o his love, Mabel Chiltern. Jack got his Gwendolyn, Algernon got his Cecily, and all were pleased. The deception earlier in the play was forgotten and left behind in the race for communal happiness. These unrealistic endings appeared to be Wildes wishful thinking as much as an attempt to make the audience question our affinity for the deceivers. While the deceiver went unpunished, somehow we felt that justice had been served. Wilde set the plays up to make the audience empathize with Sir Robert Chiltern--checkered past and all--and with Algernon and his imaginary companion Bunbury. The overly simplistic endings could not have been merely Wildes attempt to force the audience to question that empathy, however; the unpunished deceit seemed to be a wish for his own painless redemption. Unfortunately for the playwright, the resolution of deception was not so easily obtained in his personal life. Wilde, with his excesses and love affair exposed and prison sentence served, died poor and estranged from his wife and children (Holland 175-187). The happy endings he wrote for his plays were unrealistic not only as literature but also in his own enactment of the deception theme. Oscar Wildes plays frequently consisted of social criticisms and parodies; these imitations of life were joined by the theme of deception he drew from his more personal life. Wildes art was often quite accurate in its imitation of life, and through this imitation Wilde voiced his opinion. The critical eye that summed up the absurdity of London society also searched inward to express the fear and hope that abounded from Wildes experience with deception. An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest were not by any means exact accounts of Wildes life; to the contrary, the shared theme and attitude were the aspects of life that Oscar Wilde used to express his situation, as opposed to imitation through shared events and outcomes. Art imitated his life in a much more...
