The Importance of Being Earnest/Victorian Research

By researching the Victorian Age, I learned lots of important information that helped my understanding of the novel The Importance Of Being Earnest. One thing I learned was the large difference between the living standards of the lower and upper class. Since people who were rich usually inherited their wealth from the family, or were born in to royalty, they had exorbant amounts of free time. This ties in with the character's constant priority to pursue pleasure over many other things since they have nothing better to do, as demonstrated by Jack and Algernon, in their conversation with Bracknell, in which she describes smoking and how it gives him "somthing to do", like a job. This was unlike the lower class, which usually lived in sub-standard conditions, and usually were looked down on by the lower class as inferior and unworthy, and most could not marry someone of a higher class, since some of them could not produce parents, or wealth. This was satirized during the book, when Lady Bracknell rejects Jacks proposal to her daughter, supposedly wanting the "best" for her.
Another piece of information that I learned about while researching was marriage. It was very different in the Victorian Age then it is today, mostly because it involved the husband inheriting everything his wife owned, and it was his choice to will her any of it or not. As a result, Wilde, in the book ,believes it is not about love, but more like one big joke. This is evidenced by Jack and Gwendolens relationship, when she tells him that his "other" name is that of rich and intelligent men, and that it is the basis for her love for him, furthering the authors point.