By Dr Augustine Tirivangana

IT is no coincidence that the word ‘bunburyism’ alliterates with barbarism.
In the play The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde presents an English society that is far from the ideals of civilisation.
The ancestors of the contemporary English society with all its pretences to civility were worshippers of triviality and hypocrisy.
If you ‘bury buns’ what do you expect to harvest besides decay and disease. Throughout the play, ‘bunburyism’ invokes images of repulsive and repugnant immorality.
It is an embodiment of lies and deception, a complete mirror of sophisticated jungle morality and the complete nemesis of what we now know as Unhu/Ubuntu; and yet it is presented shamelessly as the dominant philosophy in the play.
Jack Worthing, the play’s protagonist, is presented as a pillar of the community in Hertfordshire, where he is guardian to Cecily Cardew, the 18-year-old granddaughter of the late Thomas Cardew, who found and adopted Jack when he was a baby.
He is presented as a man of responsibilities; he is a major landowner and guardian to several tenants, farmers, servants and other employees yet for years he has also pretended to have an irresponsible black-sheep brother named Ernest who leads a scandalous life in pursuit of pleasure and is always getting into trouble of a sort that requires Jack to rush grimly off to his assistance.
We realise too that in fact ‘Ernest’ is merely Jack’s alibi, a non-existent phantom that allows him to disappear for days at a time and live a life of debauchery and sundry.
Ernest is the name Jack uses as a pseudonym in London, which is where he goes on false rescue missions—to pursue scandals which he disapproves of in his imaginary brother.
Jack is in love with Gwendolen Fairfax, the cousin of his best friend, Algernon Moncrieff.
When the play opens, Algernon, who knows Jack as Ernest, has begun to suspect something, having found an inscription inside Jack’s cigarette case addressed to ‘Uncle Jack’ from someone who refers to herself as ‘little Cecily’. Algernon suspects that Jack may be leading a double life, a practice he seems to regard as commonplace and indispensable to modern life, imagine such naturalisation of forgery.
He calls a person who leads a double life a ‘Bunburyist’, after a non-existent friend he pretends to have, a chronic invalid named Bunbury, to whose deathbed he is forever being summoned whenever he wants to get out of some tiresome social obligation.
At the beginning of Act I, Jack drops in unexpectedly on Algernon and announces that he intends to propose to Gwendolen.
Algernon confronts him with the cigarette case and forces him to come clean, demanding to know who ‘Jack’ and ‘Cecily’ are.
Jack confesses that his name isn’t really Ernest and that Cecily is his ward, a responsibility imposed on him by his adoptive father’s will.
Jack also tells Algernon about his fictional brother.
The arrival of Gwendolen and her mother, Lady Bracknell, gives Jack an opportunity to propose to Gwendolen.
Jack is delighted to discover that Gwendolen returns his affections, but he is alarmed to learn that Gwendolen is fixated on the name Ernest, which she says “inspires absolute confidence.”
Gwendolen makes clear that she would not consider marrying a man who was not named Ernest.
In the second Act, the scene shifts to Jack Worthing’s country estate where Miss Prism, Cecily Cardew’s governess, is teaching Cecily in the garden.
The local vicar, Chasuble, arrives and, sensing an opportunity for romance, takes Miss Prism for a walk in the garden.
While they are gone, Algy shows up pretending to be Jack’s wicked brother Ernest.
He is overcome by Cecily’s beauty.
Jack returns early in mourning clothes claiming that his brother Ernest has died in Paris.
He is shocked to find Algy there posing as Ernest.
He orders a horse-drawn carriage to send Algy back to London, but it is too late. Algernon is in love with Cecily and plans to stay there, but because she has always wanted to marry someone named Ernest Algy, like Jack, needs to arrange a rechristening.
One wonders at the impetuosity of the way these characters fall in love.
The way they fall in love and change names like socks shows how superficial this lot is.
They hardly value humanity, let alone love and marriage, which they treat with utmost nonchalance.
Identity is depicted as a matter of choice and indulgence and one wonders what kind of vanhu these are.
Act III takes place in the drawing room of the Manor House, where Cecily and Gwendolen have retired.
When Jack and Algernon enter from the garden, the two women confront them for lying.
Interestingly when the women are flattered, they feel appeased, but still concerned over the issue of the name; and not substance of their lovers.
Their longing for change of names has nothing to do with the symbolism, but indulgence.
Notice that when Jack and Algernon tell Gwendolen and Cecily that they have both made arrangements to be re-christened ‘Ernest’ that afternoon, all is forgiven and the two pairs of lovers embrace.
Of course their love of the name ‘Earnest’ has nothing to do with serious intent or purpose as the author may insinuate; it is hardly backed by any moral inclination.
Meanwhile, Lady Bracknell has followed Gwendolen from London, having bribed Gwendolen’s maid to reveal her destination.
She demands to know what is going on.
Gwendolen again informs Lady Bracknell of her engagement to Jack, and Lady Bracknell reiterates that a union between them is out of the question.
Algernon tells Lady Bracknell of his engagement to Cecily, prompting her to inspect Cecily and inquire into her social connections, which she does in a routine and patronising manner that infuriates Jack.
He replies to all her questions with a mixture of civility and sarcasm, withholding until the last possible moment the information that Cecily is actually worth a great deal of money and stands to inherit still more when she comes of age.
At this, Lady Bracknell becomes genuinely interested; again betraying the snobbery and avarice of this so called nobility class.
The irony is that Lady Bracknell herself does not want to give consent to Jack’s marriage to Gendolyn because of what she considers his low background only realising later through Prism’s account of the lost bag and lost baby that Jack is not the illegitimate child of Miss Prism, but the legitimate child of Lady Bracknell’s sister and, therefore, Algernon’s older brother.
Furthermore, Jack had been originally christened ‘Ernest John’.
All these years, Jack has unwittingly been telling the truth: Ernest is his name, as is Jack, and he does have an unprincipled younger brother — Algernon.
Again the couples embrace, Miss Prism and Dr Chasuble follow suit, and Jack acknowledges that he now understands, “the vital Importance of Being Earnest.”
Yet for all we know now this play celebrates hypocrisy.
The coincidence of comic conclusion lacks moral force.
The truth that remains is that none of the characters has been earnest let alone honest.
They are all bunburyists.