My Apprehension

To be honest, I absolutely adore The Importance of Being Earnest!  The humour in it seems to be quite close to that of the Monty Python movies, which I have grown up watching.  The trivial matters taken seriously and the serious matters taken trivially, however, seem to confuse me quite a bit.  I understand that Oscar Wilde intended this to be a way to poke fun at the higher class and show how messed up their troubles actually are, but I feel like there is something else that is intended by this.  To be honest, I feel as though I may just be grasping at straws since I honestly do not know what else the switch of serious and trivial could be used for besides the obvious of making fun of the upper class.  I just feel as if Wilde is intending something else that I have not yet discovered.

Another point I have to make about this play is that I understand it now, but I feel as though the plot will become quite twisted with the second identities (such as Jack in the city and Earnest in the countryside) and the question of who is Earnest, since many people claim to his name, but just as false identities.  I know that the plot, though it will become quite humorous, will also become more confusing and since it is so close to the end of the year, I feel as if my brain will not want to handle more confusing literature with hidden meanings.  I am trying to keep it going until the end of the novel, but honestly the amount of analyzing we have done on the other novels seems to have add up throughout time and now I need an easy read.  This could possibly be an easier read than all of the others and I may simply be overreacting, since I realize now that the play is certainly not like Hamlet in need of some strong analysis and confusing roles between protagonist and antagonist.

All in all, I feel as though my apprehension is getting the better of me since I am not in the right mindset to do another major analyzation.  To me, I cannot just read the play and enjoy it, I do have to analyze it but the analyzation mixed with the fear of confusion is what is truly holding me back.  Maybe it is a good thing that we are reading this in class and therefore we can learn together, which will decrease the confusion of the class as a whole.  I know I am probably overreacting, but I am worried about this play since the last one was Hamlet, which is truly an amazing play, do not get me wrong, but is also confusing and does not seem to have an answer to any of the questions created because of it.  There has got to be some middle ground between super easy and Hamlet-hard, and maybe that middle ground is The Importance of Being Earnest.

Emma: The Setting Makes The Novel

In Jane Austen’s Emma, the setting has a major bearing on the novel as a whole.  A tiny little town with nothing to do in it seems as if it would not affect the novel, however, I believe that is the point.  Austen is trying to tell the reader that even the most simplistic settings can change the novel completely.  I have been thinking about this lately and it is true that this novel would not be anything like it is now without having this setting.  Emma would not be bored enough to want to entertain herself with matchmaking, which would halt the rest of the novel from happening.  It is interesting when I think about it because if the same exact characters from the novel were dropped into some big hustling and bustling city such as New York City, there is almost a guarantee that none of the events of the novel would have taken place.  Emma would have most likely found some other people whose lives were in need of Emma meddling into, Mr. Woodhouse would certainly not have the fears that he holds in the novel since he would not be able to leave his apartment building if he had them in NYC, and Mr. Knightley would have found someone who truly belongs with him rather than ending with Emma who believes she is in love due to pure jealousy.  There would be no Harriet, no tea parties, and certainly no literary merit for the novel.  On that note, there is no telling whether we would be reading this novel in class today if the setting was any different.  Austen needed the dull setting in order to prove Emma’s boredom then turn Emma into a matchmaker through that boredom.  Emma could have found something else. Maybe something that is actually useful, to do with her life rather than matchmaking if she had been dropped into any other setting than this.  But maybe that is just it, Austen had to make the townspeople’s lives so unbelievably boring that a marriage between two random people could absolutely rock their world.  I know that if I had read this novel with the setting being in New York City, a wedding would not have even made it to the list of exciting things happening in the novel, yet when the setting is so mind-numbingly boring, something like a wedding is quite exciting; I know I was elated to read about the union between a ditsy, egotistic girl and a self-righteous man.  And the fact that I was actually rooting for them and cheering them on all the way to the aisle makes me realize that even though they are absolutely angrily annoying, I still feel happiness since we have followed them this far.  Maybe it is the fact that I was excited for them since this moment could be one of the happiest they will ever experience, or maybe I was simply excited that I had finally reached the end of such a long novel, but regardless, I was pleased when I reached the last chapter and everything came to a close.