Oscar Wilde’s comedy of manners, The Importance of Being Earnest, offers the reader and viewer a chance to laugh at the deceptive ways that people present themselves. As Lady Bracknell puts it, towards the close of the play, “We live, I regret to say, in an age of surfaces”. (Wilde Act 3, line 164) This fascination with the contradictions between the visible and the concealed aspects of personality and behavior is a reflection of Wilde’s stated goal for the play. He subtitles the play, “A Trivial Comedy for Serious People”; after all, an epigram that itself contains contradiction. Additionally, his obsession with contradictions between personal behavior and social expectations may reflect his own documented struggle with forbidden behavior that brought him to legal disaster. To demonstrate the contrast between socially fabricated identity and the genuine self, Wilde provides each character an opportunity to reveal both their glossy surfaces, and, somehow, in some way, the more real and authentic person existing below the more socially acceptable outer layer. By distributing the deception across the entire cast, he makes a powerful comment that all members of society are equally guilty of having surfaces that differ sharply from their true selves. The most obvious contrast is in the characters of Algernon and Jack. Each has a second identity that allows them to operate free of the censure of those whose good opinion they value. Each espouses one set of values but actually operates by a slightly different one. Jack Worthing, whose name itself suggests a play on the word ‘worthy’, presents two very different surfaces to the world. When in London, he plays the part of a ‘man about town’. In his city identity as ‘Ernest’, he occupies a bachelor apartment, despite owning a full-sized house located on a staid square of family residences, which he rents out to a presumably less dashing elderly lady (Wilde Act 1, line 520), in a neighborhood that remains desirable today. He participates in the social whirl, for example by dining with his friends, and becoming perhaps so intoxicated that he does not recall having left behind a valued cigarette case (Wilde Act 1, line 111). However, he presents a very different character in his country setting. “Jack”, as he has allowed himself to be known in his country identity, is a notably careful guardian to his benefactor’s grand-daughter. Jack encourages Cecily’s study of an admirably challenging range of academic subjects, such as German, Geology, and Political Economy (Wilde Act 2, line 97), all in the enlightening company of Miss Prism (Wilde Act 1, line 195). He also serves his community as Justice of the Peace (Wilde Persons of the Play). In this role, he doubtless encounters legal cases involving the exact sort of youthful indiscretions he himself engages in while in London (e.g., dining out at Algernon’s and getting into other trouble) (Wilde Act 1, Line 210-211). His disconnect between surface and truth is so comprehensive that he is dismayed, at the end of Act 3, “to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth” (Wilde Act 3, line 477-479) Algernon Moncrieff is Jack/Ernest Worthing’s long-time friend, and even more of a useless playboy. He may be sur