The Importance of the Fictitious

The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.

–The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

SECOND ACT

SCENE

Garden at the Manor House. A flight of grey stone steps leads up to the
house. The garden, an old-fashioned one, full of roses. Time of year,
July. Basket chairs, and a table covered with books, are set under a
large yew-tree.

Miss Prism. [Shaking her head.] I do not think that even I could
produce any effect on a character that according to his own brother’s
admission is irretrievably weak and vacillating. Indeed I am not sure
that I would desire to reclaim him. I am not in favour of this modern
mania for turning bad people into good people at a moment’s notice. As a
man sows so let him reap. You must put away your diary, Cecily. I
really don’t see why you should keep a diary at all.

Cecily. I keep a diary in order to enter the wonderful secrets of my
life. If I didn’t write them down, I should probably forget all about
them.

Miss Prism. Memory, my dear Cecily, is the diary that we all carry about
with us.

Cecily. Yes, but it usually chronicles the things that have never
happened, and couldn’t possibly have happened. I believe that Memory is
responsible for nearly all the three-volume novels that Mudie sends us.

Miss Prism. Do not speak slightingly of the three-volume novel, Cecily.
I wrote one myself in earlier days.

Cecily. Did you really, Miss Prism? How wonderfully clever you are! I
hope it did not end happily? I don’t like novels that end happily. They
depress me so much.

Miss Prism. The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what

Fiction means.

Cecily. I suppose so. But it seems very unfair. And was your novel
ever published?

Miss Prism. Alas! no. The manuscript unfortunately was abandoned.
[Cecily starts.] I use the word in the sense of lost or mislaid. To
your work, child, these speculations are profitless.