this meeting, John discovers who really is and what his real name is.
At the end there are some marriages and lots of happiness.

Oscar Wilde Documentary (video)

Great Lives: Oscar Wilde. BBC radio

ACTORS AND ACTRESSES on the radio play:

Terence Alexander
as Merryman

Samantha Bond
as Gwendolen

Miriam Margolyes
as Miss Prism

Michael Hordern
as Lane

Michael Sheen
as John Worthing

Martin Clunes
as Algernon Moncrieff

Judy Dench
as Lady Bracknell

John Moffat
as Cannon Chasuble

Amanda Root
as Cecily

Second Act: The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde

The place where the second act is situated is in the Manor House, in the country.
As we already know, Algernon Moncrieff has surreptitiously got Cecily’s address and is determined to visit her, as he has fallen in love with her… without even having ever met her.

The first scene is in the garden. Cecily is studying with Miss Prism, but she doesn’t like the subjects her governess proposes her.

Unexpectedly for them, Algernon arrives under the name of Ernest Worthing, the wicked brother invented by Jack Worthing. Cecily is so happy to meet him, that she immediately falls in love with him.

They both go in the house and, while they are inside, Jack arrives and communicates the sad news of his brother death to Miss Prism and Dr Chasuble, the parson, without knowing that Algernon/Ernest is there. A moment later, Algernon/Ernest and Cecily come out to the garden and meet them. Jack has a big surprise and has to pretend that Ernest death has been a misunderstanding or a bad joke.

In the second scene, Gwendolen arrives to visit Jack/Ernest, and she meets Cecily. Then they are enormously puzzled because they both say they are engaged to Ernest. Fortunately for them, they discover that they’re two different young men, and that none of them (unfortunately for the boys) is called Ernest. Cecily and Gwendolen are very disappointed, but they end forgiving their lovers.

The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde

Some films: 

The Importance of Being Earnest (1952)

Frame of The Importance of Being Earnest (2002)

The Importance of Being Earnest (2002)

Wilde (1997)

The Trials of Oscar Wilde (1960)

Happy Prince, "La importancia de llamarse Oscar Wilde",  (2018)

The importance... a radio play: BBC audio

The Importance of Being Earnest was a very successful play in London at the end of the 19th century, but its performances stopped when Oscar Wilde became convicted for “gross indecency” and sent to prison.

There are some versions of the same play. Ours has three acts.

In the first act, Algernon Moncrieff gets some visitors at home. The first visitor is his friend Ernest Worthing; in his visit, we discover that his real name isn’t Ernest, but Jack (a form of John). Algernon also finds that Ernest is the tutor of a very beautiful young ward called Cecily Cardew, and immediately he falls in love with her.

Next visitors are his aunt Augusta (Lady Bracknell) and her daughter Gwendolen. While Aunt Augusta, with the help of Algernon, is selecting some music for a party she’s going to have that evening, Ernest/Jack proposes to Gwendolen, and she says yes. Aunt Augusta comes back suddenly, reproaches the couple’s behaviour and attitude and, obviously, cancels the engagement. However, she asks some questions to Ernest/Jack in order to discover if he is an eligible man for her daughter; when she knows that he has no parents and has been adopted, she discards him absolutely and forbids him to approach Gwendolen.

By chance (and listening attentively) Algernon gets to know Cecily’s address in the country, and decides to visit her.

 

Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin in 1854 and died in Paris at the age of 46.

He was the son of an important poetess of the Irish Literary Renaissance.

He went to Trinity College in Dublin and then to Oxford. After that, he settled in London, where he got the reputation of a clever wit for his writings and lectures. His epigrams and paradoxes are famous. He also went to the USA to deliver lectures.

But he got his literary position thanks to his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) and to his play The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). He also wrote some short stories, e.g. The Happy Prince, and some poems, e.g. The Ballad of Reading Gaol.

At the age of 30, he got married and had two children.

Wilde prosecuted the Marquess of Queensberry (Lord Alfred Douglas’s father, his lover) for criminal libel and lost the trial. As a consequence of the information appeared in the trial relative to his sexual behaviour (“the love that dare not speak its name”), he was arrested and sentenced to two years of hard labour. Once he got out of prison, he went to Paris, where he spent his three last years of life, impoverished and abandoned from everybody.

His tomb is in Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris.

Funny Little Snake, by Tessa Hadley

Funny Little Snake in The New Yorker

SUMMARY

Gil (or Gilbert) a 50-year-old history professor, divorced and remarried, feels his duty to invite her only child, a 9-year-old daughter with his first wife and whom he hasn’t seen for 5 years, to spend a few days with him and his new young wife, Valerie, in their house in the north of England, away from London, where his ex-wife lives.

Gil drives to pick up his daughter Robyn, but then, once he’s at home, leaves her to the absolute care of his wife, with the excuse of too much work. Valerie, who didn’t know anything about her nor about children in general, can see now that Robyn is a poor very underdeveloped shy child and is puzzled about how to deal with her. But she tries to do her best.

The day to take her back to her mother arrives, and Gil again, with the excuse of too much work, asks Valerie to do the errand and take the girl back to London by train, and that isn’t a short trip.

So to London they go. There Valerie discovers what kind of person is Marise, Robyn’s mother: a sophisticated ex-hippie who is living with a much younger musician, Jamie, and who doesn’t know her anything about the duties of a parent. Now Valerie understands why the girl is so immature in body and mind.

Valerie has to spend the night at her mother’s intending to go back home the next day, but the next day is snowing, and the trains aren’t working very well, so she has to wait in London. She doesn’t like being with her mother and doesn’t know what to do in the meanwhile. She goes for a walk, and her steps, or her tube, takes her unconsciously to Marise’s. Not knowing why and how, now she’s standing near the house. Robyn is looking out of the window and, after a while, sees Valerie and starts to wave frantically at her. Suddenly, Valerie is thinking about rescuing her.

But we aren’t going to be spoilers…
Is she really going to try and rescue her? What will Marise say and do? What about Jamie? And Gil, would he like Valerie’s idea?

QUESTIONS

How does the narrator show that Robyn is a defenceless child?

Is there any irony in the character’s names? Robyn, Valerie, Gil (Gilbert) Hope, Marise, Jamie…

What kind of relationship is there between Gil and Valerie? How do you know?

And with Marise? Why did they get married, and why did they separate? Why does Gil hate Marise so much now?

Do you think it’s possible to be leftist in politics and traditional or rightist in personal questions?

Gil married two uneducated wives: Why do you think he did so, being himself so educated?

What do you think about this: is a self-made man more or less tolerant with people who haven’t been able to go up in life?

What does Gil think about his mother? And Valerie about hers?

What kind of toys did Robyn have? What games did she play?

In your opinion, why does Gil talks about himself in the third person when he’s asking for a favour to Valerie?

According to Valerie, “important men had to be selfish in order to get ahead”. What is your point of view about this?

What are the differences between sitting room and drawing room? And about tea (in the afternoon / evening) and supper or dinner?

Why do you think Marise and Jamie are partners? Is there love between them?

Does Marise love her child? How do you know?

Do you think Valerie has different manners with Gil when she’s at home from when she’s at Marise’s?

What is the relation of the title with the story?

What is the symbolic meaning of the “stuffed birds and that horse” at Marise’s?

What is the meaning of “Gilbert sitting there steering along in the little cockpit”?

Does the snow and the end of the story work as a symbol? What symbol?

Why, according to your view, does Valerie go to rescue Robyn? And why does Jamie help her? Why does Robyn want to get away with Valerie?
In your opinion, what is going to happen when Valerie gets home with Robyn? How is Gil going to react?
The last sentence says: “Just for the moment, though, the child was inconsolable”? Why was she so?

Another summary

Dido's Lament, by Tessa Hadley

Dido's Lament, on The New Yorker (text, and audio, read by the author)

SUMMARY, by Josep Guiteras

Lynette was 30 years old, she was tall, with brown freckly skin; she was original and eager, and she was wearing a wool coat that she had found in a charity shop.

It was winter at 5 pm, after work, when she went into John Lewis store to buy some things she needed. Leaving the stores and heading to the corridors and subway platforms, a man making his way through the crowd hit her, causing great pain in her ankle, so she decided to follow him to demand an apology, but, when she touched him, she realized that it was Toby, her ex-husband whom she had left 9 years ago, possibly because he wasn’t her type. Toby was glad to see her, and Lynette saw that Toby had changed: he has gone from being shy with the air of a country boy to seeing himself as a mundane and prosperous man. Currently, he had created a new production company that brought him a good income.

She had failed in the attempt to being a singer since her voice did not meet the conditions. Now, she had a temporary job at the BBC: in short, things were not going very well for her.

Toby told her that he had married Jaz, and they had two daughters and that he and his wife were very happy. Lynette lied when she said that she had a good boyfriend.

The bars were full of people, so Toby invited her to his house in Queen’s Park because his wife and his daughters had gone to her sister’s house. The house was located in a good area, the exterior appearance of the house was perfect and, inside, it was spacious with an old and modern decoration, and beautiful functional furniture. She realized that what the house contained was Toby’s liking.

Toby thought that he had done well to take Lynette home since in a bar he would have fallen into a flirtation under Lynette’s control, while, in his family’s house, everything was more transparent.

Before leaving, Lynette wrote her phone number on a blackboard. When Toby was left alone at home, he erased the phone number because he did not want to put everything together, family, work and home to maintain a relationship with Lynette. Lynette went to a bar near Toby’s house and saw that she had left the cheap clothes she had bought at John Lewis in Toby’s home.

She thought that Toby would call her, or maybe not. Lynette came to the conclusion that it was better to be free and, if she wasn’t, it was necessary.

QUESTIONS

-Bearing in mind Lynette’s physical appearance, what can you say about her personality?

-Do you think Toby didn’t notice he struck somebody going into the tube?

-The way you see it, what are Lynette’s reasons to follow obstinately the man who struck her?

-In your opinion, did he know somebody was following him?

-Can you always justify someone’s unconsciousness / abstraction?

-What do you think were the reasons for their divorce? Was one of them guiltier than the other?

-Did Toby prosper more than Lynette because of their divorce?

-Her having ancestors from Sierra Leone, does it have any relevance for her personality, for her divorce, for the story?

-She says she isn’t of the marrying kind nor the mothering kind. Don’t you think these situations come from chances rather from our will?

-Why did she lie about having a boyfriend and about meeting some friends of her?

-According to you, why did he invite her to his house, and why did she accept?

-To your mind, why didn’t she tell him about his clashing her in the tube?

-“She was afraid that his loving kindness might enclose her too entirely, like a sheath.” When can love and tenderness be scary?

-She was also afraid of his subordination. Why?

-“Men always run their women together into a continuum.” What does this sentence mean?

-Why does she think “Toby had opted for an easy, chummier life”?

-What is the author’s purpose when she mentions the car accident?

-Do you think that Lynette, when she wanted the divorce, resorted to the old cliché of not being free to give herself to work completely?

-What do you know about Dido’s Lament and about Dido and Aeneas?

-What do you imagine is the relation between the title and the story?

-Can you explain why she gave him her telephone number? And why did he erase it immediately?

-She forgot a bag in Toby’s house and Toby hid it to prevent his wife to see it. Did he still have any feelings for Lynette? What’s his relation with Jaz like?

-Do you think the story has an open ending, or it’s definitely finished?

 

VOCABULARY

John Lewis, fuming, funnelling, tartan, branded, hem, forging, trudging, tearing, Oyster card, escalator, filled out, wizened, dilapidated, smug, temp, temping, Sierra Leone, wincing, thrumming, children's teatime, devious, earnest, taking in, scuffed, rocking horse, goaded, barley sugar, simpering, chummier, juggernaut, ruddy, russet, guesting, accretions, Calpol, ranting, chalkboard

Dido's Lament, from the opera Dido and Aeneas, by Henry Purcell

Dog, by Graham Swift

 

SUMMARY AND COMMENTS

The plot is very simple: a 56-year-old father, remarried to a woman half his age, takes their baby daughter to the park in her pram; there, a fierce dog attacks another child, and he runs to the baby’s defence and fights the dog with a violence so extreme that in the end he kills it. Then he takes his child back home.

But the story has more issues than this terrible incident.

The protagonist is a self-made man who has made a lot of money, has had a family of three grown up and independent children, a divorce and some love affairs. Then, in his fifties, he got married to a young woman and had a child with her: a daughter whom he loves devotedly. It seems that, once he finished bringing up a family, he stars a new life, a new family and feels young again.

But perhaps the most important theme of the story is the man’s character. We can see that he has been someone who was able to control everything: money, love…, and that taking things in control was his worthiest feature. But now, when he has fulfilled his life (money, family, children) and he’s starting a new one, it looks like as he had lost this control, so he isn’t able to master his life any more: he can’t help adoring, doting on his child with a passion so intense that he even can’t refrain his fury when he kicks the dangerous dog. In the past, he thought he would be happy mastering money and feelings, but now he discovers that this breaking free of his emotions can make him happier.

QUESTIONS

What is for you the relation between money and happiness?

What do you think of giving allowances to your children? And what about the “social salary”, I mean, about the idea of the right to have a salary because you are a person, not because you work?

Do you think it’s a good definition of growing up, “gaining more and more control”?

Do you have a pet? Are you in favour to have a pet when you have small children? Is it a good idea walking the dog in a children’s park?

Do you think that it has to be forbidden to have potentially dangerous dogs?

Is it a good idea to consider your pet as a member of your family? Do you have a dog? What is its position in your household?

“People had dogs in order to have the illusion of mastery and control”. What is your opinion about this?

The scene in which the narrator kicks the dog to save a small child is a bit distressing. Why? Too much violence? But wasn’t he saving a baby from a fatal attack?

The narrator was all the time talking about control. Why do you think he lost control in the park? Was there any other motive besides from trying to save a child from a dog?

What do you imagine Julia’s reaction to the news is going to be?

 

VOCABULARY

utterance, feather-bedded, estranged, inveigled, entrancing, bumps, swerves, put her feet up, crocuses, dab, chunks, notch, graph, dire, threshold, toppled, full-tilt, heave, breed, headsets, bellowing, contraptions, stab, teeter, mauling, writhed, far-fetched, paean, grapevine

Mother's Son, by Tessa Hadley

SUMMARY, by Montse Puigvert

 

Christine, Thomas’s mother, works as a literature teacher at the university and lives on her own in a flat in London. She is working at home, as she usually does on Thursdays, when she suddenly remembers about what someone told her the previous evening while having dinner with some friends of hers: Alan, Thomas’s father, is going to get married to a young girl half his age, in fact she could be his daughter.

Immerse in her thoughts, she receives by surprise the visit of Thomas. He’s got himself in a bit of a mess and needs to talk. He usually doesn’t tell her about his worries, which means that something important must be going on. At first, she thinks it is concerning Alan’s wedding, but it is not, he’s actually happy about it. He’s having an affair with a girl she met at work called Annie, curiously the same name as his girlfriend, Anna. He feels so comfortable talking with this girl, she is very bright, but not as good-looking as Anna. He hasn’t told anything about it to his girlfriend yet, as he wants to be sure, rather than upsetting her for no good.

Furthermore, he is not quite convinced with his work as an assistant of a Labour member of parliament, whom he really doesn’t believe in. Due to that, he is thinking about leaving the job and going away by himself to live abroad, in Prague or Budapest.

He starts to be impatient to leave. Christine knows he is going to meet Annie without even telling her. Remembering the way he has talked about her before, she feels he is so infatuated.

She feels herself reflected on Annie and revives the relationship she had with Alan. They had an affair by the time he was married and with two children. For a short period of time, Alan left his family to live with Christine, and that’s when Thomas was conceived. The relationship hadn’t worked out because they quarrelled continuously and Alan missed his children. So he came back home, leaving Christine alone while she was pregnant. They only kept their relationship from time to time to manage things about Thomas. In one of those meetings, they had a huge discussion on how to educate his son. From that day, their relationship broke definitely.

In the following morning after Thomas went to see his mum, Anna visits her at the university and tries to know what’s going on. Obviously, even caring about her, Christine feels that her loyalty is towards Thomas’s confidence. That’s why she only tells Anna about his worries concerning his job, whether he was doing the right thing working on it. But Anna keeps jostling for more, in fact fighting for their relationship. Christine only adds what he said about the possibility of going on holiday to Europe, and supposedly on his own. Anna is very sad, and she will try to talk to Thomas to get the truth.

Deep inside, Christine envies the Anns for having this struggle over him, the game of pursuit and being pursued, and the feeling of possession, a possession which she, as a mother, had from the very first moment when Thomas was born and which is now no longer available for her.

QUESTIONS

-She had the news about Alan, she forgot them, she remembered next day, but then she only thinks about her place. Why remembering Alan make her meditate about her place and how she likes it?

-Why did she use Mondrian to decorate her flat?

-How do you know she liked her son’s visit?

-Can you make a summary of Alan’s love live?

-Why does the narrator give us information about the husband if the key history it’s his son’s?

-“Being good might be another kind of lie”: When or where can you apply that?

-Why does he prefer Annie to Anna?

-Christine longed those storms caused by her relationships long time ago. Why can anyone miss some herd times in their lives?

-Could that mother (stormy in her youth) be a good adviser?

-For our children, what is it better, a simple or a complicated life?

-Bearing a child is always a good experience?

-Could you say the Alan was a bit sexist, or he was a product of his time?

-What would you say to a child who asked you about death?

-Do you think parents can / have to solve love problems of their children?

-Is “being extra nice” a sign of a lie?

-Do you think Anna pays too much attention to her body?

-What is the meaning of the rotten egg at the end of the story?

-When you had a mess, is it a good idea phoning somebody to tell the about it to try to forget it?

VOCABULARY

bristling, thriving, entertained, slate, cost the earth, brogues, pull a sickie, cropped up, wagged, dummy, popped, slick, BFI, tame, pebbles, dabble, prig, mew, truce, patching, moody, jostling, swivel, rump, shallot, bleached

Seraglio, by Graham Swift

SERAGLIO, PLOT AND COMMENTARY, by Núria Lecina

This short story tells us about the relationship of a couple. We don’t know their names.  Maybe the storyteller, who is the husband, doesn’t think it is necessary. He explains the facts and his thoughts.  Neither, we never know his wife’s feelings in this experience.  They are on holidays in Istanbul, but they could be anywhere, their relationship would be the same.

They decided to travel to Istanbul, a place really beautiful and interesting, because they wanted something exotic, they needed holidays, but different. “A place where you can save your ordinary life”. They look for an escape. They feel that have suffered, and now they are in convalescence, so that’s why they want an exotic and special place. But this way they won’t solve their problems. Sooner or later, they’ll return.

Thanks to the husband’s narration, who has a tourist’s book, we know a lot of aspects about the exotic Istanbul. For instance, what is the Seraglio, the place where the Sultan had all his women or concubines.

He also defines what is his wife like, both physically and psychologically. And what is the couple’s life like.

It is a rich text in descriptions, full of adjectives that help the reader to understand and imagine the situation.

One day in these holidays, when the husband arrives to the hotel after he has done a photographic report, he finds his wife laying on the bed crying. She explains to him that a hotel’s worker has come to their room to repair the heater, and when he had finished, he approached her and touched her. The explanations aren’t much clearer, neither what they can do to clear up the incident. At this moment, the situation becomes tense. Is she the victim? Is he guilty because he wasn’t there? Is it necessary to inform against? What is the meaning of “touched her”?  Did she use this fact to blame him? Is he being insensitive? …

This fact makes the husband think about how they can have arrived to this way of living, and then he tells us about their past. Their wedding was seven years ago. They worked together. He immediately fell in love with her. Soon they got married.

He, practising an odd philosophy, tested his love. He had a lover to check that really the woman who loved was his wife. This adventure, like a secret Seraglio, finished when the wife was pregnant. But soon after, she had a miscarriage, and it all got ruined. Perhaps his cheating on her was also an addition to their crisis?

Between them, it was installed the silence, a common guilt, the incapacity to talk about the loss, the incapacity to talk about the causes of everything and about what they could do to get out of their mourning.  And so, the solution was the escape, covering up what hurt them, the loss.

From that moment, rewards are the most important thing: theatre, restaurants, concerts, exhibitions, and expensive holidays.

I think the last sentence sums it up well: “So, one doesn’t have to cross to the other continent, doesn’t have to know what really happened”.

Until when?

QUESTIONS

-What do you know about the history of Istanbul?

-A cruel custom is mentioned. Do you know about similar customs related to power?

-Beauty is sometimes terrible: that is what we call sublime. Do you know any examples of this?

-What do you think of the famous cliché “Men seem to have the power, but who really gives orders is his wife”?

-What do you know about Oman II?

-“On holiday, you want to be spared ordinary life”. What do you think of the tourists lying on the beach, while shipwrecked immigrant people that have come out of a small boat lay on the beach?

-Do you think clichés in the story about Turkey are close to reality? Have you seen “Midnight Express” or “The Turkish Lover”?

-What do you know about Florence Nightingale?

-Where is Surrey in England? Do you know anything about it?

-How fond of taking photos are you? How do you like taking them?

-Do you think something really happened between the porter and the wife? How do you know?

-According to your opinion, are police officers competent enough to attend assaulted women?

-“But I have wanted this too.” What does it mean? Page 4, line 11.

-Was he really in love with his wife? How do you know?

-What do you think of the saying “Out of sight, out of mind”?

-Can you comment the sentence “Men want power over women in order to be able to let women take this power from them”?

-Do you usually discuss a film / play after seeing it with your friends / partner?

-Who killed their baby? Did he have a reason to feel guilty, and thus cause the miscarriage? What reason could be?

-What is the best way to narrate an embarrassing / delicate situation?

-What do you think is the meaning of her holding “one hand, closed, to her throat”?

-Having in mind their circumstances (abroad, tourists, eastern country…), what would you have done in her situation, talk to the manager, go to the police, go to your embassy…?

-Why did the author mention that the radiator was “distinctly warmer”?

-Why in the plane “other people glanced at his wife”?

-Do you think their marriage will go on?

 

VOCABULARY

sherbet, rent, squalls, hailstorms, bloated, spattered, Elastoplast, cripples, chequers, bled, dig, flawless, complexion, fastidious, tends, interfered, elicit, bluffly, blowing up, sensible, cut out, consultant designer, crushed, make believe, conscripted, heater, siege, scornful, issue, scoff, linen, gauge, ledge, reprieve, stay of execution, plane trees