Describe Jacks tone. Does he seem amused with Lady Bracknell, ...

[mrsjacobs44]

Describe Jacks tone. Does he seem amused with Lady Bracknell, nervousabout the interview, or genuinely eager to please her?
 
  What will be an ideal response?

Question 2

How would you characterize Lady Bracknell? What are her chief concernsin interviewing her daughters suitor? Find examples from the text to support your argument.
 
  What will be an ideal response?

[ju]

Answer to Question 1

Jack, as developments make clear, is a very clever and urbane young man, and as such he can hardly help being amused, to some degree, by the formidable personage before him. He is of course eager to please her, but how genuinely so? After all, he is pursuing his own interest, not hers; pleasing her is a means to his end, not an end in itself. And he is clearly nervous about the interview: his first answer is I must admit I smoke, as if he is afraid that the admission will count against him, and he answers her question about whether he knows everything or nothing only after some hesitation, suggesting that he is trying to decide which response is more likely to make a favorable impression on her.

Answer to Question 2

• She is haughty, domineering, and, to say the least, opinionatedall qualities that are conferred and reinforced by her wealth and social position. She is, as the saying goes, certain of certain certainties; in this respect, she might put one in mind of the comment made by the moody Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle about a much more genial and secure contemporary: I wish I were as certain of anything as Tom Macauley is of everything.

Her chief concern about Jack as a potential husband for her daughter is his social acceptabilityhis background, his parentage, his income and holdings, the fashionability of his address. The emphasis is entirely on outward things, such as propriety and property. Her questions are also quite interesting for the kinds of things that seem not to concern her very much, such as his personality, his character, and especially his feelings for Gwendolen.