What does Cecily do to annoy Gwendolen while they are having tea?

The Importance of Being Earnest is a play by Oscar Wilde, first performed in 1895. The title works on a pun between the adjective "earnest", meaning honest or sincere, and the name Ernest, which the two female protagonists of the play, Cecily Cardew and Gwendolen Fairfax are fond of. Indeed, they have this deep desire of marrying a man named Ernest. The funny thing is, their two suitors, Algernon Moncrieff and Jack Worthing, pretend both to be named Ernest. This lie, which contradicts totally the real meaning of being "earnest", leads to a misunderstanding between Cecily and Gwendolen during the scene 2 of act II of the play. While talking of their respective suitors, both supposedly named Ernest, they tend to think Ernest is just one person,…show more content…
Same thing for line 18 to 20 "The country always bores me to death" ; "Ah ! This is what the newspapers call agricultural depression, is it not ? I believe the aristocracy are suffering very much from it just at present." This witty exchange between the two women is full of sarcasm, and shows how much they are different. While Gwendolen seems to be haughty and boastful regarding what she represents, Cecily is the sarcastic one and doesn't get flustered. Her comments are clearly directed to mock Gwendolen's airs, while remaining polite if you don't get these literally. Cecily's disdain and sarcastic remarks are clearly the comic elements of the extract, especially when the two women come to talk about food. Cecily offers Gwendolen some tea. While Gwendolen declines some sugar and asks for bread and butter, Cecily gives her cake and a cup of tea full of sugar. These goings-on are depicted though stage directions, which give another comic dimension to the extract, for exemple line 26 "[...] puts four lumps of sugar into the cup" and line 30 "cuts a very large slice of cake, and puts it on the tray". These stage direction are in total contradiction with the polite and trivial dialogue. The comic culmination of the extract is when Gwendolen finally realizes that Cecily was making fun of her and…show more content…
The stage direction line 2 indicates that "the presence of the servants exercises a restraining influence, under which both girls chafe". Cecily and Gwendolen know that they must not bicker in front of the hired help because they must stay respectable in any occasion, according to the customs of the time. This is why Merriman's presence has an effect on the scene: both girls are mindful of their manners despite their hatred. Even their anger seems civilized. As a result, the scene becomes ridiculous and at the same time funny and subtle. The two women seem also embarassed by Merriman's presence because there is a "long pause" after he talked and they simply "glare at each other", as if it was impossible for the conversation to be polite. Once Merriman is out of the stage, Cecily and Gwendolen do not hesitate to speak each other the truth about their feelings. Merriman's presence also gives power to Cecily. When he asks her if he should "lay tea here as usual" (line 4), he acknowledges the fact that Cecily is the lady of the house and therefore that she is the one in charge and deserves respect. That is a benefit that Gwendolen does not own in the scene. As a proof, Cecily responds to the servant's question "sternly" and repeats the term "as usual" (line 5) which affirms that she uses her influence as a disguised weapon against

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I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.

Summary

When Algernon appears in the doorway, Jack is furious, not only because Algernon is there, but also because he is disguised as Jack’s own invented, and now presumably dead, brother. Cecily takes Jack’s anger as part of the long-standing ill feeling between the two brothers and insists that Jack shake hands with Algernon, who has evidently been telling her about his good offices toward his poor friend Bunbury. Jack is apoplectic at the idea of Algernon talking to Cecily about Bunbury, but he can do nothing. He cannot expose Algernon without revealing his own deceptions and hypocrisy, and so he has to go along with the charade.

Jack wants Algernon to leave, but Algernon refuses as long as Jack is in mourning. As Jack goes off to change his clothes, Algernon soliloquizes briefly about being in love with Cecily. When she comes back to water the garden, he uses the opportunity to propose to her. He is surprised to discover that Cecily already considers herself engaged to him and charmed when she reveals that her sustained fascination with “Uncle Jack’s brother” had moved her, some months previously, to invent an elaborate romance between herself and Ernest. Cecily has created an entire relationship, complete with love letters (written by herself), a ring, a broken engagement, and a reconciliation, and chronicled it in her diary. Algernon is less enchanted with the news that part of Cecily’s interest in him derives from the name Ernest, which, echoing Gwendolen, Cecily says “inspires absolute confidence.”

Algernon goes off in search of Dr. Chasuble to see about getting himself christened Ernest. Meanwhile, Gwendolen arrives, having decided to pay an unexpected call at the Manor House. She is shown into the garden. Cecily, who has no idea who Gwendolen is or how she figures in Jack’s life, orders tea and attempts to play hostess, while Gwendolen, having no idea who Cecily is, initially takes her to be a visitor at the Manor House. She is disconcerted to hear that Cecily is “Mr. Worthing’s ward,” as Ernest has never mentioned having a ward, and she confesses to not being thrilled by the news or by the fact that Cecily is very young and beautiful. Cecily picks up on Gwendolen’s reference to “Ernest” and hastens to explain that her guardian is not Mr. Ernest Worthing but his brother Jack. Gwendolen asks if she’s sure, and Cecily reassures her, adding that, in fact, she is engaged to be married to Ernest Worthing. Gwendolen points out that this is impossible as she herself is engaged to Ernest Worthing. The tea party degenerates into a kind of catfight in which the two women insult one another with utmost civility.

Toward the climax of this confrontation, Jack and Algernon arrive, one after the other, each having separately made arrangements with Dr. Chasuble to be christened Ernest later that day. Each of the young ladies takes great pleasure in pointing out that the other has been deceived: Cecily informs Gwendolen that her fiancé is really named Jack and Gwendolen informs Cecily that hers is really called Algernon. Shocked and angry, the two women demand to know where Jack’s brother Ernest is, since both of them are engaged to be married to him, and Jack is forced to admit that he has no brother and that Ernest is a complete fiction. Both women are furious. They retire to the house arm in arm, calling each other “sister.” Alone, Jack and Algernon must sort out their differences. Each taunts the other with having been found out and they end up squabbling over muffins and teacake.

Analysis

Jack’s confrontation with Algernon when Algernon appears unexpectedly at the Manor House pits the logic of dandyism against the logic of Victorian morality. Jack bristles protectively when Algernon tells Jack he thinks “Cecily is a darling.” He tells Algernon he doesn’t like him to talk about Cecily that way, but his concern pales against Algernon’s sense of outrage over the inappropriateness of Jack’s clothes. “It is perfectly childish to be in deep mourning for a man who is actually staying for a whole week with you in your house as a guest,” Algernon fumes. “I call it grotesque.” Jack ignores the insults and orders Algernon to leave on the next train, but Algernon then points out that it would be impolite of him to leave while Jack was in mourning. Jack is, of course, not really in mourning, and Algernon has derailed Jack’s elaborate deception. By commenting ironically on Jack’s mourning dress, Algernon is meeting fiction with fiction, buying time for his own agenda by playing into the ridiculous situation Jack has created for himself. Jack may be worried and outraged at Algernon’s interest in Cecily, but Algernon the dandy cares little for those concerns. Instead, he treats everything as part of an elaborate game.

Read more about the dandy as a motif.

Cecily proves herself as capable as Jack and Algernon at creating fictions when she discusses her made-up relationship with Ernest, and in many ways she resembles Gwendolen when she discusses her relationship and love in general. Cecily’s diary is the hard evidence of her own elaborate fiction, as are the letters she has written to herself in Ernest’s name and the ring with the true-lover’s knot she has promised herself always to wear. Like Gwendolen, Cecily has chosen to take charge of her own romantic life, even to the point of playing all the roles, and Algernon is left with very little to do in the way of wooing. When Cecily lays out the facts of her relationship with Ernest for the man she thinks is Ernest himself, she closely resembles Gwendolen. She makes a grand Gwendolen-like pronouncement or two and demonstrates a Gwendolen-like self-consciousness with regard to her diary. She wants to copy Algernon’s compliments into it and hopes he’ll order a copy when it is published. Even her explanation for having broken off the engagement at one point, “It would hardly have been a really serious engagement if it hadn’t been broken off at least once,” echoes Gwendolen’s need for gravitas and propriety. Her unexpected fascination with the name Ernest is the final link between her and Gwendolen. This fascination seems incongruous with what we’ve seen of Cecily thus far, but nonetheless, the revelation lends the play a symmetry and balance.

Read an in-depth analysis of Cecily Cardew.

The two major confrontations at the end of Act II, between Cecily and Gwendolen and between Jack and Algernon, are both rooted in the fictions all four characters have created, believed, or perpetuated. Cecily and Gwendolen squabble over who has the right to consider herself engaged to Ernest Worthing and seek to establish their respective claims on him by appealing to their diaries, in which each recorded the date of her engagement, as though the mere act of having written something down makes it fact. Meanwhile, what they have recorded is fundamentally untrue, since neither woman’s lover is the Ernest he has pretended to be. Both women are fully in the right, but wrong at the same time. Jack and Algernon, for their parts, bicker over who is a better candidate to be christened with the name Ernest, an argument that is just as absurd and fiction-based as the women’s. Jack argues that he never was christened, so he has a perfect right to be. Algernon counters by saying the fact that he’s survived the experience indicates that his “constitution can stand it.” He reminds Jack that Jack’s brother almost died this week from a chill, as though this damns Jack’s own constitution—while, of course, that brother is the fabricated Ernest. These confrontations cannot and will not be decided, since their very subjects essentially do not exist.

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