The Importance of Being Earnest: Character Revision

• seemingly responsible and respectable young man
• double life
• Ernest in town 
• Jack in the country - Hertfordhire 
• discovered in a handbag in the cloakroom of Victoria Stationby an old man
• old man adopted and gave him the name Jack
• Jack guardian to his granddaughter - Cecily 
• Jack is in love with his friend Algernon’s cousin - Gwendolen 
• childish brotherly actions with Algernon

• Nephew of Lady Bracknell
• Gwendolen's cousin
• Jacks best friend
• Bunbury his escape from town (bunburying)
• Childish brotherly play with jack
• Thinks marage is a job - unromantic

• in love with Jack - she thinks his name is Ernest
• fixated on the name Ernest  - metaphor for wealthy as it is an upper-middle class name
• she sayse the name "inspires absolute confidence"
• similar to her mother Lady Bracknell
  • strong-minded 
  • speakes with authority
• She shows signs of becoming like her mother (like jack fears)
• a likeable character
  • because what she does 
  • her jugements are so outrageous (inversion of our expectations)

• Jacks ward
• 18 years old 
• Educated (by Miss Prism)
• child of nature -  "as ingenuous and unspoiled as a pink rose" (Algernon says)
• Obsessed with theh name Ernest 
• falls in love with Jacks 'brother' Ernest 
• Inventive - fantasy world
  • Invented her relationship with 'Ernest' by writiing letters to her self
  • her and 'Ernest' are engaged

• Algernon's aunt 
• Gwendolen's mother
• Snobbish
• married to lord Bracknell
• traditional views on marage
• she has a list of "eligible young men"
• doesn't mean to be witty
• through her speach Wilde manages to satirize the hypocrisy and stupidity of the British aristocracy
• values ignorance - she sees it as “a delicate exotic fruit.”

• Cecily's governess
• Romantic feelings for Rev.Chasuble
• cares more about finding her handbag then knowing that the baby she lost is alive

• the reverend on Jacks estate 
• was going to christen Jack and Algernon to the name of Ernest
• Romantic feelings for Miss Prism

Lane

• Algernon's servant 
• only person that knows about Algernons Bunburying (at the start)

(only appears in Act I)

Merriman

• butler on Jacks estate in the country

(appears in Act II and Act III only)