Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest was written during the Victorian Era - a time where there was a great deal of change occurring throughout the British Empire in terms of culture and social values. Half way through the Victorian Era brought about the rise of aestheticism, which separated art from morality. This art was seen in forms of literature, painting, writing, fashion, etc. Many cultural theorists attacked this contemporary culture and claimed it was degenerate – physically and morally. According to Wilde, a notable dress reformer in the late 1870s through the 1880s, fashion was, “a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months” (Maginnis 2002). Wilde was a major part the rise of aestheticism, but his downfall in fame brought that to an end. In 1895, after the first production of The Importance of Being Earnest, Wilde was arrested and sentenced to two years of hard labor for “committing acts of gross indecency with other male persons” as homosexuality was classified as a crime in England at the time. It seems as though Wilde is toying with audiences during the time of the Victorian Era by giving the play a title with more than one meaning; making the title slightly deceptive. Wilde’s text, The Importance of Being Earnest, emphasizes his drive to defy stereotypical gender roles during the time of Victorian Era through the significance of the name ‘Ernest’, as it also brings out an underlying meaning of his homosexuality.