Shoutout to The Importance of Being Earnest for being a feminist play a CENTURY before feminism was officially a thing.
Think about it: the women hold all the cards and all the power in that play, and the men are just running around trying to please them. Jack needs to find a way to get Gwendolen’s MOTHER’s approval of their union; her father doesn’t even show up. Algernon submits wholeheartedly to spending the rest of his life fulfilling Cecily’s fantasy and being the dream man she’s imagined in her head for years. The two protagonists are literally willing to CHANGE THEIR NAMES so they’ll have the name their girlfriends want them to have. And ultimately it’s Miss Prism - the unmarried older woman - who holds the answer to the entire play’s central mystery.
Yes, it’s a comedy, but still, those guys let their ladies wear the pants in their relationships and it is GLORIOUS to see in a play written in the 1890s. Praise Oscar Wilde.
