Annotate: Showing K&U or language and literary features as well as context. Cross reference with rest of text to show wider

In the conversation between Gwendolen and Cecily the topic is centred on family, opinions and it’s put across very formal. Wilde uses language and literature devices to reveal the character and their attitudes. Oscar Wilde has made them so similar to one another because his main interest was satirizing the society that produced women like them. Within the text Gwendolen s character is portrayed she comes across as a forthcoming and very limited woman. The quote ‘Has brought me up to be extremely short sighted’ reveals that she is a narrow minded person, Gwendolen is like this because she has been raised in the city and is polished and sophisticated she has this advantage over Cecily which she enjoys. However Cecily may be younger, less fashionable, and less sophisticated than Gwendolen, but when she wants something she’s determined to get it. Also Cecily thinks very high of herself we know this when she says ‘Oh! Not at all, Gwendolen. I am very fond of being looked at’.

Wilde uses many language devices throughout the text, one of them is lexis. The quote ‘Once a man begins to neglect his domestic duties he becomes painfully effeminate’. Gwendolen uses strong vocabulary because she’s saying when man neglects his duties he becomes lazy and worthless, in the Bracknell family roles have been switched around. In the play Gwendolen takes the man role, she thinks that the man is the one that should be at home ‘The home seems to me to be the proper sphere for the man’.  Also another device is a rhetorical question which is used by Gwendolen, ‘So do you mind me looking at through my glasses’. She does this to engage to the reader, and to see if Cecily is really listening to her because she classes her as ignorant.

In the Victorian society hypocrisy was like a mask because most people comported themselves in overly sincere, in polite ways but cruel attitudes. Wilde portrays the divide in some scenes in the novel, especially between Gwendolen and Cecily there mannerism towards their servants or governesses. The constant changing between truth and lies of earnestness and duplicity shows how messed up Victorian values of honesty and responsibilities are.