Homosexuality--Making Hypocrites of Society

After the discussion in class today, I now realize just how sexual the play The Importance of Being Earnest actually is.  I am shocked.  The cucumber sandwiches may seem to be harmless, but in reality they are a major sexual reference that is almost completely vulgar since the play is intended to be seen by all people of all ages.  The cucumbers are sliced, but when thought of as an unsliced vegetable they can also represent a quite blatant phallic symbol.  The act of the men eating these cucumber sandwiches is also a reference to a vulgar sexual act.

Another sexual reference in the play is the fake character named Bunbury.  No, he is not real, but he is mentioned quite a lot.  The name “bunbury” has two key words that make up the whole: bun and bury.  “Bun” is described by dictionary.com as slang for “the buttocks.”  “Bury” is described by dictionary.com as a way “to plunge in deeply” or “to immerse (oneself).”  When these two words are put together, it is quite clear to understand the point that Oscar Wilde is trying to get across to the audience.

Besides Wilde’s quite blatant sexual references, there are more discrete (and less vulgar) ones to suggest his homosexual code throughout the play.  He uses Lady Bracknel as a key character in this code.  She is the one who flips the sexist stereotypes by being loud and boisterous and pushing men around, while the social norms are that women stay quiet and away and are pushed around by men.  The flip in gender stereotypes shows that women can be masculine and men can be feminine, just as gay people are viewed to be.

I am honestly quite shocked that The Picture of Dorian Gray is the novel that suggested Wilde’s homosexuality, especially since I feel that this play is much more sexual than his other work.  Then again, I read that novel many months ago and did not know of Wilde being gay, so I did not look for any gay hints in the novel as I did in this play.  Wilde’s forceful emphasis on everything homosexual seems almost as if he was trying to be caught and he was trying to push boundaries just so that he can proved that homosexuality may be condemned by all social classes, but the same people who are against his ways and beliefs are entertained by his works of literature.  In other words, these people say that being gay is a sin while they pay money to go see plays all about being gay, though they do not know it yet.  It is actually quite genius of Wilde to do this since the play is about mocking society and society knows this, but he is also mocking society in a different way and proving they are all hypocrites while they have absolutely no idea of this.  I now understand why Wilde is widely studied today, since he was such a mastermind in his days.