No Importance of Being Earnest

Why does Jack refuse to give his consent to Cecily’s marriage? How may this help his own case with Lady Bracknell?  

Jack refuses to give his consent to Cecily because if he says that Cecily can’t marry Algy then Lady Bracknell will try to convince him to let her marry him because she has a lot of money. Jack is using Cecily as leverage so that Lady Bracknell would first give him permission to marry Gwendolyn, and the longer that he holds out on Lady Bracknell then she will have to give in to Gwendolyn marrying Jack because lady wants the bounty that comes with Cecily. She has already given Cecily the right to call her aunt, so she has already accepted her, but it’s really only for the money.

Why do you think Algernon “kills” Bunbury? Why does he not need him anymore?

Algernon used Bunbury as an excuse to get out of going to his Aunt’s dinner parties, but now he has found a more logical reason to get out of the parties, Cecily. I think he killed Bunbury because he was tired of lying, after she found out that his name wasn’t really Earnest then which turned into a web of lies and so he wanted to be his true self and just be Algernon, and get rid of the lie of Earnest and Bunbury.

Describe the recognition scene in Act iii.  How is Jack’s discovery of his true identity ironic?

Jack realizes that he is actually related to Lady Bracknell and that he is the nephew of Lady Bracknell and Gwendolyn is his cousin. It is ironic that he turns out to be the brother of Algernon, so when he said that he was earnest in the city and Jack in the country it turned that not only did he actually have a brother but he was also true about the city, because he told Cecily and Miss. Prism that he had to visit his brother who was always getting into scrapes, which Algernon actually is. It was also ironic that when he questioned who his father was and it turned out that his father’s name was Earnest and he is named earnest which he wanted because Gwendolyn wanted to marry someone named Earnest. Everything that Jack said had turned out to be true without him actually realizing. He actually had a brother who lived in the city, his father’s name was Earnest and him being christened earnest was actually the right thing because his name was really Earnest. Wilde showed through the novel and the turn of events, and how no one actually got married that there really isn’t an “importance of being Earnest” and that earnest was really just a web of tangled lies, and earnest was just a trivial thing in order for Jack and Algernon to get Cecily and Gwendolyn, by lying and saying their name was earnest.