Whether it is a negligent vacationing under the false name of Ernest, escaping the tedious trivialities of domestic life by Bunburying, or simply moments of "mental abstraction" that lead to life altering mistakes, all the characters in The Importance of Being Earnest have potentially devastating secrets of some kind. Coping with the treacherous battlegrounds of the Victorian society has lead each of them to evolve into complex individuals with equally confusing lives, to the point where the lines of reality and unreality blur together into a cacophonous, variegated blur of deceit and absence of truth. No longer is it necessary to judge characters by their earnestness, but rather to the degree in which they thrive upon deception.
For instance, Algernon and Jack both adapt their lives to the ideology of the Bunburyist. However, Jack uses his imaginary brother as a method of attaining the life of hedonistic asceticism that he feels he has been denied. On the other hand, Algernon only plays into the preconceptions of others in pursuit of a woman he feels an outlying attraction to. This, paired with his charming, "Wilde-esque" wit and dashing good looks, make him a more likely protagonist than Jack. Ironically, the inventor of "Ernest" appears to be the least earnest of the play, not necessarily because of his actions (which are reciprocal of Algernon's), but rather because he has the moral foundation to recognize that the life of his concoction is wrong.
In the end, it seems clear that the pressures and stress of moral and societal conventions during the Victorian Era lead the character's to their paths of deceit. In firm recognition that morality does not always lead to happiness, they have brought themselves to paradoxical zeniths of unreality and, when reality returns, cataclysmic lows. Whatever their social standing, occupation, moral foundation or marital status, they all respect and understand the importance of not being earnest.
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