Women and Irony in Molière's Comedies of Marriage 019888737X, 9780198887379

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Women and Irony in Molière’s Comedies of Marriage

Women and Irony in Molière’s Comedies of Marriage J O H N D. LY O NS

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © John D. Lyons 2023 The moral rights of the author have been asserted All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2023936390 ISBN 978–0–19–888737–9 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198887379.001.0001 Printed and bound in the UK by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A. Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

To the memory of Dan Fallon, and to my students

Preface This is a book about how Molière, France’s most celebrated author of comedies, made something strikingly new out of the traditional comedy plot of thwarted courtship. Though justly celebrated for his mastery of physical comedy and farce, one of Molière’s key moves was to pay attention to the way women could use language. Seventeenth-century France was a time when speaking well became exceptionally important. And in this arena women were the trend-setters. Among the most important places to display taste and social skills were the salons, gatherings presided over by women. Yet women still enjoyed little in the way of rights, particularly regarding a central decision in their lives: the choice of a husband. French regulations of marriage contracts became increasingly restrictive, largely to the detriment of women. To draw attention to their plight, women novelists and essayists presented case studies in how men and women misunderstood one another, how women were coerced to wed, how marriages could become nightmares, and how courtships could fail. Against this fraught social background Molière showed women using one of the few assets they had, their mastery of words, and in particular the rhetoric of irony, to frustrate the plans of fathers, guardians, and other authority figures. My own expertise in the literature of this period is primarily in tragedy and other genres. But it happened that in the fall of 2017, I was teaching a section of an introductory French literature course to a class comprised entirely of women. The fall of 2017 was also the moment when the ‘#MeToo’ movement began to gather momentum. In fact, even though the phrase was used in its feminist sense as early as 2006, it was with a tweet on 15 October 2017, that things accelerated.¹ On 15 October, my students were midway through a reading of Le Misanthrope—in act III.² And the following week we reached the passage where Alceste declares to Célimène, in act IV, scene 3,

¹ Chicago Tribune staff, ‘#MeToo: A Timeline of Events’, chicagotribune.com, accessed 1 May 2019, https://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestvles/ct-me-too-tiin.eline-20171208-litmlstoiT.html. The tweet on 15 October 2017 was by Alyssa Milano. ² Gérard Defaux writes of ‘the incomparable greatness of Le Misanthrope’, in ‘1673 The Comic at Its Limits’, A New History of French Literature, eds. Denis Hollier and R. Howard Bloch (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989), 337.

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… je voudrais qu’aucun ne vous trouvˆat aimable, Que vous fussiez réduite en un sort misérable, Que le Ciel en naissant, ne vous eût donné rien, Que vous n’eussiez ni rang, ni naissance, ni bien, Afin que de mon cœur l’éclatant sacrifice Vous pût d’un pareil sort réparer l’injustice, Et que j’eusse la joie et la gloire, en ce jour, De vous voir tenir tout des mains de mon amour. Yes, I could wish that no one found you charming, That you were reduced to some most wretched state, That heaven had given you nothing at your birth, Not rank, gentility, or property, So that the public offering of my heart Might then repair the injustice of your lot, That I might have the glory and the joy Of making you owe everything to my love. (4.3.1422–1432)

I don’t need to tell you that this wish to see Célimène reduced to total misery and thus to complete dependence on her ‘lover’ Alceste did not meet with great enthusiasm in my class. Alceste’s misogynistic dream of complete dominance, against the background of twenty-first-century reports of men who were able to reduce smart, talented, beautiful women to abjection, did not favour a reading of the play in which Alceste appeared as the heroically virtuous, upright, fighter against corruption that we often see in commentaries on this play. Inspired by my students—as is often the case—I began to wonder why so much commentary on this play consists of an apology for Alceste. Naturally, the defences of Alceste are usually accompanied by various disclaimers: recognitions that he is, after all, the ‘homme aux rubans verts’ (‘man with the green ribbons’) played for laughs by Molière himself; that he is imperfect, despite his good intentions; and that he is, as heroes often are, excessive in his virtuous ambitions. I also began to wonder why Célimène, whom Molière represents in multiple ways as the centre of the action and as the character whose decision is eagerly awaited throughout the play—why Célimène does not receive much more attention from commentators. Rather impulsively, at the end of the semester, I told the students that I would focus my next book on Célimène. And the students are still holding me to that promise. It has happened several times that students from that class, when I

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meet them on campus, ask me, ‘Have you finished your book on Célimène yet?’ Little do they know or appreciate that it took me seven years to write my previous book! Thinking about the characters and situations of Le Misanthrope, I have read and reread the rest of Molière’s work with attention to the way men and women approach a sought after or impending marriage. Célimène, being a widow and apparently emancipated (free to make her own decision about marrying or not marrying), is an exception in the playwright’s comedies. Most often, young women or girls face an arranged marriage not to their liking. It has seemed to me that the sustained attention to women’s disadvantageous position regarding perhaps the single most important decision of their lives is a significant feature of Molière’s comedies, one that has not received deserved attention. Molière was a prolific playwright and the comic star of his own acting company. Of his copious production of about thirty plays (some are incomplete or no longer extant), the present study concerns eleven and concentrates on those—typical of the vast majority of his comedies—in which a young couple attempt to overcome obstacles to their marriage.³ There are a few that portray problems between already married partners and that find their place in this volume.⁴ In some, the plot concerns both tensions between a married parental couple and also the marriage aspirations of a younger generation. About half of those considered in detail are well known and frequently performed and studied in schools and universities. These include L’École des femmes, Le Misanthrope, Les Femmes savantes, Les Précieuses ridicules, and Le Tartuffe. But there are others such as L’École des maris, Don Garcie de Navarre, George Dandin, Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, and Amphitryon that show Molière’s inventive implementation of this important comic motif. My reading throughout follows Molière’s consistent attention to women’s struggle to prevail in their choice of a marriage partner. Will this line of inquiry

³ The attempt of a young couple to marry, most often overcoming parental disapproval, is a central plot element of close to twenty plays, including Le Médecin volant, L’Étourdi, Le Dépit amoureux, Don Garcie de Navarre, L’École des maris, Les fˆacheux, L’École des femmes, Le Tartuffe, L’Amour médecin, La Pastorale comique, Le Sicilien, L’Avare, Le Tartuffe, Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, Les Amants magnifiques, Les Fourberies de Scapin, La Comtesse d’Escarbagnasse, Les Femmes savantes, and Le Malade imaginaire. To these it is appropriate to add Le Misanthrope, where there is no external obstacle to marriage, but where the protagonists are engaged in courtship, which, quite exceptionally, does not lead to marriage. ⁴ Molière’s plays centred on the problems of already-married couples include La Jalousie du barbouillé, Sganarelle, ou le Cocu imaginaire, Amphitryon, and Psyché (written in collaboration with Pierre Corneille). But we should add that Le Tartuffe also concerns a troubled relationship between the father and stepmother of the young woman who seeks to marry her lover. Of these we study only Le Tartuffe and Amphitryon.

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lead towards the conclusion that Molière is in some sense conveying a ‘feminist’ message? Writing about one of the major plays with a plot concerning a forced marriage, Noel Peacock warned against such interpretive leaps. While that comedy is, he writes, ‘rooted in the social reality […] critics have made an unjustifiable deductive leap in attempting to deduce from this Molière’s ideology. For many years, the view that L’École des femmes was a pièce à thèse was critically orthodox. The play was taken by some to be an expression of Molière’s support for the education of all women and for their freedom to choose their marriage partner.’⁵ Is there an ideology or doctrine in these comedies? Or is there perhaps primarily a sympathy? How should we deal with the challenge of meaning in literature? Is the meaning of a work a message that the author intended to convey? This latter position, defended most notably by E. D. Hirsch, runs directly counter to many psychoanalytic and deconstructive approaches, which suppose that an author may (or even must) be unaware of what her or his text is saying.⁶ Harold Bloom’s paradoxical take on meaning is that ‘Reading […] if strong is always a misreading’.⁷ And for Bloom, the strong readings are the ones that matter, the ones that are interesting and that make our experience of the work being read richer. Taking a position closer to Gadamer’s in Truth and Method, I neither suppose that Molière was writing comedies to advocate for social change nor that we need to ‘misread’ the comedies in order to make them matter to us.⁸ Indeed, should we not take into account the possibility that earlier audiences ‘misread’ texts? Here my position joins that recently presented by Michael Call, writing about Molière’s L’École des femmes. Molière’s early adversaries, writes Call, ‘were startlingly (or perhaps even willingly) tone-deaf to what undoubtedly should have been the true scandal of the play: the sexual emancipation of Agnès’.⁹ If the texts of the past, and particularly dramatic texts, are to be significant to a public that is not primarily seeking documentation of the society of several

⁵ Noel A. Peacock, Molière, L’école des femmes, Glasgow Introductory Guides to French Literature (Glasgow: University of Glasgow French and German Publications, 1988), 21. A strong voice for the view that Molière did advocate for a woman’s right to decide about her marriage was Simone de Beauvoir, who wrote ‘Ce n’est pas cependant que Molière soit ennemi des femmes: il attaque vivement les mariages imposés, il demande pour la jeune fille la liberté sentimentale, pour l’épouse le respect et l’indépendance’ (Simone de Beauvoir, Le deuxième sexe (Paris: Gallimard, 1949), 2, 184). ⁶ E. D. Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967). Cf. Hans-Georg Gadamer’s argument (Truth and Method, trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall [New York: Continuum, 1995]). ⁷ Harold Bloom, A Map of Misreading (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975), 3. ⁸ Hans-Georg Gadamer, ‘Transformation into Structure and Total Mediation’, in Truth and Method, trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (New York: Continuum, 1995), 110–134. ⁹ Michael Call, ‘Comedic Wars, Serious Moralists: Genre, Gender, and Molière’s L’École des femmes’, Yale French Studies 130 (2016): 57.

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centuries ago, the texts must have interest for us, ‘The relation of being objectively concerned in something, by having a right or title to, a claim upon, or a share in’ (OED). It seems to me natural that we perceive in Molière’s comedies things that are objectively there—things that may neither have been the author’s primary purpose in writing the text nor have attracted the attention of most readers and viewers in Molière’s day and in subsequent centuries. Molière wrote and performed to earn money. He did so by attracting the attention of the public, both the attention of contemporaries who may have seen the plays as conveying their own social preferences and those who felt attacked by the plays. It is useful to know the social context, the meanings of words, the implied background of laws and institutions of which the fictive characters are supposed to be aware. But it is up to us to connect the dots and to construct a coherent, plausible meaning out of what the playwright has given us. I agree with the view that Will Moore presented long ago: ‘in the plays no conclusions are drawn; a picture is presented’.¹⁰ Yet readers, viewers, academic commentators such as myself, stage directors, production designers, and actors will draw their own conclusions. Individual spectators and readers will have different reactions to each comedy, to each set of assertions by characters, and to the outcomes of the plots as a whole. Moreover, each spectator and reader may have different reactions to what she or he had at previous performances and previous readings, sometimes being surprised at how Molière has altered our perspective or at least given us some distance from our own habitual stance on issues. Michael Hawcroft’s wise observation on the eternally discussed question about which of the principal male characters in Le Misanthrope represents a position favoured by Molière: ‘We do not laugh at the concept that sincerity is a noble ideal and we do not instantly admire the concept of honnêteté. It is only when we realize, whether in the theatre or outside, that Molière has made us laugh at a character who believes in sincerity and made us see him through the eyes of a character who believes in accommodating himself to an imperfect society that we recognize the ambiguities created by the gap between theatrical experience and the complex issues that the play-world has raised.’¹¹ Some readers of this book will know such frequently staged comedies as Le Tartuffe, Les Précieuses ridicules, and Le Misanthrope from theatrical performances or from films of such productions. But many of the plays, such as Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, Don Garcie de Navarre, and George Dandin, are ¹⁰ Will G. Moore, Molière, a New Criticism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962), 51. ¹¹ Michael Hawcroft, Molière: Reasoning with Fools (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 177–178.

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available to most of us only through the printed text. This is my own case, and I should say at the outset that I come to Molière’s work as a scholar of dramatic literature rather than as an expert in performance or the history of staged interpretations. The two approaches to Molière’s comedies—as dramatic literature and as the history and experience of performance—differ, but are not ultimately incompatible or contradictory. Our most ample resource for accessing Molière’s work is the printed text, and this text serves as the basis of staged interpretations. Readers, literary historians, actors, directors, production designers—we all come to an understanding of the comedies by weighing the words in context, empathically imagining the thoughts and feelings of the fictive dramatic figures, and deriving from this experience an idea of what the text can mean for us. Throughout this study I refer frequently to writings by Molière’s contemporaries—to writings by women who brought to light the defects that they saw in relations between men and women and within the legal and religious institutions of marriage, and also to writings by men who combatted women’s growing social influence and advocacy for what we today would call women’s rights. The first audiences of these plays would have been aware of the novels, treatises, church doctrines, laws, plays, and satires that dealt with the themes appearing in Molière’s comedies of marriage. The following exploration of Molière’s comedies may not make readers see him as a feminist author in a recent sense, but it is my hope that these pages will stimulate thinking about the serious issues of human freedom and marriage that Molière so consistently raises in his comedies.

Acknowledgements Quotations from the works of Molière are taken from Molière: Œuvres complètes, edited by Georges Forestier et al. (Paris: Gallimard, 2010). The English translations for Molière’s plays are by Richard Wilbur, unless otherwise noted. In all cases references are indicated by act, scene, and verse numbers, except for plays in prose, for which act, scene, and page number are given. My debt to other scholars who have written about Molière is immense. Let the footnotes and bibliography bear witness to what I have learned from them.

Contents Introduction

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PA RT I S C H O O L S F O R M A R R I A GE 1. L’École des maris: The School of Preterition

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2. L’École des femmes: Idiocy and After

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PA RT I I C O U RT SH I P A N D T H ER A P Y 3. Le Misanthrope: Two Versions of Pastoral 4. Don Garcie de Navarre: Female Reason and Male Pathology

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PA RT I I I F R EED O M T O M A R R Y 5. Les Femmes savantes: Role Reversal and Tyranny

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6. George Dandin: The Marriage Market

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7. Monsieur de Pourceaugnac: Desire as Defence

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8. Les Précieuses ridicules: The Demand for Courtship

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PA RT I V BEI N G M A R R I ED 9. Le Tartuffe: Negotiating for Freedom 10. Amphitryon: The Case of the Perfect Lover Conclusion: Don Juan and Célimène: adversaries or allies? Bibliography Index

177 205 228 241 251

Introduction

In one of the best-known scenes of Molière’s École des femmes, the girl Agnès is ordered by her guardian to chase away the young man who is courting her by throwing a rock at him through her window. The guardian, Arnolphe, who plans to force his ward to marry Arnolphe himself, is at first delighted at her quick compliance. He tells her, ‘Vous avez là suivi mes ordres à merveille’ (‘everything went well, and I’m delighted. / You have obeyed my orders most exactly’). Only later does he learn that Agnès had turned the situation completely upside down. Instead of frightening her suitor away with the rock, she has attached a love letter. The missile carried a missive. What seemed to be a hostile gesture was exactly the opposite. The weak and seemingly ignorant girl outwitted the experienced and manipulative old man. How ironic! But comedy is no laughing matter—not for everyone. When Agnès’s suitor Horace reveals this incident to Arnolphe (without realizing that Arnolphe himself is the cruel guardian), he expects the latter to join him in savouring this wonderful irony. Horace is surprised at the older man’s reaction. ‘Vous n’en riez pas assez, à mon avis’ (‘You’re not laughing enough, I think’). And the audience savours Arnolphe’s discomfiture when the best he can do is say, ‘Pardonnezmoi, j’en ris tout autant que je puis’ (‘Forgive me. I’m laughing as much as I can’).¹ Inside the comic world the fictional characters are often more inclined to weep than to laugh. Those people on stage or in our imagination as we read are full of fear, anguish, anger, perplexity, and usually—for some of them— a final moment of relief. What makes the comedies of Molière’s day different from tragedies is that in the former there is no immediate danger of violent death. In comedies people do not worry much about death but rather about living through years of misery, about losing the chance of a happy marriage, and about being instead shackled to some odious and oppressive partner—or to be more specific, to the husband from hell. Conflicts about the institution of marriage are central to most of Molière’s comedies for reasons that derive, on one hand, from the long-term traditions of the genre of comedy and, on the other hand, from social and political conditions specific to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century France. This book is about irony and marriage. ¹ Molière, Œuvres complètes, ed. Georges Forestier (Paris: Gallimard, 2010), I, 443 (3.4.938–939).

Women and Irony in Molière's Comedies of Marriage. John D. Lyons, Oxford University Press. © John D. Lyons (2023). DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198887379.003.0001

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Marriage in the Plot Most of Molière’s plots concern the attempt of characters to marry or to avoid marrying. This book is about the way irony appears in the struggles that arise between the men in positions of power and the women who need to outsmart them. The pursuit of marriage, hindrances to marriage, and attempts to avoid marriage are important in Molière’s comedies in two respects: first, as a basic structure of the action (the story that unfolds) and the audience’s experience of that action through suspense or empathy with the fictive characters; and second, as the representation of a social institution that was crucial to early modern Europe. Marriage was arguably the most important single event of an institutional nature in the life of a woman in early modernity because there was, with very few exceptions, no escape.² We can also refer to these different but intertwined manifestations of marriage as, on one hand, the quest to marry as dramatic framework, and on the other the quest to marry as representation of a problematic social institution. It is easy to see that Molière’s comedies differ in the degree to which one or the other of these two manifestations prevails—a question of dosage, so to speak, but also a question of the reader’s, spectator’s, stage director’s, or actors’ interpretation and emphasis. In L’École des maris as in L’École des femmes both the plot and the representation of women’s inability to choose a husband are central. There is nothing else going on except, in both cases, a male guardian seeking to force himself upon a girl and the girl’s attempt to escape from this constraint by finding an alternate marriage partner. In Le Tartuffe, on the other hand, Orgon’s plan to force his daughter to marry a man of his choice and to deny his daughter her choice of husband is only one element in a set of plot components and in a representation of contemporary social institutions, namely, the directeur de conscience (lay spiritual advisor) who abuses his ostensible religious function for his own gain. The question of Mariane’s marriage provides the trajectory of the first four acts, and yet it is likely that most readers and spectators will see the play as being ‘about’ religious hypocrisy rather than being about the institution of marriage. In other words, the marriage plot serves as a stage on which other social institutions are displayed and criticized. Consider L’Avare (The Miser), in which the plot builds suspense about the outcome of several wished-for marriages. Will Harpagon marry Mariane, or will she marry her lover Cléante (Harpagon’s son)? Will Harpagon’s daughter Élise escape the awful fate of marrying the ² For the difficulty of exiting from this bond see Wendy Gibson, ‘The Dissolution of Marriage’, in Women in Seventeenth-Century France (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan, 1989), 84–96.

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old man Anselme and will she instead marry Anselme’s son Valère? And yet it is likely that Harpagon’s obsession with money will dominate most readings and performances of this play. In all these cases a certain tradition of literary-dramatic plot structures is at work. It is a truism that comedies end with marriages. Marriage has even been called ‘the only structural invariable of comedy as a genre’.³ Since the Greek New Comedy of Menander and the Latin comedies of Plautus and Terence the formation of a couple and the removal of hindrances to their union has been, with a few exceptions, a central component of the action.⁴ And the same is true with the novel or romance. The Greek novels of Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus recount the many obstacles faced by the protagonists in their quest to be united, delaying their union until the very end. Molière’s contemporary Madeleine de Scudéry’s novels Artamène (1649–53) and Clélie (1654–60) also stretch the pursuit of a final union of the protagonists in marriage until the very end of long separations and adventures. Lafayette’s Princesse de Clèves plays on the traditional expectation of a marriage by ending the story with the surprising non-marriage of the protagonist with the man she loves. And not only seventeenth-century French comedies and novels but also tragedies hold forth the prospect of a marriage (e.g., Pierre Corneille’s Le Cid and Rodogune among others, and Racine’s Andromaque and Phèdre). In short, the plot of lovers’ attempts to form a socially sanctioned couple is the default structure for writers of narratives and plays, even when writers have other thematic concerns they wish to emphasize. In some comedies of the early modern period the marriage quest takes the form of courtship. Courtship is here understood as a situation in which the two potential parties to a marriage (and, of course, this means for the period in question a man and a woman) are able to choose largely for themselves their future spouse. Thus, courtship is a process of mutual discovery and mutual persuasion since the partners must give consent to the union. A good example of this is the plot of Corneille’s Le Menteur (The Liar), where both the male protagonist and the two women who are attracted to him are trying to learn enough about one another to consent to marriage. The term ‘courtship’, though derived from the usages of a court such as a royal court, has been used in English in the sense of amorous pursuit and discovery at least since the time of Shakespeare (OED). In French poetry the act faire la cour is an explicit part of love poetry. The poetic speaker’s explicit aim is to persuade the text’s recipient ³ Georges Forestier, Molière (Paris: Gallimard, 2018), 326. ⁴ Vincent J. Rosivach, When a Young Man Falls in Love: The Sexual Exploitation of Women in New Comedy (London: Routledge, 1998).

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of the sincerity, force, and urgency of his desire, and this address implies that the recipient will be able to grant the supplicant’s request. There are very few examples in Molière’s plays of courtship displayed onstage in this sense, that is, where the two individuals have the power to decide for themselves. These few cases are Don Garcie de Navarre, Le Misanthrope, Le Festin de Pierre (or Don Juan), and to a lesser extent L’École des femmes, in which we see an amorous couple interacting in conversation. What dominates most of his plays, however, is not the lovers’ interaction but instead the search for stratagems to overcome the resistance of the parent or guardian who is hostile to their marriage plans. The affection of the lovers is often simply taken for granted; whatever brought about their mutual attraction seems either to belong to a period before the action of the play began or seems to be a choice of the lesser of two evils. A young person,∧ having no apparent choice other than to marry her elderly guardian or to throw herself into the arms of a younger but almost totally unknown suitor, will choose the latter. This is the premise of L’École des maris, (The School for Husbands).

The Marriage Problem in Early Modern France In L’École des femmes Arnolphe tells his ward Agnès, ‘À choisir un mari, vous êtes un peu prompte. / C’est un autre en un mot que je vous tiens tout prêt’ (‘You’re a little too hasty to chose a husband. / I have another one all ready for you.’ )⁵ In seventeenth-century France, the idea that a young woman would presume to choose a man to marry on the grounds that she loved him was a subversive idea. But it was also an idea that appealed, as least as a fantasy, to a multitude of readers of prose romances and to theatre audiences. We know that Molière’s comedies drew large audiences because of his keen awareness of contemporary social trends. Larry Norman’s important study The Public Mirror: Molière and the Social Commerce of Depiction has shown in detail how close the playwright came to depicting his society with a realism that amused many and outraged others.⁶ If he had based his work on timeless formulas he would have been less exposed to efforts to silence him, but he would also not have had the same power to rouse laughter as well as indignation. In Molière’s day, marriage had an economic and institutional power that is

⁵ Molière, Œuvres complètes, I, 431 (2.5.628–629). ⁶ Larry F. Norman, The Public Mirror: Molière and the Social Commerce of Depiction (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).

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difficult for twenty-first century audiences in Europe or the Americas to grasp.⁷ In many, perhaps most, literary and cinematic depictions of decisions about marriage in the West today, the attraction between the two future spouses seems to be the paramount or even the only factor. Negotiations between parents of the (potential) couple have little or no bearing, and the motivations of the individuals often seem to have no (overt) economic aspect. In Molière’s time, in contrast, marriage was a contractual undertaking organized most frequently by the fathers of the potential future spouses.⁸ And during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the laws regulating the access to marriage became increasingly stringent, to the detriment of men and women seeking to choose a spouse. The choice of marriage partners in almost all cultures had long been based on calculations of economic, social, and political alliances. As one historian of marriage has written, ‘For most of history it was inconceivable that people would choose their mates on the basis of something as fragile and irrational as love and then focus all their sexual, intimate, and altruistic desires on the resulting marriage’.⁹ As early as Herodotus (c. 485–425 BC), it was considered peculiar that a man love his wife.¹⁰ And in the French literary tradition, obstacles to marriage and unhappy marriages are frequent elements of narrative plots since at least the twelfth century.¹¹ Early modern France was a particularly bad place for a young woman or young man to wish to choose a spouse.¹² The Catholic Church had traditionally taken the position that a man and a woman could partake of the sacrament of marriage by simple mutual consent.¹³ The Catholic Church published in

⁷ Ian Maclean, ‘The Question of Marriage’, in Woman Triumphant, Feminism in French Literature, 1610–1652 (Oxford, New York: Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press, 1977), 88–118; Wendy Gibson, ‘The Preliminaries to Marriage’, 41–83 and ‘The Dissolution of Marriage’, 84–96, in Women in Seventeenth-Century France (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan, 1989). ⁸ See Wendy Gibson, ‘The Preliminaries to Marriage’, in Women in Seventeenth-Century France (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan, 1989). ⁹ Stephanie Coontz, Marriage, a History, From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage (New York: Viking, 2005), 15. ¹⁰ Herodotus, wrote of the Lydian king Candaules, ‘this Candaules actually fell in love with his own wife, and being in love, he thought she was the most beautiful of all women’ (The Histories: Norton critical edition, ed. Walter Blanco, trans. Jennifer Tolbert Roberts [New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013], 7 [book 1, section 8]. ¹¹ The Lais of Marie de France include Guigemar (in which a wife is imprisoned), Les Deux amants (in which a father works to prevent suitors from marrying his daughter), Yonec (in which there is a traditional marriage of a much older man and a young woman). Closer to Molière’s day are the tales of Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptaméron, where stories 21 and 40, about Rolandine, show a family preventing a daughter’s marriage. ¹² Claire L. Carlin, ‘Misogynie et misogamie dans les complaintes des mal mariés au XVIIe siècle’, in La femme au XVIIe siècle, ed. Richard G. Hodgson, vol. 138, Biblio 17 (Tu¨bingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 2002), 365–378. ¹³ As Cecilia Cristellon summarizes the tradition, ‘according to marriage law prior to the Council of Trent, the consent of the bride and groom alone was sufficient to create a marriage that was both legally

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1563 the decree Tametsi, approved in one of the last sessions of the Council of Trent, tightening conditions for the validity of marriage by requiring the advance publication of banns (notification of the intention to marry) on three successive Sundays, celebration of the wedding in the parish church of one of the spouses, presence of the parish priest (or his representative) and of at least two witnesses.¹⁴ The Church did not require parental consent. In France, however, beginning in the sixteenth century, the powerful legal profession (the legists) moved to deprive individuals of the right to choose a spouse. Sarah Hanley describes this historic change as the ‘Family–State compact’, through which legists ‘remolded the social body by constructing and consolidating family networks, which required control over family formation’. This seems in part to be a nationalist movement asserting French independence from the Italian-controlled Catholic Church with ‘innovative French laws that superseded Canon laws and regulated alliances in terms of family interests, not those of church or children’.¹⁵ Even though French Catholics notionally accepted that marriage was a sacrament and that its validity depended on the mutual consent of the partners, there was a difference between Catholics in France and Italy in that French bishops took the position, in conjunction with the Parlements, not to ratify the decrees of the Council of Trent regarding marriage. French institutions aligned with parents against children and against Italian influence.¹⁶ The constriction of individual freedom to marry progressed by steps. The edict of 1556 outlawed marriages without parental consent and conferred on the notion of ‘clandestine marriage’ the meaning of ‘marriage without parental consent’.¹⁷ The 1556 edict also lengthened the age of minority from twenty to thirty years for males and from seventeen to twenty-five years for females. This constituted a breath-taking shift of power from young people, who had previously been considered adult, to their fathers. A royal ordinance of 1579 (édit de Blois) required even widows under twenty-five years to obtain consent and sacramentally valid, requiring neither the presence nor the participation of priest, notary, or witnesses’ (‘Marriage and Consent in Pre-Tridentine Venice: Between Lay Conception and Ecclesiastical Conception, 1420–1545’, The Sixteenth Century Journal 39, no. 2 [2008]: 389). ¹⁴ Gary Ferguson, ‘Baroque Sexualities’, in The Oxford Handbook of the Baroque, ed. John D. Lyons (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), 699. ¹⁵ Sarah Hanley, ‘Engendering the State: Family Formation and State Building in Early Modern France’, French Historical Studies 16, no. 1 (1989): 8–9. ¹⁶ As Haase-Dubosc writes, ‘Les décrets du Concile ne furent jamais enregistrés en France par le Parlement car les juristes gallicans les jugeaient insuffisamment sévères: ils ne protégeaient pas assez les droits des familles de choisir leurs alliances matrimoniales’ (Ravie et enlevée: de l’enlèvement des femmes comme stratégie matrimoniale au XVIIe siècle [Paris: Albin-Michel, 1999], 111). ¹⁷ Léon Duguit, ‘Étude historique sur le rapt de séduction’, Nouvelle revue historique de droit français et étranger 10 (1886): 587–625.

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from parents to remarry.¹⁸ In other words, a married woman, who had previously escaped from her parents’ control by being subordinated instead to her husband, reverted effectively to the status of child upon her husband’s death. This 1579 ordinance forbad notaries from recording marriage rituals by the exchange of vows between spouses unless a priest was present, required at least four witnesses, and required priests to check the social status of people wishing to marry. The consequences of violations of these laws were severe. According to the 1556 edict, children who undertook to marry without parental consent could be deprived of assets already transferred to them (donations) and could be disinherited from any future expected legacy.¹⁹ The 1579 ordinance extended this punishment to widows under twenty-five and linked clandestine marriage with the crime of rapt, which was punishable by death for the male partner.²⁰ This closed a loophole for couples who sought to elope. A woman might be consensually enlevée (abducted) by her lover in order to use the situation to force the parents’ hand on the grounds that the parents would fear a loss of reputation through the ‘disgrace’ of their daughter, as Danielle Haase-Dubosc has shown in her study Ravie et enlevée: de l’enlèvement des femmes comme stratégie matrimoniale au XVIIe siècle. The title of Haase-Dubosc’s book (carried away and abducted: the abduction of women as matrimonial strategy) goes to the core of a practice that must seem, for people of the twenty-first century, to be from another universe. The idea that a woman could be seized by a man, not simply as a way of asserting his belief in his own sexual entitlement, but as a step towards a consensual marriage, is today difficult to imagine. Rape (viol, as distinct from abduction) occurs sometimes within marriage, and it occurs with overwhelming frequency in an episodic way, without relation to marriage. But to consider abduction (rapt) as a strategy to achieve a marriage that is recognized both by the Church and by civil authorities requires modern readers to take very seriously the way French women were deprived of legal autonomy (or maturity) in early modern France. And it also provides us with a powerful example of the way that parents viewed marriage simply as a device for transfers of wealth, social ascension, and formation of political alliances. The best known and extensively documented case of consensual abduction for the purpose of marriage is that of Catherine Meurdrac, later Madame de ¹⁸ François de Boutaric, Explication de l’ordonnance de Blois (Toulouse: G. Henault, 1745), 68. ¹⁹ Henri II, Edit du roy Henri II. touchant les mariages clandestins, accessed 19 February 2022, https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k9782664b. ²⁰ Hanley, 10.

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La Guette, in 1634, who wrote an account of her use of this strategy to force her father to agree to let her marry the man she loved.²¹ Consensual abductions figure in dramatic works of the time. Haase-Dubosc has studied one such case, Pierre Corneille’s comedy La Veuve (The Widow, 1632), and several of Molière’s comedies also represent consensual abductions, such as the protagonist’s escape from her guardian in L’École des maris (1661) and a similar but less successful attempt in L’École des femmes (1662). Haase-Dubosc succinctly presents the two ways to consider the practice of abduction with view to marriage: ‘First of all, [the abductor] commits an infraction by misusing to his advantage the rules for exchange of women guaranteeing […] the transmission of power among men. But abduction may also, by opposing family practice of arranged weddings, realize an aspiration: the aspiration towards empowerment of individuals—men and women—for the choice of their own partners.’²² Among the most famous examples of a woman’s struggle to choose her own husband is that of the Grande Mademoiselle (Anne-Marie-Louise d’Orléans), cousin of Louis XIV. The king forbad her marriage to Lauzun, then finally authorized it, but the Grande Mademoiselle finally managed in her mid-forties to marry the man she loved, then discovered that he really merely sought access to her immense fortune.²³

The Battle against Pleasure As a sacrament, marriage was promoted energetically by the Catholic Church. Yet marriage was also a problem for Catholics because it was the most dangerous sacrament, the sacrament which offered endless occasions to commit mortal sin, which condemned the sinners to eternal damnation. For the Church, the paradox was that the absolute and obligatory core of marriage, sexual intercourse between the two spouses, was shameful and disgusting, and, if enjoyed, was sinful. François de Sales, who wrote to advise lay women and men, had a good deal to say about marriage. In one of the great all-time bestsellers of Catholic pastoral literature, his Introduction à la vie dévote (1609), he warned his readers of the dangers of marital sex that was enjoyed. He begins his chapter ‘De l’honnêteté du lit nuptial’ (‘On the decency of the nuptial bed’) by saying, ‘Le lit nuptial doit être immaculé, comme l’Apôtre l’appelle, ²¹ Haase-Dubosc, Ravie et enlevée, 107–133. Catherine Meurdrac de La Guette, Mémoires de Madame de La Guette, ed. Micheline Cuénin (Paris: Mercure de France, 1982). ²² Haase-Dubosc, Ravie et enlevée, 7. ²³ See Christian Bouyer, La Grande Mademoiselle: Anne Marie Louise d’Orléans, Duchesse de Montpensier (Paris: A. Michel, 1986).

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c’est-à-dire exempt d’impudicités et autres souillures profanes’ (‘The nuptial bed should be immaculate, as the Apostle says, that is, free from unchastity and other profane defilements’).²⁴ While enjoyment of any sensory experience is morally problematic at best, there was something particularly disgusting about sex: ‘Il y a quelque ressemblance entre les voluptés honteuses et celles du manger, car toutes deux regardent la chair, bien que les premières, à raison de leur véhémence brutale, s’appellent simplement charnelles.’ (‘There is some resemblance between the shameful pleasures and those of eating, because both concern the flesh, although the first, because of their brutal force are called carnal.’ )²⁵ Sex in marriage was required, certainly, and the participants should even ‘essayer de témoigner de l’appétit, aussi le devoir nuptial doit être toujours rendu fidèlement, franchement, et tout de même comme si c’était avec espérance de la production des enfants’ (‘try to show some appetite; hence the conjugal duty should always be carried out faithfully, frankly, and all the same as if it is with the hope of producing children’).²⁶ Having sex too often and especially with dérèglement (disorder) constitutes at least venial sin (the kind that does not damn the person eternally but sends him or her to purgatory): le commerce nuptial […] est néanmoins en certains cas dangereux à ceux qui le pratiquent; car quelquefois il rend leurs aˆmes grandement malades de péché véniel, comme il arrive par les simples excès, et quelquefois il les fait mourir par le péché mortel, comme il arrive lorsque l’ordre établi pour la production des enfants est violé et perverti, auquel cas, selon que l’on s’égare plus ou moins de cet ordre, les péchés se trouvent plus ou moins exécrables, mais toujours mortels.²⁷ marital interaction … is nonetheless in certain cases dangerous to those who take part; for sometimes it makes their soul gravely sick with venial sin, as happens by simple excess, and sometimes it causes them to die of mortal sin, as happens when the established order for the production of children is violated and perverted, in which case, depending on how much one strays from the proper order, sins are more or less odious, but always mortal.

For a man or a woman or a man even to think about sex with a spouse was ‘abject et infˆame’ (‘abject and infamous’), and because de Sales does not dare to ²⁴ François de Sales, Introduction à la vie dévote, in Œuvres, ed. André Ravier, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1969), 240. ²⁵ Sales, 240. ²⁶ Sales, 241. ²⁷ Sales, 241–242.

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directly represent the kinds of thoughts about which he is writing, he uses the extended simile of eating. People are not supposed to think about food except at the very moment of eating: ‘C’est une vraie marque d’un esprit truand, vilain, abject et infˆame de penser aux viandes et à la mangeaille avant le temps du repas, et encore plus quand après icelui on s’amuse au plaisir que l’on a pris à manger, s’y entretenant par paroles et pensées, et vautrant son esprit dedans le souvenir de la volupté que l’on a eue en avalant les morceaux…’ (‘It is the hallmark of a criminal, nasty, abject, and infamous mind to think of food and eating before mealtime, and even more after the meal when one lingers with the pleasure that one experienced while eating, talking, and thinking about it, and wallowing with one’s mind in the remembrance of the sensual enjoyment that one had while swallowing each bite…’).²⁸ The obscenity of sex must have seemed unspeakable to de Sales for him to need to convey it by thus describing the obscenity of food. The author complicates the comparison by introducing the example of the elephant, reputed for its chastity. The elephant engages in sex very rarely, does so covertly, and afterwards washes away the traces of the filthy activity. The male elephant ‘aime tendrement celle qu’il a choisie, avec laquelle néanmoins il ne parie que de trois ans en trois ans, et cela pour cinq jours seulement et si secrètement que jamais il n’est vu en cet acte; mais il est bien vu pourtant le sixième jour auquel avant toutes choses il va droit à quelque rivière en laquelle il se lave entièrement tout le corps, sans vouloir aucunement retourner au troupeau qu’il ne se soit auparavant purifié’ (‘makes love tenderly with the female he has chosen, with whom he mates however only once every three years, during a period of five days and so secretly that he is never seen in that act; but he is seen on the sixth day when his highest priority is to go to some stream where he washes his body completely, never wishing to rejoin the herd before he is entirely purified’).²⁹ Eating and copulating are both shameful and impure necessities that Christians should banish from their thoughts.³⁰ Leaving the impurity behind, married people should ‘s’en purifier au plus tôt, pour par après avec toute liberté d’esprit pratiquer les autres actions plus pures et relevées’ (‘cleanse themselves from it, as quickly as possible, so that afterwards they can carry out other pure and more elevated actions with

²⁸ Sales, 242. ²⁹ Sales, 243. See Milad Doueihi, ‘Elephantine Marriage: The Elephant and Devout Table Manners’, MLN 106, no. 4 (1991): 780–792. ³⁰ And yet sexual pleasure was for males, considered not only a right but even a necessity: ‘il est impensable, dans la culture du temps, qu’un homme marié demeure continent plus de quelques jours—et il ne peut l’être que pour des raisons de force majeure (voyage, maladie)’ (Maurice Daumas, ‘La sexualité dans les traités sur le mariage en France, XVIe–XVIIe siècles’, Revue d’histoire moderne contemporaine 511, no. 1 (2004): 7).

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a free mind’).³¹ Michel Jeanneret has described this moment in French culture as a ‘vast operation of repression’ leading to a ‘collective neurosis of guilt’.³² The vehement denunciation of pleasure—including the pleasure of thought—by Church authorities encountered strong resistance from many quarters. The two cultural currents that favoured happiness and pleasure are often separated roughly into libertins and précieuses, women intellectuals mocked in Molière’s day and associated with the culture of galanterie.³³ Free-thinkers or libertins, sceptical about Christian dogma, generally viewed happiness and pleasure as positive goods. The term libertin is usually associated with prominent men, though there was the important historical female exception of Ninon (Anne) de Lenclos (1620–1705), a friend of Molière and advocate of a refined hedonism.³⁴ While the libertins were often, and perhaps calumniously, described as seeking quick and purely sensual pleasure, such haste in consummating sexual desire was not often considered to be the vice of women authors questioning coerced marriages, constraints on courtship, and even the need for women to marry at all. Instead, women were criticized and mocked for delaying the formation of couples and for not accepting parental choices of husbands. Whatever the distinctions among the stock types of ‘problem’ women—such as coquette, prude, précieuse—they had in common a resistance to male entitlement. Moreover, women were (as they often still are) blamed for exercising power over men when the women were the objects of male desire.³⁵ Considered in terms of their shared aspirations, libertins and précieuses shared the positive valuation of pleasure and called traditional marriage into question. One of the challenges of writing about the situation of women in seventeenth-century France is the issue of terminology for referring to those women who played an active role in shaping literary culture and who, in most cases, were critical of women’s disempowerment in decisions about whether they would marry and, if they did, whom they would marry. Historically attested terms related to the culture such women favoured, such as galant and ³¹ Sales, 243. ³² Michel Jeanneret, Eros rebelle: Littérature et dissidence à l’A ge Classique (Paris: Le Seuil, 2003), 16. ³³ Faith Beasley finds the combat against pleasure (and against literary works written by women) in Valincour’s Lettres à Madame la Marquise ∗∗∗ sur le sujet de la Princesse de Clèves: ‘Valincour … rejects pleasure as a literary value by associating it with negative consequences for society at large’ (Salons, History, and the Creation of Seventeenth-Century France: Mastering Memory [Aldershot; Burlington, VT: Ashgate Pub., 2006], 118). ³⁴ The later literary figure of the Marquise de Merteuil in Choderlos de Laclos’s Liaisons dangereuses is a male fiction about the intellectual female libertine (1782). ³⁵ Larry Riggs, Molière and Modernity: Absent Mothers and Masculine Births (Charlottesville, Virginia: Rookwood Press, 2005), 15–23.

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précieux, are subject to criticism, particularly regarding the latter. Women did not leave documents in which they claim the term précieuse, which was instead used freely by male writers attacking or mocking women’s achievements and aspirations. Yet there is no doubt that there was a movement towards the emancipation of women and that this movement was designated, historically, by its adversaries under the term précieuse. The most vehement of attacks on the use of the term comes from Domna C. Stanton.³⁶ She notes ‘an incapacity to pinpoint the literature of Preciosity in the seventeenth century. This problematic results from a more fundamental inability to locate the referent that corresponds to an arbitrarily created sign. For seventeenth-century texts make no mention of a précieux style or school, much less of a précieux man or poet.’ Yet whether there were males referred to as précieux is somewhat beside the point, since the (disparaging) term précieuse did exist. To argue against the existence (or the perception) of a phenomenon because of the absence of a term is not unproblematic. Was there misogyny in the seventeenth century? Surely there was, as we can see in such works as Le portrait de la Coquette ou la lettre d’A ristandre à Timagène.³⁷ And yet the the word misogyne did not appear in a French dictionary until 1873.³⁸ Women grouped around writers such as Madeleine de Scudéry and MarieMadeleine de Lafayette seem to favour courtship over marriage, strongly advocate women’s right to choose suitors and husbands and leave little room for parental imposition of marriage as a familial duty. Scudéry’s novels, and in particular the ten-volume Clélie, histoire romaine (1654–60), served as a manual for polite interactions between the sexes, teaching men to know how to be agreeable social partners and lovers. As George Forestier writes, ‘A ll the ladies of the court knew Clélie, the gallant novel par excellence, almost by heart.’³⁹ While Scudéry’s novels shed a positive light on women’s happy choice of lover (but significantly by delaying marriage), Lafayette came to the question from another angle, showing the misery of women whose choice of spouse was made for them, as in La Princesse de Montpensier (1662) and later in La Princesse de Clèves (1678). Other women went further. Gabrielle

³⁶ ‘The Fiction of Préciosité and the Fear of Women’, Yale French Studies, no. 62 (1981): 107–134, 109. ³⁷ Félix de Juvenel de Carlencas, Le portrait de la Coquette ou la lettre d’A ristandre à Timagène (Paris: C. de Sercy, 1659). ³⁸ The first French dictionary to list the word misogynie was Littré’s Dictionnaire de la langue française in 1873, along with misogyne. Misogyne seems first to have appeared in print in 1863 in Théophile de Gautier’s Le Capitaine Fracasse. ³⁹ Forestier, Molière, 252.

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Suchon advocated for a woman’s right not to marry at all.⁴⁰ Male authors who glorified a woman’s freedom to choose a husband independently fell afoul of Church and state. The play that has been enshrined in the literary canon as the ‘French Romeo and Juliet’, Le Cid (1637), was censured by the newly created French Academy for its portrayal of the woman protagonist Chimène as a ‘fille trop dénaturée’ (an unnatural or depraved daughter) and as scandalous or even depraved: ‘ses mœurs sont du moins scandaleuses, si en effet elles ne sont dépravées’ (‘her conduct is at least scandalous, perhaps even depraved’).⁴¹ The most authoritative speaker on behalf of the French Catholic Church, Bishop Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, considered Le Cid worse than the coarsest sexual stories or poems precisely because it portrayed the love of two people wishing to marry as something beautiful and even noble.⁴² The fault of the theatre, in an age when marriage was seen as a duty, not a choice, was to ‘allumer de telles flammes, qui excitent la jeunesse à aimer, comme si elle n’était pas assez insensée’ (‘ignite such fires, which incite youths to love, as if youth were not already unreasonable enough’).⁴³ Socially libertins and galants are indistinguishable, because libertins were often participants in salons, excellent writers, and close associates and family members of women who were religiously conservative, even to the point of being considered amies de Port-Royal, and hence allied with the most rigourously moralistic of Catholic groups. We need only think of BussyRabutin, cousin and correspondent of Marie-Chantal de Sévigné, who was a member of the Académie Française. Yet he was also the author of scandalous libertine writings about the sexual life of his time, including the Histoire amoureuse des Gaules. One of the most notorious of his exploits was the abduction of the wealthy and pious widow Madame de Miramion, perhaps simply as a way of getting control of her wealth.⁴⁴ An orgy in which he participated during Holy Week in 1659 was one of the reasons he was exiled to his estate in Burgundy.⁴⁵ In an apparent paradox two currents of thought that may appear ⁴⁰ Gabrielle Suchon, Du célibat volontaire, ou, La vie sans engagement, 1700. Tome premier, ed. Séverine Auffret (Paris: Indigo & côté-femmes éditions, 1994). ⁴¹ Jean Chapelain, ‘Les Sentiments de l’Académie Françoise sur la tragi-comédie du Cid’, in Œuvres de Pierre Corneille, ed. Charles Marty-Laveaux, vol. 12, Les Grands Ecrivains de la France (Paris: L. Hachette et Cie, 1862), 472. See Michel Jeanneret, ‘Le Cid: impudique et extravagant’ in Eros rebelle: Littérature et dissidence à l’ˆage Classique (Paris: Le Seuil, 2003), 227–249. ⁴² Jacques Bénigne Bossuet and Francesco Caffaro, L’église et le théˆatre, eds. Charles Urbain and Eugène Levesque (Paris: B. Grasset, 1930), 175–182. See also Beasley, Salons, History, and the Creation of Seventeenth-Century France, 113. ⁴³ Bossuet, 179. ⁴⁴ Haase-Dubosc, Ravie et enlevée, 219–266. ⁴⁵ Jacqueline Duchêne, Bussy-Rabutin (Paris: Fayard, 1992), 139–142.

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to be antagonistic to each other have the common goal of empowering individuals to make their own decisions about marriage, in defiance of state, Church, and family authority. Others who moved among the world of respected women of learning while also being considered libertins or friends thereof are Jean de La Fontaine and François Bernier, both friends and protégés of Marguerite de La Sablière. In the seventeenth century the threat to the established order from galants/galantes, précieuses, and libertins did not go unnoticed.⁴⁶ Émile Magne commented a century ago on one of Molière’s contemporaries who made this association: Félix de Juvenel, author of Le portrait de la coquette ou La lettre d’A ristandre à Timagène (1659). Juvenel, Magne writes, ‘combats in the name of family tradition and religion the doctrines of female emancipation that the précieuses advocated. Through Juvenel the question of coquetterie, despite its apparent frivolity, acquires a philosophical importance: it was thereafter linked closely to the great struggle between the devout life and libertinage.’⁴⁷ What many of these contemporaries did have in common was either scepticism about marriage or simple non-participation in this institution. Among well-known women of the period there are those who did not marry, such as Madeleine de Scudéry, Catherine Bernard, Marie-Catherine Desjardins (who was never legally married but took the name of her deceased lover and became known as Madame de Villedieu), and Gabrielle Suchon; those who did not remarry after being widowed, such as Madame de Sévigné; and those who lived separated from their husbands, such as Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville (Madame d’Aulnoy), Madame de Lafayette, and Madame de La Sablière. The most direct and detailed proposal for giving women a true choice about marriage is Gabrielle Suchon’s Du célibat volontaire (1700). Suchon was a tenyear younger contemporary of Molière, and although her best-known work about marriage (or the freedom from marriage) was published long after the playwright’s death, she had put her avoidance of marriage into practice long before. As Derval Conroy writes of Du célibat volontaire, ‘Suchon sets out to sketch a “troisième voie” for women, outside the constraints of marriage and of the convent, a type of “vie neutre”.’⁴⁸ Suchon had entered a convent, then ⁴⁶ With the passage of time and in particular in the eighteenth century, distinctions between galanterie and libertinage faded. See ‘Galanterie et libertinage’, in Alain Viala, La France galante: essai historique sur une catégorie culturelle, de ses origines jusqu’à la Révolution (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2008), 449–476. ⁴⁷ Émile Magne, Ninon de Lenclos (Paris: Nilsson, 1925), 172. ⁴⁸ Derval Conroy, ‘Society and Sociability in Gabrielle Suchon: Towards a Politics of Friendship’, Early Modern French Studies 43, no. 1 (2 January 2021): 61.

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left, and went to Rome, where she requested and received papal permission to renounce her vows. Many women as well as men entered religious communities (convents, monasteries) for reasons other than religious zeal, while for others, the religious life offered an alternative to marriage and (for women) a sphere of relative freedom from direct male domination. A particularly notable example of a woman fleeing her family to enter a convent was Blaise Pascal’s sister Jacqueline Pascal, who entered the convent of Port-Royal despite the objections of her father and brother.⁴⁹

Irony, as Weapon against Unwanted Marriage Over the centuries views of the depiction of women in Molière’s comedies have varied. Does he mock women’s aspirations to autonomy and to equal standing with men? Or was he ‘profeminist’? But there is one recurrent characteristic that seems beyond dispute. The comedies have in common that they represent in a positive light women’s quest to avoid forced marriages and to choose partners with a view to happiness and pleasure. The main discursive instrument that women characters and their male allies use within the plays is irony, and the playwright also makes frequent use of the construction known as dramatic irony. What is irony? Since the current study deals with irony in Molière’s comedy, it is important to begin by clarifying what is meant. And this is no easy task. Since antiquity writers have described ironists at work, or at least the stance of the eiron, but, as one writer on the topic has noted, ‘we have no adequate treatment in antiquity of “Irony” as such’.⁵⁰ Wayne Booth begins his important study A Rhetoric of Irony with the (perhaps ironic) understatement ‘There is no agreement among critics about what irony is.’⁵¹ A lifetime would not suffice to read all that has been written on the topic. The MLA bibliography currently lists just under 15,000 items dealing with ‘irony’, and other bibliographic searches produce lists in the tens of thousands.⁵² If the number of studies of ⁴⁹ See John J. Conley, The Other Pascals: The Philosophy of Jacqueline Pascal, Gilberte Pascal Périer, and Marguerite Périer (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2019). For examples of women forced into convents (forced ‘claustration’ or ‘monachization’) see Anne Jacobson Schutte, ‘Between Venice and Rome: The Dilemma of Involuntary Nuns’, The Sixteenth Century Journal 41, no. 2 (2010): 415–439. ⁵⁰ J.A.K. (James Alexander Kerr) Thomson, Irony: An Historical Introduction (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1926), 4. ⁵¹ Wayne C. Booth, A Rhetoric of Irony (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), ix. ⁵² The Harvard University library catalogue lists 4749 books dealing with irony (in 2022). The MLA International Bibliography lists at the same time 14,811 items, and WorldCat lists 73,121 items for the keyword ‘irony’.

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irony exceeds the grasp of any single reader, the meanings attributed to the term are almost without limit. Indeed, American New Criticism has been said to equate ‘irony with poetry as such’.⁵³ And it has also been said that for Paul de Man, ‘irony practically coincides with the notion of deconstruction’.⁵⁴ If irony becomes identical with poetry and with deconstruction, what boundaries can be drawn around it? As Booth so cogently observes, ‘Once a term has been used to cover just about everything there is, it perhaps ought simply to be retired; if it can apply to everything, it can hardly be rescued for everyday purposes.’⁵⁵ Perhaps a ‘non-poetic’ utterance could be ‘non-ironic’ (provided that it not be deconstructed), but all of Molière’s comedies fall within the range of ‘poetic’ (that is, literary) writing. At this level of comprehensiveness and abstraction everything in Molière’s theatre would be ironic, and within that mass it would be impossible to trace boundaries. The concept of irony would include everything, and thus … nothing. Let us, however, try to salvage the term for our limited, empirical purpose. Without attempting here to build a universally applicable theory of irony, we can locate some relatively simple notions that reappear frequently in writings about irony. A definition in the OED reads: ‘The expression of one’s meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect; esp. (in earlier use) the use of approbatory language to imply condemnation or contempt (cf. sarcasm n.).’ The first edition of the dictionary of the French Academy (1694) gives a similar definition, but with a clue about how irony can be recognized in discourse: ‘Rhetorical figure with which one attempts to convey the opposite of what one says, and which consists almost entirely in the tone of voice and pronunciation’. This understanding of irony as signifying the opposite of the normal or literal meaning of the words used is stable over a long period. A synonym for irony in this sense is antiphrasis.⁵⁶ At the very beginning of the sixteenth century we find the practice of irony denounced as a sin: ‘Suche synne is named yronie, not that the whiche is of grammare, by the whiche a man sayth one and gyueth to vnderstonde the contrary.’⁵⁷ These definitions have much in common. First, the distinction between what is ‘said’ and ‘what is meant’ (or given to be understood). Although it could be understood in terms of a single word (‘good’ said ⁵³ Alex Preminger and TerryV.F. Brogan, eds., The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993), 635. ⁵⁴ Preminger and Brogan, 635. ⁵⁵ Booth, A Rhetoric of Irony, ix. ⁵⁶ OED: ‘A figure of speech by which words are used in a sense opposite to their proper meaning’. The OED cites Thomas More’s Debellacyon Salem & Bizance (1533): ‘The fygure of ironye or antiphrasis’. ⁵⁷ The OED gives this quotation from Wynkyn de Worde, Ordynarye of Crysten Men (1502).

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of something the speaker considers ‘bad’), it is more likely to be the apparent meaning of a whole utterance and what the speaker wishes to convey to the hearer. It would be, in short, a ‘lie’ except that the speaker expects the intended receiver (or at least one in a group of potential receivers) to interpret the meaning by reversal. Second, it is worth insisting on the perhaps obvious point that the meaning of an ironic utterance is not simply different from the conventional, apparent, or literal sense of what is said but is entirely contrary. If irony were described as the practice by which the literal sense of an utterance is merely different from the intended meaning, irony would disappear into the vast field of ‘figurative’ language and would be interchangeable with metaphor, allegory, metonymy, and other figures.⁵⁸ What we have been describing up to this point is often called ‘verbal’ irony, and there are other uses of the word for concepts such as ‘romantic irony’, ‘tragic irony’, ‘dramatic irony’, to name a few. Booth notes that ‘Before the eighteenth century, irony was one rhetorical device among many, the least important of the rhetorical tropes.’⁵⁹ Booth devotes the first chapter of his important A Rhetoric of Irony to establishing criteria for a limited type of irony which he calls ‘stable irony’ (and in the present study the term ‘verbal irony’ approximates this type). For viewers and readers of early modern drama, the application of the term irony to the huge semantic expanse that is romantic irony can be vertiginous and confusing. Perhaps it is not accidental that writings about romantic irony appeared at precisely the end of the ancien régime (at the time of the French Revolution). Schlegel wrote ‘there are ancient and modern poems which breathe throughout, in their entirety and in every detail, the divine breath of irony’.⁶⁰ Such euphoric outpourings are not likely to be useful for understanding Molière. It is worth noting that much of which is written in an effort to define or theorize irony supposes that the parties to an ironic utterance—the person saying something and the person hearing the utterance—are the author and reader of a literary text. In this vein Booth gives ‘Four Steps of Reconstruction’ to help the reader determine whether a given text or passage in a text constitutes a ‘stable irony’.⁶¹ However useful this is for reading essays or novels, it has no

⁵⁸ Deirdre Wilson and Dan Sperber argue that ‘the notions of “literal meaning” and “what is said” play no useful theoretical role in the study of language use, and that the nature of explicit communication will have to be rethought’ (‘Truthfulness and Relevance’, Mind 111, no. 443 (1 July 2002): 583–632). In the case of Molière’s comedies the ‘literal meaning’ is most often useful only as a barrier to the actual meaning that is to be conveyed to the intended recipient. ⁵⁹ Booth, A Rhetoric of Irony, ix. ⁶⁰ Schlegel, Fragments (1797), quoted in New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. 634. ⁶¹ Booth, A Rhetoric of Irony, 10–14.

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direct application to what happens in comedy. While it is true that the steps Booth gives would help a dramatic character to sort utterances into ironic and non-ironic, the Arnolphes and Orgons of Molière’s comedies are not inclined to such critical refinements. In addition to verbal irony, and without veering into identification of all literary discourse with irony, the well-established concept of ‘dramatic irony’ offers a limited and focused tool for describing Molière’s comedies. It is commonly used for a situation in which ‘The words or acts of a character in a play may carry a meaning unperceived by himself but understood by the audience.’⁶² Particularly important in this definition is the notion of the audience. The audience can be understood in two ways: first, as either a person or group of persons who exist within the dramatic fiction—this we could call the ‘internal audience’—or, secondly, as a group of observers entirely outside the situation of the character—this we can call the ‘external’ or ‘theatrical’ audience. An example of the type of internal audience capable of perceiving irony is the chorus in many Greek tragedies. Verbal irony in Molière’s comedies reveals itself both to the audience and to other characters in a form of triangulation. A says something to B that B does not understand but that C does understand, as does the audience. This is, for instance, what happens in L’École des maris, when Isabelle gives Sganarelle a message for Valère. She knows that Sganarelle will not understand what she means to say but that Valère will successfully decode her words as repeated by Sganarelle. And, of course, the theatre audience understands the process and enjoys the spectacle of Sganarelle’s ignorant complicity in undoing his plan to marry Isabelle. In this instance, as in many more in Molière’s works, verbal irony (the coded message) works along with dramatic irony (Sganarelle actually does utter Isabelle’s words without understanding them). Dramatic irony (the audience’s understanding of something that the fictive characters do not understand) overlaps with what is often called ‘situational irony’. Nina Ekstein defines the latter concept by saying that ‘Situational irony involves some contradiction, opposition, or contrast between two contiguous elements (events, objects, etc.).’⁶³ The strongest and yet simplest cases of situational irony consist of someone bringing about exactly the opposite of his or her intention. Oedipus did not expect to convict himself of the killing of his father. La Fontaine’s fable ‘Le Rat et l’huître’ (‘The rat and the oyster’) sums up such a situation in the concluding verse, ‘tel est pris qui croyait prendre’ (‘the ⁶² William Flint Thrall, C. Hugh Holman, and Addison Hibbard, A Handbook to Literature (New York: Odyssey Press, 1962), 154. ⁶³ Nina Ekstein, Corneille’s Irony (Charlottesville: Rookwood Press, 2007), 4.

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predator is the one who gets caught’).⁶⁴ But the distinction between dramatic irony, as defined above, and situational irony, is that the former necessarily involves an audience, whereas the latter does not.⁶⁵ In popular fiction the story ‘The Gift of the Magi’ memorably exemplifies situational irony. A young wife, needing money to surprise her husband with a Christmas gift, sells her only possession of value, her long, beautiful hair. With the proceeds, she buys her husband a fob for his treasured gold watch. When he returns home with a gift for her, she learns that he has sold his watch to buy a set of tortoise-shell combs for her (now missing) hair.⁶⁶ The persons in this situation could consider their situation sadly ‘ironic’ even though no one else witnessed the complete reversal from expectation to experience. In the case of dramatic irony, on the other hand, the character who is in some way mistaken and who is thus perceived by an onlooker may never realize the reality of his situation or the true meaning of the words being spoken by him, to him, or about him. There are many situational ironies of this sort in Molière’s comedies, primarily resulting from a reversal between intention and result. Although the present study is concerned most of all with simple verbal irony, there is a particular form of situational irony that we often find in these comedies, and we can trace this type back to the very origin of the concept of irony. Recalling from antiquity that in Greek comedy the eiron was ‘the underdog, weak but clever, who regularly triumphed over the stupid and boastful alazon’.⁶⁷ we have a clue to something that happens in many plays, such as L’Ecole des femmes and L’Ecole des maris and that comes close to happening in other plays by Molière.⁶⁸ The clever underdog, using irony, triumphs over the confident and powerful boaster. However irony can extend beyond a character’s lack of understanding of the significance of her or his own words to include ‘any situation (such as mistaken identity) in which some of the actors on the stage or some of the characters in a story are “blind” to facts known to the spectator or reader’.⁶⁹ In numerous Molière comedies the dramatic irony in this sense (that the spectator knows

⁶⁴ Jean de La Fontaine, Fables. contes et nouvelles., ed. René Groos, Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1954), 191. ⁶⁵ S.K. Johnson, ‘Some Aspects of Dramatic Irony in Sophoclean Tragedy’, The Classical Review 42, no. 6 (1928): 209–214. ⁶⁶ O. Henry, ‘The Gift of the Magi’, in The Four Million (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page and Company, 1916), 16–24. ⁶⁷ Preminger and Brogan, The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, 635. ⁶⁸ Patrick Dandrey, considers in detail the use of irony, and in particular preterition, in La Critique de l’École des femmes and the Impromptu de Versailles in ‘Le prisme de l’ironie’, in La guerre comique: Molière et la querelle de L’École des femmes (Paris: Hermann, 2014), 351–365. ⁶⁹ Thrall, Holman, and Hibbard, eds., A Handbook to Literature, 155.

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something that a character does not) is intertwined with verbal irony. That is, there is a character who does not perceive the intended reversed meaning of an utterance while other characters and the spectators do perceive this meaning. There is a particularly unusual hybrid of verbal (or at least semiotic) irony and situational irony in the case of consensual abduction, a phenomenon more typical of real life than of comedy in early modernity. And, of course, it is important to note in this regard that what is ‘ironic’ is not necessarily amusing. The most basic form of verbal irony, as we have said, manifests itself in exchanges in which both speaker and listener understand that the speaker means to signify the opposite of what she or he says. We can see that a daughter’s consensual abduction sends an ironic message to her parents. It cannot have escaped the father’s notice that his daughter was very inclined towards a suitor rejected by the father. So, he would understand that his daughter is defying him when she is ‘abducted by’ (i.e., escapes with) that suitor. This gesture of abduction/escape signifies a mockery of paternal authority by a daughter who collaborates in creating a situation in which she takes on the appearance of a passive victim (or obedient daughter) when in fact she is a collaborator or even the mastermind of an operation by which the father is mocked. Verbal irony and dramatic irony join in comic situations (or even in some tragic situations) in which one person’s ironic (antiphrastic) utterance is successfully decoded or received by one or more other persons but not properly understood by at least one person present in the dramatic situation. One of the most influential statements of such an ironic discursive situation comes from a political philosopher who was not at all concerned with drama as such. In the eponymous essay that serves as introduction to his book Persecution and the Art of Writing, Leo Strauss describes a practice that he calls ‘writing between the lines’.⁷⁰ The term ‘writing’ does not actually limit the kind of discourse that Strauss describes, which can just as well function in speaking. It coincides exactly with the convergence of verbal and dramatic irony, that is, a situation in which a speaker communicates her or his thought in coded (reversed) terms to a receiver capable of correct decoding—a situation in which other persons who hear the ironic utterance do not perceive it as such. Here is Strauss’s example: We can easily imagine that a historian living in a totalitarian country, a generally respected and unsuspected member of the only party in existence, might be led by his investigations to doubt the soundness of the ⁷⁰ Leo Strauss, ‘Persecution and the Art of Writing’, in Persecution and the Art of Writing (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1952), 24.

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government-sponsored interpretation of the history of religion. Nobody would prevent him from publishing a passionate attack on what he would call the liberal view. He would of course have to state the liberal view before attacking it; he would make that statement in the quiet, unspectacular, and somewhat boring manner which would seem to be but natural; he would use many technical terms, give many quotations and attach undue importance to insignificant details; he would seem to forget the holy war of mankind in the petty squabbles of pedants. Only when he reached the core of the argument would he write three or four sentences in that terse and lively style which is apt to arrest the attention of young men who love to think. That central passage would state the case of the adversaries more clearly, compellingly, and mercilessly than it had ever been stated in the heyday of liberalism […] His reasonable young reader would for the first time catch a glimpse of the forbidden fruit.⁷¹

The historian in this example seems to be saying the opposite of what he really means to convey. Because he does not wish to find himself in prison or burned at the stake, he must veil his true position in the hope that his privileged, intended listener or reader will understand the subterfuge. The historian states a certain doctrine as if he is attacking it, while most of what he writes conveys the most orthodox and official teaching. It is as if he is saying ‘I find this heterodox teaching abhorrent’, when in fact he means ‘I endorse this heterodox teaching.’ For early modern France and its reception of Molière’s work, Joan DeJean’s remarks about ‘tacit knowledge’ seem particularly germane to the working of an irony of the Straussian kind. She writes, ‘Every period has tacit knowledge that is in some way publicly available even though it is not openly expressed. In its simplest form, tacit knowledge means the type of political information of which everyone is aware but of which no one speaks publicly either because it concerns events still so recent that they are too painful for a society to confront or because the information is the object of some form of official suppression.’⁷² Dramatic practice based on irony was particularly important in a period in which ‘knowing what not to know’ was the key to surviving in a repressive absolutist regime.⁷³ Though perhaps knowing what not to admit that you know would be more precise. ⁷¹ Strauss, 24–25. ⁷² ‘The Work of Forgetting: Commerce, Sexuality, Censorship, and Molière’s Le Festin de Pierre’, Critical Inquiry 29, no. 1 (2002): 55. ⁷³ DeJean, quoting from Michael Taussig, Defacement: Public Secrecy and the Labor of the Negative (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999).

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Strauss’s ‘writing between the lines’ seems to be a kind of ‘preterition’ (or apophasis) in which the forbidden or socially unacceptable statement seems to be passed over, omitted, or stated yet denied. As one seventeenth-century English writer defines it, ‘Preterition is a kind of Irony, and is when you say you let passe that which notwithstanding you touch in full.’⁷⁴ Preterition thus differs from what could be called simple verbal irony in that the reversal is formally applied to the act of enunciation rather than to the content of the utterance. A simple verbal irony might take the form, ‘We all know about Mr. X’s selfless generosity…’ (when speaking to an audience that knows of X’s avarice). On the other hand, preteritive irony would express something very close to this meaning by saying, ‘I will not say anything about X’s reputation for greed…’ For English speakers one of the most celebrated examples of preterition is no doubt the beginning of Antony’s eulogy of Caesar in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, ‘I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him…’ (3.2.71). There, of course, Antony proceeds to heap praise upon the dead man after explicitly denying that such is his intention. The speaker’s denial of what he is manifestly doing recurs during this long speech (e.g., ‘I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke…’).⁷⁵ Molière built layers of irony into the succession of comedies that concern women and their struggle for pleasure. In L’École des femmes, as we will see in Chapter 2, the female protagonist upends her guardian’s marriage plans in part by her use of verbal irony. But Molière went further to emphasize the irony in that play by creating his own (fictive) critics in his subsequent comedy, La Critique de l’École des femmes. In this play, three characters (two women and a man) praise L’École des femmes and three others (two men and a woman) find the play to be shockingly bad and even obscene. Michael Call says of the Critique, ‘While Molière’s opponents in the querelle de l’École des femmes objected to Agnès’s character on grounds of verisimilitude, they showed a bafflingly misguided (or perhaps disingenuous) understanding of the gender instructions provided in Molière’s “school”, arguing repeatedly that Molière’s play was derogatory toward women and aimed at fostering a stifling patriarchy.’⁷⁶ By deliberately creating obtuse critics who missed the rather obvious empowerment of Arnolphe’s ward, Molière’s Critique tells us that we should understand the play as the opposite of what his ‘adversaries’ assert. ⁷⁴ John Smith, Myst. Rhetorique Unvail’d (1656), p. 165, cited in OED. ⁷⁵ Antony’s oration is not, to be sure, simply preterition, for it does contain instances of simple verbal irony, e.g., ‘Brutus is an honourable man’. ⁷⁶ Michael Call, ‘Comedic Wars, Serious Moralists: Genre, Gender, and Molière’s L’École des Femmes’, Yale French Studies 130 (2016): 58.

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The transmission of the ironic message often depends on linguistic parameters that are not evident in the written or printed text. Christopher Braider reminds us of Molière’s expressed anxiety about misreadings of his plays by an audience that is not present in the theatre, citing the preface: ‘comme une grande partie des grˆaces, qu’on y a trouvées, dépendent de l’action, et du ton de voix, il m’importait qu’on ne les dépouillˆat pas de ces ornements’ (‘since many of the graces people found in the play depend on physical action and tone of voice, I was concerned that they not be shorn of these ornaments’).⁷⁷ This comment appears in Braider’s extensive study of the ‘experiment of self ’ in early modernity, and for our purposes it seems particularly apt in regard to irony. Ironists in these comedies are always in a certain sense experimenting or trying on a persona, and there is always the possibility that the implicit distinction between that persona and the underlying ‘real’ voice or intention of the speaker could be missed by the intended receiver (and the alternative danger that the wrong person could perceive this distinction). When is a speaker really saying something and when is she or he simply ‘trying out’ an utterance? This is a question that arises in all cases of preterition. Spectators and readers of Molière’s comedies will recognize a simple yet emphatic example of preterition in the recurrent phrase, je ne dis pas cela (I am not saying that). It appears perhaps most strikingly in the mouth of Alceste in Le Misanthrope, who says it three times (1.2. 352, 358, 362); in the Dépit amoureux, where it is said once (4.3.1373); in L’École des femmes (4.8.1280); in L’Avare (1.3.p.11); in Le Tartuffe (1.5.416); in Les Femmes savantes, twice (2.6.437 and 5.2.1577); and in Le Malade imaginaire (1.4.p.645). And in L’École des maris itself, Sganarelle says this to Isabelle (2.9.781). In almost all of these cases the dramatic character is, in effect, saying precisely what he denies saying. The best-known of these passages concerns Alceste’s criticism of Oronte’s sonnet in Le Misanthrope (1.2), where Alceste makes it clear that he thinks Oronte’s poem is worthless, but when Oronte seeks to get an explicit confirmation of this judgement, Alceste says ‘I’m not saying that…’ before continuing in a roundabout manner to convey this very thought. A further type of irony might be called the ‘true counter-factual’. It has in common with preterition that the contents of the utterance are true—although Antony denies that he is praising Caesar he is making claims about Caesar that he believes to be true—but the social or ideological context is such that what the speaker asserts (and believes) cannot be literally understood as such by ⁷⁷ Molière, preface to Les Précieuses ridicules in Œuvres complètes, ed. Georges Forestier, vol. 1 (Paris: Gallimard, 2010), 3. English translation of the quotation is from Christopher Braider, Experimental Selves: Person and Experience in Early Modern Europe, 2018, 238.

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the dramatic interlocutor, even though the reader or spectator can perceive the basic truth of what is being said. In George Dandin, Angélique, the wife of the eponymous Dandin, retrospectively denies her consent to the marriage, saying, ‘You only asked my father and my mother. They are the ones who married you, and that’s why you should complain to them about any wrongs done to you.’⁷⁸ While it is not literally the case that Angélique’s parents, the Sottenville, married George Dandin, it is easy to understand not only that Angélique herself had little choice in the matter but also that for Dandin, as for the Sottenville, the marriage satisfied aspirations on both sides (economic for Angélique’s parents and the quest for social recognition and respect for Dandin). We can understand why members of a persecuted group (often the minority, but not always) would seek to veil the expression of its thought to avoid punishment. This insight may allow us to perceive certain characters who make use of irony in a more nuanced light. If we start with the way characters talk and then consider the context in which they talk the way they do, we may arrive at a different view of their situation than we would have if we simply began with standard assumptions about the apparent power positions according to gender, class (early modern ‘condition’), wealth, age, and traditional family structure. For instance, Alceste, in Le Misanthrope, seems to be a well-off, respected though eccentric, attractive, aristocrat. And yet he resorts famously to preterition when he is asked for his opinion about a sonnet, denying that he finds it rubbish—or rather, denying that he is saying that it is rubbish.⁷⁹ This way of speaking seems to fit what O’Connor and Behler have said about the eiron. Most obviously, Oronte, the author of the sonnet is aggressively seeking praise, vociferously overstates everything, and (as we learn later) threatens a duel to defend the notion that his sonnet is an outstanding work of poetry. He is thus a classic braggart or alazon, confronted by a much cleverer man, who properly finds the sonnet insipid. Alceste, emitting a negative view of the sonnet, initially through preterition, is in the position of the eiron. But why? Why would he use a tool that was classically associated with someone in an outwardly inferior or disadvantaged role? Resorting to this form of discourse is a way that Alceste casts himself in this role, a role that fits his self-perception (or his represented self-perception) as someone who is in a position of weakness within his society. He frequently makes remarks ⁷⁸ Molière, George Dandin, ou le Mari confondu, in Œuvres complètes, ed. Georges Forestier, vol. 1 (Paris: Gallimard, 2010), 993. See below, Chapter 6, p. 149. ⁷⁹ Molière, Le Misanthrope, ou l’Atrabilaire amoureux, in Œuvres complètes, ed. Georges Forestier, vol. 1 (Paris: Gallimard, 2010), I, 2 (657–666).

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that portray him as outnumbered, unappreciated, and not sufficiently heeded. He finds himself outlaughed, as when he says ‘les Rieurs sont pour vous’ (‘the laughs are on your side’; 2.4.681). But Alceste’s relation to the eiron/alazon dichotomy is not unproblematic—indeed, it is reversible, for Alceste has outsized pretensions to moral heroism. Far from suffering in an understated way and allowing the braggarts (they are legion in Le Misanthrope) to make fools out of themselves, he boasts about the lengths to which he will go to prove his claim that all mankind is corrupt except himself. And Alceste’s use of irony (to say or seem to say one thing to mean quite another) is particularly striking because of his claim always to say what he means. Alceste’s case does not necessarily invalidate the distinction between alazon and eiron, nor should his case make us abandon the terms as useless. Rather, it seems, Alceste’s choice of a particular form of verbal irony helps us see the peculiar polarity within this contradictory character. He is a braggart who wishes to excel by portraying himself as the opposite. He may not even perceive the contradiction, and we need not resort to terms like ‘hypocrite’ which are so apt to describe a figure like Tartuffe. But Alceste can serve us as one important key to the work of irony in Molière’s theatre both because of his particular, even unique, insistence on the relation between discourse and truth and because of his explicit wish to obtain power and to reverse the social order. But if we can see Alceste as being the person without much power using a particular tool of discourse to undo the advantages of the more powerful, do not women characters have much more reason to resort to irony? In the chapters that follow, we will see how powerless girls and women use irony to defeat their oppressors. We begin with the worst-case scenario of a girl held captive by an older man with total legal authority over her and who plans to force her to become his wife.

PART I

SCHO OL S F OR M A R R I AGE Two of Molière’s comedies offer the worst-case scenario for young women. The protagonist is in the nightmarish situation of being entirely in the power of a man who is both her legal guardian and at the same time the man she is being forced to marry. The more traditional form of women’s submission to male authority supposes at least a division between the role of the father who chooses her husband (sometimes, though rarely in the name of his daughter’s long-term best interest) and forces her to marry him. But in both L’École des maris (1661) and L’École des femmes (1662) the adolescent is prisoner in a quasi-incestuous situation. The same man takes the place of her absent father and designates himself as her future husband. The situation is desperate from the very start. Without money, without family, without friends, without an education, and exposed to further coercion if she makes her true desires known, what can the protagonist do? In both plays she makes an ingenious, even brilliant, use of language. Though ultimately her words are not by themselves enough to get her out of this bind, they do at least for a while hold her oppressor at bay until finally, she gets a lucky break.

1 L’École des maris The School of Preterition

Although it is not among the author’s best-known plays, especially in the English-speaking world, L’École des maris has been described as the play with which ‘the really great Molière’ began.¹ In tandem with the better-known École des femmes, we find here the most direct treatment of education, yet while both École plays stage didactic models, the relation between the titles and the representations of ‘schooling’ are a little more complicated than we might at first surmise. In L’École des femmes a guardian devises and executes a pedagogical plan aimed at creating for himself the perfect wife; therefore, the play represents the schooling of a wife, and potentially a model that could be generalized. But in L’École des maris, instead of finding a character who attempts to teach husbands to be husbands, we find two men attempting to raise girls to be wives. So, when the two plays are considered together there are three ‘schools’ for wives, with three ‘teachers’: Sganarelle and his brother Ariste in L’École des maris and Arnolphe in L’École des femmes. To the extent that L’École des maris attempts to teach husbands to be husbands, the play as a whole constitutes the ‘school’. One brother exemplifies the successful approach to preparing a girl to marry while the other serves as an example of an utterly failed method.

Two Models of Husbands L’École des maris is what today we might call a thought experiment about models of marriage. Sganarelle and his brother Ariste, having been made guardians of two young orphan girls with the understanding that they would each marry one of the girls or provide for her to marry someone else when she came of age, adopt radically different educational approaches. Ariste, by almost twenty years the elder of the two, treats his ward, Léonor, with great indulgence and allows her to go out to amuse herself with her friends. He also buys her ¹ Molière, Œuvres complètes, ed. Georges Couton, Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1971), I, 413.

Women and Irony in Molière’s Comedies of Marriage. John D. Lyons, Oxford University Press. © John D. Lyons (2023). DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198887379.003.0002

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fashionable clothes and accessories and encourages her to speak frankly with him. When the time comes for her to marry, Ariste would be happy to become her husband, but he recognizes the disadvantages of their great age difference and will allow her to choose another husband if she wishes. Sganarelle, on the other hand, is intent on marrying his ward Isabelle. In the very first scene of this three-act play the two brothers discuss their different approaches to educating their wards. It is important to remember, as Michael Hawcroft points out, that the remarks of the brothers are not manifestos of educational theory.² When we first see them, they are in the midst of a discussion that may have had nothing to do with marriage, wives, or wards, and these topics come up only as part of the brothers’ sometimes abrasive repartee about how different they are from one another. Both brothers are happy with their own way of life, but Ariste is initially the more critical of the two, saying that ‘everyone’ condemns Sganarelle’s way of life, and in particular two aspects: his sullenness and lack of sociability and his clothes (1.1.13–16). Sganarelle seizes on the second point and launches into a long and sarcastic commentary about fashion in clothing, which does not seem to have been a major concern of Ariste’s but only an example of Sganarelle’s somewhat extreme individualism: Il est vrai qu’à la mode il faut m’assujettir, Et ce n’est pas pour moi que je me dois vêtir? Ne voudriez-vous point, par vos belles sornettes, Monsieur mon frère aîné, car Dieu merci vous l’êtes D’une vingtaine d’ans, à ne nous rien celer, Et cela ne vaut pas la peine d’en parler: Ne voudriez-vous point, dis-je, sur ces matières, De vos jeunes muguets m’inspirer les manières, M’obliger à porter de ces petits chapeaux, Qui laissent éventer leurs débiles cerveaux, Et de ces blonds cheveux de qui la vaste enflure Des visages humains offusque la figure? I see: I mustn’t wear what clothes I please, But must submit to fashion’s wise decrees! Do you propose, by precepts so bizarre, Dear Elder Brother—for that is what you are ² Michael Hawcroft, Molière: Reasoning with Fools (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 33.

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By twenty blessed years, I must confess, Although of course it couldn’t matter less— Do you propose, I say, to force me to Adorn myself as your young dandies do? To wear those little hats which leave their brains, Such as they are, exposed to winds and rains, And those immense blond wigs which hide their features And make one doubt that they are human creatures? (1.1.17–28)

Ariste responds by steering the conversation back to the more conceptual level: the wisdom of moderation, measured by conformity to contemporary practice: Toujours au plus grand nombre on doit s’accommoder, Et jamais il ne faut se faire regarder. L’un et l’autre excès choque, et tout homme bien sage Doit faire des habits, ainsi que du langage. It’s best at all times to observe convention And not, by being odd, attract attention. For all extremes offend, and wise men teach Themselves to deal with fashion as with speech. (1.1.41–46)

Sganarelle’s insistence on Ariste’s significantly greater age makes it seem that for him, Ariste’s willingness to conform to changing standards of dress is a symptom of his own insecurity about his age and an attempt to appear younger: ‘Cela sent son vieillard, qui pour en faire accroire, / Cache ses cheveux blancs d’une perruque noire’ (‘There speaks a vain old man who slyly wears / A black wig to conceal his few white hairs’; 1.1.55–56). Since nothing in Ariste’s preceding statement had anything to do with generational difference or with age, this particular ad hominem remark by Sganarelle, along with his previous remark about the age difference between the brothers, makes it seem that it is instead Sganarelle who is the more sensitive to age. It seems that for him change in fashion is driven by the ‘jeunes muguets’ (emphasis added), the young dandies. In declaring his preference for unchanging standards in clothing (including hats), Sganarelle aligns himself with the past rather than with the present, dressing ‘Ainsi qu’en ont usé sagement nos aïeux’ (‘Thus did our forebears dress, and they were wise’; 1.1.73).

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Only in the following scene does the question of marriage arise. This is the point at which the spectator learns of the arrangements concerning the brothers and their wards. By contract (par contrat), as Sganarelle reminds his brother, the girls are virtually already married to the old men who are raising them. This is the default position; it is not up to the girls to consent: notre ami leur père, Nous commit leur conduite à son heure dernière; Et nous chargeant tous deux, ou de les épouser, Ou sur notre refus un jour d’en disposer, Sur elles par contrat, nous sut dès leur enfance, Et de père, et d’époux donner pleine puissance. Their father, our dear friend, Entrusted them to us at his life’s end, Bidding us to marry them, if so inclined, Or find them spouses of a proper kind. Thus we have ruled them with the double sway Of father and husband, from their childhood’s day. (1.1. 99–104, emphasis added)

Only the guardians can choose alternative husbands for their wards, and the situation as Sganarelle describes it here displays the astoundingly quasiincestuous arrangement by which Isabelle and Léonor are expected to view Sganarelle and Ariste as both father and husband. This is more extreme than the situation in L’École des femmes, where Arnolphe is preparing his ward to be a wife, and where the emphasis is on preparation for marriage. In L’École des maris the intended future husbands already speak as if the future (after the officialization of the wedding) will be the same state as now, except that it will include sex. Isabelle, Sganarelle’s ward-wife, will continue to do as she is told: Vous souffrez que la vôtre, aille leste et pimpante, Je le veux bien: qu’elle ait, et laquais, et suivante, J’y consens: qu’elle coure, aime l’oisiveté, Et soit des damoiseaux fleurée en liberté; J’en suis fort satisfait; mais j’entends que la mienne, Vive à ma fantaisie, et non pas à la sienne. You let your charge be dashingly arrayed: So be it; she has a flunky and a maid;

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I’m quite content; she idly gads about, And our young beaux are free to seek her out: All that is splendid. But my charge, be it known, Shall live by my desires, and not her own. (1.2.111–116)

Sganarelle’s core principle is clear in its brutal simplicity: he will have full arbitrary power (à [sa] fantaisie) over everything his wife does. Later in the scene Ariste speaks in terms of ‘maxims’ (1.2.183) and ‘plan’ (dessein, 1.2.198) and he seems to have thought out his relationship with Léonor in terms of cause and effect and with a view to alternative outcomes, which will depend on Léonor’s wishes. This is quite different from the way the younger Sganarelle thinks; he seems not to have thought about the effects of his way of dealing with Isabelle; he does not have maxims or plan, but instead will attempt to exert total control. The future will be like the present, and Isabelle’s wishes are and will be of no importance. It might seem as if there are two divergent methods of preparing for marriage, but to say this would be to bestow too much credit on Sganarelle’s position. He seems to have a character without a ‘method’ in the sense of a well-thought-out sequence of procedures, whereas Ariste seems to have both a character and a method, one that reckons with information gathered through observation. Of women he says, Leur sexe aime à jouir d’un peu de liberté, On le retient fort mal par tant d’austérité, Et les soins défiants, les verrous, et les grilles, Ne font pas la vertu des femmes, ni des filles, C’est l’honneur qui les doit tenir dans le devoir, Non la sévérité que nous leur faisons voir. All women like a bit of freedom, and It’s wrong to rule them with a heavy hand. It isn’t bolts and bars and strict controls That give our wives and maidens virtuous souls; No, honor keeps their feet on duty’s path, And not our harshness or our threatened wrath. (1.1.165–169)

In the absence of a method, however, Sganarelle has a set of reflexes and associations that are important and revealing. Clothing, age, hostility to change, and

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(with one important exception) indifference to the opinions or wishes of other people are paramount in his personality, and in his unwillingness to think of marrying his ward to someone else financial considerations may also play a role. The only point on which he seems to take into account what other people say (and to fear it) is with regard to the possibility of being cuckolded by his wife (1.1.125–126). Fashionable clothing appears to be one of Sganarelle’s phobic obsessions. We have already seen how he goes off on a rant about contemporary dress and his refusal of it. For someone who is indifferent to fashion, he seems to be an exceptionally attentive observer: De ces petits pourpoints sous les bras se perdant, Et de ces grands collets jusqu’au nombril pendant? De ces manches qu’à table on voit tˆater les sauces, Et de ces cotillons appelés hauts-de-chausses? De ces souliers mignons de rubans revêtus, Qui vous font ressembler à des pigeons pattus; Et de ces grands canons, où comme en des entraves, On met tous les matins ses deux jambes esclaves, Et par qui nous voyons ces Messieurs les galants, Marcher écarquillés ainsi que des volants? Those little doublets, cut off at armpit-level, Those collars hanging almost to the navel, Those sleeves that drag through soups and gravy-boats, And those huge breeches, loose as petticoats? Those small, beribboned slippers, too neat for words, Which make them look like feather-footed birds? Those rolls of lace they force their leges to wear Like the leg-irons that slaves and captives bear, So that we see each fop and fashion-plate Walk like a pigeon, with a waddling gait? (1.1.29–38)

How does he know about ample sleeves that tend to fall into the sauce at meals, since he apparently does not get out much into the world? And this association of going into the world to meet people is precisely the problem with fashionable clothing. It is something one does to attract the attention of other people specifically in the context of courtship and flirtation. This issue is the

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very first one that Sganarelle brings up when he contrasts Ariste’s treatment of Léonor and his own treatment of Isabelle. He concedes that Ariste may allow Léonor such freedom, such luxuries, but his ward should not think about what she wears, nor should she be out and about amusing herself with young men. Instead, her interest in clothing should be directed towards taking care of her guardian-husband’s: Que d’une serge honnête, elle ait son vêtement, Et ne porte le noir, qu’aux bons jours seulement. Qu'enfermée au logis en personne bien sage, Elle s’applique toute aux choses du ménage; A recoudre mon linge aux heures de loisir, Ou bien à tricoter quelque bas par plaisir. She’ll dress in serge, in simple browns and greys, And not wear black except on holidays; Like any prudent girl, she’ll stay indoors And occupy herself with household chores; In leisure time she’ll mend my linen, or make Some knitted stockings for amusement’s sake. (1.1.117–122)

Fashionable clothing, freedom, and flirtation are indissociable in Sganarelle’s view of the world; each time he brings up clothing he mentions either muguets (1.2.123) or damoiseaux (1.2.114), both derogatory terms implying affectation and foppishness. Most of the theatre audience would surely not have agreed with Sganarelle’s rules about dress, since the very fact of being in a theatre or reading a play does not seem to fit his penny-pinching and anti-fashion views.

A School of Communication What makes L’École des maris interesting—and in this it is more interesting than L’École des femmes—is the greater initiative and ingenuity of the captive young woman who is about to be married by force to her tutor. She manages to transform her guardian from the obstacle to her communication with her suitor into the principal channel of that communication. Isabelle puts into practice a transmission arrangement that belongs to the rather extensive family of irony. There is no need to start with the theory. We can simply let Molière’s play teach us how it works.

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Act II begins, as did the previous act, in mid-conversation. Sganarelle and Isabelle are talking about Valère, who had accosted her guardian in the first act, trying to find a way to meet and speak with Isabelle. As spectators of this new, interrupted conversation we have no idea why Isabelle would be speaking with her future husband about the would-be suitor, though a couple of asides by Isabelle clue us into the fact that she has taken an initiative, a ‘stratagème adroit’ (‘an artful ploy’; 2.1.362), to dupe Sganarelle. The latter now seeks out Valère to speak with him, thus behaving quite contrary to what we saw in the previous act, when Sganarelle did all he could to avoid conversing with the younger man. Sganarelle does, however, proceed by avoiding any relaxed and customarily courteous arrangements. He refuses to enter Valère’s house and refuses a chair. So far the spectator has no idea what this strange encounter is about. Suspense builds about the aforesaid ‘stratagem’ until finally Sganarelle confirms that Valère knows that he is Isabelle’s guardian: ‘Savez-vous, ditesmoi, que je suis le tuteur…’. (‘Do you know that I’m the guardian…’). Now, for the first time, he lets the suitor know that Sganarelle is going to marry her, or, in his words (which obviously have a different resonance both for Valère and for the spectator), that ‘elle est destinée à l’honneur de ma couche’ (‘and that her destiny is to be my bride?’; 2.2.404). The surprises continue for Valère, when Sganarelle reveals that he knows, from Isabelle, that Valère is seeking to court her, and then delivers the following quite astounding message: Comme une fille honnête, et qui m’aime d’enfance, Elle vient de m’en faire entière confidence; Et de plus m’a chargé de vous donner avis, Que depuis que par vous, tous ses pas sont suivis, Son cœur qu’avec excès votre poursuite outrage, N’a que trop de vos yeux entendu le langage; Que vos secrets désirs, lui sont assez connus, Et que c’est vous donner des soucis superflus, De vouloir davantage expliquer une flamme, Qui choque l’amitié que me garde son aˆme. That good young woman, who, since she was small, Has loved me, came just now and told me all, And charged me, furthermore, to let you know That when, of late, you’ve dogged her footsteps so, Her heart, which your attentions scandalize,

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Read all too well the language of your eyes; That what you feel for her is all too clear, And that t’will be no use to persevere In shows of passion which can only be Offensive to a heart that’s pledged to me. (2.2.410–420)

Upon Valère’s astonished attempt to confirm that this strange message comes from Isabelle, Sganarelle continues in this vein for many more verses, each time making his statements seem ever more implausible and stressing Isabelle’s ‘douleurs’ (sorrows) at this allegedly unwanted courtship. At his point the stratagem has become clear, except to the messenger. Isabelle’s message can be understood by Valère (with the encouragement of his valet) because it is clearly—to him—ironic. How does he know, and how do we know? The sheer implausibility of the message, the idea that a young woman who has already manifested her resentment at the way she is kept a prisoner (1.2.77; 81–82) would not enjoy the courtship of a young man is all that we need to understand the message as meaning the opposite of what it literally says. We know this just as surely as we detect the irony of Sganarelle’s comment to his brother in the first scene of the play when Sganarelle says that he should bow to fashion in clothing (1.1.17), when everything in the context lets us understand that this is a sarcastic statement of his refusal to follow fashion. The fact that Sganarelle does not realize that he is bearing a message that undermines his confinement of his ward is easily understood as part of his complacent belief that he is right about everything and that he does not need advice nor even to pay much attention to the feelings of those around him. If he had bothered to listen to Isabelle, he would already know how she felt about becoming his wife. Isabelle subsequently transmits two more messages to Valère, and the latter communicates also to Isabelle through the intermediary of Sganarelle, who is completely unaware of the information that he carries back and forth. Isabelle’s second message to Valère is more explicit, but her guardian never actually gets to read it. He carries a letter unopened to the suitor in a ploy that is a sort of message-within-a-message. Feigning to have received a box from Valère that was thrown through the window of her bedroom, Isabelle insists that Sganarelle ‘return’ the box to Valère and—this is the brilliant part—without opening it. She explains that the simple act of breaking open the seal of the box to read the letter would be interpreted by her suitor as a sign of her interest in him. She explains,

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WOMEN AND IRONY IN MOLIÈRE’S COMEDIES OF MARRIAGE Une fille d’honneur doit toujours se défendre De lire les billets qu’un homme lui fait rendre, La curiosité qu’on fait alors éclater, Marque un secret plaisir de s’en ouïr conter, Et je trouve à propos, que toute cachetée, Cette lettre lui soit promptement reportée, Afin que d’autant mieux il connaisse aujourd’hui, Le mépris éclatant que mon cœur fait de lui. A decent girl should never read the tender Communications which young men may send her: To show such curiosity betrays A secret appetite for flattering praise. I think it right, then, that this missive be Returned unopened, and most speedily, So that Valère will learn this very day How much I scorn him… (2.3.483–490)

As has sometimes been said, ‘the medium is the message’. Isabelle’s argument persuades Sganarelle that her message to Valère is signified by the very act of delivering the unopened box to him, and thus she deflects attention from the second message which is the one contained inside the box. The ostensible message to Valère—the one that Isabelle tells her guardian that she is sending by her ‘refusal’ to open the box—is in fact actually a message to Sganarelle and tells him that she is virtuous and prudent and ‘worthy to be [his] wife’ (as he says 2.3.493–496). Within the box is the only entirely straightforward and unironic statement from Isabelle to Valère. The box contains a letter in which Isabelle tells her suitor of her ‘juste horreur d’un mariage’ (‘just aversion to a marriage’) that will be forced upon her in six days. If Sganarelle had seen this letter, he would have been outraged and his imprisonment of Isabelle could have become even more strict, even less bearable. To protect the message and herself, she cleverly planted the notion that reading the letter (i.e., opening the box) would send a certain message, while not reading the letter would send another message. Molière’s literate public would certainly be aware of the arts of gifts and messages that was so highly developed in the galant society of the middle of the seventeenth century. Spectators would, for instance, recall passages in Madeleine de Scudéry’s novels, such as Clélie, histoire romaine (1654–60), the

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last volume of which appeared a year before the first performance of this play. In that story there is an example of a galant signal of love consisting primarily of the box itself (the replacement of one box by another) and secondarily by the surprising contents of the box, the act of opening it, the claim of not opening it, and the mysterious delivery of the box at night-time.³ When Sganarelle reports of the successful ‘return’ of the box, Isabelle enjoys the assurance that Valère’s intentions towards her were entirely honourable and that he hoped to marry her. In essence, Valère makes a marriage proposal to Isabelle through the intermediary of her guardian himself (2.7). We hear Sganarelle naïvely serve as messenger for the suitor, telling Isabelle: … il m’a tendrement conjuré de te dire, Que du moins en t’aimant il n’a jamais pensé A rien dont ton honneur ait lieu d’être offensé, Et que ne dépendant que du choix de son aˆme, Tous ses désirs étaient de t’obtenir pour femme. … he begs me to convey this message to you: That in his passion, he never entertained A thought by which your honor might be pained, And that the one thing he desired of life Was that he might obtain you for his wife (2.7.596–599)

In short, Valère communicates the news that he is free to marry (in other words, that he is not constrained by his father) and that he wishes to marry Isabelle. Isabelle’s next move in her increasingly daring (and one might also say logocentric—giving distinct preference to the spoken word over writing or other modes of communication) strategy is to arrange a face-to-face meeting by insisting that Valère has still not understood how much she despises him (‘un homme que je hais à l’égal de la mort’ (‘a man I hate as much as death’; 2.7.613). By telling her guardian that Valère is still pursuing her and that she has certain knowledge (though an unspecified source) of a planned abduction, she obtains her first direct conversation with Valère. Those familiar with Molière’s best-known plays will see this conversation in act II, scene 9, as a ³ Marie-Madeleine de Scudéry, Clélie, histoire romaine, part I, vol. 2, book 3 (Paris: Augustin Courbé, 1654), 1279–1330.

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precursor to the much better-known scenes in Le Tartuffe (1664) in which a wife attempts to persuade her suitor that she is in love with him, while she knows that her husband is listening to every word. In L’École des maris, Isabelle can make a vehement declaration of love to Valère while Sganarelle watches, listens, and does not understand at all what she is saying. She asks Valère if he can still be in doubt of her feelings: ‘Quoi mon aˆme à vos yeux ne se montre pas toute, / Et de mes vœux encor vous pouvez être en doute?’ (‘What! When I’ve bared my whole soul to your eyes,/Can you still doubt where my affection lies?’; 2.9.723–724). Sganarelle understands these vœux to mean Isabelle’s wish to marry her guardian, while Valère understands correctly that she means that she loves her young suitor. He gallantly replies, signifying to Isabelle that the good news of her love is so important and amazing to him that he must hear it again, but Sganarelle has a completely different understanding when Valère says: ‘J’ai douté, je l’avoue, et cet arrêt suprême, / Qui décide du sort de mon amour extrême, / Doit m’être assez touchant pour ne pas s’offenser, / Que mon cœur par deux fois le fasse prononcer’ (‘Frankly, I doubted it; and this last decree, / Which decides the fate of my supreme love, / So stuns me that I dare request of you / That you repeat those words, if they were true’; 2.9.727–730). Isabelle then gives a long and impassioned statement that she is in the presence of one man whom she despises and of another man whom she wishes to marry: ‘Me voir femme de l’un est toute mon envie,/Et plutôt qu’être à l’autre, on m’ôterait la vie’ (‘The first I long to marry, while if I / Were forced to wed the other, I’d wish to die’; 2.9.747–748). Though there are further complications in the third and final act, after Sganarelle tries to accelerate his planned nuptials with Isabelle and she, assuming the identity of her sister Léonor, flees to Valère’s house, it is this series of ironically coded messages that constitutes the most unusual aspect of L’École des maris. Unusual in one way: their inventiveness, their extravagance even, and their comical exploitation of her oppressor’s fatuous incomprehension. But in another way what Isabelle does is paradigmatic for women characters in seventeenth-century French literature. Not being able to speak her desire and her aspirations directly, she, like women in similar situations in novels, tragedies, and comedies must express herself ironically. Isabelle’s revolt manifests a kinship between women struggling for independence (even if here it is a very limited kind, the choice of another man who will take the place of husband instead of the one she despises) with other social groups that can be roughly categorized as libertin, though often also with religious minorities. The similarities in the demands of the women

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writers sometimes called précieuses and libertins has been noted by scholars.⁴ As groups trying to express heterodox views in an authoritarian society, they do not have the freedom to speak, write, and print their views in clear and direct language.

Persecution and Preteritio The phenomenon of ‘writing between the lines’ is a form of the rhetorical figure known as preterition, defined by Pierre Fontanier ‘to feign to not wish to say that which nonetheless one says very clearly, and often forcefully’.⁵ It is closely related to, or even a form of, irony, which ‘consists of saying by a mockery, either jokingly or seriously, the opposite of what one thinks, or of what one wishes to make understood’.⁶ Or as the OED says, ‘The expression of one’s meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect; esp. (in earlier use) the use of approbatory language to imply condemnation or contempt (cf. sarcasm n.). In later use also more generally: a manner, style, or attitude suggestive of the use of this kind of expression.’ Both preterition and irony belong in the category of what Fontanier calls the ‘figures of expression by contrast’.⁷ Setting aside for the moment the association, in these definitions, of irony with humorous intent, the clearest difference between preterition and irony is the speaker’s disavowal of the intent to say (to mean or signify) a specific thing, whereas such metadiscursive framing does not accompany irony in general. A frequent feature of preterition is that it occurs in circumstances in which there is a divided audience. While one could use it in a one-on-one situation, the case of Antony in Julius Caesar is closer to Isabelle’s situation in that there is more than one person who hears her message. Antony speaks in a way that initially could seem to the anti-Caesar conspirators who at that point seem to have seized power in Rome as if he were doing what he claims, that is, only burying his dead friend. His intention, or at least his effect, however, becomes increasingly plain the more he speaks, and yet he constantly denies doing or saying what he is in fact saying, and thus doing: inciting violence against Brutus and Cassius. ⁴ See conclusion, pp. 237–239. ⁵ ‘[F]eindre de ne pas vouloir dire ce que néanmoins on dit très-clairement, et souvent même avec force’. Pierre Fontanier, Les figures du discours (Paris: Flammarion, 1968), 143. ⁶ ‘[C]onsiste à dire par une raillerie, ou plaisante, ou sérieuse, le contraire de ce qu’on pense, ou de ce qu’on veut faire penser’. Fontanier, 145–146. ⁷ ‘Figures d’expression par opposition’. Fontanier, 143.

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Like Antony, Isabelle states openly and emphatically that her purpose in sending Sganarelle to talk to Valère is to let the young suitor know that she is outraged by his insistent courtship and wishes him to cease. As we already saw, the guardian told Valère that Isabelle has ‘read all too well’ what his eyes were saying and was ‘outraged’ (2.2.414–416). What she is saying, we understand, is both that she understands the visual language of Valère’s pursuit (that much is unironic) and that she wants him to stop because she loves Sganarelle (that part is ironic). The two-layered message is meant to suit the split audience. She denies that she is expressing attraction to Valère in such a way that Valère understands what she is saying while Sganarelle believes her denial of what she is saying. Each of Isabelle’s subsequent transmissions via Sganarelle to Valère follows a similar pattern and occasions similar contradictory understandings. At each iteration Sganarelle feels more and more satisfied at Isabelle’s demonstration of affection and ‘virtue’ while Valère understands the intensity of Isabelle’s attraction to him and her determination to avoid marrying her guardian. The highpoint of this preterition is the face-to-face declaration of love for Valère which takes place right in front of Sganarelle, who is convinced that she is not saying what she is saying. Even when Isabelle admits that such ardent declarations of love violate the conventions of female discourse, Sganarelle approves what she has said, thinking that she is declaring her love for him: ‘Je sais qu’il est honteux / Aux filles d’expliquer si librement leurs vœux’ (‘It’s scandalous, I know, / For a young girl to declare her passion so’; 2.9.757–758). This comment makes explicit the social convention that is a central feature of French belles lettres in early modernity: young women are supposed not to express their positive amorous feelings directly. In both tragedy and comedy, young women are shown to avoid direct expressions of erotic attraction and the discursive detours they take to make their feelings known are often exploited for comic effect, as, for instance, in Corneille’s Le Menteur.⁸ Isabelle’s situation is at the direst end of the spectrum of repression. It is not simply that she fears for her reputation or that she fears disconcerting a suitor by failing to play the game of reluctance while he pursues her; instead, Isabelle would simply be locked up in her room and would have no means of escaping a dread marriage if she did not resort to this particularly extreme and amusing way of coding her meaning and transmitting it through a messenger who has no comprehension of the message he is transmitting. ⁸ Pierre Corneille, Le Menteur, act 5, scene 7.

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Hidden Messages, Unwitting Messengers Though at times Isabelle’s communicative strategy is clearly within the framework of preterition—making it seem to Sganarelle that she is expressing hatred for Valère while she, Valère, and the spectator understand her real meaning— something more is happening in L’École des maris. What makes the play so comic is that Sganarelle is working against what he conceives as his own interest by serving as messenger. He repeatedly carries, in both directions, messages between the enamoured young people without grasping the content of those messages. Indeed, he does not even always realize that they are messages. For instance, in act II, scene 7, when Sganarelle assures Isabelle that Valère wished to do nothing that would harm Isabelle’s reputation (2.7.597–598), he doesn’t conceive this statement as a message but merely a faithful report of what he has heard. This arrangement in which the messenger transmits a message without knowing it is one that particularly fascinated early modernity. In the year prior to the first performance of L’École des maris, Blaise Pascal had died. For a considerable time before his death, he had been writing and gathering notes for what apparently would have been an apology for the Christian religion, the notes we know as the Pensées. Pascal’s concept of the ‘hidden God’ leads him to describe a form of messaging that is strikingly like the device that Isabelle and Valère use to communicate secretly. The Pensées include passages on the way that the Jewish Bible was the vehicle of a message of which the bearers were unaware. He supposes that among the Jewish people there were ‘spiritual Jews’, a small minority who understood the prophecies about a Messiah in the same way that Christians later did, and that the majority of the Jewish people (the ‘carnal Jews’) did not understand the prophecies: In order to convey the faith in the Messiah there had been earlier prophecies, and these were necessarily transmitted by persons above suspicion, diligent and faithful and known throughout the world for their extraordinary zeal […]. This is why the prophecies have a hidden sense, the spiritual one, which this people opposed, underneath a carnal sense, which this people favoured. If the spiritual sense had been discovered, they would not have been able to love it, and not tolerating it, they would not have had the zeal to preserve their books and their ceremonies.⁹ ⁹ Blaise Pascal, Pensées, fragment 738, in Les Provinciales, Pensées: et opuscules divers, ed. Philippe Sellier and Gérard Ferreyrolles (Paris: Librairie générale française, 2004), 1292–1293.

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In Pascal’s description of the transmission from God to his ultimately chosen people (Catholic Christians), the bearers’ ignorance that there was a hidden message within the apparent, outward message is combined with latent hostility towards the concealed message. If they had understood this (Christian) message, they would have disapproved of it and would not have wished to transmit it. So Pascal’s ‘carnal Jews’ are precisely in the position of Sganarelle. He doesn’t realize that he is bearing a message (for instance, he does not realize that the box he delivers to Valère contains a letter from Isabelle), and if he had realized that he was carrying that message he would have destroyed it. So, the situation is on the frontier of, or emerges from the overlapping of two communicative devices: preterition and steganography. Steganography, ‘covered writing’ (στεγανoγραϕία), was a practice of considerable fascination for the Renaissance and seventeenth century. The fullest and most methodical exposition of the practice appears in a book written by the Benedictine monk Johannes Trithemius at the end of the fifteenth century but only published in 1606, under the title Steganographia.¹⁰ This work was placed on the index of prohibited books three years after it was printed. Unlike simple cryptography, in which coded messages appear as such but cannot be decoded except by a person with the key, a steganographic message does not seem to be a message and therefore does not incite attempts at decipherment.¹¹ A steganographic document might on the surface seem to be a hymn, a prayer, a cookbook, etc., and would be a much more secure vehicle than a document that had obviously been encoded. Although Isabelle as a character would have had no knowledge of rhetorical theory or of the highly sophisticated theory of secret messages, as a person in captivity, she spontaneously resorts to means that were of great interest to Molière’s contemporaries and that appeared in many variations or flavours, ranging from Scriptural hermeneutics to exchange of scientific theories and to military messages. It may seem far-fetched to associate a fictive young woman (or more accurately, girl) in a comedy meant to amuse, on one hand, and the elucubrations of the erudite, on the other. However, Molière’s comedies themselves return not infrequently to the male perception that women speak in some form of coded language. We need only think of Les Précieuses ridicules (1659), two years before L’École des maris, or of Les Femmes savantes (1672) over a decade later, where we find complaints ¹⁰ Johannes Trithemius Steganographia, ed. Anton F.W. Sommer (Vienna: Anton. F. W. Sommer, 2014). ¹¹ George E. McCracken mentions Jesuit Athanasius Kircher’s interest in steganography (‘Athanasius Kircher’s Universal Polygraphy’, Isis 39, no. 4 [1948]: 215–228).

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about women’s incomprehensible vocabulary and even more incomprehensible silences. The elliptical quality of women’s speech and writing became even more a topic of controversy in the decade following L’École des maris, when the anonymously published best-seller La Princesse de Clèves appeared and was subsequently critiqued in detail in the equally anonymous Lettres à Madame la Marquise∗∗∗ sur le sujet de la Princesse de Clèves. In this critical work, attributed to Valincour, the writing in La Princesse de Clèves was said to be full of mystery. Apparently the author of the text and her characters were conveying meanings in ways that eluded the highly educated (male) reader whom Valincour makes the mouthpiece of his rebuke: I certainly know that brevity of expression is one of the great ornaments of language; but one must not be excessive to the point of making the sentences obscure and of removing from them necessary elements, without which, as Monsieur de Voiture says so amusingly, we will see ourselves soon reduced to speaking the language of the Angels, or at least we will be forced to speak with signs.¹²

Could it be that women had a cryptic form of expression that eluded men? Did women deliberately practise a form of strategic lack of clarity or definitiveness? Such a possibility has been asserted for other plays by Molière.¹³ But the playwright also imagined a situation in which a male authority could preempt and disable female discursive skills by creating an idiot, a woman without access to the refinements of social communication.

¹² Jean-Baptiste-Henri du Trousset de Valincour, Lettres à Madame la Marquise∗∗∗ sur le sujet de la Princesse de Clèves (Chˆateau-Gaillard, 1678), 318. ¹³ Patricia Francis Cholakian, ‘The “Woman Question” in Molière’s Misanthrope’, French Review 58, no. 4 (1985): 524–532.

2 L’École des femmes Idiocy and After

Within the French literary canon, L’École des femmes (1662) is probably the single most explicit satire of the male attempt to control women, to deprive them of choice regarding their marriage partners, and to counter their cultural influence, perceived as occurring in social gatherings dominated by women. Yet, as Michael Call has shown, contemporary audiences seem, in many instances, to have missed the point.¹ Thematically it engages with the perennial controversy over the extent to which innate determinants of human personality (if there are such) can be overridden by the social environment. To what extent, in other words, can the personality be wiped clean as a tabula rasa?² We need only very briefly recall the plot of this very well-known comedy. Arnolphe, at age forty-two is about to marry his eighteen-year-old ward Agnès whom he adopted when she was four years old. Now she has fallen in love with young Horace during a brief interval when her guardian was out of town. Horace, who does not initially realize that Arnolphe, a friend of his father’s, is the man who has sequestered the girl, confides in Arnolphe. For the rest of the play Arnolphe attempts to keep Horace away from Agnès and hastens his own planned marriage with his ward. Unaware that Arnolphe uses two names, Horace does not realize that ‘Monsieur de la Souche’ (Agnès’s guardian) is in fact Arnolphe. Consequently, the young lover reveals all his plans to his rival. Finally, by a kind of deus ex machina ending, Horace’s father arrives and ‘forces’ his son to marry the daughter of Enrique, who has for more than a decade been in America. That daughter turns out to be Agnès.

An Introduction to Idiocy It is a tenet of anti-woman—or male supremacist—doctrine in the seventeenth century that women’s ability to use language is one of the gravest dangers to ¹ Michael Call, ‘Comedic Wars, Serious Moralists: Genre, Gender, and Molière’s L’École des Femmes’, Yale French Studies 130 (2016): 52–64. See in particular pages 57–64. ² Robert Duschinsky, ‘“Tabula Rasa” and Human Nature’, Philosophy 87, no. 342 (2012): 509–529. Women and Irony in Molière’s Comedies of Marriage. John D. Lyons, Oxford University Press. © John D. Lyons (2023). DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198887379.003.0003

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men. And the occasions and places for women to practise the arts of speaking and writing—the ruelles, or as we commonly say today, the ‘salons’—were threats to male dominance. Félix de Juvenel wrote a manual to prepare young men to defend themselves against the various tactics worldly-wise women of Paris would use to win the affection of men and to control them. Among the greatest skills of the ‘coquette’ was rhetoric. Juvenel gives numerous analytic descriptions of such salon women’s discursive ploys, such as this type, aimed at countering the threat posed by a woman rival: If she meets people, whom she does not trust enough to let them know what she is thinking, she begins by praising certain qualities of the person she wishes to harm. But at the same time she slips into her words the mention of some slight faults of that person, in order to see how what she says will be received. [Then] she begins to backtrack, with an if or a but, in order to contrast some of the faults with some of the perfections that she is forced to admit, but in such a refined and delicate way that the most alert people are often deceived.³

In L’École des femmes, Molière created the fiction of one of the most extreme efforts to fight against women’s mastery of language. Arnolphe wishes to create an idiot. He describes his educational programme thus: Je la fis élever, selon ma politique, C’est-à-dire ordonnant quels soins on emploirait, Pour la rendre idiote autant qu’il se pourrait. Dieu merci, le succès a suivi mon attente, Et grande, je l’ai vue à tel point innocente, Que j’ai béni le Ciel d’avoir trouvé mon fait, Pour me faire une Femme au gré de mon souhait. I had her educated by my system. That is, I furnished them a set of rules To cultivate her simple-mindedness. And God be praised, the process was successful. Now she is grown; and she’s so innocent That I bless heaven which has favoured me, Making a bride to fit my specifications. (1.1. 136–142) ³ Félix de Juvenel, Portrait ou le véritable caractere de la coquette (Paris: C. de Sercy, 1685), 36–37.

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The resemblance of the words ‘idiot’ and ‘idiom’ has a real though distant and complex basis, deriving from the Greek verb ἰδιo˜υσθαι, ‘to appropriate, to make one’s own’ (OED). Very early the term ‘idiom’ in various forms meant the language of a particular group, region, or nation. At the same time an ‘idiot’ was an ignorant person, specifically a private person as opposed to someone with ´ official or professional standing, from the Greek ‘ἰδιωτης private person, person without professional knowledge, layman, ignorant, ill-informed person, in Hellenistic Greek also common man, plebeian < ἴδιoς private, own, peculiar’ (OED). The resulting relationship between the terms ‘idiom’ and ‘idiot’ is that the language possessed by the large group is not the private language world of the unlearned. Arnolphe constructed an educational system and a situation of isolation in which Agnès has almost no access to what people say, other than the little that Arnolphe is willing to share with her and what she hears from two domestic servants who were chosen for their ignorance, ‘des gens tout aussi simples qu’elle’ (‘people as simple-minded as she’; 1.1.148). Although she has an apparently simple but standard vocabulary, she has little idea how the words link up to concepts and in turn to reference, not knowing, for example, ‘Si les enfants qu’on fait, se faisaient par l’oreille’ (‘If the children we make are made through the ear’; 1.1.164). To maintain her in ignorance of what people say, Arnolphe keeps her in a house that is different from his official, business residence. He tells his friend Chrysalde, Je l’ai donc retirée; et comme ma demeure A cent sortes de monde est ouverte à toute heure, Je l’ai mise à l’écart, comme il faut tout prévoir, Dans cette autre Maison, où nul ne me vient voir. … since my house Is always open to all sorts of people, And since one should always foresee the worst, I have installed her in that small house yonder, Where no one comes to see me. (1.1.143–146)

The house itself thus has this ‘peculiar’ or separate quality, metonymically conveying Arnolphe’s protection of the emptiness of Agnes’s mind and language. The house itself is ‘private’ in the most extreme way, since even people who know Arnolphe do not necessarily realize that the house belonging to ‘Monsieur de la Souche’ (Sire Stump) is his; the servants in the house are the most

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unintelligent possible and do not understand the wider world; and Arnolphe expects that Agnès will have no contact with the world beyond the ‘peculiar’ place in which she is isolated. The relation between women and language is a particular focus of Arnolphe’s system, and in his way of thinking language and place are associated. The most threatening force against which Arnolphe must protect his ward is the literate wit of worldly women, particularly because they gather to talk, and to talk about writing. His comments resemble Juvenel’s warnings. In his initial presentation of the plan to avoid being cuckolded, Arnolphe points towards his worse fear, the image of the women who terrify him: … une Femme habile est un mauvais présage, Et je sais ce qu’il coûte à de certaines gens, Pour avoir pris les leurs avec trop de talents. Moi j’irais me charger d’une Spirituelle, Qui ne parlerait rien que Cercle, et que Ruelle? Qui de Prose, et de Vers, ferait de doux écrits, Et que visiteraient Marquis, et beaux Esprits … … an intelligent woman isn’t safe. I know what certain friends of mine have suffered For marrying women with too many talents. I’ll hardly pick an intellectual, Whose talk is all of literary clubs, Who writes seductively in prose and verse, And receives Marquis and bright wits … (1.1.84–90)

We have already mentioned these spaces dominated by women, the Cercle and Ruelle (or ‘salons’). They are so dangerous that the topic appears later among the prohibitions in the ‘Maximes de mariage’ in act III, where Agnès is forced to read the eighth maxim, which begins ‘Ces sociétés déréglées, / Qu’on nomme belles assemblées, / Des femmes, tous les jours corrompent les esprits.’ (‘The gatherings one calls / Dances, parties, balls, / Often of all corruptions are the den’; 3.2.784–786). The spatial isolation in which he keeps Agnès, an extreme form of ‘social distancing’ is meant to prevent the spread of the idea that women can think and talk at least as well as men. The house of Monsieur de la Souche has a temporal characteristic as well as a spatial one, since it protects against modernity:

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He is clearly aware that contemporary society is moving in a direction that he considers wrong, towards a world in which women’s power is associated with the written word in its most complex forms. Whether or not he implies that women are authors of the genres he cites—and it is very likely that he does, given the possessive adjective vos and the active stance implied by the term pousseuses (presumably, ‘promoters’)—he recognizes these literary forms and the knowledge, the savoir, that is related and transmitted by them as the property, the privileged domain of women. Molière places Arnolphe’s great ideological declaration of male supremacy in the second scene of act III. While the first scene of the play, Arnolphe’s conversation with Chrysalde, constitutes the male protagonist’s most programmatic presentation of his strategy, it is now that we learn directly the doctrinal foundation motivating and justifying that strategy. It is significant that the two extensive statements are separate and made to different audiences, because it would be dangerous for Arnolphe to make clear to Agnès just exactly what are the tricks he is using to force her into submission. So, in his lesson to her, instead of saying that he is doing everything possible to make her stupid, sotte, he states his doctrine as if it were the most unassailable truth. The presentation takes place in two parts. First is Arnolphe’s direct statement of male superiority and of the good fortune that Agnès has to be subject to his control. The second part is a written text that he has Agnès read out loud. Agnès, says Arnolphe, should bless the good fortune to have been elevated from her base condition (‘la bassesse où vous avez été’ [‘the low estate where you were’]) so that she can enjoy sleeping with and having sex with him (‘jouir de la couche et des embrassements’ [‘To share the bed, to enjoy the love’]). Her gender exists to be dependent on men. Society is divided between

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men and women: ‘Ces deux moitiés pourtant n’ont point d’égalité: / L’une est moitié suprême, et l’autre subalterne: / L’une en tout est soumise à l’autre qui gouverne’ (‘Your sex is made to be dependent; / The beard is the symbol of authority / Although mankind’s divided into two halves, / Nevertheless these halves are far from equal. / One is the major half, the other minor; / One is the governing half, the other subject’; 3.2.702–704). After a series of comparisons of subordination such as that of a soldier to his commander, Arnolphe impresses on Agnès that a woman’s subordination to her husband is far more absolute than any other form of humility and obedience. She should not look him in the eye but instead avert her eyes from the serious face of her husband: Son devoir aussitôt est de baisser les yeux: Et de n’oser jamais le regarder en face Que quand d’un doux regard il lui veut faire grˆace. C’est ce qu’entendent mal les femmes d’aujourd’hui: Mais ne vous gˆatez pas sur l’exemple d’autrui. Gardez-vous d’imiter ces coquettes vilaines … Her duty is forthwith to lower her eyes, And never to dare to look him in the face Till he vouchsafes to her a pleasant look. The women today don’t understand this well, But don’t be led astray by others’ example, Don’t imitate those horrible coquettes. (3.2.714–719)

Like the Alceste of Le Misanthrope, Arnolphe specifically targets the modern world as the object of his hostility, but unlike Le Misanthrope, this play connects the husband’s pretensions to medieval visions of damnation. Agnès will be punished for any departure from her husband’s strict confinement. In this indoctrination the punishment is not, however, the direct result of any ecclesiastical teaching about concupiscence but rather concerns the husband’s vanity. Having described the relationship of the husband and the wife as that of two radically unequal ‘halves’, Arnolphe nonetheless implies that the smaller and weaker ‘half ’ has a disproportionate capacity to harm the superior one: ‘Songez qu’en vous faisant moitié de ma personne; / C’est mon honneur, Agnès, que je vous abandonne: / Que cet honneur est tendre, et se blesse de peu; / Que sur un tel sujet il ne fait point de jeu’ (‘Reflect that when I make you half of me, / It is my honor I entrust to you. / This honor is tender; it is easily hurt. / On such

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a subject there can be no trifling’; 3.2.723–726). The punishments with which Arnolphe seeks to terrify Agnès are gruesome: … il est aux Enfers des chaudières bouillantes, Où l’on plonge à jamais les femmes mal vivantes, Ce que je vous dis là ne sont pas des chansons: Et vous; devez du cœur dévorer ces leçons. Si votre aˆme les suit et fuit d’être coquette, Elle sera toujours comme un lis blanche et nette: Mais s’il faut qu’à l’honneur elle fasse un faux bond, Elle deviendra lors noire comme un charbon, Vous paraîtrez à tous un objet effroyable, Et vous irez un jour, vrai partage du diable, Bouillir dans les Enfers à toute éternité. … down in hell there are some boiling caldrons In which are plunged women of evil life. What I am saying is not just idle talk; You should lay up these lessons in your heart. If you regard them, fleeing coquettishness, Your soul will be like a lily, white and pure. But if you take a step away from honor, Your soul will turn a dreadful black, like coal; You will look horrible to everyone, And one day you will be the devil’s prey; You’ll rot in hell to all eternity. (3.2.727–737)

Molière’s initial audiences must have recognized the connection between this teaching and the deadly earnest combat of the Church (and the crown) against libertinism, the trend against religious belief and therefore against the institutions that were buttressed by Catholicism.⁴ Even though the author benefitted from the high degree of tolerance in matters of sexual conduct in the early years of Louis XIV’s personal reign, deviation from the sexual conduct prescribed by the Church was often associated with religious scepticism or outright atheism and could have deadly results. The particularly graphic form in which Arnolphe presents the threat of damnation is multivalent; it can be seen as ⁴ Antony McKenna, Molière dramaturge libertin (Paris: Champion, 2005), 21.

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the traditional way of teaching the childish and illiterate or it can be seen (by a more knowing adult audience) as parodic and laughable. This second way of reading this scene is clearly the more audacious, the riskier. Arnolphe’s personal statement of the conjugal doctrine, with its emphasis on the idea that a woman’s freedom is a direct threat to her husband’s honour is followed by another satiric representation of traditional Catholic doctrines of marriage, a printed document that he gives Agnès to read. The title is Les Maximes du mariage, ou les Devoirs de la femme mariée, Avec son Exercice journalier (Marriage Maxims; or, The Duties of the Married Woman; with daily exercises), and evokes, particularly with the reference to ‘daily exercise’, the edifying manuals written by Catholic clerics that aimed to give married women a religious practice adapted from the life of cloistered nuns.⁵ The versified maxims reiterate much of what Arnolphe has already told Agnès about the wife’s duty to please no one but her husband: ‘Car pour bien plaire à son Époux, / Elle ne doit plaire à personne’ (‘To be pleasing to her husband / She must please no one’)—an oddly and comically self-contradictory statement. What is particularly stressed is the prohibition of any sociability. The belles assemblées (brilliant gatherings), games and gambling, promenades and picnics are all grave dangers. It is striking that Arnolphe has his ward read only up to the tenth maxim, even though there are apparently more to come. The parallel with Christian teachings based on the ten commandments (and hence Molière’s satirical take on the established religion) is thus made without subtlety. In the following soliloquy, Arnolphe continues to celebrate the educational project that he has pursued for at least a decade, a project, as we have noted, based on relative ‘blank-slatism’, the idea that any inherent human nature (if there is such) can be easily wiped away so that education or conditioning can make people who they are. How he squares this with his apparent confidence in his own status and abilities, apparently innate, is, of course, never clarified. As for Agnès, he compares her to a ball of wax, a most malleable and inert substance: ‘Ainsi que je voudrai, je tournerai cette aˆme. / Comme un morceau de cire entre mes mains elle est, / Et je lui puis donner la forme qui me plaît’ (‘She’s like a piece of wax I hold in my hand, / And I can give her whatever form I wish’; 3.3.809–811). In saying that Arnolphe’s confidence in the tabula rasa approach to raising his ward is only relative, we recognize that he fears women who are too obviously intelligent to submit: ‘une femme habile est bien une autre bête. / Notre sort ne dépend que de sa seule tête: / De ce qu’elle s’y met, ⁵ François de Sales’s Introduction à la vie dévote is an example of a text begun as a source of advice for nuns that was broadened to take into account readers living as lay persons.

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rien ne la fait gauchir, / Et nos enseignements ne font là que blanchir’ (‘the shrewd woman is quite different; / Our lot in life depends upon her whim. / Nothing can turn her from her purposes; / Our admonitions get lip service only’; 3.3.820–823). We soon find that this categorization of women into two groups is a mistake; or perhaps Arnolphe is making a couple of other errors about Agnès and about intelligent women in general. Perhaps Agnès is in fact quite smart but has been deprived of a chance to use her intelligence, and perhaps Arnolphe mistakes the outward display of literacy and awareness of contemporary artistic culture for wit itself.

Le petit chat est mort One manifestation of the idiocy to which Arnolphe has deliberately reduced her appears in his first attempt at conversation with her upon his return after a journey of nine or ten days. His real purpose in this fifth scene of the second act is to interrogate Agnès about the visits that her young suitor has made to her during her guardian’s absence. He asks her ‘what’s new?’ (‘Quelle nouvelle’), and she answers, ‘Le petit chat est mort’ (‘The little cat died’; 2.5.461). This answer always brings laughs, for several converging or competing reasons. It seems to show Agnès’s childlike nature, on one hand, but on the other, it may also be a deliberate attempt on her part to evade precisely the issue that Arnolphe is inquiring about. The attempts at conversation are halting, to say the least, and he makes many attempts to get Agnès talking, to no avail. But one explanation for the statement about the death of the cat is that Agnès is ‘idiotic’ in the ancient sense of the term: she lives an entirely private life and has neither conversational practice nor understanding of the frameworks of sociability that are available to men who travel freely in the world and that are available to Arnolphe’s nemesis, the cultivated women of the salons. On this supposition, Agnès simply does not know how to make conversation. What does one talk about? In the belles assemblées that Arnolphe denounces and fears above all other possible influences on his ward, men and women learn how to talk, how to give pleasure both in terms of the things to talk about and the manner of treating them. This is a major theme of the works both of women writers such as Madeleine de Scudéry and of male authors such as Nicolas Faret and the Chevalier de Méré. One learns to please by intuiting the kind of conversation one’s partners enjoy. If conversation is a game, then Arnolphe has been singularly successful in assuring that Agnès does not know how to play

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it. In boasting to Chrysalde of the splendid stupidity produced by his pedagogical programme, Arnolphe gives the specific example of a language-based parlour game: Femme qui compose, en sait plus qu’il ne faut. Je prétends que la mienne, en clartés peu sublime, Même ne sache pas ce que c’est qu’une Rime; Et s’il faut qu’avec elle on joue au Corbillon, Et qu’on vienne à lui dire, à son tour, qu’y met-on? Je veux qu’elle réponde, une tarte à la crême. If she writes books, she knows a lot too much. I want her so sublimely ignorant That she won’t even know that words can rhyme. Why, if one plays the basket-game, you know ‘What goes in?’ you ask, and expect a rhyme-word, I’d gladly have her answer: ‘A cream tart!’ (1.1. 94–99)

The point of the game was to produce immediately the name of an object that rhymes with corbillon. Here, as in other passages, such as Agnès’s talk of making cornettes (night-caps), the spectator may very well have understood a sexual allusion of which Agnès is presumably unaware. The ‘corbeille’ can be associated with the female genitals. This creates a situational irony to the extent that she innocently says something inappropriate, thus illustrating Chrysalde’s point about the importance of women learning enough to know to be ‘honnête’ rather than committing an impropriety out of ignorance. But it also creates a dramatic irony insofar as Arnolphe himself is unaware that the educational programme of which he is so proud is producing results that the theatrical audience perceives even though the guardian does not. Idiocy as a form of stupidity is specifically the lack of awareness of the public and its usages, and without experience of the public, Agnès is not aware of how she is perceived. And ‘public’ in this instance is a much broader term than in other contexts, since it includes assemblées (or salons) not only at which men converse with women but also where women talk and convey and practice the skills that Arnolphe so much deplores and fears. Agnès’s apparently complete inability not only to initiate but even to sustain a conversational exchange is particularly striking because it is produced by her guardian’s obsessive concern with the way the public perceives him. If the ‘idiot’ is an extreme of privacy, then

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what Arnolphe has done is sacrifice the possibility of his own happiness in private in the hope of attaining distinction in public. That is, if he wishes to have any kind of conversation with Agnès, that possibility has vanished as part of his training programme. Yet the more we consider the announcement of the death of the little cat, the more mysterious it becomes. To be sure, many editions of the play include a note about the implications of the word chat (cat) since chat or chatte has long been a term for the vulva, and the death of the ‘cat’ might easily be taken to mean the end of Agnès’s virginity.⁶ And this équivoque would be, like the preceding reference to the night-cap or cornette, all the more amusing in the mouth of a girl unaware of the implication that cornette hints at Arnolphe being cuckolded, having the cornes or antlers of a betrayed husband (a dramatic irony). But as we think more about the cat’s death, we may well be puzzled that this is the news that Agnès first tells Arnolphe. He soon learns that something of much more lasting significance has occurred in his absence, when Agnès finally provides a very detailed account of Horace’s visits. Why did she not immediately mention them but instead wait until she learns that her guardian has discovered this fact? Does Agnès, despite her apparent innocence, really intend to conceal her new-found love? Or does her idiocy, that is, her lack of perspective on what people talk about and in what order, cause her to mention an incident that occurred earlier, before Horace arrived on the scene? Or instead, simply the thing that is less complicated? Or perhaps she has no idea of the scale of importance, and thinks that the loss of the cat will be more significant to Arnolphe than the visits of a total stranger in whom Arnolphe would seem to have no interest? These are questions of interpretation that stage directors, actors, and readers will have to answer for themselves, since in a staging of the play, Agnès’s gestures and way of speaking will be determined by answers to those questions. We know at least one person’s answer, since Arnolphe in an aside reveals to us that he considers Agnès to be without guile: ‘Cet aveu qu’elle fait avec sincérité, / Me marque pour le moins son ingénuité’ (‘At least, the admission made with sincerity / Indicates the simplicity of her mind’; 2.5.477–478). Seen in this way, this moment in the comedy is one more example of the situational irony that is the central structural element of the text, as we see it repeatedly in Horace’s exchanges with Arnolphe. The emotional result is that Arnolphe is tortured by the detailed exposition of the budding love affair that he devotes so much energy to prevent, and further he here (and elsewhere with Horace) must ⁶ Molière, Œuvres complètes, ed. Georges Forestier (Paris: Gallimard, 2010), I, 1362.

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conceal his anger in order to elicit Agnès’s full and unintimidated disclosure of what happened between her and her visitor. Another astounding and mysterious aspect of this scene is Agnès’s sudden prolixity and exquisite recall of detail as she recites, in dialogue format, the visit of the old woman (the stock character of the ‘old bawd’) employed by Horace to persuade Agnès to allow him to enter the house. This must be one of the most unusual récits (narration of something that happens off-stage) in all of seventeenth-century French theatre. Usually, such accounts merely summarize in general terms what happened, but in this case Agnès reproduces the dialogue itself, giving both what she said and what the old woman said. In effect, Agnès puts on a play-within-a-play for Arnolphe (and for the spectator) in which she alternately takes the role of the old woman and herself. Here is a short piece of this rather long staged flashback: Moi, j’ai blessé quelqu’un? fis-je tout étonnée, Oui, dit-elle, blessé, mais blessé tout de bon; Et c’est l’homme qu’hier vous vîtes du Balcon. Hélas! qui pourrait, dis-je, en avoir été cause? Sur lui sans y penser, fis-je, choir quelque chose? Non, dit-elle, vos yeux ont fait ce coup fatal […] ‘What, I have wounded someone?’ I exclaimed. ‘ Yes’, she said. ‘Wounded! Wounded grievously The man you saw from your balcony yesterday’. ‘Now what’, I said, ‘could be the cause of that? Did I let something drop on him carelessly?’ ‘No, it’s your eyes’, she said, ‘that did the deed. […]’ (2.5.512–517)

The humour of the scene comes both from the torture that Agnès unwittingly inflicts on Arnolphe and from her lack of understanding of the terms of the dialogue that she apparently reproduces with perfect accuracy. We recognize here one of the most persistent configurations of irony in Molière’s comedies: the three-person discursive exchange in which two of the three parties to the discourse are aware of the meaning of the utterances and the third person is unaware of the actual import of what is being said. In the scene presented by Agnès the old woman speaks in a conventional language of lovesickness. One of the women from the belles assemblées would easily decode these words as playfully figurative (and figurative language is a category with which irony was

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closely related, even entangled), but Agnès does not understand this meaning. In her turn, Agnès conveys these words without realizing the meaning that she is conveying. In effect, she does what the Sganarelle of L’École des maris does, except that the person who does understand is not the intended recipient of the message but rather precisely the person who should not receive the message, Arnolphe. It is precisely Arnolphe’s fate to be the recipient of information that his interlocutors would not like him to have (if they realized its significance to him), but this information, though useful to Arnolphe, is always painful for him to hear. In the rest of the interrogation to which Arnolphe subjects Agnès, we hear more about the power of language itself, a kind of magic language beyond meaning but with an effect more powerful than meaning itself. How did Horace spend his time with Agnès, her guardian asks, and she answers: Il jurait, qu’il m’aimait d’une amour sans seconde: Et me disait des mots les plus gentils du monde: Des choses que jamais rien ne peut égaler; Et dont, toutes les fois que je l’entends parler, La douceur me chatouille, et là-dedans remue Certain je ne sais quoi, dont je suis tout émue. He swore he loved me, with unparalleled love, And said the sweetest things you can imagine, Things like things no one ever heard before. They kind of tickled me inside, and stirred, Something which makes me sort of excited still. (2.5.559–564)

Any spectator can appreciate that all these words inflict torture on Arnolphe, but Molière decided to emphasize the suffering by having Arnolphe say, in an aside, ‘Ô fˆacheux examen d’un mystère fatal, / Où l’examinateur souffre seul tout le mal’ (‘Oh, what an unpleasant investigation of a fateful mystery, / Where the investigator alone endures all the suffering’; 2.5.565–566).

Agnès, the Ironic Ingénue The following scene with Agnès’s suitor Horace reveals to Arnolphe (and to the spectator) that she is far less malleable than her guardian had supposed. It turns out that Agnès, despite her claim to be incapable of recognizing irony, is

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quite capable of ironic expression. In fact, both her statement that she cannot understand when someone is speaking, as she says, mockingly and her own mocking of Arnolphe’s authority happen within little more than ten verses, although spectators and readers only find out in the following act what Agnès has done. In response to Arnolphe’s promise that he will see to it that Agnès is married, she (understanding that he means to Horace) is gushingly happy and yet senses that this news is too good to be true. Perhaps the disparity between her guardian’s usually stern demeanour and the assurance of his mutual caresses puzzles her to the point that she (even the discursively challenged one), suspects a joke: ‘Je ne reconnais point, pour moi, quand on se moque. / Parlez-vous tout de bon?’ (‘I can never tell when people are making jokes. / You’re speaking seriously?’; 2.5.620–621). What happens between Agnès’s question about mockery and her own gesture of an ironic, coded communication, is an outstanding demonstration of the importance of the form of communication that is perhaps the most primitive, or at least basic, in human society: pointing. Even an idiot, someone unversed in the ways of the marketplace, can respond to the question, ‘Which one do you want?’ with an extended finger or even a directed nod of the head. In spoken form, pointing appears in the words ‘there’, ‘here’, and so forth (technically the deictics). Agnès tells Arnolphe that she will have much satisfaction with him (avec lui), and at Arnolphe’s prompt to clarify, she says Avec … là (with … there). This is the slender, pointed and pointing moment in which Agnès realizes how dire her situation is. And this ‘là’ recalls the dangled ‘le’ of earlier in the scene, when Arnolphe is tormented by not understanding to what noun this ‘le’ connects.⁷ These most minimal of monosyllables (well, ‘ô’ and ‘ah’ would perhaps be the ultimate in reduction) are reminders of the educational programme of idiocy, through which Agnès’s discursive capacity has been reduced to the extreme of le, là, lui. These small words occasioned a great deal of discussion in Molière’s day.⁸ Their rich indefiniteness and suggestiveness still fascinates. It is worth pausing to consider how là affects us. If this ‘pointing word’ occurs with a gesture of actual pointing, it can be one of the most precise, clear, and unambiguous of

⁷ Michael Call, ‘Comedic Wars, Serious Moralists: Genre, Gender, and Molière’s L’École des femmes’, Yale French Studies 130 (2016): 52–64. ⁸ Joan E. DeJean, ‘Two-Letter Words. Molière’s L’École des femmes and Obscenity Made Modern’, in The Reinvention of Obscenity: Sex, Lies, and Tabloids in Early Modern France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 84–121. Georges Forestier sees Molière as acting precisely to stimulate this discussion as a way of publicizing his play and drawing still more spectators (Georges Forestier, Molière (Paris: Gallimard, 2018), 207–224). See also Patrick Dandrey, Molière, ou, l’esthétique du ridicule (Paris: Klincksieck, 1992), 104–124.

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signs. But if we read it or hear it as a sound without an accompanying visual context, it leaves us guessing. In this way it relates to the ambiguous mockery of which Agnès spoke only moments earlier. It seems to tell us something but at the same time awakens in us a doubt about just exactly what. In the immediate dramatic context, of course, there is no actual doubt in Arnolphe’s mind about who là is. When simple verbal irony works, there is also no doubt because the receiver chooses between a literal meaning that does not fit the situation and a figurative one that does. So why would the speaker use irony? In the simplest cases irony offers some ‘value added’ over the literal statement. It serves to emphasize, to make the proposition stand out from the rest of the exchange and can also imply to the interlocutor a special complicity, underscoring the fact that the hearer will know the intentions of the speaker well enough not to need a plain statement. When Agnès says là, however, it seems rather an effect of self-censorship. She has suddenly realized that her great joy at the thought of marrying Horace is unfounded; indeed, that it is turned upside-down into the nightmarish prospect of marrying the much older man who represents, now even more than moments earlier, perpetual imprisonment. There is, however, something more to glean from this set of tiny words— là, le, lui. If the Western tradition of comedy most frequently offers plots that lead to a heterosexual marriage, then we can understand this là as a marker akin to the mathematical sign x. Someone is going to marry someone, but the exact name or identity of that someone is generically open. In fact, we know that early modern comedy plays with the slippery openness of designations for the ultimate object of desire. We need only think of Corneille’s comedies, such as Le Menteur or La Place Royale, for examples of the way different potential partners are swapped into and out of the place of the potential and eventual marriage partner—in other words, the way that là is in some scenes attached to one name and in other scenes to another name. In L’École des femmes there is no hesitation on Agnès’s part about the person she wishes to marry, and yet even though she is uniquely intent on the charming Horace, her artificially induced idiocy bestows a particularly poignant depth to the là. She has never met and been courted by another young man, and hence for Agnès Horace is equal to the entire universe of marriageable men. She does not have to call him by name, because the spectators and Arnolphe realize that the specifics of Horace are not what create the situation; someone else would have been equally seductive to a young woman so deprived. It is only through the structure of the quasi deus ex machina that ends the play that Horace’s existence as other than là becomes important, that is, at the point in the play when the anarchic erotic attraction of the two young people re-enters—as almost

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always happens at the end of early modern dramas—into the state-sanctioned order. As has already been mentioned, the last scene of act II is the first scene in which Agnès becomes a practitioner of ironic expression, but the spectator and Arnolphe must wait until late in the following act to discover what she has done. This delay in letting the spectator into the secret is relatively unusual in Molière’s theatre (it does not occur, for example, in L’Ecole des maris) because usually the spectator or reader participates in the dramatic irony of understanding a message delivered by or in the presence of the dupe. But in L’École des femmes we and Arnolphe only realize Agnès’s grasp of the concept of sending two competing messages at the same time when Horace shares with her guardian the surprise of finding a written message attached to the stone that she had unwillingly hurled at her lover in the previous act. Through the first three scenes of the third act, Arnolphe revels in the triumph of his authoritarian educational (we might even be tempted to say, de-educational or dis-educational) programme. He views Agnès as completely inert and without internal resources or drives of any sort. The simile of the lump of wax mentioned above (3.3.809–811) no doubt recalled, for some of the first audience members of the comedy, Descartes’s well-known remarks on the lump of wax in the second of his Meditations on First Philosophy (1641). Certainly, the extreme malleability of the wax fits well with Arnolphe’s view of a thing (for so he considers Agnès) without essence, without any enduring properties of its own. After having written at length about the active properties of his own mind, Descartes describes a piece of wax, presumably from a candle: ‘Take … this piece of wax; it is quite fresh, having been but recently taken from the beehive; it has not yet lost the sweetness of the honey it contained; it still retains somewhat of the odor of the flowers from which it was gathered; its colour, figure, size are apparent; it is hard, cold, easily handled.’⁹ But after this description of the wax as a something that can be ‘as distinctly known as possible’, the philosopher, in a rather dramatic move, makes of the lump of wax an example of something that is transformable to the utmost: ‘But, while I am speaking, let it be placed near the fire—what remained of the taste exhales, the smell evaporates, the colour changes, its figure is destroyed, its size increases, it becomes liquid…’ What then remains of the wax? ‘There certainly remains nothing, except something extended, flexible, and movable.’ The wax, in short, is a thing without any intrinsic qualities, and this is precisely how Arnolphe ⁹ René Descartes, A Discourse on Method: Meditations on the First Philosophy Principles of Philosophy, trans. John Veitch (London: Everyman, 1994), 84.

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views his ward and soon-to-be wife. But Arnolphe is about to be reminded of another quality of wax: it is slippery and can escape from control. In the following scene Horace reappears and, viewing Arnolphe as his confidant and ally, explains that Agnès’s guardian has blocked access to her. And she herself has chased him away in no uncertain terms: ‘Agnès m’a confirmé le retour de ce Maître; / En me chassant de là d’un ton plein de fierté, / Accompagné d’un grès que sa main a jeté’ (‘Agnes confirmed that her master had returned / By driving me off, with a very haughty tone, / Accompanied by a stone she threw at me’; 3.4.877–879). Arnolphe savours his triumph and expresses his sympathy for Horace in tones that the spectator understands as cruelly ironic. But then, to the surprise not only of Arnolphe but also of the audience, Horace reveals that there was a letter attached to the rock. This turning-point in our understanding of Agnès occurs shortly after the exact mid-point of the text, beginning with Horace’s announcement, ‘C’est un autre incident que vous allez entendre, / Un trait hardi qu’a fait cette jeune beauté, / Et qu’on n’attendrait point de sa simplicité’ (‘another incident I’ll tell you about, / A bold contrivance of my little beauty. / You wouldn’t expect it, from her simple air’; 3.4.896–898).¹⁰ What follows in this scene is remarkable in two respects. First, through Horace, Molière proposes an entirely different view of human nature and hence of education than the one that underlies all Arnolphe’s plans and that was restated in the immediately preceding scene. Second, Molière shows Agnès to have transitioned in a matter of minutes from someone incapable of recognizing verbal irony to being a master of that discursive mode. Rather than supposing that persons are formed entirely by outside forces that shape them—in other words, far from supposing that we are inert and without innate capabilities and drives—Horace conveys the view that even a person kept apart from society and in ignorance of the range of communicative resources can quickly access innate abilities when they encounter a stimulating occasion, specifically the onset of erotic attraction: Il le faut avouer, l’amour est un grand maître, Ce qu’on ne fut jamais il nous enseigne à l’être, Et souvent de nos mœurs l’absolu changement Devient par ses leçons l’ouvrage d’un moment. De la nature en nous il force les obstacles, ¹⁰ The play is 1779 verses long; the mid-point would be verse 889. So, this peripeteia, or turning point, occurs not only midway in terms of the acts, i.e., act III of five, but also in terms of the verses.

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Et ses effets soudains ont de l’air des miracles, D’un avare à l’instant il fait un libéral: Un Vaillant d’un Poltron, un Civil d’un Brutal. You have to admit, love is a splendid teacher, Telling us how to be what we never were. Love often gives us accurate instructions How we can change our character in a jiffy. It breaks down all the obstacles of nature; Its transformations seem like miracles. In a moment it makes a miser generous, A coward valiant, and a boor polite. (3.4.900–907)

Of course, one could object, such a sudden change might correspond just as well as Arnolphe’s pedagogy to the Cartesian model of the lump of wax that can suddenly take on a completely different outward appearance. But the crucial difference is one of will. Love switches something on inside the person who feels it—and we need to remember that for early modern thinkers love is will-power. In the examples that Horace gives we have the confirmation of the specific internal activity of those affected by love. Whereas in Arnolphe’s and Descartes’s use of the wax simile the outward forces can uniformly and predictably mould the wax to whatever shape the external agent decides, in the case of love the outwardly manifested characteristics are variable and unpredictable. Once the drive has been activated, the lover will do what it takes to obtain her or his goals.¹¹ As spectators we can perceive both the situational and dramatic irony of this moment. Arnolphe, thinking that he was forcing Agnès to repulse her suitor, gave her the means to communicate with him. In other words, it is a classic case of reversal in the form of unintended self-harm. And the audience sees in this moment that Horace is, without meaning to, inflicting upon Arnolphe a particularly bitter defeat, a point that is humorously underscored by Horace’s repeated incitement for Arnolphe to share in the comic discomfiture of ‘Monsieur de la Souche’: ‘Riez-en donc un peu … vous n’en riez pas assez à mon avis’ (‘Laugh about it a bit … you aren’t laughing enough in my opinion’; 3.4.926 and 938). ¹¹ René Descartes, ‘Les Passions de l’ˆame’, in Œuvres de Descartes, ed. Ch Adam and Paul Tannery, vol. 11 (Paris: J. Vrin, 1966), 388–389 (sections 81–82).

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Most of all, however, this scene brings to Arnolphe and the audience Agnès’ astounding discursive virtuosity. Horace points out in technical terms how ironic her message is, showing the perfectly reversible meaning of her spoken message when she threw the stone: Car tranchant avec moi par ces termes exprès, Retirez-vous, mon aˆ me aux visites renonce, Je sais tous vos discours: Et voilà ma réponse. Cette pierre ou ce grès dont vous vous étonniez, Avec un mot de lettre est tombée à mes pieds, Et j’admire de voir cette lettre ajustée, Avec le sens des mots; et la pierre jetée. She broke off with me outwardly, by saying: ‘Sir, go away. I do not want your visits. I know all you will say, and here’s my answer!’ And then this stone or this rock which surprised you, Fell at my feet, together with a letter. And I’m amazed to see how the letter fits With her uttered words, and the symbolic stone. (3.4.911–917)

As Horace tells Arnolphe, Agnès’s spoken words can initially be taken in two ways. At the moment when she threw the stone, Horace and Arnolphe (as well as an initial, ideally naïve spectator) assume that the ‘answer’ referred to (ma réponse) is the hostile gesture of aiming a stone in the direction of her suitor. But we learn later that the answer is in fact the written one, conveying an entirely opposite meaning. This is an exceptionally sophisticated form of irony. Although it falls within the general category of verbal irony, it combines in fact both physical gesture, symbolic material object, spoken words, and written words. And there is also within the category of spoken words the connotative quality of tone along with the denotation (the plain semantic import) of what Agnès says. We have already seen that in the seventeenth century, as today, gesture and tone were considered characteristics of ironic utterances insofar as they often give clues to the reversal of meaning intended by the speaker. Here, however, Agnès apparently performs the gesture commanded by Arnolphe—’Je suis Maître, je parle, allez, obéissez’ (‘I am master here. I order; you obey’—with a masterful histrionic representation of anger towards Horace. Arnolphe even congratulates her on her performance: ‘ma joie est sans pareille. / Vous avez là suivi mes ordres à merveille’ (‘everything went well,

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and I’m delighted. / You have obeyed my orders most exactly’; 3.1.639–640). In other words, she has used her voice in the opposite way from the one traditionally associated with irony. She has given no outward clue to her intentions, but instead devised an irony with a long fuse; only the letter will later reveal that she was not saying what she was saying. When we hear Horace read Agnès’s letter to Arnolphe in act III, we hear Agnès’s voice mediated through that of her lover. As in many early modern texts, in L’École des femmes we see how many obstacles stand in the way of women’s expression of their real thoughts and desires. Convention stands in the way of direct expression and literary texts are constructed to allow them to express themselves through indirection; this is, for example, highly characteristic of the writings of Lafayette. Here, as in so many other instances of the time, Agnès’s voice is most present when she herself is physically absent. With the letter Molière also returns to the theme of nature. As preface to his reading, Horace comments: Tout ce que son cœur sent, sa main a su l’y mettre: Mais en termes touchants, et tous pleins de bonté, De tendresse innocente, et d’ingénuité, De la manière enfin que la pure nature Exprime de l’amour la première blessure. She’s found the way to express what her heart feels In touching terms, displaying all her virtue, Her artless, frank, and innocent affection, In short, in such a way as nature itself Reveals the earliest troubling sting of love. (3.4.941–945)

Horace describes, almost as a literary critic, the paradoxical qualities of the short message. The perfect representation of nature was the highest, but also most difficult, goal of early modern mimetic poetics. Time after time contemporary critics censure French authors for failing to achieve expression that respects le naturel (naturalness). People were supposed to have a natural lack of ability to speak and write naturally—this is a kind of aesthetic consequence of the widely prevalent Augustinian doctrine of mankind’s fallen nature.¹² Only ¹² Michael Moriarty, Fallen Nature, Fallen Selves: Early Modern French Thought II (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2006) and Philippe Sellier, Port-Royal et la littérature: lumière classique (Paris: H. Champion, 1999).

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with education was one supposed to be able to achieve such perfect representation. There was however one important exception: women were supposed to be closer to nature than men, to write with less art.¹³ Molière enters the quarrel of women’s proximity to ‘nature’ and to its expression by endowing Agnès with a quality not often associated with naïve characters: critical self-awareness. Here is how her message begins: Je veux vous écrire, et je suis bien en peine par où je m’y prendrai. J’ai des pensées que je désirerais que vous sussiez; mais je ne sais comment faire pour vous les dire, et je me défie de mes paroles. Comme je commence à connaître qu’on m’a toujours tenu dans l’ignorance, j’ai peur de mettre quelque chose, qui ne soit pas bien […]¹⁴ I want to write to you, but I have a lot of trouble knowing how to start. I have some thoughts that I wish you could know about; but I don’t know exactly how to tell them to you, and I don’t really trust my own words. As I’m beginning to realize that I’ve always been kept in a state of ignorance, I’m afraid of putting down something wrong, and of saying more than I ought to… (unversified, after 3.4.947)

One of the most common assertions about letters written by women to suitors or lovers is that they write in a passionate, disordered way indicative of a gender incapable of critical thought.¹⁵ Indeed, without going to such an extreme, Horace’s prefatory comments to Arnolphe stress a kind of emotional directness, though without attributing it to Agnès’s gender but rather to her inexperience, which he finds touching. The letter itself, however, is much more concerned with writing and speaking than with love. Agnès is reflecting on the idiocy for which she has been formed. The contact with the outside world makes her aware that her captivity is not normal, and the most immediate consequence is the alienation from language that she now, for the first time, feels. When she writes that she distrusts her own words, her remark is consistent ¹³ See Katharine A. Jensen, ‘Male Models of Feminine Epistolarity; or, How to Write Like a Woman in Seventeenth-Century France’, in Writing the Female Voice: Essays on Epistolary Literature, ed. Elizabeth C. Goldsmith (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1989), 25–45; and Elizabeth C. Goldsmith, ‘Authority, Authenticity, and the Publication of Letters by Women’, in Writing the Female Voice: Essays on Epistolary Literature, ed. Elizabeth C. Goldsmith (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1989), 46–59. ¹⁴ Molière, I, 443. ¹⁵ Katharine Ann Jensen, in her Writing Love, Ad Feminam, Letters, Women, and the Novel in France, 1605–1776 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1995), explores this conception in brilliant detail.

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with her previous statement to Arnolphe about her inability to recognize irony. Just as she thinks she may be missing the meaning (as opposed to the literal sense) of something that Arnolphe says, she is afraid that the words she writes may convey some other, perhaps excessive meaning, to Horace. Or that she will simply say something that is not within the bounds of polite discourse. She infers that there are usages, boundaries, rules, and hidden depths to discourse of which she was unaware before hearing Horace speak. We recall from the previous act that her account of meeting Horace (2.5.559–564) concerned above all his way of speaking and its effects. While Agnès’s letter is certainly a love letter, it is most of all a metadiscourse in which she now sets side by side the discourse of three individuals: herself, Horace, and Arnolphe. She glosses succinctly each of them and gives weight to a central hermeneutic key, her guardian’s dishonesty. We have in many cases seen that reversal is a fundamental characteristic of irony. But that figure does not have a monopoly on reversal, as Agnès now shows. Here is what she says about what Arnolphe has told her: On me dit fort, que tous les jeunes hommes sont des trompeurs; qu’il ne les faut point écouter, et que tout ce que vous me dites, n’est que pour m’abuser; mais je vous assure, que je n’ai pu encore me figurer cela de vous; et je suis si touchée de vos paroles, que je ne saurais croire qu’elles soient menteuses.¹⁶ People tell me all the time that young men are deceivers, and that one mustn’t listen to them, and that everything you tell me is only to trick me; but I assure you that I haven’t yet been able to conceive that of you; and I am so touched by your words that I can hardly believe they are lies.

Agnès understands that she cannot understand Arnolphe’s words as factually, referentially, true. Where earlier she admitted that she could not perceive the difference between the sense and the meaning of a statement—that is, utterances that were said jokingly or mockingly—now she comes to the realization of the possibility of a much more widespread schism between sense and meaning: that Arnolphe’s accusations of deception were themselves a deceit. Instead of Horace being a liar, Arnolphe himself is one. She begins to understand a system in the way she is treated. As she has just noted, she has ‘always been kept in ignorance’. Why should she trust the very person who has done this to her? And why should she mistrust the person who wishes to free her from that situation? ¹⁶ Molière, Œuvres complètes, ed. Georges Forestier (Paris: Gallimard, 2010), I, 444.

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Arnolphe thinks that a woman who talks is dangerous, and it is an odd feature of Molière’s comedy that Agnès really does not get to talk very much at all. This is one of the major and rather startling differences between L’École des maris and L’École des femmes. In the earlier play Isabelle is the inventive, energetic, witty, and striving heroine, determining her fate as much as a woman of her time and her situation can. But in L’École des femmes, while Agnès is the centre of a set of transactions that are happening all around her, she almost disappears after the first half of the play (after 3.2.801) and only re-emerges shortly before the end of the last act. And yet, when she does once more get to speak, it is as if she were picking up exactly where she left off. We left her in act III reading aloud the ‘Maximes du mariage’ given her by Arnolphe, and when she is abducted by her guardian in act V (snatched away from Horace as the two young lovers were about to elope) she returns precisely to the topic of education. Her words, though addressed to Arnolphe, can be heard as an indictment not only of the grotesque extreme to which he pushed the ‘education’ of a submissive wife but of the traditional French and Christian views of the way a married woman should comport herself. While he is shouting at her for attempting to flee to marry Horace, she points out the innocence of her intentions and that she had simply followed her guardian’s lessons: ‘C’est un homme qui dit qu’il me veut pour sa femme; / J’ai suivi vos leçons, et vous m’avez prêché / Qu’il se faut marier pour ôter le péché’ (‘He tells me that he wants me for his wife. / I learned your lessons. You had preached to me / That one must marry to remove the sin’; 5.4.1509–1511). Male power and religion are bound together in the very choice of words, ‘preaching’ and ‘sin’. In the face of Arnolphe’s objection that his whole plan was not at the level of concepts but in the service of his own interest (‘pour femme moi je prétendais vous prendre’). Agnès’s response points out the discrepancy between the penitential view of marriage that she has understood from Arnolphe’s education and the joy she expects from union with Horace: … à vous parler franchement entre nous, Il est plus pour cela, selon mon goût, que vous; Chez vous le mariage est fˆacheux et pénible, Et vos discours en font une image terrible: Mais las! il le fait lui si rempli de plaisirs, Que de se marier il donne des désirs. to tell you frankly how I think, He somehow seems to suit me better than you.

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With you, marriage is very grim and tiresome, And you describe it as a terrible thing. But he—oh, dear!—he makes it so delightful, He really makes me anxious to get married. (5.4.1514–1519)

In the last act of the play Agnès now speaks directly and with a clear sense of what she is saying. The uncertainty of act II, when we, along with Arnolphe, must guess whether she is aware of the import of her words, is now past. Both the guardian and the ward are unveiled, and his tyrannical intentions are plain to Agnès, who now weighs her words in terms of their truth-content rather than in terms of power status. When Arnolphe complains that she is admitting that she loves Horace (‘Et vous avez le front de le dire à moi-même!’ (‘And you’re so brazen as to tell me that!’)), she replies with a question that is in itself a whole manifesto against the regulation of discourse on the basis of asymmetrical social standing: ‘Et pourquoi, s’il est vrai, ne le dirais-je pas?’ (‘Why shouldn’t I tell it to you, if it’s true?’; 5.4.1522–1523). While Agnès rejects power inequality as the guide to what one should say, Arnolphe notes that this subversion of order, this empowerment of woman, is even more threatening because it is not confined to identifiable and privileged cultural circles: Voyez comme raisonne et répond la vilaine! Peste! une précieuse en dirait-elle plus? Ah! je l’ai mal connue, ou, ma foi, là-dessus Une sotte en sait plus que le plus habile homme. Puisqu’en raisonnement votre esprit se consomme, La belle raisonneuse, est-ce qu’un si long temps Je vous aurai pour lui nourrie à mes dépens? Look how this peasant argues and replies! One of the lady wits could do no better! Oh, I misjudged her; or, upon this theme, A silly girl knows more than a clever man. Since you’ve become so keen in disputation, Tell me, is it for him that I so long Have fed and lodged and educated you? (5.4.1541–1547)

There are, in other words, limits to the power of education to shape perception, and perhaps a vindication of Cartesian bon sens (good sense). But L’École des

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femmes also shows the limit of an isolated woman’s power. Neither Agnès’s words nor Horace’s passion can free her from the legal prison in which she is caught. Only a happy circumstance, the kind of deus ex machina that provides difficult-to-believe happy endings, rescues Arnolphe’s ward and gives her to Horace. Her father returns after fourteen years in America, finds that his wife has died, and that the impoverished wet-nurse who kept the baby surrendered her to Arnolphe. Horace’s father is delighted to marry his son to the daughter of his long-absent friend. Sganarelle’s and Arnolphe’s delusion that they can form the perfect wife and override any wishes of the girl whose education they oversee is not the only manifestation of overconfidence in the human ability to modify the character and behaviour of the objects of desire. In the next chapter we consider two women protagonists—not girls, as in the case of the two écoles—who attempt to cure two men of a jealous, controlling character that is analogous in some ways to the guardians of Isabelle and Agnès. But in Don Garcie de Navarre and in Le Misanthrope the struggle takes place between free adults, not in the grotesquely unequal circumstances of these schools for marriage.

PART II

COURTSHIP A ND THER A P Y In the previous chapter we looked at Molière’s take on a male fantasy of utopia, in which women are expected to be ‘innocent’ and ignorant. Now, in the present section, we consider two plays in which the tables are turned. One of these plays, Le Misanthrope, ou l’Atrabilaire amoureux (1666), is often described as Molière’s greatest comedy, and it is even said to have the status in Molière’s work that Hamlet has in Shakespeare’s.¹ The other, Don Garcie de Navarre, ou le Prince jaloux (1661), had an initial run of only seven performances, and was printed only after the author’s death. They have much in common; indeed, Le Misanthrope reuses approximately eighty verses from the earlier play. In both of them the woman protagonist is largely free to choose the man she will eventually marry. In both, love appears as a powerfully irrational force. In both the central woman character tries to cure her suitor of jealousy and of the desire to assume total control of her life. And in both plays there is a stark contrast in the way the principal woman character and the principal male character use language. The two plays at the centre of the previous section are designated as ‘schools’ and education is the metaphorical framework for the plot. In the two plays studied in this section illness and attempts to cure the illness becomes the metaphorical frame: the male protagonist appears to suffer from a mental or emotional illness, and the woman he courts tries repeatedly to cure him.

¹ John Simon, ‘Laughter in the Soul: Molière’s Misanthrope’, The Hudson Review 28, no. 3 (1975): 404. Already during Molière’s lifetime this play was called a ‘chef d’œuvre inimitable’ by Subligny, an adversary of the comedian (cited by Francine Mallet, Molière [Paris: B. Grasset, 1986]dd, 121).

3 Le Misanthrope Two Versions of Pastoral

There is a surprising bridge from the École des femmes to Le Misanthrope. Despite their enormous differences, both of these comedies refer to the pastoral tradition. We saw the extreme measures that Arnolphe took to preserve his ward, or victim, from the ‘corrupting’ influence of modern society, in which women have great influence and choice. Arnolphe went so far as to have two houses: one for the everyday, and largely commercial, social interactions, and another that is located elsewhere, the house of ‘Monsieur de la Souche’. Agnès’s guardian thus divides his world between the contemporary or social world, which follows norms that are largely out of his control, and an invented world that is more old-fashioned and that conforms to his fantasies of total control and of a conception of innocence. In this world, limited to the confines of a single house, both his ward Agnès and his servants must be uneducated to the point of stupidity. Through Arnolphe’s division of his life into the contrasting spheres of the urban, contemporary, and commercial world, on one hand, and the rural world of innocence and free desire, Molière makes a mocking reference to the ancient literary tradition of the pastoral mode. In Le Misanthrope the pastoral tradition plays a larger, more insistent, and more paradoxical role. In pastoral literature, place is particularly significant. While Arnolphe controlled the place of the action of L’École des femmes, in Le Misanthrope the reversal in power between the male and female protagonists appears in Célimène’s ownership of the space in which her male suitors pursue her. And yet, even in this vastly different, fully urban setting, the pastoral themes that so powerfully shaped the lyric poetry, the lengthy romances, and the theatre of early modern France are at work. It is almost as if we see in Le Misanthrope a vision of Arnolphe as a younger man, for he shares many aspirations—the wish to isolate and control the woman he desires—with the Alceste of this later comedy. The term ‘urban pastoral’ is often used to describe some early modern dramatic and lyric texts. While this term may at first appear oxymoronic, the transfer of pastoral themes and even character types to urban settings has been noted in the work of authors such as Castiglione, Pierre

Women and Irony in Molière’s Comedies of Marriage. John D. Lyons, Oxford University Press. © John D. Lyons (2023). DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198887379.003.0004

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Corneille, Jonathan Swift, and Wordsworth. As Rosalie Colie has written, ‘the pastoral mode, disguised as recreation, is so clearly a self-contradiction, so clearly a creation rather than an imitation of nature, it may not be far-fetched to look for examples of pastoral in its least likely site, a city’.¹ Pastoral poetry is centrally concerned with love and courtship, with the formation of couples and the attendant difficulties of such a quest. It is a truism about the tradition of comedy since Greco-Roman literature that comic plays end with a feast celebrating the end of obstacles and the celebration of a marriage. But as we ponder the confluence of these two literary traditions— pastoral poetry and dramatic comedy—it is important to distinguish among comedies with respect to the degree of importance that this ultimate marriage assumes within the play as a whole. Le Misanthrope, like L’École des maris and L’École des femmes, has as the core element of its plot thwarted attempts at contracting a marriage. But one might also say that most of Molière’s comedies (like those of Corneille, Rotrou, and their contemporaries) concern a couple’s struggle to marry. And yet the issue of marriage is not always the focus of the play. When we look at Molière’s comedies as a whole, it becomes clearly necessary to distinguish between the core of the plot, the source of the humour, and the argumentative issue in each comedy. Take L’Avare (1668), for instance. In terms of plot, there are several marriages envisioned in the course of the play. According to the wishes of the young people, Cléante, the miser’s son, would like to marry Mariane, and the miser’s daughter Élise wishes to marry Valère. These plans are for most of the play thwarted by the avaricious Harpagon’s wish to marry Mariane himself, to oblige his daughter to marry the elderly Anselme, and to force his son to marry ‘a certain widow’. But the humour of the play arises primarily from the character of Harpagon and from the complex machinations of the various characters to obtain the necessary money to undo Harpagon’s distribution of marriage partners. Neither the preparation of young people for marriage nor courtship (the interplay or negotiation of potential partners based on the qualities they desire in a partner) are central to the humour of the play. The distinction between the general plot framework (the struggle of a young couple to overcome obstacles to their marriage) and the source of humour is even clearer in such plays as Les Fˆacheux (1661), Le Médecin volant (1659), L’Amour médecin (1665), and Le Médecin malgré lui (1666). In these the mutual relationship of the people to be married has almost no importance, and sometimes the two people seeking to marry know one another very little, while the external obstacles and gags take centre stage. ¹ Rosalie Colie, ‘Castiglione’s Urban Pastoral’, Greyfriar, no. 8 (1965): 5–13.

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Against this background, Le Misanthrope stands out for the extreme importance of the internal obstacles to marriage, and thus to the characters of the male and female protagonists, their interactions, and their aspirations. In this play, as in Don Garcie de Navarre, we can speak of a veritable courtship as the centre both of the plot and of the humour. There are, to be sure, courtships in the École des maris and the École des femmes, but there is no suspense, almost no dynamism, in the relationships between Sganarelle’s ward in the former play and her suitor Valère nor between Agnès and Horace in the École des femmes. It is simply taken for granted that any young suitor will be more appealing to the heroine than the guardian who is trying to force his ward into an odious marriage. In Le Misanthrope and Don Garcie Molière creates comedy out of the interaction of free adults, able to contract marriage if both so desire, with no obstacles other than those of their own volition. Other than the difficulties that they create for themselves, all storm clouds are pushed to the side and offstage. The characters seem to live in a world made for lovers. This is the point at which comedy fuses with the pastoral, where internal obstacles to a love relationship (including misperceptions) are more important than external ones. As we turn our attention to Alceste and Célimène, the lovers of Le Misanthrope, it is worth pausing to mention that the commentary tradition has often given vastly unequal treatment of these two characters, whom we will in this reading consider as forming the principal axiological poles—the two contrasting value systems—of Le Misanthrope. Indeed, one of the purposes of the present study is to give more attention than usual to the figure of Célimène herself. She may seem to many of us to be the centre of the play, but this status is not traditional. One of the most extreme examples of neglect of Célimène is Salwa Mishriky’s Le Misanthrope ou la philanthropie de l’honnête homme classique (1994), a book of more than 200 pages in which Célimène is never discussed, never even mentioned except in the recurrent phrase, to designate the place in which the staged action occurs as ‘le salon de Célimène’.² Although Mishriky is an outlier to the prevailing views of the play, she joins the consensus that the ethical debate or ‘message’ of the comedy necessarily must appear in the opposition between Alceste and Philinte. Gustave Michaut gives a standard middle-of-the-road judgement about the ethical stakes of the play: ‘In fact neither Alceste nor Philinte is presented by Molière as a model to follow. Alceste is certainly a noble, great, generous soul, but excessive. Philinte ² Salwa Mishriky, Le Misanthrope, ou, La philanthropie de l’honnête homme classique (New York: P. Lang, 1994).

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is surely a conciliating person with a tolerant spirit, but excessively so. True wisdom consists of combining the most reasonable aspects of each.’³ But why does the critical mainstream, typified here by Michaut, describe the play as a contest between the values of Philinte, on one hand, and of Alceste, on the other? More recently, in an edition of Le Misanthrope, Claude Bourqui recalls the traditional, virtually universal, focus on the male characters as representing the ethical dilemma of the play: ‘people have always asked which one is right, Alceste or Philinte’.⁴ And a recent article by Oscar Mandel ponders at length the question of who is the reasonable character of the play, even considering the woman character Éliante, but never once mentions the possibility that Célimène could be taken seriously.⁵ Why not rather see Le Misanthrope as organized around the conflicting visions of Alceste and Célimène? Once we begin to pay more attention to these two figures, not simply as potential lovers but also as rivals, we can see the play in a more complete way. René Girard has given critics valuable insights into rivalry and into the ways rivalry, while apparently stressing difference, encourages imitation between the competing parties. This makes sense when we talk about an arms race, for example. If one side acquires a nuclear bomb the other side does the same, or if one side develops a capacity for cyber-warfare the rival will likewise do so, and so forth. In the case of Alceste and Célimène, a progress towards similarity through mimetic rivalry does not occur, except in one way. In competing to be the centre of attention in their social world, they are similar strategically but different tactically. The way that they are strategically similar is that they withhold themselves and keep other people pursuing them. Yet despite this similarity in strategy, the two characters use different tactics. One character chooses movement while the other chooses stasis. In both the first and the last scenes of the play, Philinte is chasing after Alceste, who is running away. And throughout the play, Célimène, remains entirely stable and even immobile spatially—it is her salon, and she only moves into and out of the room that is visible to us, yet she is elusive in terms of the declaration of her allegiance, hidden in full sight. In other words, one character occupies the centre by simply staying in place while others swarm around, while the other character draws attention to himself by gesturing constantly towards the periphery and physically rushing away.

³ Gustave Michaut, Les Luttes de Molière (Paris: Librairie Hachette, 1925), 208. ⁴ Molière, Le Misanthrope (Paris: Librairie générale française, 2000), 21–22. ⁵ Oscar Mandel, ‘Comment faut-il lire Le Misanthrope?’ The French Review: Journal of the American Association of Teachers of French 90, no. 3 (March 3, 2017): 25–38.

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Pastoral always represents flight, or the temptation to flee. In Molière’s play, there are two layers of pastoral, or rather two places. The first place is a room in Célimène’s Parisian house, which, while having nothing rustic about it, is a place entirely dedicated to ‘young love and courtship’. All the action on the stage takes place in the Parisian residence of this wealthy widow, where the members of a society of leisure have few pressing obligations that interrupt the enjoyment of conversation with the scintillating Célimène. The freedom with which the male and female characters of the play interact is characteristic of the salon culture of seventeenth-century France, one in which men and women achieved, if only briefly and discursively, the kind of equality that appears in bucolic fiction.⁶ And in this particular play the power of women is emphasized by the fact that the gathering place belongs to a woman with a particular status of emancipation, because she is a widow. Célimène does not have to answer to a husband, and there seems to be no question of a father or brother hovering somewhere to make decisions for her. And the second pastoral place of Le Misanthrope is the imaginary place to which the male protagonist hopes to escape. Alceste’s aspiration corresponds to another description of the pastoral genre: ‘The psychological root of the pastoral is a double longing after innocence and happiness, to be recovered not through conversion or regeneration but merely through a retreat. By withdrawing not from the world but from “the world”, pastoral man tries to achieve a new life in imitation of the good shepherds of herds, rather than of the Good Shepard of the Soul.’⁷

What’s in a Name? What can we learn from Célimène’s name? The simple answer is that through the name of this character we can discover a whole fictional and conceptual universe, a universe focused on the pursuit of love. ‘Fictional’ means here a set of stories, or plots, and ‘conceptual’, the world-view and value system that accompany and motivate those stories. Anyone who has read a handful of seventeenth-century French comedies will immediately recognize the names

⁶ The relation between pastoral and libertin thought in this period has long been recognized. See Giovanni Dotoli, ‘L’idéologie baroque et libertine des pastorales de Jean Mairet’, in Le genre pastoral en Europe du XVe au XVIIe siècle: actes du Colloque international [sur le genre pastoral en Europe du XVe au XVIIe siècle], tenu à Saint-Étienne du 28 septembre au 1er octobre 1978, ed. Claude Longeon (Saint-Étienne: Publications de l’Université de Saint-Étienne, 1980), 299–310. ⁷ Renato Poggioli, The Oaten Flute: Essays on Pastoral Poetry and the Pastoral Ideal (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975), 1.

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of the characters in Le Misanthrope as pure theatrical convention. This conventionality may make us take the names entirely for granted and as empty of any significance, but we might thus miss some important keys to understanding what is happening in the play. It is probably a coincidence that thirty years before the appearance of Molière’s play, Jean Rotrou had written and staged a comedy with the title La Célimène. The characters of the play live in the countryside, a place that is described as perfect for courtship and love. A young woman, Florante, comes from Paris, looking for her beloved Filandre. She discovers, however, that he has fallen in love with Célimène. She spurns Filandre and also another suitor, Alidor, and professes to be entirely free of any inclination to love. Florante mocks Filandre for his lack of skill in courting Célimène and asserts that she herself, Florante, knows how to win the heart of a woman. Borrowing some male clothing from Filandre and calling herself by the male name ‘Floridan’, Florante instantly succeeds in making Célimène fall in love with her. By the end of the play, things have sorted themselves out, and Célimène accepts Alidor as her lover, while Filandre is happy to be reunited with Florante. In writing a play about a woman character who resists the courtship of more than one man and who lives in a place where would-be lovers abound and spend their time writing poetry, Rotrou did not provide the matrix for Molière’s much later play centred on a ‘Célimène’. Nonetheless, the coincidence of the names gives us a starting point to understand the ambience and the themes of Le Misanthrope. What pattern or patterns does the use of the same name for a protagonist of a comedy allow us to perceive? If we make a mental inventory of French women’s names from the seventeenth century we can see that La Célimène does not draw on everyday onomastics. We do not find here Madeleine, Françoise, Marthe, Anne, or Catherine. The male characters are not Pierre, Guillaume, Louis, or Henri. We can also see that Rotrou’s play does not contain names that come from Greek, Roman, or European medieval history, names like Phèdre, Bérénice, Médée, Sabine, Roxane, or Chimène. Instead, the dramatis personae of La Célimène are recognizably ‘pastoral’, that is, they are artificial names associated with the fictive rural life powerfully popularized by Montemayor’s Diana (1559), Tasso’s Aminta (1573), Guarini’s Pastor Fido (1590), and D’Urfé’s L’Astrée (1607) and Sylvanire (1627), where we find names like Céladon, Alexis, Astrée, Hylas, and other similar names often giving an amalgam of Greek, Latin, and sometimes Celtic words. In Rotrou’s play we find, besides the eponymous character, Florante, Orante, Filandre, Félicie, Alidor, Lysis, and Floridan. The repertory of pastoral names is especially significant in view of the male guardians’ struggle

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against the ‘assemblies’ of worldly women in the École des maris and the École des femmes. In mid-century French salon society, many of the real contemporary women who seem to correspond to Arnolphe’s nightmare of independent, educated women also were known socially with names taken from d’Urfé’s Astrée and other similar fictions or were described allusively in works such as Scudéry’s Clélie, read as romans à clef. Readers of Clélie understood that the character Clarinte was a portrait of Madame de Sévigné, and Sévigné in turn used the name Amalthée to refer to Madame du Plessis-Guénégaud.⁸ So, the first insight that the name ‘Célimène’ gives us is a link to the pastoral mythos. Here is how Fontenelle described pastoral poetry in his Discours sur la nature de l’eglogue (1688): La Poësie Pastorale est apparemment la plus ancienne de toutes les Poësies, parce que la condition de Berger est la plus ancienne de toutes les conditions. Il est assez vrai-semblable que ces premiers Pasteurs s’aviserent dans la tranquillité & oisiveté dont ils jouïssoient, de chanter leurs plaisirs & leurs amours; & il étoit naturel qu’ils fissent souvent entrer dans leurs Chansons leurs Troupeaux, les Bois, les Fontaines, & tous les objets qui leur étoient les plus familiers. Ils vivoient à leur manière dans une grande opulence, ils n’avoient personne au-dessus de leur tête, ils étoient, pour ainsi dire, les Rois de leurs Troupeaux; & je ne doute pas qu’une certaine joye qui suit l’abondance & la liberté, ne les portˆat au Chant & à la Poësie.⁹ Pastoral poetry is apparently the most ancient form of poetry, because the state of a shepherd is the most ancient of all social statuses. It is probable that these early shepherds were aware of the tranquility and leisure that they enjoyed and that permitted them to sing of their pleasures and their loves. And it was natural that they mentioned in their songs their flocks, the woods, the springs, and all the objects that were most familiar to them. They lived in their own way in a certain opulence. They had no one above them. They were, so to speak, the kings of their flocks, and I have no doubt that a certain joy that flows from abundance and freedom brought them to song and poetry.

Fontenelle rehearses here in few words some of the major traits of the pastoral universe: its antiquity, its strange opulence within simplicity, the freedom from domination and oppression by superior classes, the importance of poetry ⁸ Sophie Gerard-Chieusse, Madame de Lafayette et la préciosité (Villeneuve d’A scq, France: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2003), 222 and 198. ⁹ Bernard le Bouvier de Fontenelle, Poesies pastorales; avec un traité sur la nature de l’eglogue; une digression sur les anciens, et les modernes; et un recueil de poesies diverses (The Hague: Gosse & Neaulme, 1728), 111–112.

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and love as pastimes. In a subsequent passage Fontenelle accentuates the importance of love among the shepherds: Ce n’est pas que les hommes pussent s’accommoder d’une paresse, et d’une oisiveté entière, il leur faut quelque mouvement, quelque agitation, mais un mouvement & une agitation qui s’ajuste, s’il se peut, avec la sorte de paresse qui les possede, & c’est ce qui se trouve le plus heureusement du monde dans l’amour.¹⁰ Men cannot tolerate complete indolence and leisure; they need some movement, some stimulation, but a kind of movement and stimulation that fits, if possible, with their kind of indolence, and this is what is found the most fortunately in love.

Pastoral as a genre offers a laboratory for thought experiments about erotic love.¹¹ There may be in the background other realities, other problems, and other conflicts, but during the pastoral moment, the characters concentrate on courtship, its phases, and its results. One of the major quests in pastoral is the discovery of the emotional truth of the characters that is concealed behind pretentions of indifference, virtue, and restraint. This quest for the truth that is within the mind of each character (or is supposed to be there) has repercussions for aspects of the play beyond the dialogue and the plot. It affects the way the characters imagine space itself and distinguish places according to their values and desires. Space in pastoral is exceptionally porous, not having the many walls of urban settings. The country setting facilitates deliberate spying and accidental encounters. La Célimène is typical in this respect. The topos of silent watching and discovery of the secret thoughts and feelings of other people is so deeply connected in early modernity with the pastoral genre that it is not surprising that even Descartes’s philosophical writing has been described within this frame.¹² Discovering the secret inner life and the character of the suitor or the beloved is a core motif of pastoral. Whereas Descartes seeks to conjecture the ‘true’ beliefs of nameless persons he sees in the streets, markets, and taverns of Amsterdam, the characters of lyrical, dramatic, and narrative pastorals are focused more narrowly on the thoughts and conduct of a specific individual in whom they are affectively invested. The scenic arrangement of La Célimène ¹⁰ Fontenelle, Traité, 119. ¹¹ Jean-Pierre van Elslande, L’imaginaire pastoral du XVIIe siècle: 1600–1650 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1999), ‘L’Arcadie libertine’, 77–116. ¹² Kevin Dunn has described the Discours de la méthode (1637) as an ‘urban pastoral’ (‘“A Great City Is a Great Solitude”: Descartes’s Urban Pastoral’, Yale French Studies, no. 80 [1991]: 93–107).

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is typical in this respect, since it facilitates clandestine observation, whether planned or merely coincidental. If Célimène’s name led us to the pastoral genre, Alceste’s remains mysterious, perhaps a random selection or hybrid from among the morphemes that constituted in early modernity a store of onomastic raw materials. But the male protagonist of Le Misanthrope does designate an epithet for himself that clings to him, both within the world of the play and among readers and commentators, so that it becomes almost as much a name as ‘A lceste’, sincère: ‘Je veux qu’on soit sincère, et qu’en Homme d’honneur, / On ne lˆache aucun mot qui ne parte du cœur’ (‘A man should be sincere; and in all honour / He shouldn’t say a word his heart disclaims’; 1.1.35–36). What is particularly striking, when we consider this epithet within the pastoral tradition, is that ‘sincere’ is one of the most important and influential names in all of early modernity. Jacobo Sannazaro’s Arcadia (1504) is a prosimetrum (a combination of prose and verse) that launched the early modern genre of pastoral and subsequently influenced the work of Philip Sidney, Shakespeare, and John Milton. Marguerite de Navarre translated and adapted Sannazaro’s Latin pastoral, ‘The Willows’ (Salices).¹³ The narrator of the story is named Sincero.¹⁴ There is thus a significant link between the fons et origo of modern pastoral and Molière’s work, but we do not have to suppose that the playwright read Sannazaro’s work in order to consider the Alceste-Sincero connection to be meaningful. Both Alceste and Sincero are unhappy lovers who have left behind the city, the place of politics and worldly achievement for a place in which one can speak instead of love. It also matters that Sincero is not actually a herder, not truly a member of the Arcadian world in which we see him and that the relation between his name and the quality of sincerity that it signifies is complex. We are reminded that pastoral is through and through paradoxical. Its claim to depict a simple, natural life is a pose. Its human characters are often disguised, and the affairs of the city loom in the background. Have we come too far from Molière’s Le Misanthrope? Indeed not. Molière provides us with repeated reminders of Alceste’s pastoral nostalgia—and

¹³ Jacopo Sannazaro, ‘Salices’, in Latin poetry, trans. Michael C. J. Putnam (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2009), 146–152; Marguerite de Navarre, L’Histoire des Satyres et nymphes de Dyane in Œuvres complètes, eds. André Gendre, Loris Petris, and Simone de Reyff, vol. 5 (Paris: H. Champion, 2012). ¹⁴ Sannazaro himself was given the name Actius Syncerus as a member of the Neapolitan Academy (Ralph Nash, introduction to Jacopo Sannazaro, Arcadia and Piscatorial Eclogues (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1966), 8.

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right-wing male nostalgia is never more powerful than when it concerns a ‘return’ to a never-experienced but constantly imagined ‘home’ in a simpler time that was said to have existed somewhere in the past. Molière’s play frames the central acts with comments in the first and fifth act in which the protagonist expresses his admiration and longing for the culture of a simpler, purer past, uncontaminated by urban sophistication. Alceste’s posture towards time is most of all a refusal of the present, a refusal of the time (and place) that he construes as refusing him. Of course, this ‘refusal’ or rejection is one that he himself assiduously cultivates. He views his outsider status as an indication that he represents an older, purer order. When asked to judge Oronte’s sonnet, Alceste rages against modern taste, ‘le méchant Goût du siècle’ and exclaims that ‘Nos Pères, tous grossiers, l’avaient beaucoup mieux’ (‘The bad taste of our time is terrifying; That of our rude forefathers was much better’; 1.2.389– 390). He claims to be happy that he lost his court case, saying that he has purchased the right to complain about the corruption of the world around him (5.1.1541–1550). Insofar as he is ‘defeated’, thrown into a subordinate position beneath the corrupt villains who trample on him, he reflects the upside-down presupposition of pastoral convention. The herders, in their humble and primitive station, are superior—freer from constraint, purer, more honest, and more at leisure to enjoy the core pursuits of mankind: love, friendship, and music. Alceste’s time-world is antithetical to Célimène’s. It is tempting to say that Alceste is the pastoral character, a person who is out of place in the modern city in which he finds himself, someone who should be seen as an Arcadian shepherd misplaced by fate into the corruption of modernity, and if that is so, must Célimène not be his exact contrary, the urbanite who could never live in pastoral simplicity? But it is not that simple. Shepherds, the ‘true’ shepherds of fictive pastorals, do not long for the simplicity of the golden age, since they live in that simplicity. It is true that their innocence is not entire. They know that some of their companions have died; they find traces of the past; they sing eulogistically and elegiacally—and the most famous representation of Arcadia from the seventeenth century—Poussin’s In Arcadia ego—evokes the shock of the shepherd’s discovery of mortality. But otium, as their condition is repeatedly described, casts aside regret for the past and anxiety for the future. So, the ideal pastoral attitude is complete identification with the present. In this sense, it is Célimène who is the most pastoral of the characters. We see her entirely in her element, in her moment, living for now. Even Arsinoé’s attempt to frighten her and to shake her out of her contentment with the here and now does not dent her enjoyment.

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From Arcadia to Irony There is something inherently ironic about the pastoral genre. Arcadia, the name of the region in which literary pastorals have traditionally been set, was a notoriously harsh landscape, inhabited by poor people, regarded as savage, speaking a language considered primitive by other Greeks. The ancient joke about the Arcadians was that they ‘made good soldiers for hire because they were so eager to get out of the place’.¹⁵ Yet about this place and people Theocritus and his successors wrote poetry drawing on an exquisite knowledge of the most refined literary models. This is not to say that the speakers in pastoral poems are themselves ironic in their diction, but to assign to the most rough and uneducated (from the point of view of Athenian or Alexandrine Greeks) complex reflexions on love and lyric is surely related to the frequent deployment of understatement and overstatement that are clues to ironic intent.¹⁶ And numerous critics have described the ironic mode in the pastoral tradition.¹⁷ No surprise, then, that Molière’s Misanthrope is probably the comedy with the most varied, abundant, and complex use of irony, some of which is immediately apparent but some of which is, at first glance, far from obvious. We find here verbal irony, situational irony, and its close relative dramatic irony. Let us consider these, not in the sequence of types but instead in the order in which the spectator or reader encounters them as the play unfolds. In the very first scene we meet a character who embodies a form of situational irony in such a radical way that it threatens to explode that category, and yet we do not (so far) have another way of describing it. In the situational irony that we find most often, someone’s efforts lead to a result entirely opposed to her or his intention. It is often found in tragedy. Oedipus, for instance, seeks energetically to find out and to punish the killer of his father. Of course, he does not know until very late that that killer is Oedipus himself. The situational irony is framed within dramatic irony, in that the chorus (and in the case of early modern theatre) the spectators are increasingly aware that the inquiry is proceeding towards the identification of killer and avenger as one. This is an extreme and tragic form of situational irony, but this form of plotting

¹⁵ Garry Wills, ‘The Real Arcadia’, The American Scholar 67, no. 3 (1998): 16. Rapin made the same point in 1659: ‘the Arcadian Shepherds […] by reason of the Mountainousness of the Country and the hardness of the weather, are very unsociable and austere’ (Rapin, Dissertatio, trans. Creech, 33). ¹⁶ Anna Shapiro, ‘Irony in the Pastoral: Vermont and the Literary Imagination’, SiteLINES: A Journal of Place 11, no. 1 (2015): 15–18. ¹⁷ Jeremy Strick, ‘Notes on Some Instances of Irony in Modern Pastoral’, Studies in the History of Art 36 (1992): 196–207; A.D. Cousins, ‘Andrew Marvell’s Mower Poems and the Pastoral Tradition’, International Journal of the Classical Tradition 18, no. 4 (2011): 523–546.

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can be trivial and comic as well. It can be as simple as someone taking great care to place an important object or document in a secure location so that it will not go astray, only to forget where that clever and carefully chosen storage place was. The result is thus not only different from, but the opposite of the intent. In comedy, a man may ingeniously scheme to marry the woman he finds most attractive, though as it turns out everything he does is making that marriage impossible—this is the situation of the male protagonist in Corneille’s Le Menteur. In short, in most situational irony a person’s steps are taken with the aim of succeeding, but they lead in effect to his or her own disadvantage. Alceste is a paradoxical character in that he incorporates situational irony into his very personality. Or at least he claims to do so. Where most people seek to be respected and even liked, Alceste proclaims the wish for the opposite, as we see in this early exchange between Alceste and his friend Philinte: PHILINTE: Le Monde, par vos soins ne se changera pas; Et puisque la Franchise a, pour vous, tant d’appas, Je vous dirai tout franc, que cette maladie, Partout où vous allez, donne la Comédie, Et qu’un si grand courroux contre les Mœurs du Temps, Vous tourne en Ridicule auprès de bien des Gens. ALCESTE: Tant mieux, morbleu, tant mieux, c’est ce que je demande, Ce m’est un fort bon signe, et ma joie en est grande: Tous les Hommes me sont, à tel point, odieux, Que je serais fˆaché d’être sage à leurs yeux. PHILINTE The world won’t change for anything you do. And since you think that frankness is so charming, I will be frank, and say that your obsession Amuses people, everywhere you go; And your high fury against current customs Makes you ridiculous in the eyes of many. ALCESTE Splendid, morbleu! Splendid! That’s what I want! An excellent sign! I am delighted at it! Men have become so odious to me I’d hate to have them think me sensible! (1.1.103–112)

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Failure therefore becomes success, in Alceste’s terms, and yet rather than failure being the apparent goal of what he says and does, it seems to constitute rather a by-product, the inevitable accompaniment of his proclaimed goal to live in a society of sincere and transparent communication. Throughout the play the question remains, ‘What does Alceste really want?’ Is it even correct to describe this as an example of situational irony, or is it merely a case of multiple, repeated instances of an unusual and unclear form of verbal irony? And even if it is what we have called an incorporated situational irony (internalized and conscious drive towards failure), would this irony not abolish itself by succeeding? That is, if Alceste really wishes to fail and really wishes to lose his lawsuit (1.1.196), would the loss of the lawsuit be so entirely in conformity with his intentions that this is not at all the reversal which is indispensable for irony but merely a perverse success? Perverse only because it differs from the usual wish to win a lawsuit? This is a question that runs throughout Le Misanthrope. It could be considered the central issue, insofar as we must wonder whether Alceste’s stated wish to live in a society ‘Où d’être Homme d’honneur, on ait la liberté’ (‘A man should be a man, and dare to show / The substance of his spirit in his words’; 1.1.1806) is actually what he wishes or is the opposite of what he wishes. In other words, what would Alceste be like if he lived in a society in which he would not constantly be denouncing everything and everyone around him? We will leave this more general question about Alceste’s character for the moment to come to a very clear example of the practice of that type of verbal irony known as preterition. The first and the second scenes of Le Misanthrope stand in the relationship of theory to practice. In the first scene Alceste not only protested against affectations of friendship but against any veiling of one’s thought. In the next scene, Oronte’s arrival offers Alceste a chance to put these principles into practice. As he listens to Oronte’s sonnet, Alceste expresses his sharp disapproval sotto voce in what seem to be frank terms to Philinte. Then, when Oronte presses him for his view of the sonnet Alceste at first expresses his criticism indirectly by referring to someone else who had on another occasion asked for his judgment of a poem: un jour, à quelqu’un dont je tairai le nom, je disais, en voyant des vers de sa façon, Qu’il faut qu’un galant Homme ait toujours grand empire Sur les démangeaisons qui nous prennent d’écrire; Qu’il doit tenir la bride aux grands empressements Qu’on a de faire éclat de tels amusements;

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It is natural to suppose that Alceste, while not lying, is simply adopting a conventional fiction to express by analogy what he could, more harshly, tell Oronte. This is figurative but not ironic, but when Oronte correctly understands what Alceste is saying, the latter shifts into that form of irony called preterition. He denies that he is saying what he is saying: ORONTE: Est-ce que vous voulez me déclarer par là, Que j’ai tort de vouloir… ALCESTE: Je ne dis pas cela: Mais je lui disais, moi, qu’un froid écrit assomme, Qu’il ne faut que ce Faible, à décrier un Homme […] ORONTE …are you trying to tell me by these words That I am wrong to wish— ALCESTE I don’t say that. I told my friend to avoid all tepid writing, Which is enough to bring a man discredit… (1.2.351–355) This ‘je ne dis pas cela’ is ironic in that it states that Alceste is not saying what he is saying. It is an ironic reversal of the truth of his enunciation. Alceste could have make use of a different form of irony bearing not on the act of enunciation but on the contents of the utterance, choosing words that stated the opposite

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of his thought, very like Philinte’s comment, ‘Je n’ai jamais ouï de vers si bien tournés’ (‘I’ve never heard such deftly rendered lines’; 1.2.336). Here we must ask ourselves whether Philinte is being ironic. If irony consists of saying one thing to signify the opposite, then it is easy to conclude that Philinte is simply lying, though he would not call it that, but simply politeness. From Alceste’s point of view it is lying, though both would agree that the intended effect is to allow Oronte to bask in the feeling that his sonnet is appreciated.

The Ironic Friend In the first act Alceste used preterition in a particularly artless and even halfhearted way. In this instance preterition, in order to succeed, ‘fails’ to some extent. That is, Alceste acts as if he wished to make Oronte think that he really was not saying that Oronte’s sonnet was bad, he does such a bad job of concealing his thought that Oronte understands Alceste’s actual assessment. It seems that even the spectator cannot be certain that Alceste meant Oronte to understand Alceste’s actual thought. In this example preterition differs from simple verbal irony, in which the speaker intends at least one of the hearers to seize her or his thought. Later in Le Misanthrope we find much more extensive and complex examples of preterition, used by women characters in act III in a much more elaborate way, with increasing levels of skill, reaching a level that can rightly be designated as virtuosity. One formal feature that ties Alceste’s initial preterition to the exchange between Arsinoé and Célimène is the invocation of (and no doubt the invention of ) a third-party interlocutor upon whom to transfer the onus of the negative comments that are aimed at the character present in the scene. We recall that Alceste, rather than tell Oronte directly and outright that he should not set himself up as a poet, says that he gave this advice to ‘quelqu’un dont je tairai le nom’ (‘I won’t say who’) Arsinoé likewise alleges that the negative comments about Célimène’s demeanour came from other people: Hier, j’étais chez des Gens, de Vertu singulière, Où, sur vous, du Discours, on tourna la matière; Et là, votre Conduite, avec ses grands éclats, Madame, eut le malheur, qu’on ne la loua pas. Yesterday, at a most distinguished house, The conversation chanced to turn on you.

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The obvious difference between what Alceste did and what Arsinoé does is that Alceste assigns to himself the role of critic but simply feigns to redirect the criticism towards another target. He thus takes responsibility for the views expressed. Arsinoé, on the other hand, presents herself as simple messenger, initially taking no responsibility for the views critical of Célimène. Indeed, she claims to have defended her ‘friend’: Je fis ce que je pus, pour vous pouvoir défendre, Je vous excusai fort sur votre intention, Et voulus, de votre Âme, être la Caution. In your defence I said all that I could, And insisted on your good intentions, And vouched for your character’s integrity. (3.4.894–896)

The result is a kind of ventriloquism, in which the critic initially makes her words issue from the mouths of others, who remain in the third person. As in most instances of preterition, Arsinoé’s ploy is not only to transfer the responsibility for the critical evaluation of Célimène to a third party but also to present herself in the exactly opposite role as her defender. We recognize once again the feature that we have identified as constitutive of irony: the utterance or situational outcome is not only different, but exactly the opposite from what is purported (in the case of verbal irony) or what is expected (in the case of situational and dramatic irony). Are we to suppose that Arsinoé really thought that Célimène would be the dupe of this rhetorical diversion? This is indeed a possible construction of the situation. Arsinoé may think that she can intimidate Célimène into behaving in a way that is less threatening to Arsinoé’s attempts to attract the attention of some of the men who swarm around the younger woman. If that is the case, if Arsinoé simply intended to deceive her rival, would her discourse be preterition at all? Or would it simply be lying? Let us think again of the example given by Leo Strauss, of the historian who intends to reach a distant audience while deceiving his immediately present listeners.¹⁸ ¹⁸ On Strauss, see introduction, pp. 20–22.

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We may also think again of the already mentioned example of Mark Antony, who may suppose that he is duping Brutus and his fellow assassins of Caesar, while he stirs up Caesar’s partisans. Arsinoé is clearly not protecting herself from persecution by anyone on stage, but the situation is somewhat analogous. Molière clearly expects the audience to understand Arsinoé’s intention, in a preteritive form of dramatic irony. We are here probably splitting hairs. The question is moot, since Molière intended Arsinoé’s ruse to fail (as had Alceste’s earlier in the play) and to provide Célimène with an opportunity for another one of her bravura verbal performances, this time with a fully evident ironic intention that does nonetheless adopt the formal characteristics of preterition: to deny that one is saying what one is saying. Célimène follows Arsinoé’s ‘gentle example’ (‘un exemple si doux’) with a similar avis about her interlocutor’s honour. If irony is always in a certain way a double or secondary form of enunciation, requiring the receiver first to understand the primary or literal statement before coming to grips with the opposite meaning that is wrapped in the initial utterance, here the female protagonist performs a double irony, adding the additional layer—at least one—that consists of taking Arsinoé’s message and recycling the form while reversing the content so that it targets Arsinoé’s self-righteousness rather than Célimène’s galant lifestyle. Like Arsinoé, Célimène claims (1) to have recently been visiting elsewhere when (2) certain people, of (3) outstanding merit, when they happened (4) to discuss Arsinoé, whose (5) behaviour was found lacking, and was subject (6) to an inventory of faults. Célimène, of course, like Arsinoé (7) sprang to the defence of her present interlocutor, but this defence (8) failed to convince the critics. And Célimène also is confident (9) that Arsinoé will benefit from this report while recognizing (10) that this report is conveyed without any ulterior motives. Célimène’s improvisation has an especial appeal to a public that was aware of the contemporary salon culture in which impromptu formal verbal creativity was one of the most appreciated talents. We need only think of the great vogue of bouts-rimés (end-rhymes) in mid-century: the game that consisted of taking a list of fourteen words containing pre-constructed rhymes and then filling in the rest to make a sonnet. Or Voiture’s celebrated ‘Rondeau pour Isabeau’ in which the poet represents himself as composing a rondeau on the spot, in which the task of composing becomes the content of the verses themselves. If Arsinoé’s message to Célimène could, by a stretch of the imagination, be construed as actually meant to assign credible responsibility for the content to the absent critics, Célimène’s response signals to Arsinoé that it is meant to be understood as insincere (in terms of its literal declaration, that is, as

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friendly concern) by its echo effect. In addition to displaying outstanding talent in improvisation, Célimène’s repurposing of the very structure of the earlier message is a hallmark of parody, defined as a text which ‘imitates the distinctive style and thought of a literary text, author, or tradition for comic effect’.¹⁹ It is precisely that very attentive imitation that signals the comic (ironic) effect. Célimène means to inflict the maximum humiliation on Arsinoé by purloining and deflecting her criticism and the mimetic display—which is in this case not simply representation but more pointedly a mimicking—is the kind of sign that alerts even the most inattentive listener to the presence of irony. Molière’s text prepares us for this performance. Just as musical compositions frequently introduce a theme (a formal component) in order later to provide a variation and expansion of it, so too in Le Misanthrope has Molière prepared us for Célimène’s riposte; he did so only shortly before this scene between these two women who are in some sense rivals for Alceste’s attention. We recall that the third act begins with a conversation between two male rivals for Célimène’s love. Clitandre and Acaste each believes that he is preferred. There is, however, an important turning-point in the conversation, one that leads to the dénouement of the play. Acaste claims to have a special place in Célimène’s favours. Hence the following exchange: CLITANDRE Crois-moi, détache-toi de cette erreur extrême: Tu te flattes, mon cher, et t’aveugles toi-même. ACASTE Il est vrai, je me flatte et m’aveugle en effet. CLITANDRE Mais qui te fait juger ton bonheur si parfait? ACASTE Je me flatte. CLITANDRE Sur quoi fonder tes conjectures? ACASTE Je m’aveugle. CLITANDRE En as-tu des preuves qui soient sûres? ACASTE Je m’abuse, te dis-je. ¹⁹ Preminger and Brogan, The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, 881.

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CLITANDRE Est-ce que de ses vœux Célimène t’a fait quelques secrets aveux? ACASTE Non, je suis maltraité. CLITANDRE I think, my friend, you are in total error. I think you’re blindly flattering yourself. ACASTE That’s true, I’m blindly flattering myself ! CLITANDRE What makes you sure that you’re so fortunate? ACASTE I’m flattering myself ! CLITANDRE What basis have you? ACASTE I’m blind! CLITANDRE But have you any kind of proof ? ACASTE Oh, I must be mistaken! CLITANDRE Célimène, Has she made any admission of her feelings? ACASTE No, she is brutal to me! (3.1.825–833) Acaste’s implementation of verbal irony is of the mimetic or specular kind. He turns Clitandre’s own words against him, thus exasperating his opponent by agreeing with him. Clitandre knows perfectly well that Acaste has not changed his real position, but Clitandre is now without any good argumentative option, since to disagree with Acaste would require Clitandre to affirm that Acaste does, indeed, have good reason to suppose that he is Célimène’s favourite. It looks like a complete stalemate until both agree to share their documentary evidence. This is the agreement that ultimately brings about the dénouement in a play in which the protagonists, Alceste and Célimène, would apparently

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simply spin forever in their indecisive relationship. And this scene that leads to the dénouement is just about in the middle of the text. Regarding the later exchange between Arsinoé and Célimène, specular irony of the male rivals’ dialogue presents the theme that the two women characters later develop. Célimène does not simply parrot what Arsinoé says, the way Acaste echoes (merely repeats) Clitandre’s words. Instead Célimène borrows Arsinoé’s monologue as the template for her own preterition.

Truth and ‘Sincerity’ in Le Misanthrope One of the most common statements about Molière’s comedy Le Misanthrope is that Alceste is an isolated champion of truth who is surrounded by a society of deceivers. Christian Biet says of this character that ‘A lceste has the madness of those who love truth in a universe where it is worthless…’.²⁰ But is this true? Does Alceste tell the truth? Does he value truth? Are there others in the play who in fact are more attached to the truth than he is? To answer these questions, we need to ask another, one that has been asked for thousands of years: what is truth? Patricia Cholakian follows the tradition of locating truth on the side of Alceste but does so from a different angle, a feminist critique of Célimène as deceptive. In this argument, it is not so important that Alceste tell the truth as it is that women tell lies. Cholakian argues that study of how ‘women use language in Le Misanthrope reveals the “word” as the main tool whereby they practice the art of deception’.²¹ Many critics, seeking an epithet for Alceste, foreground his ‘sincerity’ and thus encourage readers to see this as his essential quality.²² Gita May writes of ‘the sincere Alceste’.²³ Using a term that became more prevalent in Molière criticism in the wake of twentieth-century existentialism, both Lionel Gossman and Jeffrey Peters describe Alceste in terms of his ‘authenticity’—apparently ²⁰ ‘A lceste a la folie de ceux qui sont épris de vérité dans un univers où elle n’a pas cours…’ (Christian Biet, ‘La Veuve et l’idéal du mari absolu: Célimène et Alceste’, Cahiers du Dix-Septième: An Interdisciplinary Journal, no. 1 [1997]: 219). ²¹ Patricia Francis Cholakian, ‘The “Woman Question” in Molière’s Misanthrope’, French Review 58, no. 4 (1985): 525. ²² Eglantine Morvant sees Alceste as a political reformer whose action is ethical rather than moral. His sincerity is, however, linked to truth insofar as he tells others the truth about themselves. He is in this way a ‘parrésiaste’ in Michel Foucault’s terms because he has ‘le courage de dire aux autres leur vérité’ (emphasis added by John D. Lyons). See ‘Existences en résistance chez Molière: Comment Tartuffe, Dom Juan et Alceste se realisent en résistant a l’ordre social du XVIIe siècle’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Virginia, 2013), 94–117. ²³ Gita May, ‘1750 Beauty in Context’, in A New History of French Literature, ed. Denis Hollier and R. Howard Bloch (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989), 443. May is describing Rousseau’s view of the Molière character.

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using the term as roughly equivalent to ‘sincerity’—though this equivalency is debatable.²⁴ Peters also insightfully links Alceste’s claim to be sincere to an implicit gender distinction, one that could be construed as misogynous. Peters points to Alceste’s statement ‘Je veux que l’on soit homme’ (1.1.70) and comments, ‘A lceste suggests that one is a man—by which he understands “honnête homme” in contrast to the “fat” […] but also the masculine as opposed to the feminine—through the language one speaks…’.²⁵ In short, either the truthfulness or the claims of truthfulness on the part of Alceste have been a major component of the commentary tradition for centuries. The most celebrated partisan of the character Alceste and at the same time the most heated detractor of the moral effect of Le Misanthrope as a play is Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who wrote at length about it in his Lettre sur les spectacles and gave lasting prominence to the conception of Alceste as, above all, an unappreciated moral hero.²⁶ Rousseau does not dispute the importance of this play. In fact, he notes that among Molière’s comedies, it is ‘celle qu’on reconnaît unanimement pour son chef-d’œuvre: je veux dire, le Misanthrope’ (‘the one that people unanimously recognize as his masterpiece: I mean, Le Misanthrope’). In writing to d’A lembert, the Genevan positions himself as an expert in dramatic spectacles as well as an ethicist. Thus, in the former of these professions, Rousseau makes a point of his ability to discern what makes the comedy a technical tour de force while at the same time, in moral terms, he deplores its corrupting effect on the public. It is easy to assume that Rousseau’s attachment to the male protagonist of the play derives principally from the perception that Alceste and Rousseau share a passion for truth. In the first paragraph of this essay the author announces: ‘Justice et vérité, voilà les premiers devoirs de l’homme’ (‘Justice and truth, those are the first duties of man’).²⁷ He further says of this text, ‘J’ai dit froidement la vérité: qui est-ce qui se soucie d’elle?’ (‘I have said the truth coolly: who cares about it?’).²⁸ Moreover, throughout his work Rousseau proclaims emphatically his attachment to truth-telling, as in the ringing declaration that opens the Confessions: ‘Voici le seul portrait d’homme, peint exactement ²⁴ Lionel Gossman writes ‘To all appearances, Alceste is a seeker after authenticity in a world profoundly marked by inauthenticity’. ( Men and Masks: A Study of Molière [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1963], 67); Jeffrey N. Peters, ‘The Rhetoric of Adornment in Le Misanthrope’, The French Review 75, no. 4 (2002): 708–719. ²⁵ Peters, ‘The Rhetoric of Adornment in Le Misanthrope’, 710. ²⁶ Pierre Force comments on the lasting impact of Rousseau’s evaluation of Molière’s theatre in Molière, ou, le prix des choses: morale, économie et comédie (Paris: Nathan, 1994), 208–209. ²⁷ Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Lettre à M. D’A lembert sur son article Genève, ed. Michel Launay (Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1967), 43. ²⁸ Rousseau, 48.

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d’après nature et dans toute sa vérité, qui existe et qui probablement existera jamais’ (‘Here is the only portrayal of a man, painted from life and in all its truth, that exists and that probably will ever exist’).²⁹ Yet Rousseau’s praise for Alceste, though implying that they both share a commitment to truth-telling, does not specifically and directly link the character with the terms vrai, vérité, or véritable (true, truth, or veritable). He does call Alceste a ‘véritable homme de bien’—but Rousseau is praising the exactness of Molière’s depiction, not centring the quality of homme de bien on the relationship to truth-telling.³⁰ Only by a slightly round about way can we deduce that Alceste must be attached to a certain form of truth, insofar as he appears ridiculous in the play, and Rousseau attributes to Molière the general project of ridiculing the honnêtes gens: Examinez le comique de cet auteur: partout vous trouverez que les vices de caractère en sont l’instrument, et les défauts naturels le sujet; que la malice de l’un punit la simplicité de l’autre; et que les sots sont les victimes des méchants: ce qui, pour n’être que trop vrai dans le monde, n’en vaut pas mieux à mettre au théˆatre avec un air d’approbation, comme pour exciter les ames perfides à punir, sous le nom de sottise, la candeur des honnêtes gens.³¹ Examine the comicalness of this writer: throughout you will find that character flaws are his means and natural defects are the subject; that the malice of one person punishes the simplicity of the other; and the dim-witted are the victims of the wicked: that is something which, because it is already true enough in the world, is not worth putting on the stage with some sense of approval, as if to excite perfidious minds to punish, under the heading of foolishness, the candour of honest people.

Looking in Cotgrave’s Dictionary (1611), we find candeur described as ‘A bright, or shining whitenesse; also, courtesie, gentleness, integritie, sinceritie, faire dealing, uprightness’. Sincerity, which is a certain type of truth, is only one part of candeur, and we can attribute that quality to Alceste insofar as he is the butt of ridicule, and hence, one of these honnêtes gens who figure in Molière’s theatre.³² In fact, Rousseau specifically describes Alceste as sincère: ‘Vous ne sauriez me nier deux choses: l’une, qu’A lceste, dans cette pièce, est ²⁹ Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions, in Œuvres complètes, ed. Bernard Gagnebin, Marcel Raymond, and Robert Osmont, vol. 1 (Paris: Gallimard, 1959), 3. ³⁰ Rousseau, Lettre à M. D’A lembert, 96. ³¹ Rousseau, Lettre à M. D’A lembert, 93–94. ³² Cotgrave defines syncerité as ‘Sinceritie, integritie, soundnesse, intirenesse, honestie, puritie, cleanesse, uprightnesse, plainesse, true-heartednesse’.

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un homme droit, sincère, estimable, un véritable homme de bien; l’autre, que l’auteur lui donne un personnage ridicule.’ (‘You cannot contradict me in these two things: first, that Alceste, in this play, is an upright, sincere, estimable, and virtuous man; second, that the author makes him a ridiculous character.’ )³³ Sincerity is here presented as part of a bundle of virtues, rather than as a quality standing on its own. Alceste’s dominant passions are the hatred of vice and the love of virtue, rather than a passion centered on truth itself: Le caractère du misanthrope n’est pas à la disposition du poëte; il est déterminé par la nature de sa passion dominante. Cette passion est une violente haine du vice, née d’un amour ardent pour la vertu, et aigrie par le spectacle continuel de la méchanceté des hommes. Il n’y a donc qu’une aˆme grande et noble qui en soit susceptible. L’horreur et le mépris qu’y nourrit cette même passion pour tous les vices qui l’ont irritée sert encore à les écarter du cœur qu’elle agite. De plus, cette contemplation continuelle des désordres de la société, le détache de lui-même pour fixer toute son attention sur le genre humain. Cette habitude éleve, aggrandit ses idées, détruit en lui les inclinations basses qui nourrissent et concentrent l’amour propre…³⁴ The character of the misanthrope does not depend on the author; it is determined by the nature of his dominant passion. That passion is the violent hatred of vice, born from an ardent love of virtue, and embittered by the ceaseless spectacle of the maliciousness of mankind. Only a great and noble soul is thus inclined. The horror and scorn that this passion nurtures for all the vices by which it has been afflicted remove them from the heart that they excite. Moreover, this continual contemplation of social disorders distances him from himself and turns his attention to the whole human race. This habit elevates and broadens his ideas, destroying in him the low inclinations which encourage and intensify self-love.

Alceste is thus most generally a moral reformer, who opposes the ‘disorders of society’. It would seem then that his principal aim would be, not so much sincerity, but rather an accurate and effective representation of the disorders that he so continuously contemplates, since his attention is entirely fixed on the human race, the genre humain. What then, in Rousseau’s account, are the disorders that Alceste observes in society? We might expect that the author of the letter to d’A lembert would foreground the scene that figures in almost all critical and scholarly texts ³³ Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Lettre à M. D’A lembert, 96. ³⁴ Rousseau, Lettre à M. D’A lembert, 104.

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concerning Alceste’s character, the opening scene (I, 1) in which the male protagonist rants about excessive, empty compliments. Rousseau, however, has little to say about this scene, except to quote two verses—he says that he does not have the text with him and is quoting from memory. Alceste says that he hates all mankind (‘tous les Hommes’): ‘les uns, parce qu’il sont méchants, / Et les autres, pour être aux méchants complaisants’ (‘Some because they are wicked and do evil, / Others because they tolerate the wicked’).³⁵ In other words, Rousseau does not comment on the lack of truthfulness or ‘sincerity’ in Philinte’s greetings of people he scarcely knows but rather insists on general human corruption, whether by commission or omission. After this quotation, Rousseau comments ‘Ce n’est donc pas des hommes qu’il [Alceste] est ennemi, mais de la méchanceté des uns et du support que cette méchanceté trouve dans les autres.’ (‘It is not of humans that he is the enemy, but of the maliciousness of some and the support that this maliciousness finds among the others.’ )³⁶ Again, in seeking to determine what are the important ‘disorders’ against which Alceste and Rousseau himself allied, we need to go further in the letter. Since Molière, in Rousseau’s view, is a supreme technician of comedy and an astute observer of his contemporary public, while at the same time a corruptor of public morality, the fulcrum of the play is the paradoxical passion of the man of virtue for—of all possible beings—a coquette: ‘Rendre le Misanthrope amoureux n’était rien, le coup de génie est de l’avoir fait amoureux d’une coquette’ (‘To make the Misanthrope be in love was nothing; the stroke of genius is to make him the lover of a coquette.’ )³⁷ Now it would be easy for Rousseau, as for so many commentators after him, to see the contrast between the male and female protagonists in terms of their relation to truth. Rousseau, however, does not do so. Instead, he views both Alceste and Célimène in the terms of the bigger picture that he, Rousseau, wishes to paint of social corruption. Therefore, in this description of the play Alceste represents the struggle for social order (or the ‘natural’ state) and Célimène represents a case of extreme disorder (or the perversion of the natural state). What the skilled modern dramatist (that is, the author most capable of pleasing a seventeenthcentury audience) does, is seize upon, amplify, and thus finally pervert the natural order. In this account, the modern stage is no longer the place of drama

³⁵ Rousseau, 98. The exact passage is ‘Les uns, parce qu’ils sont méchants et malfaisants; / Et les autres, pour être aux Méchants, complaisants’, 1.1.119–120 (Molière, Œuvres complètes, ed. Georges Forestier et al. (Paris: Gallimard, 2010), I, 652). ³⁶ Rousseau, Lettre à M. D’A lembert, 98. ³⁷ Rousseau, Lettre à M. D’A lembert, 127.

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but instead the place of romance: ‘depuis Molière et Corneille, on ne voit plus réussir au théˆatre que des romans, sous le nom de pièces dramatiques’ (‘since Molière and Corneille, nothing succeeds in the theatre except novels, under the name of drama’).³⁸ In Rousseau’s account the gravest threat to virtue in the world represented in Le Misanthrope is not, as many readers (like Biet) have supposed, a loss of the relationship between language and truth but instead the redistribution of roles and the ascendancy of women over men. What the two types of accounts have in common is, of course, language, but the difference between these readings of Molière’s play lies in the identity (the gender identity) of the speaker rather than in the content of the utterances. By promoting love as the central issue of plays, Molière (like Corneille before him) opened the way to this disorder: L’amour est le règne des femmes. Ce sont elles qui nécessairement y donnent la loi: parce que, selon l’ordre de la nature, la résistance leur appartient, et que les hommes ne peuvent vaincre cette résistance qu’aux dépens de leur liberté. Un effet naturel de ces sortes de pièces est donc d’étendre l’empire du sexe, de rendre des femmes et de jeunes filles les précepteurs du public, et de leur donner sur les spectateurs le même pouvoir qu’elles ont sur leurs amants. Pensez-vous, monsieur, que cet ordre soit sans inconvénient, et qu’en augmentant avec tant de soin l’ascendant des femmes, les hommes en seront mieux gouvernés?³⁹ Love is the domain of women. They are the ones who necessarily determine the law: because, according to the order of nature, resistance is theirs, and men can only overcome that resistance at the expense of their freedom. A natural consequence of this type of play is to extend the dominion of the female sex, to make women and girls the preceptors of the public, and to give them the same power over the public that they have over the spectators. Do you find, sir, that such an arrangement has no drawbacks, and that by increasing with such care the superiority of women, men will be better governed?

This comment looks as if it could be directed at Les Femmes savantes, rather than at Le Misanthrope, but Rousseau is not taking aim solely at pedantic ³⁸ Rousseau, Lettre à M. D’A lembert, 113. Note the serendipitous convergence of this view with Richard Goodkin’s witty description of Molière’s satire of roman (romance) conventions in Les Précieuses ridicules: ‘the model of novelistic courtship is seen as a kind of emblematic or exemplary series of consecrated rituals protecting against the dangers of male sexuality and in particular of giving in too quickly to a man who may not be trustworthy’ (‘Molière’s Satire of the Novel: Men Are from Theater, Women Are from Narrative’, in How Do I Know Thee (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2015), 170. ³⁹ Rousseau, Lettre à M. D’A lembert, 113.

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women but more generally at women’s role as speakers and the concomitant positioning of men as listeners. In Rousseau’s view, women should remain silent. The problem is that when women speak it somehow degrades men, even when, in some rare cases, the woman has something worth saying.⁴⁰ In a well-ordered society, like that of antiquity, women should neither be seen, nor heard: Les anciens avaient en général un très grand respect pour les femmes; mais ils marquaient ce respect en s’abstenant de les exposer au jugement du public, et croyaient honorer leur modestie, en se taisant sur leurs autres vertus. Ils avaient pour maxime que le pays où les mœurs étaient les plus pures, était celui où l’on parlait le moins des femmes; et que la femme la plus honnête était celle dont on parlait le moins.⁴¹ In general the ancients had a great respect for women; but they showed this respect by refraining from allowing them to be judged by the public, and believed that they honoured their modesty by remaining silent about their other virtues. They held to the maxim that the land with the purest morals was the one where women were spoken about the least; and that the most decent woman was the woman who was the least mentioned.

The modern theatre, consequently, is doubly corrupt, for not only are women seen on stage, but they speak. And in the case of Le Misanthrope, they— and particularly Célimène—speak copiously, wittily, and effectively, marking the decline from the stage of the ancients: Chez nous, au-contraire, la femme la plus estimée est celle qui fait le plus de bruit; de qui l’on parle le plus; qu’on voit le plus dans le monde; chéz qui l’on dîne le plus souvent; qui donne le plus impérieusement le ton; qui juge, tranche, décide, prononce, assigne aux talents, au mérite, aux vertus, leurs degrés et leurs places; et dont les humbles savants mendient le plus bassement la faveur. Sur la scène, c’est pis encore.⁴² Among us, on the contrary, the woman who is the most respected is the woman who creates the greatest stir, the one about whom people talk the most, who is seen the most in public, at whose home people dine the ⁴⁰ ‘Il peut y avoir dans le monde quelques femmes dignes d’être écoutées d’un honnête-homme; mais est-ce d’elles, en général, qu’il doit prendre conseil, et n’y auroit-il aucun moyen d’honorer leur sexe, à moins d’avilir le nôtre?’ Rousseau, 113. Cotgrave’s dictionary (1611) defines aviler as ‘To despise, disisteeme; imbase, make vile, or cheape; to pull downe the price of, to bring to a low price’. ⁴¹ Rousseau, Lettre à M. D’A lembert, 114. ⁴² Rousseau, Lettre à M. D’A lembert, 115.

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most often, who sets imperiously the tone, who judges, determines, decides, pronounces, and who establishes the scale of values among talents, merits, virtues, and distinctions, and whose favour humble learned men beg obsequiously. On the stage, it is even worse.

Rousseau’s attack on the depiction of Alceste, then, seems to signify not so much an attachment to telling the truth as rather a militant programme of transforming society back to a time of male- and master-dominated society. The problem with women, and specifically the problem with Célimène, is not that they speak deceptively but that they speak at all and that they occupy the discursive space that is ‘rightly’ (in Rousseau’s view) the property of men. Rousseau accepts Alceste’s claim to be a social reformer and amplifies that position by filling-in or generalizing so that Alceste’s project of controlling Célimène becomes the vaster project of effacing women from the central position in society that Rousseau implies that they have. Molière’s Alceste is not necessarily Rousseau’s Alceste, but the detour through Rousseau’s reading has at least the advantage of emphasizing a real competition between Alceste and Célimène and expanding the view beyond one of a courtship that fails because one person is committed to truth and the other person is not. It is not difficult to suppose that Célimène and Alceste are rivals pursuing competitively the same thing: both seek both attention and distinction.⁴³ These two things are not exactly the same, of course, but for the moment we can simply look at two ways in which Alceste and Célimène seek to achieve the social aim of being the centre of attention. Rivalry within the salons of Paris is not, however, Alceste’s ultimate concern. He expresses repeatedly his goal of isolating and controlling Célimène. As Larry Riggs writes, ‘Like Arnolphe, Alceste is an aspiring despot with an obsessively consistent, rigidly methodical approach to achieving mastery.’⁴⁴ Just as Arnolphe sought to isolate Agnès from society, Alceste wishes to keep Célimène from having any contact with others, cutting her off and making her dependent upon him. He wishes that she were impoverished, unattractive, without social standing, so that she would in desperation have to accept him: Ah! rien n’est comparable à mon amour extrême; Et, dans l’ardeur qu’il a de se montrer à tous, ⁴³ Marcel Gutwirth has a telling formulation of the relation of the two protagonists of Le Misanthrope: ‘A lceste hait les hommes, Célimène les méprise, Philinte s’en désintéresse’ (Molière, ou l’invention comique [Paris: Lettres modernes, 1966], 75). ⁴⁴ Larry Riggs, Molière and Modernity: Absent Mothers and Masculine Births (Charlottesville, Virginia: Rookwood Press, 2005), 100.

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This is the chilling, hostile wish that Alceste in his ‘sincerity’ expresses to the woman he claims to love, a form of love that Célimène, with striking understatement, calls ‘strange’. Alceste’s dramatic gesture of flight at the end of act V is only the most spectacular reminder that Célimène and Alceste have different relations to the world outside of Célimène’s house, one real and one imaginary. The real world is what was memorably called la cour et la ville (the court and the city). It includes the politico-legal space of the monarchical court and the institutions that depend on it, such as the lever du roi (morning ceremony in the king’s bedchamber) and the tribunals in which both Alceste and Célimène have ongoing legal actions and the maréchaussée (royal marshals) that intervenes to prevent a duel between Alceste and Oronte.⁴⁵ And it includes also la ville, the other places of polite society where people gather to talk. Both protagonists mock ⁴⁵ James F. Gaines, The Molière Encyclopedia (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2002), 308–309 and François Bluche, Dictionnaire du Grand Siècle (Paris: Fayard, 2005), 966–968.

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this world and mine it for rhetorical purposes. While for Alceste the politicolegal and social spaces of Paris and Célimène’s salon are fused into a uniform world of corruption, for Célimène the space outside her home is a warehouse of characters for artful depiction. Alceste’s perception of the world includes in addition an imaginary space that is neither la cour nor la ville, but rather a utopian anti-modern and non-urban place, an ‘endroit écarté / Où d’être homme d’honneur on ait la liberté’ (an isolated place/where one can be free to be a man of honour’; 5.4.1805–1806). But more important than these boundaries of space is the conceptual border between two conceptions of truth. The neglect of this boundary leads to many contrasting descriptions of the action and characters of the play and to quite hotly contested ethical as well as aesthetic judgments. Biet says that Alceste is ‘épris de vérité’ (in love with truth) but can we not also say that Célimène is ‘éprise de vérité’? What the Rousseauian reading and its wake have done to readings of Le Misanthrope is to make it seem that sincerity and truth are synonymous and bidirectionally equivalent. However, this assumption quite distorts the idea of truth. To give the simplest and most obvious case, we know that someone may be perfectly sincere while at the same time uttering statements that are not true, that is, to affirm things about the world which are in fact not the case. With regard to Le Misanthrope, Larry Norman’s excellent book The Public Mirror has the great virtue of foregrounding ‘depiction’ as a major theme and function of Molière’s play, and the character in the play who most excels at depiction is Célimène. Norman even goes so far as to make a more general claim about the author’s comedies by saying that ‘Molière deeply identifies his art with that of the social commerce of depiction as practiced by women.’⁴⁶ Moreover, in Norman’s view—it is the central theme of the entire book—the accuracy (we might say ‘truth’)—of depiction can be evaluated by the contemporary audience insofar as that audience recognizes itself and its society on the stage: ‘The comedy of manners is a place where the public sees itself.’⁴⁷ Pointing out that in the tradition of Molière comedy ‘critics have nearly always embraced Alceste rather than Célimène as Molière’s alter ego’. Norman calls that interpretive habit—very rightly, as we see it—into question.⁴⁸ The difference between these two major characters of Le Misanthrope centrally concerns a boundary between these two types of truth: sincerity, on one hand, and depiction or portraits on the other. The Trésor de la langue française ⁴⁶ Larry F. Norman, The Public Mirror: Molière and the Social Commerce of Depiction (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 25. Cf. Goodkin’s association of women with the novel. ⁴⁷ Norman, 15. ⁴⁸ Norman, 169–170.

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defines sincérité as ‘Qualité d’une personne sincère, qui exprime des sentiments réellement éprouvés, qui ne cache pas ses pensées’ (‘The characteristic of a sincere person, who expresses feelings that are really felt, who does not hide his thoughts’). Twenty-eight years after the first performance of Le Misanthrope the first dictionary of the Académie Française defined sincère as ‘Véritable, franc, qui est sans artifice, sans deguisement’ (‘Veritable, frank, who is without artifice, without disguise’). What these definitions have in common is an emphasis on the boundary between the inside and the outside of a person. Sincerity is, first, the opposite of concealment and disguise, and, secondly, something that concerns inner experience or feeling, ‘feelings really felt’. Although it may be counterintuitive and a little shocking to express it this way, sincerity is actually self -centred. A sincere utterance gives us information about the speaker. What does the speaker believe? What does the speaker feel? It is easy to see that this description fits Alceste both in his own view— he appears to be sincerely sincere—and in the views of others. Eliante says of him, ‘la sincérité dont son aˆme se pique / A quelque chose en soi de noble et d’héroïque’ (‘In that sincerity that he’s so proud of / There’s something rather noble and heroic’; 4.1.1165–1166). This comment conveys both an internal and external assessment of sincerity, since Eliante expresses admiration for Alceste’s sincerity and confirms that Alceste himself is quite pleased with his display of the quality. Let us assume that this sincerity is real. After all, the text of the play offers no basis for supposing that Alceste feigns sincerity as Tartuffe does, but in the very scene in which Eliante speaks so positively of Alceste’s character she gives us food for thought about the relation between sincerity and truth. She answers Philinte’s question about Célimène’s feelings for Alceste by saying, C’est un point qu’il n’est pas fort aisé de savoir. Comment pouvoir juger s’il est vrai qu’elle l’aime? Son cœur de ce qu’il sent n’est pas bien sûr lui-même; Il aime quelquefois sans qu’il le sache bien, Et croit aimer aussi parfois qu’il n’en est rien. That’s not an easy matter to decide. How can you settle if she really loves him? Her heart is not quite sure of its own feelings. A heart may love, denying that it loves, Or think it loves, in ignorance of the truth. (4.1.1180–1184)

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There is no reason to suppose that this penetrating analytic comment is valid for Célimène’s feelings alone. Alceste’s admission to Philinte in the play’s opening scene makes it seem that Alceste himself is unsure of his feelings for Célimène or at least unsure of their cause and their precise contour. ‘J’ai beau voir ses défauts et j’ai beau l’en blˆamer, / En dépit qu’on en ait, elle se fait aimer’ (‘though I see her faults and blame them in her, / It is too much for me, she makes me love her’; 1.1.231–232) he says, before reaching the general statement that ‘la raison n’est pas ce qui règle l’amour’ (248). So Alceste feels something, there is no reason to doubt that, but does he know (and do we know) exactly what that is?⁴⁹ As a source of truth sincerity has serious limits, and this was a point much discussed in Molière’s day. The first French edition of La Rochefoucauld’s Réflexions ou sentences et maximes morales appeared only the year before the performance of Le Misanthrope, though certainly much of its content must have been widely shared before the appearance of the printed form. Nine years later, Pierre Nicole’s ‘moral essay’ ‘De la connaissance de soimême’ appeared. Both texts point out the defective nature of self-knowledge and thus undermine the implied connection between sincerity and truth. The text by La Rochefoucauld usually called ‘maxime supprimée numéro 1’ and that begins ‘L’amour-propre est l’amour de soi-même et de toutes choses pour soi…’ (‘Amour-propre is the love of oneself and of all things for oneself…’) points to the truth that is hidden behind the ‘truth’ that we say, the truth of amour-propre that is, as the author writes, ‘souvent invisible à lui-même’ (‘often invisible to itself ’).⁵⁰ In a less poetical and more detailed analysis, Nicole points out that we can only achieve self-knowledge through the help of those around us. Although we are surrounded by deceivers and flatterers, argues Nicole, if we can learn what people say about us when they are not trying to please us—in fact, if we can find out what people say about us when they think we cannot hear them—those depictions will correct the distorted perception that self-love creates in us. Seventeenth-century audiences were thus aware of limits to ‘sincerity’—that is, the limits to the truth-claims that people make when they are guileless and believe completely, even passionately in what they are saying.

⁴⁹ Gossman remarks that ‘A lceste is not concerned with his own honesty and sincerity, which he would have us accept unquestioningly. He is concerned only with the honesty and sincerity of others…’, 67. ⁵⁰ François La Rochefoucauld, Œuvres complètes., ed. L. Martin-Chauffier and Jean Marchand (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), 485–487.

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Hence, at the time of the performance and printing of the play, it is unlikely that Molière’s audience would assume that Alceste’s claims that he is ‘sincère’ (e.g., 1.2.300 in the scene with Oronte) and that he wishes that people would be ‘sincère’ (1.1.35) can be understood as covering the entire semantic field of ‘truth’. In fact, the words ‘sincère’ and ‘vérité’ appear in the same sentence only a single time in Le Misanthrope (1.1.1506–1513) and ‘vrai’ and ‘sincère’ never appear together. However, the single sentence in which assertions of sincerity and truth appear together is uttered by Alceste.⁵¹ So that it appears that he, at least, believes that the two concepts coincide. Alceste has a certain idea of himself that proceeds from within. It is not directly contested by the people he interacts with (except in one instance that we will consider shortly) but paradoxically the more other people object to (rather than disagree with) what he has to say, the more convinced he seems to be that he is the sole repository of a sincerity-based concept of truth. The single character who expresses admiration for Alceste’s claim of sincerity, Eliante, does so in terms that do not unequivocally help his cause. She speaks of him not simply as a truth-teller but rather as someone who boasts of his sincerity (‘la sincérité dont son aˆme se pique’, 4.1.1165). Se piquer did not appear in seventeenth-century dictionaries, but in the fourth edition of the Academy dictionary we read ‘Se glorifier de quelque chose, en faire vanité, en faire profession, en tirer avantage’ (‘To boast of something, to be vain about something, to profess, to gain advantage from’.)⁵² And we know that se piquer (to be proud of, to vaunt) was not usually a verb used to praise someone; as La Rochefoucauld wrote, ‘Le vrai honnête homme est celui qui ne se pique de rien’ (‘The true gentleman is someone who does not boast of anything.’ )⁵³ In Le Misanthrope the great rival to Alceste’s position on truth is Célimène. This claim has apparently never been made explicitly, although Larry Norman’s insight that women in Molière’s theatre and particularly Célimène are ⁵¹ Lui qui d’un honnête homme à la cour tient le rang, A qui je n’ai rien fait qu’être sincère et franc, Qui me vient, malgré moi, d’une ardeur empressée, Sur des vers qu’il a faits demander ma pensée; Et, parce que j’en use avec honnêteté, Et ne le veux trahir, lui ni la vérité, Il aide à m’accabler d’un crime imaginaire. (5.1.1509–1513) ⁵² The dictionary gives a series of examples: ‘Il se pique de bien écrire, de bien parler, &c. Il se pique d’ être bien fait, d’ être brave, de bien danser, &c. Il se pique de qualité, de noblesse. Il ne se pique d’ autre chose que d’ être honnête homme.’ ⁵³ François duc de La Rochefoucauld, Maximes: suivie des réflexions diverses (Paris: Garnier, 1967), maxim number 215.

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the champions of ‘depiction’ comes very close to the same conclusion.⁵⁴ Célimène shows little interest in sincerity, neither in general nor in the case of Alceste. She displays a purely external, observation-based practice of truthtelling by making verbal ‘portraits’. The contrast between Alceste’s concept of an internally based truth and Célimène’s finely crafted descriptions can be understood in terms of the different forms of validation that each supposes. Alceste is sure that what he says is true because he feels that he is saying the truth. No one else can tell whether he is actually saying what he thinks—even Célimène, for her part, creates utterances that can be validated as true statements by the listener. The exclamations by the members of her salon show both recognition of the persons and actions depicted and of the high quality of her verbal art. This is true both when her descriptions concern third parties not present in the salon and when her guests themselves read their own descriptions in Célimène’s letters in act V. We know that many of the seventeenth-century writers who were associated with the current of thought mentioned above sometimes called ‘précieux’ included ‘amies/amis de Port-Royal’: Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de Sévigné; François de La Rochefoucauld; Marie-Madeleine de Lafayette; Madeleine de Souvré, marquise de Sablé, and so forth. One of the major problematics that Port-Royal and, for want (at this point) of a better term, the précieuses, had in common was the difficulty in accessing knowledge of the actual nature (the real desires and thoughts) of any human being. Not only is the other (conceived primarily in terms of the differences between men and women) a mystery, but so is the self. Long before Nathalie Sarraute’s essay popularized the phrase, the seventeenth century was already the ‘ère du soupçon’ (era of suspicion).⁵⁵ Although Pascal sometimes invites his readers to examine their thoughts, he elsewhere expresses scepticism about the knowledge gained from the introspection recommended by Stoic philosophers and proceeds instead to instruct by showing the reader recognizable portraits of contemporaries—in other words, external depictions in which we can recognize ourselves.⁵⁶ Nicole, in his essay ‘De la connaissance de soi-même’, argues in detail for the indirect acquisition of knowledge of people: we learn best about someone not by what that person says but by finding out what others say about the person

⁵⁴ Norman, The Public Mirror, 28. ⁵⁵ Nathalie Sarraute, L’ère du soupçon: essais sur le roman (Paris: Gallimard, 1987). ⁵⁶ (e.g. ‘que chacun examine ses pensées…’ [‘let each examine his thoughts…’] Blaise Pascal, Pensées, in Les Provinciales, Pensées: et opuscules divers, eds. Philippe Sellier and Gérard Ferreyrolles (Paris: Librairie générale française, 2004), 754–1374. fragment 80, p. 862.

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in question. The reason to discount what people say about themselves is not based on the view that they are deliberately lying, but that they themselves are ignorant of their own inclinations and patterns of behaviour. Nicole’s critique is general and would apply to all the characters of Molière’s play, though perhaps particularly to a figure like Alceste, who is the one with the greatest investment in claims about himself: le principal usage que nous faisons de cet amour de la vérité est de nous persuader que ce que nous aimons est vrai. Car si nous voulons nous faire justice, nous reconnaîtrons que nous n’aimons pas les choses, parce qu’elles sont vraies; mais que nous les croyons vraies parce que nous les aimons. Notre volonté s’attache aux objets indépendamment de leur vérité, et par le seul rapport avec ses inclinations.⁵⁷ we mainly use this love of truth to persuade ourselves that what we like is true. For if we were honest with ourselves we would recognize that we don’t love things because they are true, but instead we believe them to be true because we love them. Our will attaches itself to things independently of their truth and solely with reference to our inclinations.

Self-observation and introspection are thus highly unreliable ways to learn the truth about ourselves and thus even to be certain that we can make credible statements about the world around us. But external observation, despite our biases (thinks Nicole), offers a surer way: comme il n’est pas défendu néanmoins de remarquer dans les autres certains défauts visibles, et qu’il est même impossible de ne pas voir ce qui frappe nos sens, il faut essayer de nous en servir pour nous mieux connaître […] Les occasions de faire de ces sortes de réflexions ne sont que trop ordinaires. Car l’amour-propre, qui a mille adresses pour nous cacher nos propres défauts, n’en a pas moins pour découvrir ceux d’autrui. Et au lieu que sa délicatesse ne nous permet guère d’arrêter la vue sur les nôtres, il nous rend au contraire clairvoyants à l’égard de ceux des autres. Nous les voyons tels qu’ils sont […].⁵⁸ since it is not forbidden to note certain visible faults in other people, and in fact since it is impossible not to see things so striking, we need to try to use these observations to understand ourselves better […] Opportunities to reflect in this way are all too abundant, since self-love, which has a thousand ways to conceal our own faults from us, has a similar number of ways ⁵⁷ Pierre Nicole, Essais de morale, ed. Laurent Thirouin (Paris: Encre marine, 2016), 326. ⁵⁸ Nicole, 360–361.

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to discover other people’s faults. So while its sensitivity does not allow us to scrutinize our faults it makes us perceptive regarding other people’s faults. We see them as they are…

Nicole thus promotes external observation of humanity as a ‘ploy’ (adresse) to understand ourselves, and this observational approach to knowledge, this adresse, is itself (from an Augustinian perspective) a way of profiting from mankind’s sinful, libidinous nature: ‘Cet effet vient sans doute d’une assez mauvaise cause, mais en le retenant dans de justes bornes, on en peut tirer quelque utilité’ (‘This results from a rather bad cause, but if we keep it within proper limits, we can make it useful.’ )⁵⁹ The character in Le Misanthrope who shows the most skill at observation and description is, of course, Célimène. She can produce recognizable—and thus intersubjectively validatable—verbal portraits, drawing precisely on what Nicole calls an ‘assez mauvaise cause’, that motivates others to say of her that she has an ‘esprit médisant’ (1.1.219). As we see, the root of this practice of saying bad things about other people is in Nicole’s view a kind of potentially self-correcting faculty of mankind in its ‘fallen’ (i.e., real, actual) state. The accuracy of a depiction is a fundamental part of its usefulness insofar as it corrects the flattering imaginary views that people have of themselves. Célimène’s médisance is distinguished, as I have noted, by the quality of its intersubjective validity, by the fact that everyone recognizes the sharpness of the portraits. It is not difficult to make the case that Célimène is closer to Molière as playwright, than is the character Alceste. That is, Célimène excels at creating comic depictions of her contemporaries. The qualification ‘as playwright’ is important, since the tradition of biographic criticism, with its supposition that Molière’s jealous, obsessive, and difficult relations with Armande Béjart are the basis for the portrayal of the male protagonist, does not always distinguish between Molière’s intentions and Alceste’s. Yet even more sophisticated and cautious readings of the play can become too persuaded by paratexual statements of which the truth-status is at least questionable. Larry Norman thoughtfully delineates the layers of social representation in Le Misanthrope, using Donneau de Visé’s prefatory letter as a starting point. Here is Norman’s summary of the basic situation: ‘To restate: Molière “speaks against current manners”, yes. Célimène also speaks against current manners. But Molière, in dramatic form, “speaks” against those, such as Célimène, who “continually speak, and write, against” others.’⁶⁰ ⁵⁹ Nicole, 361. ⁶⁰ Norman, The Public Mirror, 172.

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In the last two scenes of the play, Célimène agrees to marry Alceste. But that is not enough for him. She must also leave Paris and follow him to the place of which he dreams, the place where she will be isolated from society and will depend entirely on him. Over the centuries commentators have tended to view Célimène as defeated, abandoned by all her suitors. This view has more recently been called into question. Can either of the two protagonists exist outside of metropolitan urbanity? What would Alceste do if he could no longer find people to scold and denounce? Is he really cured of his irrational attachment to Célimène? Is there any reason to suppose that Célimène’s wealth, beauty, and wit will fail to attract other visitors? And is Molière himself not, like his two protagonists, entirely dependent upon the social foibles that they tirelessly describe? What is the significance of the non-marriage of the principal characters? Can it be that neither Célimène nor Alceste actually wish to marry? Their very essence seems to consist of deferral and of reminding one another of what is wrong with their relationship, a relationship by which both of them are energized and inspired to ever renewed verbal jousts. Richard Goodkin’s suggestion about Alceste’s departure is the most insightful description of the play’s ending. The real reason that Alceste rejects Célimène at the end of the play is not that she refuses to follow him into the wilderness—‘that is simply a red herring, a pretext. The true reason for Alceste’s rejection of Célimène is her acceptance of his offer of marriage, for no sooner is the word “hymen” (marriage) out of her mouth than Alceste jumps on it and withdraws his proposal. Célimène is attractive to Alceste only as long as she still has the power to refuse him.’

4 Don Garcie de Navarre Female Reason and Male Pathology

Le Misanthrope is not only a play about language and truth but also about uncontrollable male jealousy, a pathological behaviour that is assigned a diagnosis of melancholy. It is only one of a great number in Molière’s work in which jealousy plays an important, though not quite so central, a role: Sganarelle ou le Cocu imaginaire, L’École des femmes, George Dandin, ou le mari confondu, La Jalousie du barbouillé, and Amphitryon. And then there is Le Tartuffe, where jealousy appears in a strange negative form, as the emotion that we would expect from a husband seems strangely to be missing. Jealousy is so massively part of Molière’s comedies that it is tempting to suppose that this emotion finds its way directly from his personal life into his fictional world. Critics can thus, as they so often do in writing about Molière’s creations, swerve away from the plays towards biographical speculation.¹ If we look at the comedies within the broader literary context of the century, however, it is obvious that the theme of jealousy is simply an important concern of many writers and in particular of women writers such as Scudéry and Lafayette, who in their novels and shorter fiction show jealousy to be primarily a pathological affliction of the male mind. Molière’s other great play about jealousy, second only to Le Misanthrope, is Don Garcie de Navarre, ou le Prince jaloux, where jealousy, explicitly designated as such (as jalousie, the emotion of a man who is jaloux) is the central issue throughout the five acts. Alceste’s jealousy is explicitly mentioned in Le Misanthrope only seven times, whereas there is much more discussion of his claim to speak sincerely.² Despite the fact that Alceste’s jealous and controlling nature wrecks his chance to marry the woman he loves, readers and critics most often concentrate on his vaunted frankness. Don Garcie is a much more focused play that details the collision of a certain male characteristic, identified as a sickness (a maladie), with the subtleties of an intelligent woman’s form of communication. ¹ René Jasinski, for example, in his Molière et le Misanthrope, devotes a chapter to ‘La vie sentimentale de Molière jusqu’en 1666’ (Paris: Librairie Nizet, 1951), 49–67. ² The adjective jaloux appears six times and the noun jalousie once.

Women and Irony in Molière’s Comedies of Marriage. John D. Lyons, Oxford University Press. © John D. Lyons (2023). DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198887379.003.0005

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What is jealousy? The Academy dictionary at the end of the seventeenth century gives this definition of jaloux: Qui craint que quelque concurrent ne luy ravisse un bien qu’il possede, ou auquel il aspire. Il se dit principalement du mary & de la femme, de l’amant & de l’amante. Cet homme est jaloux de sa femme, ou absolument, est jaloux. elle est jalouse de son mary. il est jaloux de tous ceux qui parlent à elle. il est extremement, furieusement jaloux. C’est un vieux jaloux. il est si jaloux, qu’il est jaloux de son ombre. On dit aussi fig. qu’Un homme est jaloux de son honneur, jaloux des droits de sa Charge. He who fears that some rival may steal from him a good that he possesses or to which he aspires. It is said mainly of a husband and of a wife, and of a man who loves and a woman who loves. This man is jealous of his wife, or in an absolute sense, he is jealous. she is jealous of her husband. he is jealous of all those who speak to her. he is extremely, furiously jealous. he’s an old jealous man. he is so jealous that he is jealous of his shadow. One says figuratively that A man is jealous of his honour, jealous of the prerogatives of his Office.

The dictionary appropriately relates jealousy to the sense of possession, of ownership. Descartes is even clearer in the Passions de l’ˆame in the paragraph in which he writes of jealousy as a form of fear: La Jalousie est une espece de Crainte, qui se rapporte au Desir qu’ on a de se conserver la possession de quelque bien; et elle ne vient pas tant de la force des raisons, qui font juger qu’on le peut perdre, que de la grande estime qu‘on en fait, laquelle est cause qu’ on examine jusques aux moindres sujets de soupçon, et qu’on les prend pour des raisons fort considerables.³ Jealousy is a type of fear, which relates to the desire that one has to maintain the possession of some good; and it does not arise so much from the impact of the possibilities that make him fear that he will lose but rather from the great attachment that he has to it, which causes him to scrutinize even the most minor threats and that he perceives them as major factors.

Elsewhere in the Passions de l’ˆame Descartes situates jealousy with respect to related passions and with a sense of their temporal characteristics. Jealousy, hope, and fear all concern the future. Jealousy is a particular form of fear, and as such has only a small admixture of hope: ³ René Descartes, Les Passions de l’ˆame, in Œuvres de Descartes, eds. Ch. Adam and Paul Tannery (Paris: J. Vrin, 1966), third part, section 167, vol. 11, p. 457.

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Il suffit de penser que l’acquisition d’un bien […], pour estre incité à la désirer. Mais quand on considere, outre cela, s’il y a beaucoup ou peu d’apparence qu’on obtiene ce qu’on desire, ce qui nous represente qu’il y en a beaucoup, excite en nous l’Esperance, & ce qui nous represente qu’il y en a peu, excite la Crainte, dont la jalousie est une espece. Lorsque l’Esperance est extreme, elle change de nature, & se nomme Securité ou Asseurance. Comme, au contraire, l’extreme Crainte devient Desespoir.⁴ It is enough to think that it is possible to acquire a good […] to be incited to desire it. But when we consider, moreover, that even if there is a great deal or little likelihood that we will obtain what we desire, that which conveys to us the idea that there is a great deal of likelihood, stimulates hope within us and that which conveys to us the idea that there is little likelihood, stimulates fear, of which jealousy is a kind. When hope is great, it changes nature and is called security or assurance. As, on the contrary, extreme fear becomes despair.

To understand the cultural importance of jealousy and the power attributed to it in mid-seventeenth-century France we need only think of its role in MarieMadeleine de Lafayette’s La Princesse de Clèves, published little over a decade after Molière’s play. In that novel, jealousy is not only a major symptom of love but also a potentially fatal disorder. Lafayette’s sixteen-year-old protagonist obediently marries the much older man chosen by her mother, the Prince de Clèves. She has never had any experience of love and lives placidly with her new husband until the Duc de Nemours returns to court from travels abroad. Although she is immediately attracted to him, she does not realize that she is in love until she suspects that he is in love with another woman. And at the sharp stab of jealousy suddenly she realizes what love is.⁵ Later in the novel, her husband mistakenly believes that his wife has had a tryst with Nemours. The unfounded but overwhelming jealousy causes him to sicken and die. Although jealousy afflicts both women and men, in both Le Misanthrope and Don Garcie de Navarre the central male figure is much more susceptible to that emotion than is the woman he loves. One way to consider the interactions between women and men in these comedies is that the women are attempting to cure men of their mental and emotional maladies. We might call this, in ⁴ René Descartes, Les Passions de l’ˆame, section 58, p. 375. ⁵ ‘Jamais affliction n’a été si piquante et si vive: il lui semblait que ce qui faisait l’aigreur de cette affliction était ce qui s’était passé dans cette journée, et que si M. de Nemours n’eût point eu lieu de croire qu’elle l’aimait, elle ne se fût pas souciée qu’il en eût aimé une autre. Mais elle se trompait ellemême; et ce mal qu’elle trouvait si insupportable, était la jalousie avec toutes les horreurs dont elle peut être accompagnée.’ (Marie-Madeleine de Lafayette, La Princesse de Clèves, in Œuvres complètes, ed. Camille Esmein-Sarrazin, Pléiade [Paris: Gallimard, 2014], 397).

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twenty-first century terms, ‘therapy’. Rather coincidentally, Molière is one of the only dramatic writers of his day who used the word thérapie.⁶ Given that the social roles of men and women in society, on one hand, and the pretensions of the medical profession, on the other, are among the most important themes in the playwright’s theatre, it is probably not surprising to find that the two themes often intersect and unite. And the play in which both the male pathology and the woman’s attempt to rid her lover of his jealousy is most extreme is Don Garcie de Navarre. Here is a quick glimpse of the rather complex plot of Don Garcie. Elvire is princess of Léon, but her father is dead, and the throne of that kingdom has been usurped by the treacherous Mauregat. She has taken refuge in Astorgue, where she is protected from the usurper by the prince of Navarre, Don Garcie. It is believed that her brother is still alive and living with the king of Castille, an old ally of Elvire’s father. Don Sylve has been sent from Castille to combat Mauregat, but the two young military leaders who are working on Elvire’s behalf against Mauregat are rivals for Elvire’s affections. She shows a clear preference for Garcie. Meanwhile, Elvire’s best friend the Countess Ignès is held captive by Mauregat, who plans to force her to marry him. In each of the five acts Garcie has an outburst of jealousy on the basis of unfounded suspicions about Elvire. In the first act Elvire receives a billet from Ignès, and Garcie, thinking that it is from a male lover, has a fit, before he reads the letter and apologizes abjectly. In the second act, Garcie comes upon a fragment of a letter in which Elvire expresses her love for a man. He explodes, only later to learn that it was a letter that Elvire had written to him but not sent. In act III, Garcie finds Elvire talking with Sylve, and accuses her of having contrived the meeting with Sylve (which she did not). In act IV Elvire’s friend Ignès, having managed to escape from Mauregat by disguising herself as a man, takes refuge with Elvire in Astorgue. Garcie, predictably, hearing that there is a ‘man’ in Elvire’s company, refuses to take her word that her visitor is not a man and breaks up with Elvire. He plans to flee from his sorrow through a heroic, suicidal gesture of killing Mauregat. But, in act V, Garcie learns that Sylve has anticipated him and killed the tyrant. Then, to everyone’s surprise, including his own, Sylve learns that he is in fact Elvire’s brother, and hence the rightful king of Léon. Garcie, who is unaware of this astounding secret, finds Sylve and Elvire rejoicing affectionately together, and once again draws the conclusion that they are lovers. Despite Elvire’s many declarations throughout the play ⁶ Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, act 1, scene 8 (Œuvres complètes, II, 220). The Trésor de la langue française informatisé cites Molière’s play as the oldest historical example of the use of the term.

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that she will never marry a jealous man, she relents and agrees to accept him because he is worthy of her pity. In the first act, Elvire and her confidant Élise, share their views about love and jealousy. Elvire makes it clear that she believes a person’s inclination to love one person rather than another is irrational. It is not based on merit. She does not make an exception for herself. Between Don Sylve and Don Garcie, she says: […] je serais encore à nommer le vainqueur, Si le mérite seul prenait droit sur un cœur. Mais ces chaînes du Ciel, qui tombent sur nos aˆmes, Décidèrent en moi le destin de leurs flammes; Et toute mon estime égale entre les deux, Laissa vers Don Garcie entraîner tous mes vœux. (1.1.9–14) […] I would be still hesitating to name the conqueror, if merit alone could decide my heart. But these chains, with which Heaven keeps our souls enslaved, decide me, and though I esteem both equally, my love is given to Don Garcie.⁷

This is why she prefers Garcie, despite his jealous nature, to the equally valiant and generous Sylve. It does certainly seem irrational to prefer a man whose character she finds odious: Mais enfin quelle joie en peut prendre ce cœur, Si d’une autre contrainte il souffre la rigueur? Si d’un Prince jaloux l’éternelle faiblesse, Reçoit indignement les soins de ma tendresse; Et semble préparer dans mon juste courroux Un éclat à briser tout commerce entre nous? (1.1.53–58) But what delight can my heart feel, if it suffers severely from other pangs; if the continual weakness of a jealous prince receives my tenderness with disdain, ⁷ English versions of the quotations from this play are based on the prose translation in Molière, ‘Don Garcia of Navarre, or The Jealous Prince’, in The Dramatic Works of Molière, trans. Henri Van Laun, vol. 1 (Edinburgh: William Paterson, 1875). A small number of modifications have been made in Van Laun’s translation.

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compels me justly to give way to anger, and thus to break off all intercourse between us?

She is quite insistent that Garcie’s ‘sombre, et lˆache jalousie … l’étrange frénésie’ (‘dark and cowardly jealousy … strange frenzy’; 1.1.63–64) is intolerable to her. Élise, on the other hand, finds male jealousy not at all a bad thing. It is an indication of sincere love: Enfin, si les soupçons de cet illustre Amant, Puisque vous le voulez n’ont point de fondement; Pour le moins font-ils foi d’une aˆme bien atteinte, Et d’autres chériraient ce qui fait votre plainte. De jaloux mouvements doivent être odieux, S’ils partent d’un amour qui déplaise à nos yeux. Mais tout ce qu’un Amant nous peut montrer d’alarmes, Doit lorsque nous l’aimons, avoir pour nous des charmes. Though the suspicions of that illustrious lover have no foundation—for you tell me so—they at least prove that he is greatly smitten: some would rejoice at what you complain of. Jealousy may be odious when it proceeds from a love which displeases us; but when we return that love, such feelings should delight us. (1.1.89–96)

In Elvire’s eyes the vice of jealousy is inextricably tied to another male defect: the inability to understand non-verbal communication. By this account, Garcie is jealous because he is essentially illiterate regarding glances, gestures, and other indications that of Elvire’s sincere affection. When her confidant Élise defends Garcie by pointing out that Elvire has never told him that she loves him, Elvire responds with a whole manifesto about the semiotics of love: Non, non, de cette sombre, et lˆache jalousie Rien ne peut excuser l’étrange frénésie; Et par mes actions je l’ai trop informé, Qu’il peut bien se flatter du bonheur d’être aimé. Sans employer la langue, il est des interprètes Qui parlent clairement des atteintes secrètes. Un soupir, un regard, une simple rougeur, Un silence est assez pour expliquer un cœur. Tout parle dans l’amour, et sur cette matière

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Le moindre jour doit être une grande lumière; Puisque chez notre Sexe, où l’honneur est puissant, On ne montre jamais tout ce que l’on ressent. J’ai voulu, je l’avoue ajuster ma conduite, Et voir d’un œil égal, l’un et l’autre mérite: Mais que contre ses vœux on combat vainement, Et que la différence est connue aisément, De toutes ces faveurs qu’on fait avec étude A celles où du cœur fait pencher l’habitude. No, no; nothing can excuse the strange madness of his gloomy and unmanly jealousy. I have told him but too clearly, by my actions, that he can indeed flatter himself with the happiness of being beloved. Even if we do not speak, there are other interpreters which clearly lay bare our secret feelings. A sigh, a glance, a mere blush, silence itself, is enough to show the impulses of a heart. In love, everything speaks: in a case like this, the smallest glimmer ought to throw a great light upon such a subject, since the honour which sways our sex forbids us ever to uncover all we feel. I have, I own, endeavoured so to guide my conduct, that I should behold their merits with an unprejudiced eye. But how vainly do we strive against our inclinations! How easy is it to perceive the difference between those favours that are bestowed out of mere politeness, and such as spring from the heart. (1.1.63–80)

From Elvire’s description it seems that Garcie was simply not paying attention to what was right in front of his eyes, although we later learn that—in keeping with truisms about the attentiveness of lovers—he seems to be extremely alert to all that the princess does. But Elvire’s vehement pronouncement here tells us several other important things. It is not that Garcie misinterpreted any message or sign that Elvire intended to convey to him; instead, he did not grasp the symptoms of love that Elvire was deliberately concealing. She describes a standard convention in literature of this period. Women are not expected to show what they feel and carefully avoid formulating their emotions in words. But in addition to the general discursive reserve imposed upon women, which might allow a certain preference to appear as to which males seemed to make a more positive impression on her, Elvire is attempting to make all that she does indicate, falsely, that she likes Sylve, prince of Castille, just as much as she likes Garcie. But she takes for granted that she will fail in this effort and seems to wish to fail, or at least, to fail to deceive Garcie while she succeeds in concealing her true feelings from Sylve.

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We soon learn that the wish never to put her feelings of love into words is even more forceful with regard to written expression. Her suitor must never have any durable evidence of a commitment from her: ‘La faveur d’un écrit laisse aux mains d’un Amant / Des témoins trop constants de notre attachement’ (‘When we favour a lover by writing to him, we leave in his hands too flagrant proofs our inclination’; 1.1.149–150). In many of Molière’s comedies, the women characters make clever use of preterition, as we saw in L’École des maris and L’École des femmes. They manage in speaking to say things which they simultaneously deny that they are saying. Isabelle, in the École des maris is certain that her suitor Valère knows how to decode the messages which she delivers in an ironic mode that prevents her jealous guardian from understanding. Elvire proceeds in a different way. She knows that Garcie does not manage to understand what her involuntary visual expressions of affection should convey to the kind of lover she considers competent or normal. Or she knows, at least, that he is not confident that he understands; he does not believe in his good fortune. But rather than reassuring him by putting her feelings into words in a letter, she withholds those words by telling Élise not to send but rather to destroy the letter that she wrote him. It becomes clear that Elvire has no intention to reassure Garcie. She makes clear to him that she wishes for him to change, or at least to appear to change. The obstacle to his happiness is not the rival Sylve but rather something in himself. He needs to learn how to love. He can hope for her love, she tells him, ‘Quand vous saurez m’aimer, comme il faut que l’on aime’ (‘When you know how to love me as one should love’; 1.3.248). Clearly the way one should love is to respect and trust the beloved woman and not to suppose that she must be kept under constant surveillance. She takes a similarly direct approach to Garcie’s insulting suspicions in the second act, when he accuses her of writing a love letter, of which he has seen one half. This is precisely the letter mentioned in the previous act and that was torn in two pieces. The tear was vertical, rather than horizontal, and he has only the left side, where he sees lines beginning with expressions such as ‘Je chéris tendrement…’ (‘I cherish tenderly…’). When he angrily shows her the piece he has and accuses her of ‘perfidy’, she admits calmly of the letter that it is ‘pour un Amant, que ma main l’a formé, / Et j’ajoute de plus pour un Amant aimé’ (‘for a lover, my hand has written it, and I will add, for a lover who is beloved’; 2.5.574–575). Here we see that truth itself, literally stated, can become a form of irony when the speaker knows that the listener’s preconceptions are such that he will misconstrue what is said. Garcie throws himself right into the trap. Like every form of verbal irony, what happens in this scene is a collaboration between speaker and listener—in this case

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accuser and accused. Elvire gives him the half of the letter that remains in her possession, and when Garcie puts the pieces together, he realizes that he is the guilty party for having accused her falsely. What he now experiences is also a situational irony, for he had been raging against a letter that was an explicit testimony of Elvire’s love for him. Garcie subsequently grovels and begs forgiveness for his mistake, as he will do in each of the subsequent acts. But what is most important about this scene is Molière’s metaphorical use of the torn letter, which becomes a physical representation of the whole problem of female–male communication as it is viewed both by Molière and major women writers such as Lafayette. This problem can be stated in two ways, ways that differ according to a gendered viewpoint. From Garcie’s perspective, what Elvire tells him is always inadequate. She is never sufficiently explicit, and the definitive assurance that she loves him and only him is lacking. From Elvire’s point of view, what she has communicated to him should be amply sufficient, but Garcie lacks the fundamental interpretive ability to assemble and make sense out of all the signs. The torn letter represents this situation vividly. Elvire thinks that Garcie should know perfectly well that she would write such endearments only to him. In fact, she feels that the letter is already too explicit and for that reason has decided not to send it. Garcie, on the other hand, feels that there is no way he could be expected to know that the missing piece would confirm that the letter is meant for him. In order to know that the fragment he has was a declaration of love for him, he would need to know already, beforehand, what the letter declares. In short, from one point of view the letter is redundant, and from the other it is fatally inadequate. The torn letter is thus an emblem of irony, because to understand an ironic utterance, one must already have a pre-understanding of the speaker’s or writer’s words, or at least a key that permits a reversal of the apparent, surface, meaning. In each act of the play Garcie shows that he lacks this key, which consists simply in the knowledge that he is loved by Elvire and that any appearance to the contrary is devoid of meaning. But Elvire, on the other hand, understands full well that Garcie will misconstrue her words and repeatedly pushes his misunderstanding in a way that we could describe either as simple passive aggression or as a form of shock therapy, meant to shake her lover out of his incomprehension. In the fourth act there is an example of her deliberate withholding of information in such a way that Garcie will either grotesquely misunderstand or will finally apply the key that she has given him (the assurance of her love) to see that the surface of what is happening is contrary to its significance. Elvire’s

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friend Ignès has fled to Astorgue in male disguise to escape from the usurper who wishes to marry her. Garcie lets loose a tirade of insulting accusations against Elvire (36 verses), no doubt giving the theatre spectators many laughs as they savour the dramatic irony of knowing what a fool he is making of himself. But rather than give him a short and literal declaration (e.g., ‘C’est Ignès.’ ), Elvire gives him a lesson on the way a lover should behave: Loin d’agir en Amant, qui plus que la mort même, Appréhende toujours d’offenser ce qu’il aime, Qui se plaint doucement, et cherche avec respect, À pouvoir s’éclaircir de ce qu’il croit suspect, À toute extrémité dans ses doutes il [Garcie] passe, Et ce n’est que fureur, qu’injure, et que menace […] Far from acting like a lover who would rather die than offend her whom he loves, who gently complains and seeks respectfully to have explained what he thinks suspicious, he proceeds to extremities as soon as he doubts, and is full of rage, insults, and threats. (4.8.1335–1341)

She tells him that he will simply have to give up all his suspicion, take her at her word that she is perfectly faithful to him, and submit completely. But if he does not, and if he continues to demand proof, the price of that proof is that she will forever renounce any thought of marrying him and that she would choose ‘plutôt d’être à la mort’ (‘rather to die’; 4.8.1387) than to be his wife. Garcie, always jealous and specifically always unwilling to understand what is implicit in any utterance, demands to see with his own eyes the ‘traitor’ who is visiting Elvire. Garcie, recognizing Ignès cries ‘Ô Ciel!’ and speaks of the profound ‘horror’ that he has of his earlier doubts. The repeated experience of learning that he was wrong and blind to Elvire’s obvious and passionate love for him never cures Garcie of his jealousy. Laboratory mice seem to learn from repeated experience faster and better than does Garcie. At the end of the final act, when Garcie’s rival Sylve turns out to be Elvire’s brother, and hence king of Léon, and when he (as king) allows Elvire to marry Garcie, she expresses her intention to do so, even though he is not cured. Instead, she expresses pity for him and essentially marries an invalid: ‘votre maladie est digne de pitié’ (‘your sickness should be pitied’; 5.6.1867). Not only did Elvire’s repeated attempts to bring Garcie to his senses fail, Elvire herself exemplifies the deep irrationality of love. Don Garcie de Navarre may seem

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to have a conventional happy ending—the two lovers are about to marry—it is hard to imagine any ‘happy ever after’ prospects for this couple. Le Misanthrope, on the other hand, seems to end without the conventional resolution through marriage, but at least Célimène is spared the prospect of a life with the abusive Alceste. Love in Molière’s comedies is almost always irrational, and at least Elvire and Garcie have in common that they are crazy … about one another.

PART III

FR EED OM TO M A R R Y We have now looked in detail at four plays, going from the extreme worstcase situation for a girl who is a prisoner, in L’École des maris and L’École des femmes, without any say about the choice of her husband, at one extreme, to two plays in which the woman protagonist was free to choose and to reject suitors.¹ Now we come to several comedies that are in-between these poles, where young women or girls attempt to assert their preference of husband, or, when they can’t marry the man of their choice, they find an accommodation, circumventing the institution of marriage—in this case ‘freedom to love’ is admittedly a more appropriate descriptive term, but the situation results from the denial of free choice of partner. In each of these cases, much more than in L’École des maris and L’École des femmes, where the female protagonists escape the clutches of a guardian to marry a man about whom they know almost nothing, women give an idea of the kind of man they are looking for, an ideal, even if it is only one based on fictions.

¹ It is true that Elvire, in Don Garcie de Navarre, technically must have the approval of the king, her brother, to marry Don Garcie, but neither she nor anyone in the play casts any doubt on her freedom to decide what she will do.

5 Les Femmes savantes Role Reversal and Tyranny

Les Femmes savantes (1672) is one of Molière’s best-known works and it is the comedy, along with Les Précieuses ridicules (1659), that can easily be considered, at first glance, as conveying anti-woman stereotypes.¹ In terms of its plot, it fits the basic model of a young woman or girl being forced by a parent or guardian into a marriage that she most vehemently does not want. Molière seems to have proposed to us a thought experiment to explore the question: does the gender of the authority figure (if the latter is a woman) mitigate the injustice of a forced marriage? This question comes into focus through the convergence of many other situational variables that appear in other plays by Molière. If we looked at Les Femmes savantes in isolation, we would probably focus on the adjective in the title, savantes. And thus it would be tempting to ignore what else is happening to make the play an amusing criticism of social practices. However, if we place this play within the Molière canon, we will see that the desire for distinction on the basis of knowledge is just a variation on a theme. Four recurrent motifs converge in Les Femmes savantes: striving for a status that is conventionally viewed as incompatible with the social standing of the eponymous character (as in George Dandin, Le Tartuffe, and Le Bourgeois gentilhomme); performances of literary criticism (as in Les Précieuses ridicules, L’Impromptu de Versailles, and Le Misanthrope); ludicrous displays of specialized knowledge (here philosophy and elsewhere medical, as in Le Malade imaginaire); the effort of parents or guardians to force children to marry against their will (as in L’École des maris and L’École des femmes). It is understandable that satirical representation of a woman’s striving for knowledge and in particular for reputation on the basis of knowledge—the motif that most distinguishes this play from others by Molière—should be the customary focus of critical attention. The editors of the Pléiade edition view the satire of pedantry as the core of Les Femmes savantes and note that ‘The figure of the

¹ Marcel Gutwirth, ‘Molière and the Woman Question: Les précieuses ridicules, L’École des femmes, Les femmes savantes’, Theatre Journal 34, no. 3 (1982): 345–359.

Women and Irony in Molière’s Comedies of Marriage. John D. Lyons, Oxford University Press. © John D. Lyons (2023). DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198887379.003.0006

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woman who indulges in science beyond what is considered proper represents an extreme and especially spectacular case of this flaw that was so shameful in polite society.’² Such a focus, however, may distract us from the central plot element that it shares with so many other works by this author: the plot of resistance to forced marriage and the idea of education (which is often associated with repression).

The Tyrant Mother In this story, Philaminte and her husband Chrysale have two daughters, Armande and Henriette. The latter is in love with Clitandre, and they wish to marry. Clitandre had previously courted Armande, but she, inspired by her mother’s teaching that disparages bodily pleasures, refused Clitandre, though she still feels possessive of him and seeks to discourage Armande’s relationship. Philaminte orders Henriette to marry Trissotin, a wit (bel esprit) and poet whom the mother holds in high esteem. Complicating Henriette’s and Clitandre’s situation is Chrysale’s sister Bélise, who is convinced, without evidence of any kind, that all the men around her, including Clitandre, are desperately in love with her. The three ‘learned women’ of the play are Philaminte, Bélise, and Armande. In his depiction of them, Molière weaves together various reductive and parodic representations of the intellectually curious and literate women of the early to mid-seventeenth century. The humour of the play is clearly meant to arise from the characters rather than from the situation. With the exception of Henriette and Clitandre, and Ariste (who appears in the role of an advice-giver), all the major figures in the play are in one or more ways quite ridiculous. Molière does not attempt to represent any of the many learned women of his day, no doubt because there would be nothing especially amusing about such achievements as Marie Meurdrac’s book La Chymie charitable et facile, en faveur des dames (Charitable and easy chemistry, for the benefit of women).³ Nor does he attribute to his women characters any of the gifts of the very talented Marguerite Hessein de La Sablière, whose salon Molière himself frequented, and who was in fact a multilingual student of physics and astronomy as well as the author of a book of Christian maxims. Nor does he engage directly with

² Molière, Œuvres complètes, ed. Georges Forestier (Paris: Gallimard, 2010), 2, 1515. ³ Marie Meurdrac, La chymie charitable et facile en faveur des dames (Paris: Se vend rue des Billettes, & rue du Plastre proche la rue S. Avoye, 1666).

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the writings of such major novelists as Madeleine de Scudéry and MarieMadeleine de Lafayette. Instead, he achieves his humour in two ways. First, by exploiting male phobic fantasies about powerful women so widespread among his contemporaries and visible in the male characters of his own plays, particularly L’École des maris, L’École des femmes, and George Dandin. Second, by assigning to women characters some of the personality traits that provoke laughter when they appear in a male character such as Arnolphe, Orgon, or Monsieur Jourdain. The play is built on three interlocking sets of personal rivalries. Trissotin and Vadius challenge each other for the patronage of Philaminte. Armande challenges Henriette for the affections of Clitandre. And, most of all, Philaminte seeks to assert her dominance in the family over her husband Chrysale. There are other less significant or less immediately obvious rivalries as well. For example, less significant, almost pro forma, is the contest between Trissotin and Clitandre for Henriette’s hand, but this very traditional male-against-male rivalry is here an empty one, since Trissotin has absolutely no power of his own; he is merely a token for the exercise of Philaminte’s maternal power. Less obvious but perhaps much more decisive at the time of the comedy’s first performances is the combat for status between Parisian scholars and intellectuals, on one hand, and the royal court. These power struggles are most fully expressed in the fourth act, where the social graces and honnêteté (civility) are valued over bookish pretentiousness. The play begins with the rivalry between the sisters, as Armande asserts her residual rights to Clitandre’s affection. He had courted her for two years, but when Armande refused to marry him, he turned to Henriette, with whom he has a successful and uncomplicated relationship. Armande scolds Henriette for wishing to surrender the title of unmarried woman, that is, of fille, for the vulgar and even nauseating status of married woman. Armande frames her objection to marriage in terms of taste and status. The physical aspects of male-female relationships—sex, pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood— along with household management appear to Armande low and disgusting: ‘À de plus hauts objets élevez vos désirs, / Songez à prendre un goût des plus nobles plaisirs, / Et traitant de mépris les sens et la matière, / À l’Esprit comme nous donnez-vous tout entière’ (‘A spire to nobler objects, seek to attain / To keener joys upon a higher plane, / And, scorning gross material things as naught, / Devote yourself, as we have done, to thought’; 1.1.33–36). Henriette is perfectly happy to enjoy the earthly (and earthy) pleasures of marriage, the ‘terrestres appas’ (‘pleasure of the earth’; 1.1.66). Behind the doctrinal differences, however, appears a more easily understood power struggle between

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the sisters. Armande considers herself the legitimate possessor of Clitandre: ‘c’est un dessein qui serait malhonnête, / Que de vouloir d’un autre enlever la conquête’ (‘it would be an improper design, / To wish to steal a conquest of mine’; 1.1.91–92). In this exchange we discover the two levels on which this comedy will continue to play, the conceptual level (which throughout is presented in an exaggerated, caricatural form) and the emotional level, in which desire, resentment, rivalry, imitation, and struggle for dominance play out. The former serves as the outward wrapping or proxy for the latter, and it is this wrapping, this display, that gives the play its distinction, since the emotional turmoil of the plot—the conflicts that arise on the way to a marriage—is constant from one of Molière’s plays to the next. The concepts with which Armande presents her difference from Henriette are caricatures and thus not a document of life in seventeenth-century France. To reach an audience and to amuse, caricatures, however, must have a recognizable connection with the world as the audience perceives it, even though the audience’s pre-existing perception is itself a distortion. An inventory of Armande’s claims would include: rejection of the institution of marriage, and with it the male role of husband (mari) also called ‘un Idole d’Époux’ (‘an idol of a husband’) with the male laws which make a woman a slave (1.1.43); rejection of sexual reproduction and of childcare, the ‘marmots d’Enfants’ (brats); concomitant rejection of sense-based desires, the ‘partie animale / Dont l’appétit grossier aux Bêtes nous ravale’ (‘animal part / Whose gross appetites makes us like beasts’; 1.1.48–49) along with ‘les sens et la matière’ (‘the senses and matter’; 1.1.35); dedication to Mind (Esprit), study, and reason; acceptance of male adulation provided that this does not take physical or traditional legal form: ‘l’on peut pour Époux refuser un mérite / Que pour adorateur on veut bien à sa suite’ (‘We may refuse a man, yet be desirous / That still he pay us homage, and admire us’; 1.1. 103–104). Armande’s doctrine is a confection of ideas appearing in numerous writings of the period. We recognize allusions to some of the dangerous aspects of motherhood, though the most horrible, such as death in or shortly after childbirth and other consequences of pregnancy, are not explicitly mentioned, no doubt because they were just too grim to fit the tone of this comedy. And yet Molière’s contemporaries, especially women viewing the play, would certainly have been aware of the primary role assigned to a married woman. ‘In the early-modern period’, writes Holly Tucker, ‘long before the advent of family planning and reliable birth control, a woman’s identity centered on her ability to marry and to procreate. The fruitfulness of the conjugal union was put to the test almost immediately. After twelve months of marriage, a healthy woman

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would be expected to bear her first child and again every two years or so until she was no longer able to conceive.’⁴ In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, France was in the forefront of innovative publications about women’s health and particularly about pregnancy and childbirth. The editor of a selection of such writings includes particularly treatises by authors ‘motivated to save women from some of the worst horrors of pregnancy and childbirth’.⁵ And despite the comic aspect of Armande’s rejection of marriage—and specifically rejection of Henriette’s marriage—she does serve as a conduit for the serious aspirations of women to acquire learning and to have a place in intellectual life, which we can glimpse within her hyperbolic tirade: Que vous jouez au Monde un petit Personnage, De vous claquemurer aux choses du ménage, Et de n’entrevoir point de plaisirs plus touchants, Qu’un Idole d’Époux, et des marmots d’Enfants! […] Loin d’être aux lois d’un Homme en Esclave asservie; Mariez-vous, ma sœur, à la Philosophie, Qui nous monte au-dessus de tout le Genre Humain, Et donne à la Raison l’empire souverain… How can you choose to play a petty role, Dull and domestic, and content your soul With joys no loftier than keeping house And raising brats, and pampering a spouse. […] Why marry, and be the slave of him you wed? Be married to philosophy instead, Which lifts us up above mankind, and gives All power to reason’s pure imperatives… (1.1.27–30 and 43–46)

In a novel we might learn more about the backstory of Armande’s decision to reject Clitandre’s proposal of marriage. Presumably he did not initially perceive her assertive and even militant views about that institution and that type ⁴ Holly Tucker, Pregnant Fictions, Childbirth and the Fairy Tale in Early-Modern France (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2003), 1. ⁵ Valerie Worth-Stylianou, ed., Pregnancy and Birth in Early Modern France: Treatises by Caring Physicians and Surgeons (1581–1625) (Toronto: Iter Inc: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2014), xvi.

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of relationship. Did she previously hold such views? Did something change? Clearly she is strongly influenced by her mother, though not precisely by her mother’s example. As Henriette points out, their mother did something entirely different from what Armande proposes to do—though, on that score, we do not know whether the very assertive Philaminte actually chose to marry or submitted to parental command. Exactly what the spectator is supposed to understand about Armande’s motivations is a matter of speculation that must concern any actor, director, or even reader. But what is explicit in the text is her dualistic doctrine that places marriage on the side of sensation, matter, vulgarity, and refusal of marriage on the side of mind (esprit), reason, philosophy, and superiority (philosophy ‘nous monte au-dessus de tout le Genre Humain’ 1.1.45). This set of rigidly doctrinaire statements puts Armande in rather surprising company within Molière’s repertory of characters. The claim of the power to rise above the human condition smacks rather of the excessive self-confidence and her elevation of a theory-based approach to action puts her in the company of the male guardians trying to shape their wards into ‘ideal’ wives in the École des maris and École des femmes and in that of the Alceste of Le Misanthrope. A telling remark by Henriette points simultaneously towards Armande’s anti-empirical stance and towards the difference between the daughter and the mother she claims as her model: Ainsi dans nos desseins l’une à l’autre contraire, Nous saurons toutes deux imiter notre mère; Vous, du côté´ de l’ˆame et des nobles désirs, Moi, du côté´ des sens et des grossiers plaisirs; Vous, aux productions d’esprit et de lumière, Moi, dans celles, ma sœur, qui sont de la matière. Thus, though our lives contrast with one another, We each shall emulate our worthy mother— You, in your quest for rational excellence, I, in the less refined delights of sense; You, in conceptions lofty and ethereal, I, in conceptions more material. (1.1.67–72)

It would no doubt be wrong to suppose that the two sisters’ positions are based on calmly thought-out theoretical stances. Armande, having refused Clitandre, wishes to make certain that Henriette does not marry him. Later in the

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play Armande, however, makes no effort to dissuade Henriette from marrying Trissotin, after their mother has announced that the latter is her choice of spouse for the younger sister (3.4.1074). Deep in her resentment of Clitandre’s defection and Henriette’s happiness, the older sister is the person who repeatedly asserts and supports the institutionalized subjection of girls to parental authority in the matter of marriage. She already described the free choice of a husband as a crime, asking Henriette how she dared: De répondre à l’amour que l’on vous fait paraître, Sans le congé de ceux qui vous ont donné l’être? Sachez que le devoir vous soumet à leurs lois, Qu’il ne vous est permis d’aimer que par leur choix, Qu’ils ont sur votre cœur l’autorité suprême, Et qu’il est criminel d’en disposer vous-même. When you propose to wed a man without The leave of those who brought your life about? You owe your parents a complete submission, And may not love except by their permission; Your heart is theirs, and you may not bestow it; To do so would be wicked, and you know it. (1.2.163–168)

And in the third act, Armande once again attacks the idea that a young woman could choose her husband freely, this time singling out the mother as the ultimate decider: ‘Nous devons obéir, ma Sœur, à nos Parents; / Une Mère a sur nous une entière puissance’ (‘we still / Owe strict obedience to our parents’ will; / You’ll wed the man our mother bids you marry…’; 3.5.1096–1097). While this statement is, in legal terms, entirely false (because a mother, unless she was a widow, could not exercise this authority in the seventeenth century), it is the clearest statement of a kind of feminism that would simply replicate the patriarchal system by reversing the gender roles without freeing unmarried girls or young women from marital servitude. Armande is not engaged in a disinterested exchange about whether a daughter should have the right to choose a husband. Instead of representing Henriette’s pro-forma acceptance of her father’s decision in favour of Clitandre as a successful negotiation that in fact, if not in principle, empowers the young woman, Armande puts an entirely different spin on her sister’s position. She claims that Henriette is not so much motivated by love for Clitandre

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but rather by a desire to affront her mother. Pointing out the alacrity with which Henriette agreed to marry the man she loves, Armande says that her sister ‘semblait suivre moins les volontés d’un Père, / Qu’affecter de braver les ordres d’une Mère’ (‘she appeared, indeed, / Moved by defiance towards her mother, rather / Than deference to the wishes of her father’; 4.1.1125–1126). This is, of course, a tendentious representation of Henriette’s own statements in all her previous appearances on stage. The younger sister seems completely uninterested in her parents’ conflicts and sides with her father only insofar as he favours her own purpose to marry Clitandre.

Four Women and Four Ways to Use Language The four major women characters in Les Femmes savantes use language in different ways. Summarily stated, three of them use language in such a way as to prevent other characters from achieving a desired goal (Philaminte, Armande, and Bélise) while Henriette shows little interest in thwarting and instead concentrates on her own oft-repeated wish to marry Clitandre.

Philaminte We can start by looking at Philaminte, the character who holds the most power in this household. The very fact that we do not see her until late in the second act, after we have already met the three other women characters, conforms to a frequent practice in French seventeenth-century theatre to bring the dominant character on stage later than the others. Tartuffe’s appearance in act III of Le Tartuffe is a striking example of this. So that by the time the important character appears, we have seen that person’s impact through what other characters have to say. The spectator already knows that in this family the wife considers herself authorized to make decisions that, in terms of the customs and laws of the time, were expected to be made by the father. Philaminte’s assumption of male prerogatives may have been underscored by the fact that a male actor, André Hubert, dressed as a woman, was cast in this role. Philaminte’s first spoken lines in the play consist of two imperatives and a question that simply underscores her impatience to have her orders followed immediately. Like one of today’s actual tyrants, Philaminte enjoys being able to say to an underling, ‘you’re fired’: ‘Quoi, je vous vois, maraude? / Vite, sortez, friponne; allons, quittez ces lieux, / Et ne vous présentez jamais devant mes yeux’. (‘What! Still

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here, you hussy! / Be off, you trollop; leave my house this minute, / And mind you never again set foot within it!’; 2.6.428–430). Her questions could themselves be construed as a form of imperative, in that they are intended to intensify the force of her commands and to intimidate anyone who shows the slightest resistance or delay, as when she asks her husband, who is trying to find out why the maid should be dismissed, ‘Quoi, vous la soutenez?’ (‘So! You defend the girl!’) and ‘Prenez-vous son parti contre moi?’ (‘Are you taking her side against me?’; 2.6.433 and 434). And Philaminte’s declarative or constative sentences go beyond the imperative in force, in that she states as a future truth, what she has decided, thus progressing beyond the imperative, which implies the need for another person to acquiesce by executing the order: ‘elle sortira, vous dis-je, de céans’ (‘Enough! I bade her leave, and leave she must’; 2.6.438). Philaminte frames her own authority by appropriating, as her own, a set of laws and hierarchies that are even more important because they are unrecognized by others. Their ignorance and resistance increase her pleasure in the exercise of power. She thus adopts a set of criteria that have no obvious connection to the status or task of the person with whom she is dealing as a way of asserting superiority, as in the case of her ignorant, but otherwise excellent, cook Martine, blaming her for her faulty grammar (2.6.460–461, 465, 476) and making it seem that Martine’s tasks, though indispensable for life, are beneath contempt, imposing a rigidly dualistic doctrine of the separation of body and spirit: ‘Le Corps, cette Guenille, est-il d’une importance, / D’un prix à mériter seulement qu’on y pense, / Et ne devons-nous pas laisser cela bien loin?’ (‘This rag, the body—does it matter so? / Should its desires detain us here below? / Should we not soar aloft, and scorn to heed it?’; 2.7.539–541). Such questions as ‘vous la soutenez?’ show that the perception of resistance serves to fuel her appetite for controlling others. This trait of her mother’s is well known to Armande, who knows that Philaminte is driven by an authoritarian-contrarian impulse more than by her independent perception of a specific good. Thus, in act IV, Armande presents Henriette’s wish to marry Clitandre in precisely the most powerful way to inflame Philaminte, by claiming that her sister was motivated not by love for Clitandre but by desire to defy maternal authority (4.1.1125–1126). There is no textual evidence that Henriette puts defying her mother above her wish to marry Clitandre, but Armande knows how Philaminte will react to this alleged defiance of her dominance. The core action of the play, the thing that is to be decided one way or another, could, of course, be described as learning whether Henriette will or will not be able to marry Clitandre. However, this way of stating what is at stake is not

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how Philaminte sees the matter. For Philaminte the issue is whether she can bend her daughter to her will. As the mother puts it, ‘Nous verrons qui sur elle aura plus de pouvoir, / Et si je la saurai réduire à son devoir’ (‘We’ll see by whom her spirit will be swayed; / It doesn’t suit me to be disobeyed’; 4.4.1415– 1416). The play of pronouns in this statement reflects the two enemies whom Philaminte perceives. One is her husband Chrysale (the qui who will have the power to authorize the daughter to do what she wishes) and the other is the la (she), whom Philaminte intends to bend into submission. Philaminte does not mince words. She does not make use of indirect forms of expression that we have seen in many other plays where characters (often women characters) use preterition or irony. Perhaps her only ironic expression takes the imperative form, when Henriette balks at recognizing Trissotin as her future husband and expresses disbelief at this choice, and Philaminte says ‘Oui, vous. Faites la Sotte un peu’ (‘Yes, you. Play the stupid one’; 3.4.1075), by which she conveys the idea that her younger daughter is stupid and in ironically ordering her to continue to be sotte she means the opposite, as today one might say ‘smarten up’. As a powerful person, sure of herself, Philaminte does not need detours. And when she speaks emphatically, it is not ironic but merely a literal statement of her world vision. Clitandre is no admirer of the literary and scientific culture Philaminte professes and is in particular sceptical of her choice of male interlocutors. But when Henriette’s mother says that he ‘fait profession de chérir l’ignorance, / Et de haïr surtout l’Esprit et la Science’ (‘it’s ignorance he prizes; / Learning and wit are things which he despises’; 4.3.1273–1274) she is simply stating exactly how she views Clitandre.

Armande Armande models herself on her mother and seems largely to parrot or echo what Philaminte says. She gives longer, more detailed statements of the dualistic mind/body doctrine that her mother sometimes alludes to. The older sister’s literal-minded statements are useful to set the scene as the play opens. She heaps scorn on Henriette for wishing to marry and to have children and proposes herself as role-model in a kind of trickle-down hierarchy of imitation: ‘Vous avez notre Mère en exemple à vos yeux, / Que du nom de Savante on honore en tous lieux, / Tˆachez ainsi que moi de vous montrer sa Fille, / Aspirez aux Clartés qui sont dans la famille’ (‘You have a mother to whom all pay honour / For erudition; model yourself upon her; / Yes, prove yourself her daughter, as I have done, / Join in the quest for truth that she’s begun’;

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1.1.37–40). When Philaminte expresses aesthetic ecstasy at Trissotin’s poetry or at the Vadius’s knowledge of Greek, Armande replies as if she were a chorus (2.3). This first form of discourse typical of the older sister is paraphrase or even simple repetition, as when she presents Philaminte’s plan for an academy under the watchful eye of her mother, as if she were a pupil reciting the lesson that she had learned. Armande’s second way of using language is simply to lie, to express a falsehood with the apparent intention of being believed, and thus to deceive. This happens repeatedly in act IV. As we already saw, she does this when she tells Philaminte that Henriette manifested more a wish to defy her mother than to marry Clitandre (4.1.1125–1126). But she does it again when she is speaking to her mother in the presence of the man she considers by right her own: Je ne souffrirais pas, si j’étais que de vous, Que jamais d’Henriette il pût être l’Époux. On me ferait grand tort d’avoir quelque pensée, Que là-dessus je parle en Fille intéressée, Et que le lˆache tour que l’on voit qu’il me fait, Jette au fond de mon cœur quelque dépit secret. Mother, if I were you, I shouldn’t let That gentleman espouse our Henriette. Not that I care, of course; I do not speak As someone moved by prejudice or pique, Or by a heart which, having been forsaken, Asks vengeance for the wounds which it has taken. (4.2.1139–1144)

But Armande’s relation to language may not be as simple as this summary description leads us to believe. While she is not ironic in the sense of saying one thing to signify (to be understood as saying) the opposite of the literal sense of her words, there is something deeply troubling about Armande’s selfpresentation. What terms could we use to describe someone who, first, wishes to deceive her interlocutor, and second, wishes to deceive herself ? Molière’s comedies are full of sad and defeated people, persons who inflict harm on themselves. This is what tragic protagonists do—we think of Oedipus, trying to do the right thing and to avoid the doom that the oracle has predicted for him—and yet who precisely causes the unhappiness for himself and his family that he sought to prevent. Molière’s protagonists do not rise to the level

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(or fall to the level) of unintentional damage found in tragedy (evils including incest, killing, and cannibalism) but they are often quite deeply unhappy. For example, Arnolphe in L’École des femmes is surely in his own way lovingly attached to his ward Agnès and devastated by losing her, but he brought it on himself. Armande may be another self-deceiving character, but Molière chose not to make explicit her thoughts, motivations, and actions prior to the start of the play.⁶ We learn that Clitandre courted her and asked her to marry him and that she rejected his proposal of marriage. Why did she do this? Was it the result of a lover’s quarrel, a dépit amoureux of the type that we see between Mariane and Valère in Le Tartuffe (act II, scene 4)? Did she wish to make Clitandre woo her still more earnestly and thus raise the stakes to a point where he gave up, even though she (secretly) wished him to persevere? Or was it a result of her mother’s denigration of marriage? Did Armande—or rather does Armande still at the beginning of the action of the play—believe that there is something degrading about physical lovemaking, childbirth, and raising children? Richard Goodkin gives the most thorough and persuasive argument in favour of this analysis of Armande’s motivation. In his book Birthmarks, he describes Armande as a typical oldest child, noting that there is a kind of ‘psychological primogeniture’ even in societies which do not have an institutional system giving more wealth and status to the first-born child (almost always the first-born male). He writes, ‘Even in present-day Western societies that have no explicit system of primogeniture, eldest siblings tend to be more conservative, more like their parents, and more respectful of authority than their younger brothers and sisters.’⁷ One of the first and most powerfully exemplary cases presented in Birthmarks is that of Philaminte’s elder daughter: ‘It is clear from the very first scene that Armande is her mother’s psychological heir: she has taken her mother’s bait, hook, line, and sinker. Armande has gone as far as to reject marriage to Clitandre, a man who loves her and whom she loves, because she has taken literally her mother’s discourses singing the praises of the spirit while belittling the lowly functions of the body. Armande, obviously still in love with Clitandre two years after having turned down his proposal, cannot reconcile her feelings of sexual attraction for him with her mother’s disembodied spiritual discourse….’⁸ One of the things that Goodkin’s reading implies is that

⁶ Noel Peacock remarks on ‘Molière’s ironic presentation of the role’ of Armande ( Molière, Les Femmes Savantes: Critical Guides to French Texts [London: Grant & Cutler, 1990], 83). ⁷ Richard E. Goodkin, Birth Marks: The Tragedy of Primogeniture in Pierre Corneille, Thomas Corneille, and Jean Racine (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), 35. ⁸ Goodkin, Birth Marks, 38.

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Henriette is the more intelligent of the two sisters. According to the hypothesis of psychological primogeniture, the younger sister feels normally less submissive to parental authority—and here parental authority is clearly located in the mother, who fills the void left by her husband’s indecisiveness and aversion to conflict. But perhaps also, Henriette can see the inconsistency and even the hypocrisy of her mother’s proclamations, since, as Henriette points out to Armande, their mother did, after all, marry and have children (1.1.66–72). In order better to understand Armande, we need to circle back for a moment to Philaminte. Besides the results due to birth order, there may be something more unsettling in this situation. Armande may in fact not believe what she tells her sister and Clitandre. She is certainly under her mother’s influence, whether or not she has come to believe what Philaminte says and what she, Armande, parrots. Philaminte does not herself believe the anti-marriage doctrine as Armande presents it in the first act, since the mother orders Henriette to marry Trissotin (3.4). There are two implicit overlapping motivations for Philaminte’s command that her daughter marry the pretentious poet. The first is that she, the mother, is herself besotted with Trissotin and wishes (more out of the quest for social distinction than from sexual or emotional attraction) to secure the closest possible alliance with him, to make Trissotin a member of her family. There is good reason to see Philaminte as a female variant on the delusional father-figure of Orgon in Le Tartuffe. Orgon wishes to ally himself, as a family member, to Tartuffe. Such motivations for paternally arranged marriages are the most traditional of patriarchal practice. The marriage of children is conventionally an arrangement by which two fathers bind themselves together. The not-implausible supposition that Orgon is in love with Tartuffe (perhaps in a homosexual, but certainly at least in a homosocial sense) is simply Molière’s way of revealing what is—to modern Western readers and spectators—the scandalous reality of such arranged marriages: the fathers are ‘marrying’ one another—that is, they are cementing their relationship (often a business arrangement) using their offspring as tokens. Philaminte’s plan is analogous. She herself cannot marry Trissotin, but she can effect the same result as the one Orgon seeks by using her daughter as a proxy. Strengthening the argument for seeing Philaminte as Molière’s way of providing a female variant of the tyrannical parent is Philaminte’s declaration that she will rush the wedding to spite everyone: Voilà sur cet Hymen que je me suis promis Un mérite attaqué de beaucoup d’ennemis; Et ce déchaînement aujourd’hui me convie,

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This resolve to ‘confond[re] l’envie’ (to spite her opponents) resembles Orgon’s defiance of his family when he marries Tartuffe (to Mariane) and gives him all the property belonging to the Orgon family, and further declares that Tartuffe will continue to have intimate meetings with Orgon’s wife: ‘Faire enrager le monde, est ma plus grande joie’ (‘Infuriating other people is my greatest joy’ (Le Tartuffe, 3.7.1173). While an alliance with Trissotin is one of Philaminte’s goals, another seems very clearly to be the absolute, that is, arbitrary, exercise of power. Much of the mother’s pleasure comes from forcing Henriette to accept as husband a man towards whom her daughter feels no inclination, while at the same time preventing the marriage the daughter ardently desires, thus demonstrating her total maternal control. If that is true, then what does that imply about the backstory of Armande’s renunciation of a marriage to the man she loved and still loves? If the alliance with Trissotin were Philaminte’s only goal, then why not

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tell Armande to marry him? After all, Armande explicitly accepts her mother’s cultural values and choice of male literary idols and could secure the desired alliance. Why insist on making Henriette miserable, other than to prove that Philaminte can utterly destroy both daughters’ emotional aspirations? If this description of Armande’s situation is a plausible one (and with fictional characters in drama we have no direct access, as in the novel, to their interiority), then we may be closer to understanding that Armande is simply never telling the truth at all. Thinking that Henriette will be forced to marry Trissotin and thus that Clitandre will be again available, Armande says with (presumably feigned) reluctance: Hé bien, Monsieur, hé bien, puisque sans m’écouter Vos sentiments brutaux veulent se contenter; Puisque pour vous réduire à des ardeurs fidèles, Il faut des nœuds de chair, des chaînes corporelles; Si ma Mère le veut, je résous mon esprit À consentir pour vous à ce dont il s’agit. Ah well, Sir: since you thrust my views aside, Since your brute instincts must be satisfied, And since your feelings, to be faithful, must Be bound by ties of flesh and chains of lust, I’ll force myself, if Mother will consent, To grant the thing on which you’re so intent. (4.2.1235–1240)

Not ironic, perhaps, in that Armande may not wish to make Clitandre understand the opposite of what she says, but here Armande’s performance of reluctance quivers. We glimpse the real reason that the older daughter has been spouting her mind/body doctrine—not out of deep personal commitment to philosophical and literary learning but simply because of the calculation that she should place herself on the side of the more powerful pole in her parents’ marriage, on the side, that is, of her authoritarian mother. Since the mother has replaced the father as the one who will choose her spouse, Armande adopts the usual rhetoric of the submissive daughter, modestly concealing her real desire for Clitandre as dutiful obedience. For a moment, Armande feels that she is on the verge of obtaining what she really desires.

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Bélise Bélise, Henriette’s aunt on her father’s side, is the woman character whose use of language is the most complex and amusing. Bélise serves in the plot as an obstacle to Henriette’s marriage to Clitandre (as a kind of farcical echo of the more serious threat that is Philaminte), but she also offers an interesting, perhaps unique, example of a woman’s quest to enjoy her emotional freedom by perpetual deferral of marriage or any other commitment to a man with whom she might form a couple. Bélise is an older, unmarried woman. She is, after all, the sister of Henriette’s and Armande’s father. Although the range of ages among siblings can be quite substantial, and it is not impossible for Bélise to belong to the same generation as her nieces, she is treated with the deference owed to a woman closer in age to Philaminte. Bélise first appears in a conversation with Clitandre, who seeks to win her aid to get Henriette’s mother to agree to his proposal to marry Henriette. What happens is quite ironic, in a situational sense, because Bélise ironizes Clitandre’s words and leaves him struggling to make her understand that he is speaking plainly and literally. Here is the beginning of their exchange: CLITANDRE Souffrez, pour vous parler, Madame, qu’un Amant Prenne l’occasion de cet heureux moment, Et se découvre à vous de la sincère flamme… BÉLISE Ah! Tout beau, gardez-vous de m’ouvrir trop votre aˆme: Si je vous ai su mettre au rang de mes Amants, Contentez-vous des yeux pour vos seuls truchements, Et ne m’expliquez point par un autre langage Des désirs qui chez moi passent pour un outrage; Aimez-moi, soupirez, brûlez pour mes appas, Mais qu’il me soit permis de ne le savoir pas: Je puis fermer les yeux sur vos flammes secrètes, Tant que vous vous tiendrez aux muets Interprètes; Mais si la bouche vient à s’en vouloir mêler, Pour jamais de ma vue il vous faut exiler. CLITANDRE Des projets de mon cœur ne prenez point d’alarme: Henriette, Madame, est l’objet qui me charme, Et je viens ardemment conjurer vos bontés De seconder l‘amour que j‘ai pour ses beautés.

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BÉLISE Ah! Certes le détour est d’esprit, je l’avoue: Ce subtil faux-fuyant mérite qu’on le loue, Et, dans tous les Romans où j’ai jeté les yeux, Je n’ai rien rencontré de plus ingénieux. CLITANDRE Ceci n’est point du tout un trait d’esprit, Madame, Et c’est un pur aveu de ce que j’ai dans l’ˆame. CLITANDRE Madam, permit a lover’s heart to seize This happy opportunity, if you please, To tell you of his passion, and reveal— BÉLISE Hold, Sir! Don’t say too baldly what you feel. If you belong, Sir, to the ranks of those Who love me, let your eyes alone disclose Your sentiments, and do not tell me bluntly Of coarse desires which only could affront me. Adore me if you will, but do not show it In such a way that I’ll be forced to know it; Worship me inwardly, and I shall brook it If, through your silence, I can overlook it; But should you dare to speak of it outright, I’ll banish you forever from my sight. CLITANDRE My passions, Madam, need cause you no alarms; It’s Henriette who’s won me by her charms, And I entreat your generous soul to aid me In my design to wed that charming lady. BÉLISE Ah, what a subtle dodge; you should be proud; You’re very artful, it must be allowed; In all the novels that I’ve read, I’ve never Encountered any subterfuge so clever. CLITANDRE Madam, I meant no witty indirection; I’ve spoken truly of my heart’s affection. (1.4.273–4.296)

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Bélise is comical because of an idée fixe, a relatively harmless paranoid delusion of a sort that fascinated early modernity. Bélise’s reference to novels or romances (Romans) is specifically connected to the subtle inventiveness of amorous language that was so much a topic of the writings of Madeleine de Scudéry, but the literary genre of romance was also associated with various forms of systematic delusion, with extravagance. Descartes, among others, explicitly makes this connection, and may even have been thinking of the greatest, most popular representative of systematic delusion in France, Cervantes’s Don Quichotte, available in multiple editions of the translation by César Oudin and François de Rosset and also present in theatrical comedies. There is much more to Bélise than delusion, though that is surely what makes her a fun figure on the stage. Her way of understanding Clitandre is not utterly without some justification in a social context in which a suitor’s ingenious use of a range of indirect symbolic expressions of his love was much appreciated. If words were used, they needed to rise to the level of magic. We recall how Agnès described the effect of her suitor Horace’s words in L’École des femmes: ‘toutes les fois que je l’entends parler, / La douceur me chatouille’ (‘They kind of tickled me inside, and stirred, / Something…’; 2.5.563). More delicate still would be the language of the eyes, which, says Bélise, should be the only messengers or translators of his desire (vos seuls truchements). Two years prior to the first performance of Les Femmes savantes Marie-Madeleine de Lafayette had given the world one of the most extreme examples of the replacement of verbal language with the symbolic and intuitive discourse of glances in her Zayde, histoire espagnole.⁹ In that romance the male and female protagonists have no spoken language in common and simply cannot use words to tell one another what they feel, and so they can only surmise what the other is thinking and trying to express. What makes the exchange between Clitandre and Bélise particularly provocative and amusing within the early modern discussions of the proper way to declare love and to receive such declarations is that the language of the eyes is notoriously uncodified and easy to misinterpret. It would seem obvious, then, that saying things in plain words would reduce the chance for misunderstanding, but here in Les Femmes savantes no amount of speaking can remedy Bélise’s misunderstanding. And that, of course, is precisely the point, because Bélise favours what she considers the delicious ambiguity of all male–female social interaction.

⁹ Marie-Madeleine Lafayette, Zayde, histoire espagnole, in Œuvres complètes, ed. Camille EsmeinSarrazin, Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 2014), 89–278.

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What happens when a person ironizes another person’s utterances? Could we not simply say that Bélise is mistaken, that she misunderstands Clitandre? More is going on here than simple misunderstanding because it is a systematic mode of interpretation that would be perfectly accurate if Clitandre were being ironic. We can play the game of trying to decode from Bélise’s standpoint what Henriette’s suitor says. Not wishing to be crudely direct and knowing Bélise’s enthusiasm for novels, Clitandre might choose this playful way of making his attraction to her known without putting her in the uncomfortable position of needing to accept him as ‘lover’, which would already constitute a favour that she hesitates to bestow. So, he might use Henriette as a covername for this courtship. Corneille’s Le Menteur contains the suggestion of precisely such a rhetorical procedure, when the protagonist Dorante explains to his confidant-valet that names that were originally simply part of one of his many lies could subsequently become a source of intimate code once he has secured the complicity of the woman he is courting.¹⁰ We might think of some of the elaborate coded expressions of affection in Scudéry’s novels.¹¹ We watch and laugh as Clitandre is dispossessed not only of control over the received meaning of what he says but even of the possibility of making any progress towards his intended goal of enlisting Bélise’s help in his courtship of Henriette. There are other scenes in Molière’s plays in which a character obtains complete control of the discursive exchange through irony, but usually it is simple verbal irony rather than ironization of the interlocutor’s discourse.¹² The most immediately obvious thing about Bélise’s ironization of Clitandre’s words is that she makes it seem that he is saying something that he does not intend to say and that we, the spectators, know to be false. But Bélise is also making a declaration of her own. She expresses her pleasure at being courted. She explicitly recognizes the social convention that women should express displeasure at male advances when she says that if he dares to put his love into words she will be compelled to reject him while she encourages his pursuit as long as he follows the rules of coded expression, some of which may be ironic. In other words, she herself makes an ironic use of the social code: rejection signifies encouragement.

¹⁰ Pierre Corneille, Le Menteur, act I, scene 6. ¹¹ For example, the elaborate flirtation and banter of Artaxandre in Madeleine de Scudéry, Clélie, histoire romaine, ed. Chantal Morlet-Chantalat (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2001), Part I, book 3 (volume I, 437–497 of Morlet-Chantalat edition). ¹² For example, Don Juan’s treatment of his creditor Monsieur Dimanche in Le Festin de Pierre (act IV, scene 3).

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It is easy to classify Bélise, as her brothers do, simply as folle. We can easily suppose that she has had few or no suitors in her life and assuages her disappointment with a vivid fantasy life fed by reading romances.¹³ But another way to consider her is more positive. In a society in which women are expected to project indifference or even hostility towards male desire, Bélise overtly declares her enjoyment of being courted. She boasts to her brother Ariste that that Clitandre, along with Dorante, Damis, Cléonte, and Lycidas are all madly in love with her (‘de toute leur puissance’ (‘as much as they possibly can be’; 2.3.379) even though none have dared to declare so openly. She enjoys not only the idea of a couple but of being appreciated by multiple suitors. Even if her view of the world appears to the men around her as ‘chimères’ and ‘visions’, Bélise breaks with the model of the submissive, indifferent woman to reveal a woman who revels in a positive view of male–female courtship.

Henriette Henriette seems to make the simplest, most direct and literal use of language in Les Femmes savantes. This simplicity corresponds to Molière’s apparent design to distinguish her from the other, more sophisticated women in the play, while maintaining her in the social and economic condition that distinguishes her from the working-class and ungrammatical cook Martine. Indeed, Henriette’s style is quite elevated and metaphorical and could be compared to speeches made in Corneille’s tragedies. Le Ciel, dont nous voyons que l’ordre est tout-puissant, Pour différents emplois nous fabrique en naissant; Et tout Esprit n‘est pas composé d’une étoffe Qui se trouve taillée à faire un Philosophe. Si le vôtre est né propre aux élévations Où montent des Savants les spéculations, Le mien est fait, ma sœur, pour aller terre à terre, Et dans les petits soins son faible se resserre. Ne troublons point du Ciel les justes règlements, Et de nos deux instincts suivons les mouvements; Habitez par l’essor d’un grand et beau génie, Les hautes régions de la Philosophie, ¹³ John Farrell, Paranoia and Modernity: Cervantes to Rousseau (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2006).

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Tandis que mon esprit se tenant ici-bas, Goûtera de l’Hymen les terrestres appas. But Heaven, in its wise omnipotence, Endows us all with differing gifts and bents, And all souls are not fashioned, I’m afraid, Of the stuff of which philosophers are made. If yours was born for soaring to the heights Of learning, and for speculative flights, My own weak spirit, Sister, has from birth Clung to the homelier pleasures of the earth. Let’s not oppose what Heaven has decreed, But simply follow where our instincts lead. You, through the towering genius you possess, Shall dwell in philosophic loftiness, While my prosaic nature, here below, Shall taste such joys as marriage can bestow. (1.1.53–66)

It seems, in fact, as if Henriette’s way of speaking is crafted quite deliberately to serve as a model of unaffected elegance. While she may not attract as much attention as the more colourful and exaggerated discourses of the other women of her family, how the younger sister speaks is as important as what she says. She is consistently ‘on message’ and amazingly self-possessed, even in the midst of arguments in which her interlocutor becomes sarcastic and hostile. Henriette is stylistically as well as emotionally well matched with her lover Clitandre, whose way of speaking resembles hers. In one of his major doctrinal statements, Clitandre says to Trissotin: Permettez-moi, Monsieur Trissotin, de vous dire, Avec tout le respect que votre nom m’inspire, Que vous feriez fort bien, vos Confrères, et vous, De parler de la Cour d’un ton un peu plus doux; Qu’à le bien prendre au fond, elle n’est pas si bête Que vous autres Messieurs vous vous mettez en tête; Qu’elle a du sens commun pour se connaître à tout; Que chez elle on se peut former quelque bon goût; Et que l’Esprit du Monde y vaut, sans flatterie, Tout le savoir obscur de la Pédanterie.

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WOMEN AND IRONY IN MOLIÈRE’S COMEDIES OF MARRIAGE Permit me, Mister Trissotin, with due Respect for your great name, to say that you And all your kind would do well to discuss The court in tones less harsh and querulous; That the court is not so short of wit and brain As you and all your scribbling friends maintain; That all things, there, are viewed with common sense, That good taste, too, is much in evidence, And that its knowledge of the world surpasses The fusty learning of pedantic asses. (4.3.1337–1346)

The ideal of clarity, avoidance of obscure references, and, in two words often used in Molière’s day, ‘naturalness’ (le naturel) and honnêteté (modesty and agreeableness) appear in both Henriette’s and Clitandre’s language. This is surely not a mere accident, for language is a central focus throughout Molière’s comedies. Ridiculous characters speak in a way that is presented as bizarre, pedantic, riddled with the jargon of barristers and physicians, rural, lowerclass, and generally deviating from the ideal presented in Clitandre’s words above. Specifically, within Les Femmes savantes we see that even a proposition that—taken out of context or rather enunciated in a different way—would pass as reasonable, can be tainted by the habitus of the speaker. Thus, Philaminte’s attack on Henriette’s choice of husband, while ostensibly a defence of women, becomes not only oppressive but obviously ridiculous in its very form. But this is Molière’s way of making Henriette’s statements stand out for their elegance and clarity as well as for their content. Henriette’s refusal of Trissotin’s attempt to become her husband is simultaneously a model of politeness and a dazzlingly clear manifesto of a woman’s right, even need, to free choice. And it embodies as well the doctrine found in most of Molière’s comedies, that love cannot be explained and cannot be earned but is an essential and ineluctable preference of the lover: … à ses premiers vœux mon aˆme est attachée, Et ne peut de vos soins, Monsieur, être touchée. Avec vous librement j’ose ici m’expliquer, Et mon aveu n’a rien qui vous doive choquer. Cette amoureuse ardeur qui dans les cœurs s’excite, N’est point, comme l’on sait, un effet du mérite;

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Le caprice y prend part, et quand quelqu’un nous plaît, Souvent nous avons peine à dire pourquoi c’est. … first love, Sir, is too strong a feeling, All your persuasions could not prove appealing. Let me, upon this point, be blunt and plain, Since nothing I shall say could cause you pain. The fires of love, which set our hearts aglow, Aren’t kindled by men’s merits, as you know. They’re most capricious; when someone takes our eye, We’re often quite unable to say why. (5.1.1493–1500)

Philaminte thinks highly of philosophy, but isn’t Henriette the single member of the family able to formulate a philosophy of love?

6 George Dandin The Marriage Market

George Dandin is a comedy about buyer’s remorse. The eponymous character bought himself a wife without thinking through the consequences. The wife in question was in essence merely a token, a membership card so to speak, in the aristocracy to which he aspires. These terms—token, membership card, buyer’s remorse—are anachronisms, but they (or rather our reaction to them as anachronisms) do have the advantage of drawing our attention to the role of language in a situation in which the central male character, rather than his female counterpart, is prevented from claiming what he considers his rights. In fact, the very first sentence of this prose drama designates the story as a ‘leçon parlante’ (a speaking—or revealing—lesson), and it soon turns out that it is also a lesson in how to speak.

Buying a Wife Let us recall the situation in brief. A wealthy commoner, George Dandin, who identifies himself as a paysan (peasant), feeling that his money should entitle him to the finer things in life, arranges to marry the daughter of the aristocratic Sotenville family in a deal that provides the impoverished nobles money and that will, the husband thinks, elevate himself in a society in which ‘condition’ (status as commoner or noble) is more important than simple wealth. In his bitter opening soliloquy, Dandin claims that his in-laws did not marry him but rather his money: Ah! qu’une femme Demoiselle est une étrange affaire, et que mon mariage est une leçon bien parlante à tous les Paysans qui veulent s’élever au-dessus de leur condition, et s’allier comme j’ai fait à la maison d’un Gentilhomme. La noblesse de soi est bonne: c’est une chose considérable assurément, mais elle est accompagnée de tant de mauvaises circonstances, qu’il est très bon de ne s’y point frotter. Je suis devenu là-dessus savant à mes dépens, et connais

Women and Irony in Molière’s Comedies of Marriage. John D. Lyons, Oxford University Press. © John D. Lyons (2023). DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198887379.003.0007

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le Style des Nobles lorsqu’ils nous font nous autres entrer dans leur famille. L’alliance qu’ils font est petite avec nos personnes. C’est notre bien seul qu’ils épousent, et j’aurais bien mieux fait, tout riche que je suis, de m’allier en bonne et franche paysannerie, que de prendre une femme qui se tient au-dessus de moi, s’offense de porter mon nom, et pense qu’avec tout mon bien je n’ai pas assez acheté la qualité de son mari. George Dandin, George Dandin, vous avez fait une sottise la plus grande du monde. Ma maison m’est effroyable maintenant, et je n’y rentre point sans y trouver quelque chagrin. Ah! what a strange thing is a lady wife, and what an eloquent lesson is my marriage for any peasants who wish to lift themselves above their condition and to make an alliance with an aristocratic house. Nobility is a good thing in itself; it’s something worthy of consideration, but it comes with such bad circumstances, that it is better not to get mixed up with it. I’ve paid the price of learning about all that, and I know how nobles deal with us when they let us into their family. They don’t bind themselves to us as persons. They only marry our wealth, and I would have done better, as rich as I am, to marry into good solid peasantry, instead of taking a wife who stands above me, is offended to bear my name, and thinks that with all my money I did not pay enough to buy the distinction of being her husband. George Dandin, George Dandin, you have done the stupidest thing in the world. My home is frightful to me now, and I never return there without finding some sorrow. (1.2.p.975)

He soon finds that his wife Angélique is happy to be courted by a young nobleman, that his father- and mother-in-law will intervene in no way to assure the reality of the conjugal relationship that they brought about. Indeed, they will not even admit that anything is amiss other than George Dandin’s preposterous claim to any marital privileges. The text gives no indication that Dandin has a sexual relationship with his wife, but we learn early in the first act that his father- and mother-in-law do not wish him even to refer to their daughter as his wife. From the point of view of all the persons of the play, the husband is in the wrong and the potentially adulterous couple of wife and suitor are in the right. The only point on which Dandin and everyone else agrees is that marriage is a strictly commercial transaction in which the ancient principle of caveat emptor applies. George Dandin deals directly with two great social awakenings of the seventeenth century: first, the demands of a rising non-aristocratic (roturier) group that is not yet called a ‘class’, and second, the demands of women to be allowed to be autonomous, that is, to be emancipated from the control of their family.

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The play’s title seems to place the wealthy commoner George at the centre of the play, and it is tempting to say that the events are seen from his point of view. But while a term like ‘point of view’ may have some significance for the reading of a novel, or short story, or for the viewing of a film, it is much harder to apply to a play, where the audience literally has its own ‘point of view’ onto the incidents on stage. What we can say is that George Dandin is the character whose experience is the most fully represented. He is the first and last to speak. The play opens with the first of Dandin’s monologues and ends with his eighth monologue. He is the least socially and discursively skilled, but there are grounds for seeing him as the aggrieved party, which is his own view of his situation. In a simple sense, Dandin tells the factual truth of what occurs on stage: it is the case that his wife Angélique has given an assignation to her suitor Clitandre. He presents this claim to Angélique’s parents three times, once in each of the three acts, and each time they remain unconvinced and force him to apologize to their daughter. This play was very well received and apparently considered highly amusing and suitable for light-hearted, festive occasions, such as the Divertissement Royal at Versailles in July 1668 (where it was performed as part of a pastoral ballet).¹ It is difficult to believe that the misfortunes of the wealthy commoner Dandin appeared as sad or troubling to the aristocratic audience—who dined, danced, saw fireworks, and laughed in a context described as féerique.² But subsequent readers have gone so far as to find the play dark and with ‘tragic undertones’.³ Philip Wadsworth reminds us, however, that readings and stagings of the play in which pity for Dandin (or indignation on his behalf ) is a significant component of the play’s affect are modern, revisionist takes that depart radically from the seventeenth-century pleasure in seeing the ignorant, uncouth, bumbling commoner repeatedly humiliated: ‘the comedy has an atmosphere of jocularity and it builds up to a climax of nocturnal hide-andseek in the third act. Dandin’s soliloquies, which seem grim or pathetic today, were surely spoken in a laughable manner.’⁴ In order to see Dandin as misused, as a victim of something other than his own ignorance and desire to purchase social consideration by means of his wealth, one needs to ignore the situation of Angélique, his unwilling wife. The most ridiculous characters in the play ¹ For details of the creation and first performance of the play, see the detailed notice by Gabriel Conesa, Claude Bourqui, and Anne Piéjus in Molière, Œuvres complètes, ed. Georges Forestier (Paris: Gallimard, 2010), I, 1560–1571. ² Œuvres complètes, I, 1560. ³ Gaines, 196: ‘George Dandin, the object of farcical ridicule, including a bastonnade, also takes the stage in a number of monologues with tragic undertones, including the final scene, in which he finds that the only solution to his failed marriage is suicide.’ ⁴ Philip A. Wadsworth, Molière and the Italian Theatrical Tradition (Columbia, S. C: French Literature Publications Co., 1977), 115.

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are Dandin and his parents-in-law, Monsieur and Madame Sotenville. They are also the characters who are the most responsible for the whole situation, that is, for the unhappy marriage of Angélique and Dandin. While the commerce of marriage (parental arrangement of marriages to satisfy the material or symbolic—prestige—aims of the parents) was a cultural fact and a literary theme in seventeenth-century France, there are few works that display so boldly and frankly the point of view of the unfortunate women who are compelled to marry against their will. If there is a passage of George Dandin that presents a dark side to this otherwise farcical comedy, it is not to be found in Dandin’s outrage that his money was misspent when he purchased an aristocratic young wife. It is instead the quite sober and objectively true statement that Angélique makes in the middle of the play (2.3). In response to Dandin’s indignant and accusing question to his wife, ‘C’est ainsi que vous satisfaites aux engagements de la foi que vous m’avez donnée publiquement?’ (‘Is this how you comply with the promises that you gave me publicly?’) she replies: Moi? je ne vous l’ai point donnée de bon cœur, et vous me l’avez arrachée. M’avez-vous avant le mariage demandé mon consentement, et si je voulais bien de vous? Vous n’avez consulté pour cela que mon père, et ma mère, ce sont eux proprement qui vous ont épousé, et c’est pourquoi vous ferez bien de vous plaindre toujours à eux des torts que l’on pourra vous faire. Pour moi qui ne vous ai point dit de vous marier avec moi, et que vous avez prise sans consulter mes sentiments, je prétends n’être point obligée à me soumettre en esclave à vos volontés, et je veux jouir, s’il vous plaît, de quelque nombre de beaux jours que m’offre la jeunesse…⁵ Me? I did not give freely give you my word, you ripped it from me. Before the wedding did you ask for my consent, and if I wanted you? You only asked my father and my mother, and they are the ones who actually married you, and that’s why you would do better to complain to them about any wrongs that could be done to you. As for myself, never having asked you to marry me and having been taken by you without regard to my wishes, I assert that I am not obligated to submit like a slave to your whims, and I wish to enjoy, if you please, some of the good days that youth offers me… (2.2.p.993)

Here, in the middle of a comedy, we find a statement that could be the transcription of a case for annulment of marriage (that is, for a declaration that the ⁵ Molière, George Dandin ou le Mari confondu, in Œuvres complètes, ed. Georges Forestier, vol. 1 (Paris: Gallimard, 2010), 993.

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supposed marriage did not, in fact, in the eyes of the Church, have any validity). The longstanding tradition of the Catholic (Western) Church held that the essential condition for marriage was the consent of the partners.⁶ And yet the situation that Angélique describes corresponds very precisely to the historical situation of women in France, where the legal requirements for marriage disenfranchised potential marriage partners in favour of their parents.⁷ We can only speculate—and we should—about Molière’s reasons for placing such a polemical text in the centre of his comedy and for assigning it to a character who is, first, not the eponymous figure; second, a woman rather than a man; third, one who is indeed breaking the explicit laws of matrimony. Clearly Angélique’s conduct, as incipient adulteress, did not trouble the court on the occasion of the first performance in July 1668 at Versailles during the Grand Divertissement royal, nor, apparently, on its subsequent court performances. The 1668 performance was part of exceptionally luxurious, even extravagant, festivities. And, as the contributors to the Pléiade edition note, this ‘comedy was the centrepiece of these marvels’.⁸ And in Félibien’s official account of the Divertissement, George Dandin was ‘made up of such varied and agreeable elements that we can say that hardly ever has the theatre had anything more able to please both the ears and the eyes of the audience’.⁹ It seems that this play, like Molière’s other comedies, presents the case for marriage based on the consent of the parties, and most importantly, on the consent of the woman. For the modern reader accustomed to the idea of social mobility and a form of meritocracy that is most often represented in the form of increased wealth, it is easy to suppose that George is entitled to see himself as wronged. Yet for the same modern readers, who feel that women and men should themselves choose a marriage partner rather than be forced by parents, guardians, ecclesiastical, or political (feudal or monarchical authorities), it is also easy to see that Angélique is an aggrieved party. But it is likely that the thought process that leads us to these positions is different from those of the characters themselves, who live in a society in which hierarchy or condition was

⁶ Commission Théologique Internationale, ‘La Doctrine Catholique sur le sacrement du mariage’, (Vatican: 1977). The decree on marriage was issued in the 24th session of the Council of Trent on 11 November 1563. ⁷ The drive for increasing parental control over the marriages of offspring continued well into the seventeenth century: ‘Beginning in 1557 and culminating in 1639, the sovereign courts and Crown defined more and more restrictions on the validity of marriage in the interest of strengthening parental control over their children’s unions’ (Carolyn Chappell Lougee, ‘The New Princess of Saxony: Paris, Imposture, and Secret Marriage in the Seventeenth Century’, French History 30, no. 3 [1 September 2016]: 304). See also in this volume the introduction, pp. 5–8. ⁸ Molière, Œuvres complètes, ed. Georges Forestier (Paris: Gallimard, 2010), I, 1561. ⁹ Cited in Molière, Œuvres complètes I, 1661.

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quite different from today. There is literally nothing that Dandin could do that would make her accept him as her husband. He is in truth uncouth, lacking in manners, wit, musical or literary awareness or talent. He is also without empathy for Angélique. But even if he were to acquire all those things (and Molière’s Monsieur Jourdain attempts to acquire at least some of them in Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme), he would still, in his wife’s eyes, be entirely ineligible to be her husband except in a purely monetary and external way because his money cannot erase his roture, his innate quality as a commoner. No doubt Angélique finds Clitandre charming because he is young, good-looking, well dressed, well spoken, and so forth, and these are reasons to prefer him to other suitors. But to enter the competition for her affections, Clitandre, or any other man would first need to be born an aristocrat. Only after that initial, necessary requirement had been fulfilled could a man’s personal qualities (appearance, wit, etc.) become relevant for her choice. We could compare it to the effect of citizenship, passport, or visa in today’s world. For someone seeking a job in France it is not enough to be, for instance, a highly qualified engineer or physician. Without the documents—the status—allowing her or him to work in France, those other qualifications would have no effect. Let us return to Dandin’s very first sentence in the play, when he describes his marriage as a leçon parlante for anyone who seeks to rise about his condition.¹⁰ In this context the expression simply means a ‘telling example’ of the folly of trying to change one’s station in life. However, a play on words (on the ‘parlant’ or speaking) becomes clear three scenes later, when Dandin first attempts to enlist the help of the Sotenvilles to urge Angélique to respect her marriage vows. No sooner does Dandin speak his first sentence to his wife’s parents than he receives a lesson in how to speak. It seems that the words he is accustomed to using to designate people and relationships are not acceptable. His reality is not the reality in which Angélique and her family live. When he addresses his mother-in-law in ordinary French as his ‘belle-mère’, she responds by saying, ‘Est-il possible, notre gendre, que vous sachiez si peu votre monde, et qu’il n’y ait pas moyen de vous instruire de la manière qu’il faut entre les personnes de qualité?’ (‘Is it possible, our son-in-law, that you have so few social skills and that there is no way to teach you how to interact with persons of quality?’; 1.4.p.979). What Dandin learns is that he is not allowed to call his mother-in-law, his mother-in-law, and he is not allowed to call his wife, his wife. Such terms can only be used by members of the same condition talking to and about one another. ‘ne vous déferez-vous jamais avec moi’, says his ¹⁰ Molière, George ou le Mari confondu, (1.4), 975.

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mother-in-law, ‘de la familiarité de ce mot de ma belle-mère, et ne sauriez-vous vous accoutumer à me dire Madame’ (‘Will you never rid yourself of the familiarity of that term, my mother-in-law? And will you never get used to calling me Madame?’; 1.4.p.979). From Dandin’s point of view the absurdity peaks at the point when he learns that he must not pretend to be on an equal footing with his wife—indeed, he must not refer to her as his wife: MONSIEUR DE SOTENEVILLE: Tout beau. Apprenez aussi que vous ne devez pas dire ma femme, quand vous parlez de notre fille. GEORGE DANDIN: J’enrage. Comment, ma femme n’est pas ma femme? MADAME DE SOTENVILLE: Oui, notre gendre, elle est votre femme, mais il ne vous est pas permis de l’appeler ainsi, et c’est tout ce que vous pourriez faire, si vous aviez épousé une de vos pareilles.¹¹ MONSIEUR DE SOTENVILLE: Wait a moment. You must learn that you should not say ‘my wife’ when you speak of our daughter. GEORGE DANDIN: I’m beside myself. What? My wife is not my wife? MADAME DE SOTENVILLE: Yes, our son-in-law, she is your wife, but you are not permitted to call her that, and that is what you could do, if you had married one of your ilk. (1.4.p.980) The difference in ‘condition’ or ‘quality’ was so deeply ingrained in the people of Molière’s day that it was instinctive and obvious. It was precisely what Pascal called a ‘second nature’ which is the world as we know it, because, as Pascal points out in the Pensées, mankind cannot access the ‘first nature’. The second nature is created by custom and creates the thought-environment (the ‘ideology’) in which people live. A person’s condition does not refer to any acquired qualities or merit but is linked tenaciously to that person’s birth. The Academy dictionary defines condition thus: ‘The quality that comes from birth and in this sense it is used with the particle of. To be of great condition. of a high condition. of good condition. of middling condition. of fair condition. of low condition. of slight condition. of servile condition. his condition gives him great advantages. ¹¹ Molière, George ou le Mari confondu, (1.4) 980.

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he is too showy, he spends too much. he is too luxurious for his condition. that is above his condition.’ With regard to the obvious impossibility for a woman to love someone below her in quality, there is an excellent contemporary example in Marie-Madeleine de Lafayette’s Histoire de la Princesse de Montpensier (1662), which appeared only six years before the first performance of George Dandin. In Lafayette’s novella, an extremely virtuous, loyal, intelligent, and educated nobleman, the Comte de Chabannes, is the devoted friend of a much younger aristocrat, the Prince de Montpensier. Entrusted by the prince with the education of his young wife, Chabannes soon helps the Princesse de Montpensier to develop her natural intelligence and to become a very accomplished woman: Chabannes, ‘se servant de l’amitié qu’elle lui témoignait pour lui inspirer des sentiments d’une vertu extraordinaire, et dignes de la grandeur de sa naissance, il la rendit en peu de temps une des personnes du monde la plus achevée’ (‘using the friendship that she had for him to inspire in her a feeling for exceptional virtue, worthy of her high birth, in a short time he made her one of the most accomplished persons in the world’).¹² Spending long hours with her every day, Chabannes finally falls in love with his student and after long hesitation reveals that love to her, well aware that she could be furious with him. But what happens is much worse, and it is one of the best examples of the sheer power of ‘quality’: il osa lui dire qu’il l’aimait; s’étant bien préparé à essuyer les orages dont la fierté de cette Princesse le menaçait. Mais il trouva en elle une tranquillité et une froideur pires mille fois que toutes les rigueurs à quoi il s’était attendu. Elle ne prit pas la peine de se mettre en colère. […] Il sentit le mépris des paroles de la Princesse dans toute leur étendue, et le lendemain, la revoyant avec un visage aussi ouvert que de coutume, sans que sa présence la troublˆat ni la fit rougir, son affliction redoubla de la moitié…¹³ he dared to tell her that he loved her, being resolved to endure the storms that the princess’s pride threatened him with. But he found in her a calm and a coldness that were a thousand times worse than all of the rigours that he had expected. She did not even bother to become angry. […] He felt the full extent of her scorn in the princess’s words, and the next day, seeing her with a face as placid as usual, without any sign of turmoil or blush, his sorrow increased by half again… ¹² Marie-Madeleine Lafayette, ‘La Princesse de Montpensier’, in Œuvres complètes, ed. Camille Esmein-Sarrazin, Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 2014), 23. ¹³ Lafayette, ‘La Princesse de Montpensier,’ 23–24.

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In this description of George Dandin, we have noticed several instances of what are often called simply ‘ironic’ situations, that is, a state of affairs in which a person’s actions or intentions result unexpectedly contrary to expectations. This situational irony, as opposed to verbal irony, exists in the play at different levels, which manifest themselves as larger and smaller units of the plot. At the largest level, the defeat of the husband and the victory of the wife is ironic by virtue of the reversal of the habitual dominance of husband over wife. The final defeat of Dandin is the cumulative result of lower-level situational ironies in each of the three acts. The farcical figure of Lubin, the lackey of Clitandre, suitor of Dandin’s wife, appears to mark the early part of each scene as an agent of reversal. In act I, after Dandin’s opening soliloquy, Lubin arrives, not recognizing Dandin as the husband and tells him exactly what the husband should not hear, describing in detail Clitandre’s courtship of Angélique and enjoining Dandin not to reveal any of it to the ‘husband’, concluding ‘Bouche cousue au moins. Gardez bien le secret, afin que le mari ne le sache pas’ (‘Keep your lips sealed. Keep the secret, so that the husband doesn’t know about it’; 1.2.p.978). In the first scene of the second act, Lubin’s role is not to reveal to a husband that his wife is cheating but rather to represent the role of a complacent husband, in other words, the opposite of George Dandin. And in the third scene of the third act Lubin once again tells Dandin exactly what the latter is not supposed to know. The scene takes place at night and Lubin takes Dandin for Angélique’s maid Claudine and says, ‘il [Dandin] ne sait pas que Monsieur le Vicomte et elle sont ensemble pendant qu’il dort. Je voudrais bien savoir quel songe il fait maintenant. Cela est tout à fait risible!’ (‘he does not know that Monsieur le Vicomte and she are together while he is sleeping. I would very much like to know what he is dreaming about now. It’s entirely ridiculous!’; 3.3.p.1003). Although the repeated situational ironies drive the plot, the instances of verbal irony in George Dandin contain the most important statements of the aspiration to freedom of choice for women. In the first act, for example, when Angélique’s parents are attempting to get to the bottom of Dandin’s accusations of infidelity (scene 6), they confront Clitandre, Angélique, and Dandin, and Angélique speaks the truth through a form of verbal irony in which the literal sense of the words and their meaning are identical, and yet she cloaks her utterance with the pretence of speaking ‘ironically’. CLITANDRE: Est-ce donc vous, Madame, qui avez dit à votre mari que je suis amoureux de vous?

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ANGÉLIQUE: Moi, et comment lui aurais-je dit? Est-ce que cela est? Je voudrais bien le voir vraiment que vous fussiez amoureux de moi. Jouez-vous y, je vous en prie, vous trouverez à qui parler. C’est une chose que je vous conseille de faire. Ayez recours pour voir à tous les détours des Amants. Essayez un peu par plaisir à m’envoyer des ambassades, à m’écrire secrètement de petits billets doux, à épier les moments que mon mari n’y sera pas, ou le temps que je sortirai pour me parler de votre amour. Vous n’avez qu’à y venir, je vous promets que vous serez reçu comme il faut. CLITANDRE: Hé là, Madame, tout doucement. Il n’est pas nécessaire de me faire tant de leçons, et de vous tant scandaliser. Qui vous dit que je songe à vous aimer? ANGÉLIQUE: Que sais-je moi ce qu’on me vient conter ici? CLITANDRE: On dira ce que l’on voudra. Mais vous savez si je vous ai parlé d’amour lorsque je vous ai rencontrée. ANGÉLIQUE: Vous n’aviez qu’à le faire, vous auriez été bien venu. CLITANDRE: Je vous assure qu’avec moi vous n’avez rien à craindre. Que je ne suis point homme à donner du chagrin aux Belles, et que je vous respecte trop, et vous et Messieurs vos parents, pour avoir la pensée d’être amoureux de vous.¹⁴ CLITANDRE: Are you the one, Madame, who told your husband that I am in love with you? ANGÉLIQUE: Me? And how would I have told him that? Is that true? I would really like to see you be in love with me. Try to play that role, I pray you, and you will find with whom you are talking. That’s a thing that I advise you to do. Make use of all the expedients of lovers. Try for the fun of it to send me messages and to write me secretly little love letters, to spy out the times when my husband is not around, or the moments when I go outside, to talk to me about your love. You just have to come, I promise you that you will be received as you should be. CLITANDRE: Now there, Madame, calm down. You don’t have to lecture me and to get all shocked. Who said that I have any thought of loving you? ¹⁴ Molière, George Dandin. ou le Mari confondu, (1.6), 984–985.

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ANGÉLIQUE: What do I know about what people tell me? CLITANDRE: People can say what they like. But you know whether I said anything about love when I met you. ANGÉLIQUE: You just could have done it, and you would have been welcome. CLITANDRE: I assure you that you have nothing to fear from me. I am not a man to bother beautiful ladies and I respect you too much and your parents as well to have the slightest idea of being in love with you. (1.6.p.984) Here there is no doubt for the spectator that Angélique is saying to Clitandre exactly what she wishes to say, in full literalness, using the same ploy that Isabelle used in L’École des maris. She tells him to use all the ruses of lovers, to write her love letters in secret, and she assures him in advance that she will receive his advances favourably. Here, of course, is a particular point at which the Sotenville parents will have a completely different understanding from that of Angélique, Clitandre, the theatre audience, and perhaps even Dandin. When Angélique promises ‘vous serez reçu comme il faut’ (‘you will be received as you should be’), the parents are supposed (we realize) to understand that Clitandre will be rebuffed, according to social decorum or bienséances. To call this set of exchanged utterances ‘ironic’ is odd—one might even say ‘ironic’ in itself. If irony is defined as ‘to say one thing for the purpose of causing the listener to understand the opposite’, then it would at first seem entirely incorrect to describe what happens in this scene as irony. In addressing Clitandre Angélique means exactly and literally what she says. But while Angélique is speaking to Clitandre, she is not only speaking for Clitandre. She is performing the role of model daughter for her parents. So, it seems that her parents are meant to understand that she means the opposite of what she says to Clitandre, and presumably she would spit out her words with a correspondingly mocking intonation, sneer, and gestures to indicate a haughty and witty disdain that is above simple remonstrance. Such a performance would be based on the assumption, which runs throughout everything that the Sotenville parents say, that even the slightest failure to observe conjugal obligations is simply unthinkable on the part of a woman descended on the maternal side from the illustrious Prudoterie.¹⁵ Within this horizon of ¹⁵ Molière, George Dandin. ou le Mari confondu, (1.4), 981.

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expectation (or, as we might say today, in the face of such cognitive dissonance) one must understand Angélique’s words as ironic. This adds a new twist to what we are calling ‘irony’ in this case. The Sotenvilles may not be as sot as their name implies. Molière’s text allows the reader or the stage director enough latitude to choose between two possibilities. Perhaps the parents are sufficiently naïve to be duped by what they see as a defiant and ironic rebuff of Clitandre. Another way to put this is that they manifest a case of ‘cognitive dissonance’, which occurs when someone is faced with a phenomenon that does not conform to their firmly established world view. If everyone who hears what Angélique says understands that she means exactly what she says, and if Angélique intends everyone to understand her literally, then can we even speak of irony? But the title of the comedy is, we recall, George Dandin, ou le Mari confondu; perhaps it should be Le critique confondu. One way of dealing with a situation in which the speaker is pretending to be ironic when in fact she expects her interlocutor (Clitandre) to understand that she means exactly what she is saying and when she may also expect the other listeners to understand that same literal meaning, is that we have here another instance of preterition, or, in other words, something that can be prefaced with the implied statement: I am saying that I am not saying what I am saying but I am actually saying it. We could formulate this somewhat differently by describing it as an ironic pseudo-irony. Angélique wraps her message in the guise of irony (intonation, gesture, etc.), but she means to be understood literally. So, the irony consists, as usual, in a reversal that simply happens in two phases: (1) I am pretending to say the opposite of what I mean; (2) but I actually mean what I say. There are other scenes in George Dandin in which the chief verbal ironist of the play, Angélique, makes use of this trope, but in simpler ways. Take, for instance, towards the end of act II, the night scene in which she beats her husband by pretending that it is simply an accident (scene 8). In this variant of the earlier one in which she speaks to Clitandre in the presence of her parents and husband, Dandin’s wife simply confirms for her suitor that she has fully understood his various efforts at courtship, using the coded reversed language that is more typical of irony than the astoundingly literal declaration that she makes earlier. Whereas earlier she says, ‘Je voudrais bien le voir vraiment que vous fussiez amoureux de moi’ (‘I would really like to see you be in love with me’; 1.6.p.984) to mean exactly that, now she claims to have expressed her displeasure at his courtship: ‘j’ai témoigné mon dépit’ (‘I showed my displeasure’; 2.8.p.998). However, in this coded language she seems to go even further by

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suggesting to Clitandre, and to her listening parents, that the Sotenville family is on his side: ‘comme si j’étais femme à violer la foi que j’ai donnée à un mari, et m’éloigner de la vertu que mes parents m’ont enseignée. Si mon père savait cela, il vous apprendrait bien à tenter de ces entreprises’ (‘as if I were a woman to violate the promise that I gave to a husband and to stray from the virtue that my parents taught me. If my father knew that, he would teach you to try such a thing!’; 2.8.p.999). And yet this show of indignation coincides with Angélique’s manifest enjoyment of Clitandre’s courtship. Assuming that what Angélique says is to be understood through the process of reversing sense and meaning, we arrive at the message: my parents will do nothing to try to stop you. However important verbal irony is in this play, it is subordinate in impact to the overall result manifested in the plot. The comedy has a happy ending. George Dandin is, after all, a comedy, and comedies usually have happy endings, but this does not mean that everyone is happy. Tartuffe is not happy at the end of Tartuffe, Arnolphe is not happy at the end of L’École des femmes, and so on. The removal of the obstacle to the love affair of the two young aristocrats, characters who resembled the spectators of the first performance in 1668, and the sidelining and defeat of the uncouth, possessive husband who had attempted to exercise rights obtained in violation of the rules of the sacrament of marriage (according to the Church) if not in violation of those of the Kingdom of France—all these things make it seem that at least one of the guilty parties is punished: George Dandin himself. The parents, who negotiated away their daughter’s life, escape punishment in a compromise in which they simply look the other way. The happy ending that is often shocking to today’s viewers consists of the husband’s realization that he is defeated.¹⁶ In a brief final monologue he says, ‘A h! je le quitte maintenant, et je n’y vois plus de remède, lorsqu’on a comme moi épousé une méchante femme, le meilleur parti qu’on puisse prendre, c’est de s’aller jeter dans l’eau la tête la première.’ (Ah! I give up now, and I see no remedy, when someone marries a wicked woman, the way I did, the best thing to do is to go drown oneself ’; 3.8.p.1013). This monologue, we know, is the signal for the start of a ballet, followed by festive dancing.

¹⁶ The editors of the Pléiade edition note that sympathy for Dandin, which seems in the context of the royal entertainment to have been entirely absent, first significantly manifests itself in the nineteenth century with the historian Jules Michelet. The Pléiade note continues by admitting ‘il est vrai que certains éléments de sa facture—la figure du héros, sa solitude, son impuissance—peuvent désorienter le spectateur moderne’ (Œuvres complètes, II, 1570).

7 Monsieur de Pourceaugnac Desire as Defence

In Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, Molière shifts the variables in the plot of forced marriage. This comedy-ballet takes Angélique’s situation from George Dandin (another comedy-ballet) and reimagines it by supposing that the daughter can thwart her father’s plan to force her to marry a suitor she despises. When readers and theatregoers today think of the galant esthetics and thematics of seventeenth-century France, they probably do not have in mind the now rather neglected three-act Monsieur de Pourceaugnac. It was performed for a royal audience in autumn 1669 at Chambord. It was described by the Gazette as ‘a new comedy … mixed with ballet and music’ (‘une nouvelle comédie … entremêlée de ballet et de musique’) in which ‘there was as much magnificence as gallantry’.¹ Both of the creators of the comédie ballet performed on the stage: Molière as Pourceaugnac and Lully as one of the Italian musicians disguised as physicians. Though it is sometimes performed, Pourceaugnac receives little attention from critics and scholars, and why should it? Its plot is, as the editors of the most recent Pléiade edition note, ‘almost entirely borrowed from the subject of a commedia dell’arte’.² But in its very simplicity, the play, essentially a farce in which an older, undesirable suitor is deceived, mocked, and sent packing by the intended bride and her lover, shows how Molière’s comedies so often work on two levels at the same time. On one hand, there is a comedy that includes slapstick, visual characterization of the undesirable suitor who lacks all sense of the fashionable galanterie, class satire, regional (antiprovincial) satire, and dialect. And on the other hand, there is an ideological core that orients the spectator’s attitude towards the humorous elements of the play and makes it clear what we should laugh at. Here, as in many of Molière’s comedies, the title designates not the character with whom we are expected to sympathize but rather the character who is the object of ridicule, scorn, and often also dread.

¹ Quoted in Molière, Œuvres complètes, II, 1409. ² Molière, Œuvres complètes, II, 1411.

Women and Irony in Molière’s Comedies of Marriage. John D. Lyons, Oxford University Press. © John D. Lyons (2023). DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198887379.003.0008

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Repelling the Unwanted Suitor Julie, daughter of the wealthy Oronte, is in love with Éraste, whose marriage proposal Oronte has rejected. The father has received a proposal from a wealthier man from Limoges, the eponymous ‘Monsieur de’ Pourceaugnac. His name speaks of the contempt that the first spectators, the royal court, were expected to feel for a man thus identified both with an ignoble animal, the swine (pourceau), and with a disfavoured province, as connoted by the morpheme ac, typical of southern French toponyms (e.g., Armagnac, Vitrac, Floirac) and some Breton ones (Quédillac, Assérac) but not typical of the langue d’oïl that was the language of the court.³ Several times in the course of the play Pourceaugnac insists that he is a noble, though his extensive familiarity with legal jargon unmasks him as a commoner. Critics have noted that this character foreshadows the ambition for upward mobility that later appears in the Monsieur Jourdain of Le Bourgeois gentilhomme.⁴ The humour of the play comes from the way the objectionable suitor— objectionable from the point of view of the young woman, not from the point of view of her father—is tormented, frightened and driven away. For spectators to enjoy that humour requires them to empathize with the two lovers, Julie and Éraste, and not with the father or Pourceaugnac, even though both French law and tradition are on the side of the father, for whom the marriage of his children was a business matter. Julie herself plays almost no role in her own defence until the penultimate scene (3.7). She simply agrees with her lover in the opening scene of the play that Éraste should use all the means at his disposal, a series of stratagems (machines), to prevent the coming marriage. In a telling, though in the context probably comical, exchange, Julie’s words to Éraste remind us how powerless young women were regarding the truly crucial decision of their lives: the decision of whether to marry and to whom. Asked by Éraste what she will do if none of his stratagems works, she answers, in order, ‘Je déclarerai à mon Père mes véritables sentiments… Je le menacerais de me jeter dans un Convent…’ (‘I will tell my father my true feelings… I’ll threaten to take refuge in a convent’; 1.2.p.205–206)—that exhausts her defensive arsenal and recalls Mariane’s despairing outcry in Le Tartuffe. In the second act Julie appears once more on stage with a more interesting, and ironic, approach. By this point Pourceaugnac has suffered numerous threats and indignities. He has ³ The contributors to the Pléiade edition note that it was fashionable at the time to make fun of people from southern France through ‘l’exploitation d’un comique assez grossier fondé sur la satire d’un provincial originaire de Gascogne ou de Guyenne’. Molière, Œuvres complètes, II, 1413. ⁴ Molière, Œuvres complètes, II, 1415.

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fallen into the clutches of physicians and an apothecary who diagnose him as melancholic and delusional and who inflict upon him the standard medical treatment in Molière’s comedies, an enema. He has been accused of defrauding his creditors and of being a polygamist with numerous children (a group of children surround him, calling ‘papa! papa!’), and threatened with hanging on the grounds that polygamy is a capital offence (particularly when the guilty party is from Limoges). But Julie enters with the most unexpected, and situationally ironic, attack: she pretends to have an irresistible sexual attraction to Pourceaugnac. In act II, scene 5, Pourceaugnac, indignant at the reception he has received since his arrival in Paris, confronts the man he had expected to become his father-in-law, and the two get into a shouting match. Unexpectedly, Julie comes to Pourceaugnac’s defence. Seeing him for the first time she exclaims, ‘A h le voilà sans doute, et mon cœur me le dit. Qu’il est bien fait! Qu’il a bon air! et que je suis contente d’avoir un tel Époux! Souffrez que je l’embrasse, et que je lui témoigne…’ (‘A h, this must be he; my heart tells me so. How handsome he is! What elegance! I am so happy to have such a husband! Let me kiss him, and show…’; 2.6.p.231). This little scene, which continues in the same vein, was prepared by Éraste’s agent Sbrigani, who had in the previous scene, after much show of reluctance, shared with the arriving suitor this view of Julie: ‘De vous dire que cette Fille-là mène une vie déshonnête, cela serait un peu trop fort; cherchons pour nous expliquer, quelques termes plus doux. Le mot de Galante aussi n’est pas assez; celui de Coquette achevée, me semble propre à ce que nous voulons, et je m’en puis servir, pour vous dire honnêtement ce qu’elle est.’ (‘To say that this girl leads an immoral life, that would be going a little too far. Let’s find some milder terms to make this clear. The word galante is not strong enough. The expression coquette achevée—a complete coquette—is closer to the thing that we are trying to say, and I can use it to say frankly what she is’; 2.4.p.230). Even without stage directions, it is clear that Julie throws herself aggressively on Pourceaugnac. Her father tells her to stop what she is doing with this suitor saying ‘Doucement, ma Fille, doucement’. (‘Hold on, my daughter, slow down’; 2.6.p.231). Despite Oronte’s attempts to continue the conversation, Julie cannot stay away from Pourceaugnac, exclaiming ‘Que je suis aise de vous voir! et que je brûle d’impatience…’ (‘How delighted I am to see you! And how I yearn impatiently…’; 2.6.p.232). And once again Oronte tries to pry her away, saying ‘A h, ma Fille, ôtez-vous de là, vous dis-je’ (‘A h, daughter, get off of him, I tell you’). But Julie’s stratagem has the effect at which she was surely aiming. Pourceaugnac takes fright, saying ‘Ho, ho, quelle égrillarde’ (‘what a loose woman’). He is already afraid that his future marriage

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will bring him public disgrace, in view of Julie’s apparently strong sex drive. He had told Sbrigani that he did not want to be cuckolded: ‘je ne me veux point mettre sur la tête un chapeau comme celui-là, et l’on aime à aller le front levé dans la Famille des Pourceaugnac’ (‘I do not wish to have such a “hat” as that on my head, and in the Pourceaugnac family we like to hold our head high’; 2.4.p.230). The ironic humour of this scene comes from the use of language to produce an effect of reception that is the contrary of the literal surface meaning of the speaker’s words. Whereas the most frequent use of verbal irony in everyday speech is to have the receiver understand that what the speaker intends to communicate is the opposite of the plain sense of the words used, here Julie does not want Pourceaugnac to understand the effect she wishes to have. In an unusual form of dramatic irony, Julie is lying to her unwanted suitor, but she knows that he has been prepared in such a way that words and gestures that would normally be very well received by a suitor will now have for Pourceaugnac an entirely contrary resonance. His intended future bride’s attraction to him, something a suitor would usually welcome, now seems on the contrary to be frightening, a symptom of female desire that threatens to escape from male control. Both the father and the suitor are afraid of Julie’s apparently limitless female lust. This scene in the second act sets up the decisive moment in the third and last act when Julie is said to have run off with Pourceaugnac. Éraste’s agent Sbrigani tells Oronte that Pourceaugnac has abducted Julie—such abductions were often consensual in the seventeenth century, agreed upon by a woman and her lover as a way of forcing the father’s hand and making him choose between scandal and dishonour, on one hand, and the acceptance of a marriage carried out in such a way as to usurp his legal authority.⁵ Sbrigani pursues this news with the statement about Julie: ‘elle en [of Pourceaugnac] est devenue si folle, qu’elle vous quitte pour le suivre, et l’on dit qu’il a un Caractère pour se faire aimer de toutes les Femmes’ (‘she has become so crazy about him, that she is going to leave you to follow him, and they say that he is the kind of man who makes all women fall in love with him’; 3.6.p.246). By this point in the play, the father has grave doubts about Pourceaugnac’s finances, sanity, and marital status, but it is a particularly poignant reversal that Oronte finds himself now opposed to a marriage that his daughter is in the process of pretending to

⁵ Danielle Haase-Dubosc, Ravie et enlevée: de l’enlèvement des femmes comme stratégie matrimoniale au XVIIe siècle (Paris: Albin Michel, 1999).

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pursue, thus confronting Oronte with a fait accompli based not on a father’s command but on a daughter’s preference. Éraste now arrives dragging Julie along behind him. He claims to have caught her and brought her back to her father by force. Addressing Julie, Éraste says, Allons, vous viendrez malgré´ vous, et je veux vous remettre entre les mains de votre père. Tenez, Monsieur, voilà votre fille que j’ai tirée de force d’entre les mains de l’homme avec qui elle s’enfuyait; non pas pour l’amour d’elle, mais pour votre seule considération; car après l’action qu’elle a faite, je dois la mépriser, et me guérir absolument de l’amour que j’avais pour elle. Come on, you will come along whether you wish to or not; and I am going to put you in the custody of your father. Here, Sir, here is your daughter whom I pried from the hand of the man with whom she was fleeing. I did not do it out of love for her, but only out of respect for you. Because after what she has done, I must despise her and must cure myself of the love that I had for her. (3.7.p.247)

This is, we understand, the performance of something completely fictitious with the intention of deceiving Oronte. What follows immediately deserves a close look. In all texts of the play, someone then says, ‘A h infˆame que tu es!’ (‘A h, how despicable you are!’).⁶ Thereupon Éraste says, Comment? me traiter de la sorte, après toutes les marques d’amitié que je vous ai données! Je ne vous blˆame point de vous être soumise aux volontés de Monsieur votre père: il est sage et judicieux dans les choses qu’il fait, et je ne me plains point de lui de m’avoir rejeté pour un autre. S’il a manqué à la parole qu’il m’avait donnée, il a ses raisons pour cela. On lui a fait croire que cet autre est plus riche que moi de quatre ou cinq mille écus; et quatre ou cinq mille écus est un denier considérable, et qui vaut bien la peine qu’un homme manque à sa parole; mais oublier en un moment toute l’ardeur que je vous ai montrée, vous laisser d’abord enflammer d’amour pour un nouveau venu, et le suivre honteusement sans le consentement de Monsieur votre père, après les crimes qu’on lui impute, c’est une chose condamnée de tout le monde, et dont mon cœur ne peut vous faire d’assez sanglants reproches. What? you treat me this way, after all the marks of friendship that I have bestowed on you! I do not blame you for submitting to your father’s wishes: ⁶ In the Forestier Pléiade edition this line is pronounced by Oronte.

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he is wise and judicious in what he does, and I do not blame him for having rejected me for another suitor. Even if he did break his word to me, he had reasons for that. They made him believe that the other man was four or five thousand écus richer than I; and four or five thousand écus is a pretty penny, and it can be worth it for a man to break his word. But to forget in an instant all the ardent love that I showed for you, and to allow yourself to fall head over heels with a newcomer, and then go away with him without your father’s consent, after the crimes of which he is accused, that is something that everyone condemns. My heart can never accuse you intensely enough. (3.7.p.247)

Éraste clearly feels accused, but not by the father. His words are addressed to Julie, (the gender agreement of soumise is incontrovertible proof ). Julie replies to Éraste in a coded, ironic language of the sort that we saw in L’École des maris, by outdoing herself in protestations of love for Pourceaugnac, saying ‘oui, j’ai conçu de l’amour pour lui, et je l’ai voulu suivre, puisque mon Père me l’avait choisi pour Époux’ (‘Yes, I’ve fallen in love with him and I wanted to go with him because my father had chosen him as my husband’; 3.7.p.247). She then defends Pourceaugnac in words that are literally true and will be understood in one way by her father and in another way by Éraste, Sbrigani, and the audience of the play: ‘Ce sont sans doute des pièces qu’on lui fait, et c’est peut-être lui qui a trouvé cet artifice pour vous en dégouter’ (‘These are just lies that they made up, and perhaps he’s the one who found this ploy to make you turn against him’; 3.7.pp. 247–248). In other words, she tells her father that lui (Éraste) used a series of tricks to make Oronte suspect Pourceaugnac of all sorts of things that make him unworthy to be Oronte’s son-in-law. This is, in the most concise terms, exactly what we have seen in all the preceding scenes of the play. But Julie says this to Oronte with the certainty that he will understand exactly the opposite. Once again, the lovers have created a situation of both verbal and situational irony. Even though Julie truthfully and literally describes what she, Éraste, Sbrigani and their allies have done since the first act, Oronte believes the opposite: that she is lying to defend Pourceaugnac. And as a result, Oronte now forces Julie to do exactly what she wished to do, that is, marry Éraste.

8 Les Précieuses ridicules The Demand for Courtship

The Précieuses ridicules (The Precious Damsels, 1659) is often read as an attack against the progressive women of the mid-seventeenth century whom male writers of the period and long thereafter often called précieuses.¹ As we have seen in other chapters of this study, Molière frames a serious social debate within a set of comical components that can be viewed and read in various ways. While no one would doubt that the central characters of this play, Magdelon and Cathos, along with the pseudo-aristocrats Mascarille and Jodelet, are indeed laughable, we can ask whether the ideas that they express in their simplified and sometimes garbled way are themselves actually held up as ridiculous. Could the Précieuses ridicules exemplify Molière’s inventiveness in devising variations on the use of an ironic mode to express serious and even grave social concerns? Or in other words, could the ridiculousness of the dramatic figures who are speaking serve the same function as more obvious and traditional forms of preterition?

The Suitors Strike Back We need to hold clearly in mind what is going on as the play begins—in other words, what has just happened before the moment when the spectators see the action on stage? Two young men with at least a modicum of wealth and some pretentions, have just spent some time visiting with the daughter and the niece of the middle-class provincial Gorgibus, in the latter’s Parisian residence.² Gorgibus hopes that the outcome will be two marriages that will take ¹ Myriam Dufour-Maître, Les précieuses: naissance des femmes de lettres en France au XVIIe siècle (Paris: H. Champion, 1999); Domna C. Stanton, ‘The Fiction of Préciosité and the Fear of Women’, Yale French Studies, no. 62 (1981): 107–134; Roger Duchêne and Antoine Baudeau de Somaize, Les précieuses, ou, Comment l’esprit vint aux femmes (Paris: Fayard, 2001); Michel de Pure, La prétieuse, ou, Le mystère des ruelles, ed. Émile Magne (Paris: E. Droz, 1938). ² James F. Gaines, in his indispensable Social Structures in Molière’s Theater (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1984), describes the clues that alert the spectator to the non-noble but pretentious character of the suitors (63–64).

Women and Irony in Molière’s Comedies of Marriage. John D. Lyons, Oxford University Press. © John D. Lyons (2023). DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198887379.003.0009

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the young women off his hands. In the event, the women do not find that the suitors rise to the level of their own aspirations to upward social mobility and cultural refinement. The suitors may be wealthy and perhaps even aristocratic, but they lack the manifestations of cultural refinement that Magdelon and Cathos seek. The initial rejection of the young men occasions a form of play-within-aplay. There are two courtships (or rather two times two): the real ones of La Grange et Du Croisy that have ended within the first scene and the farcical ones that result from the suitors’ resentment. Having been rejected by Magdelon and Cathos, the suitors decide to punish them and to expose the women’s lack of discernment by sending their valets disguised as a marquis and a vicomte to court the précieuses. From scenes 7 to 12 Mascarille and Jodelet charm Magdelon and Cathos with claims to virtuoso talents in literature and music, great military feats, excellent social and cultural connections, and perfect taste in clothing and all fashion accessories. All of this is exaggerated and laughable, but tightly connected to actual clothing trends and to the literary and theatrical scene of the day. Finally, the masters return in scene 13 to punish the valets for doing exactly what they were tasked with doing: dupe Magdelon and Cathos into displaying such dreadful ignorance and bad taste that they could not distinguish between masters and servants. Unlike many Molière comedies there is no character who appears to be in the category of raisonneur, that much-debated role of someone who can be presented as the voice of reason, of common sense, or of Molière himself. Instead, all the characters seem to be presented as seriously flawed and relatively unsympathetic. This could be said particularly of the two masters, the two scorned, resentful, and finally physically violent suitors. As a play about proposals of marriage, women’s reaction to such proposals, and male resentment and revenge, the Précieuses ridicules claims our attention for more than a satire of language, fashion, taste, and pretentiousness. Within the first four scenes we see that the comedy raises serious questions about male privilege, the prerogatives of wealth, and women’s expectations of suitors and potential husbands. It reflects in a timely manner discussions of the galant aesthetic. The characters belong to different economic and social groups. The suitors, though they have no aristocratic titles, are apparently well-enough off to make Gorgibus feel that they are desirable husbands for his daughter and niece, and in the marriage economy that we see in the comedy of the period, parents generally favour suitors who offer either a more distinguished social ‘condition’ or more money. So, the Gorgibus family hovers in the middle of this hierarchy, and beneath Gorgibus, his daughter Magdelon and her cousin

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Cathos are the domestic servants. Even among these there is a hierarchy from Mascarille and Jodelet (who seem to have acquired a varnish of cultural references), to Marotte, the servant of the young women, and below them the chairbearers. Marotte reveals her inexperience by being even less conversant with the literary references in the fashionable Parisian jargon than are the valets. The importance of this hierarchy appears immediately in the first lines of the play. Both Du Croisy and La Grange (particularly the latter) are outraged that they have not received the grovelling manifestations of respect to which they feel entitled. La Grange describes in detail how poorly they were received: A-t-on jamais vu, dites-moi, deux Pecques Provinciales faire plus les renchéries que celles-là, et deux hommes traités avec plus de mépris que nous? à peine ont-elles pu se résoudre à nous faire donner des sièges. Je n’ai jamais vu tant parler à l’oreille qu’elles ont fait entre elles, tant bˆailler; tant se frotter les yeux, et demander tant de fois quelle heure est-il; ont-elles répondu que oui et non à tout ce que nous avons pu leur dire? Et ne m’avouerez-vous pas enfin que quand nous aurions été les dernières personnes du monde, on ne pouvait nous faire pis qu’elles ont fait? Has anyone ever seen two scatter-brained country girls put on such airs? Or two men treated as offhandedly as we were? They could hardly bring themselves to the point of asking us to sit down. I’ve never seen so many mutual confidences in the ear, so much yawning, so much eye-rubbing, so much repetition of ‘What time is it?’ And to everything we could think of to say to them, could they find any answer except ‘Yes’ and ‘No’? So won’t you admit that if we’d been the scurviest people on earth, they couldn’t have treated us worse than they did? (1.p.7)³

What is immediately striking in this remark and the subsequent brief exchange that leads to the plan of revenge is the suitors’ overwhelming sense of entitlement. They have, La Grange feels, been treated as if they were the lowliest people on earth rather than the important men they feel themselves to be. The boring visit they have just suffered through was entirely the fault of their hostesses, in his view, and he feels no obligation to have made interesting conversation. In short, the ‘Pecques Provinciales’ are presented as subaltern entertainers, who failed to respect the pretentions of the suitors. These pretensions are even more absurd, the spectator may feel, in that Du Croisy’s ³ Molière, Les Précieuses ridicules, in Œuvres complètes. For this one-act play in prose parenthetical references will give the scene number and then the page number. Here, scene 1, page 7 (1.p.7).

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and La Grange’s status is not validated by any titles, even in the dramatis personae, but we can assume that their valets are aping their masters when they present themselves as a marquis and a vicomte. Gorgibus, who plans to marry his daughter and his niece to them, simply calls them ‘ces messieurs’. In response to Gorgibus’s question about how things went—and Gorgibus, like the suitors, places the responsibility for everything on the young women— Magdelon refers to the ‘procédé irrégulier de ces gens-là’. Here begins an important, albeit satirical, exposition of what women readers of the novels of Madeleine and Georges de Scudéry would consider desirable in courtship leading to marriage. In fact, when Gorgibus asks what the problem with Du Croisy and La Grange is, his daughter goes straight to the point: ‘La belle galanterie que la leur! quoi débuter d’abord par le mariage?’ (‘What kind of gallantry did they display! What! To begin right off with marriage?’; 1.p.9). Putting marriage at the beginning of a relationship is simply, in Magdelon’s eyes, backwards.⁴ For Gorgibus, making the marriage proposal up front is the ideal: ‘Et par où veux-tu donc qu’ils débutent, par le concubinage? n’est-ce pas un procédé, dont vous avez sujet de vous louer toutes deux, aussi bien que moi?’ (‘What did you except them to begin with? Concubinage? Isn’t that the gentlemanly thing to do?’; 1.p.9). But for Magdelon, this is ‘du dernier bourgeois’ (‘So utterly bourgeois’). While for Gorgibus the whole matter is, in a ‘bourgeois’ fashion, a matter of business, a marriage without courtship makes of the woman a token in a financial transaction. What is missing is, simply, love; or to be more specific, romanesque love, the kind that appeared in the tradition of romances that had recently been re-energized by writers such as Honoré d’Urfé, Marin Le Roy de Gomberville, La Calprenède, and especially the Scudérys.⁵ The exaltation of romanesque or erotic love encountered strong headwinds, because it was contrary simultaneously to the traditions of marriage based purely on family interests common (for different reasons) to both the aristocracy and the rising middle class and to the conservative views of the Catholic Church. Molière reminds us of the divergence between Magdelon’s views and the Church by having Gorgibus oppose his daughter’s call for a courtship that observes the bel air des choses (the fine art of things), by saying ‘Je te dis que le mariage est une chose sainte et sacrée, et que c’est faire en honnêtes gens que de débuter ⁴ We could even make the same point about comedy itself—thus there is an odd complicity between Molière and his women characters; between comedy as a genre and comedy as a sequence of events; between forme and fond. ⁵ For the most insightful reading of this play in terms of its relationship to the seventeenthcentury novel see Richard E. Goodkin, How Do I Know Thee? Theatrical and Narrative Cognition in Seventeenth-Century France (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2015), especially the section ‘Molière’s Satire of the Novel: Men are from Theater, Women Are from Narrative’, 169–183.

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par là’ (‘And I say that marriage is a holy and sacred matter, and it’s only decent to begin with it’; 4.p.10). In other words, as the Church taught, marriage comes first and—in the best of cases—love follows. In rebuttal to her father’s business-like conception of marriage, Magdelon gives the longest single speech in the whole play. Its length and thoroughness mark it as the doctrinal core of the play, even though the farcical business that results from the execution of La Grange’s plan for revenge only begins three scenes later. Magdelon and Cathos are through-and-through followers of Scudéry. The short form of Magdelon’s credo is, indeed, a critique of brevity itself. If everyone thought like Gorgibus, ‘un Roman serait bientôt fini: la belle chose, que ce serait, si d’abord Cyrus épousait Mandane, et qu’Aronce de plain-pied fut marié à Clélie’ (‘if everyone were like you, novels would be very short! A nice thing it would be, if the Great Cyrus married his Mandane right at the beginning, or if Aronce married Clélie in the first chapter!’; 4.p.10). Molière’s public would immediately recognize and understand the references to the Scudéry mega-romances, Artamène, ou le Grand Cyrus (1649–53) and Clélie, histoire romaine (1654–60). The first of these, Artamène, was more than 13,000 pages in the original edition and two million words long. Clélie was ten volumes long. Both works have the same basic plot principle, as Magdelon’s remark points out. The male–female couple of lovers must be separated at the outset of the story and then pass through prolonged, suspenseful adventures for years before they are finally reunited and married at the end of the last volume. Although the woman protagonist must show initiative and even, especially in the case of Clélie, heroism, the male lover is the primary agent of the quest. He proves his qualities of fidelity, nobility of soul (for example, often saving the life of his enemies and rivals), persistence, and military valour before becoming a husband. Magdelon’s longer and more didactic presentation of the Scuderyan model follows. She traces step by step the first meeting of the future lovers, the nature of their conversation during which ‘on ne manque jamais de mettre sur le tapis une question galante, qui exerce les esprits de l’assemblée’ (‘when some problem of gallantry is always brought up to exercise the wits of the assembly’). At this point the suitor makes his initial declaration of love. The woman reacts angrily: ‘Cette déclaration est suivie d’un prompt courroux, qui paraît à notre rougeur, et qui pour un temps bannit l’amant de notre présence’ (‘This declaration is followed by immediate anger on our part, which shows itself in our blushes; and for a time our fury banishes the lover from our presence’). When the woman has had time to accustom herself to the suitor, she will make the important declaration that has such a crucial place in seventeenth-century French literary culture, the aveu. The suitor will ‘tirer de nous cet aveu qui fait

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tant de peine’ (‘he draws from us that admission which causes us so much distress’). But the aveu is far from the end of the story. Indeed, it is only after the couple has been constituted by a reciprocity of passion that the obstacles will intervene: ‘Après cela viennent les aventures: les rivaux qui se jettent à la traverse d’une inclination établie, les persécutions des pères, les jalousies conçues sur de fausses apparences, les plaintes, les désespoirs, les enlèvements, et ce qui s’ensuit’ (‘Then come the adventures: the rivals who cross an affection which has been established, the persecutions of fathers, the jealousies which are conceived on some false basis, the reproaches, the despairs, the abductions and all the consequences’). This is the right model, with which Magdelon fully identifies by referring to the woman in question as nous (us). Starting off by signing the marriage contract, she says, is backwards, it’s prendre justement le Roman par la queue (starting the romance at the wrong end) and is entirely hucksterish (‘rien de plus Marchand’). In contrast to the ideal of a courtship followed—perhaps—by marriage that contemporaries found in the writings of numerous women of Molière’s day, the conservative position taught by the Church is presented in several of the comedies, beginning with Les Précieuses ridicules. We recall Gorgibus’s words to his daughter, when he told her that marriage is ‘a holy and sacred thing’. This formulation does not seem to be at all sinister but directs the audience’s attention towards Church teaching. Ten years later, in Le Tartuffe, the ecclesiastical doctrines about marriage (as interpreted in France) appear in greater and more sobering detail. Orgon’s plan to force his daughter to marry Tartuffe is framed entirely in religious terms. There is nothing implausible about it within the customs of seventeenth-century France. When Mariane, on her knees, begs her father not to force her to marry Tartuffe—even if he will not allow her to marry Valère—he is moved by pity at her desperate unhappiness and he expresses his resolve precisely as would a good Catholic, struggling against human weakness. He says out loud but to himself, ‘A llons, ferme, mon cœur, point de faiblesse humaine’ (‘Courage, my heart! Down with this human weakness!’; Le Tartuffe, 4.3.1293), alluding to the sinful inclinations that lead men to stray from the injunctions of their faith. What follows may seem, to modern audiences, to be a satirical exaggeration of Catholic theology. When Mariane offers to give up all her inheritance (she presumably has some wealth of her own from her deceased mother) and to go into a convent, Orgon replies: Debout! Plus votre cœur répugne à l’accepter, Plus ce sera pour vous matière à mériter: Mortifiez vos sens avec ce mariage, Et ne me rompez pas la tête davantage.

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Get up! The more your heart recoils from him, All the more meritorious is the yielding. So mortify your senses by this marriage, And let’s have no more nonsense out of you! (Le Tartuffe, 4.3.1303–1306)

Yet mortification remains a central tenet of Catholic Christianity even today. As a member of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit (an order founded in Paris during the reign of Louis XIV ) writes in the twenty-first century: Mortification aims at replacing disorder by order, revolt against God and reason by subjection to Christ and His faith, disordered nature by vivifying grace, and self-indulgence by purity and justice. The ultimate effect is to reduce our senses to the control of our reason, our imagination to our will, and our will to God. It may be defined then as a deliberate renouncement of the life of disorderly satisfaction of our concupiscences, and a curbing of every inordinate exercise of our external and internal faculties. According to the signification of the word, it means a process of destruction, a dealing of death to that activity in us which seeks pleasure for the sake of pleasure; its purpose is that this activity being deadened, the life received in baptism may have free scope for its development.⁶

According to this doctrine, the more distasteful Mariane finds her husband the better will be the marriage in a religious sense. The single most influential Catholic treatise in seventeenth century France was François de Sales’ Introduction à la vie dévote (Introduction to the Devout Life, 1609). Mariane’s desire to be married to a man other than the man chosen for her by her father belongs to the category of improper desire: ‘ces désirs inutiles occupent la place des autres que je devrais avoir, d’être bien patient, bien résigné, bien mortifié, bien obéissant et bien doux en mes souffrances, qui est ce que Dieu veut que je pratique…’ (‘these useless desires take the place of the other desires that I should have, to be patient, resigned, mortified, properly obedient and very calm in my suffering, which is what God wishes me to do…’).⁷ ⁶ Edward Leen, C.S. Sp. ‘Mortification: A Condition of Life’, Catholic Education Resource Center (blog), 20 June 2020, https://www.catholiceducation.org/en/religion-and-philosophy/spiritual-life/ mortification-a-condition-of-life.html. ⁷ François de Sales, Œuvres, ed. André Ravier, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1969), 231. On de Sales’s teaching about sexuality in marriage see Milad Doueihi, ‘Elephantine Marriage: The Elephant and Devout Table Manners’, MLN 106, no. 4 (1991): 780–792.

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The Précieuses ridicules have been appreciated since the earliest performances because of the antics of the two farcical pseudo-aristocrats, because of Magdelon’s and Cathos’s gullibility, and because of their caricaturally schematic presentation of the Scuderyan (and more broadly, proto-feminist) doctrine of courtship, consent, and marriage. The two young women seem to anticipate Emma Bovary by two hundred years. But does the frankly laughable presentation of a vision of courtship in which women have a choice about the men they marry—and then show little perspicaciousness in the choice they make—render the idea of free choice itself inherently unwise? Throughout Molière’s comedies, and many others, men are shown as making bad choices about any number of matters, and yet the concept that adult males should be deprived of autonomy is never in itself put forward as an option. At least two lines of argument can be outlined according to which the Précieuses ridicules is actually a play that presents the women’s aspirations in a positive light. The first of these relies on the already-mentioned ploy in which propositions disowned by the speaker may actually be the propositions that the speaker wishes to convey to a select portion of the audience. Indeed, on this account, the heterodox doctrine (i.e., the apparently rejected notion) that young women should have the right to choose their husband needs to be rendered more vivid and memorable than what surrounds it so as to stand out, to be noticed, and to be remembered. And, indeed, the ‘serious’ traditional male characters in the Précieuses ridicules (La Grange, Du Croisy, and Gorgibus) receive much less critical attention (and one supposes also less attention from audiences) than the disguised valets and the two young précieuses. The second and even stronger argument for considering this play as supporting female emancipation regarding marriage is the depiction of the grotesquely violent and arrogant Du Croisy and La Grange.⁸ As Larry Norman observes in The Public Mirror: Molière and the Social Commerce of Depiction, the role of these two rejected suitors is usually overlooked. This is, as Norman calls it, a ‘conspiracy’.⁹ Do these suitors represent a more palatable model of male-female relationships than the ephemeral society of pleasure constituted by Magdelon, Cathos, and the two disguised valets they find amusing? Molière offers his spectators a choice between two sets of values with which to sympathize. On ⁸ On this point we differ from Noel Peacock’s assessment of these suitors, when he writes, about Les Femmes savantes that Philaminte’s rejection of Clitandre ‘recalls the unwillingness of Cathos and Magdelon in Les Précieuses ridicules to recognize that the sophisticated lovers they had been seeking were the very ones they had rejected, La Grange and Du Croisy’ (Molière, Les Femmes Savantes: Critical Guides to French Texts [London: Grant & Cutler, 1990], 64–65). ⁹ Larry F. Norman, The Public Mirror: Molière and the Social Commerce of Depiction (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 94–99.

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one hand the audience may share the aversion to social climbing that appears repeatedly in Molière’s comedies (as in Le Bourgeois gentilhomme and George Dandin). Concomitantly such an audience would likely share the generally conservative views of the suitors, even if the suitors themselves have little to recommend and are undeveloped as characters. On the other hand, the two précieuses, however ridiculous, represent the aspiration to free choice of a husband that also appears in the majority of Molière’s comedies. In the next chapter we will look at two major plays in which women who have (as far as we know) freely chosen their husband find themselves disappointed in the reality of marriage.

PART I V

BEING M A R R IED Despite the coercion to which they are subjected, and despite the inadequacy of many of the men available, some women characters in Molière’s plays have apparently chosen freely to marry. Several of his comedies depict a marriage which encounters difficulties later, long after the courtship. In earlier chapters we have seen some already-married couples (as in Les Femmes savantes, George Dandin), though our attention has been directed at the struggles of younger, unmarried people to overcome the obstacles in the way of their union. But in the two comedies that concern us in the present chapter Molière foregrounds a breakdown in a married relationship that did begin, or may have begun, under better auspices. The first of these plays is the five-act comedy Le Tartuffe ou l’Imposteur (1664), in which Elmire finds herself neglected or even ignored by her husband. We learn nothing about the circumstances in which this beautiful and charming woman married the wealthy and well-connected landowner (and perhaps royal officer) Orgon. There is no suggestion that she married under duress, though on the other hand we have no evidence that she chose him for his personal qualities or because of her feelings for him. She may have married him because of the comfort his wealth offered her. There are grounds for supposing that she is of a higher social class than her husband.¹ But in the moment that we see on stage, their marriage offers Elmire little in the way of conjugal affection or even friendship. In the other play discussed at length in this section, Molière’s three-act adaptation of Plautus’s Amphitryon, the marriage of the heroic Theban general and Alcmène seems to have been going well until the very night on which the action of the play begins. What destroys the placid happiness of this marriage is the arrival of another male person, who, like Tartuffe, is an impostor. However,

¹ Gaines points out that Orgon’s mother speaks with ‘the vocabulary of an old-fashioned commoner’ (203), whereas Elmire and her brother Cléante dress and speak with elegance and social ease.

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Alcmène’s lover is divine and offers her a glimpse of tactful, attentive, and ardent love that her real husband cannot match. Both comedies allow women to give voice to what they seek in their husbands.

9 Le Tartuffe Negotiating for Freedom

Women in Molière’s comedies have lots to fear from the way language is used against them. In fact, one of the traditional imperatives for a woman is to avoid being talked about—to escape from language. The value of silence, the wonderful freedom to live and act without being outed in a society that punishes women for precisely the same things that it rewards men for, is such an important theme in Tartuffe that we need to pay close attention to the way the playwright alerts us to the social rules about talking in French society as Molière depicts it. The opening scene of Le Tartuffe is the textbook case of the exposition that orients audiences to the situation, naming characters and clarifying their relationship for spectators in the age before printed programmes or showbills. One character dominates this scene, Madame Pernelle, the mother of the gullible Oronte, whose household has come under the influence of the title character, Tartuffe. A striking thing about Madame Pernelle’s role in the comedy is that, after speaking so much at the outset of the play that the others struggle to get in a few words, she only reappears in the last act, where she pronounces only twenty-four verses. It would be easy to suppose that she is only a sort of technical utility, brought on the stage to recite the dramatis personae somewhat like the ‘protactic characters’ of Plautine and Renaissance drama. The ridiculousness of what she says must have been underscored for the first spectators of the play by the fact that she was played by an actor in male dress (Louis Béjart).

Saying and Seeing Yet Madame Pernelle gives us much more than background information. She sets out the major thematic issue of the whole comedy, the tension between seeing and saying. This important function becomes clear retrospectively when, in the first scene of the last act, her son must insist to her that he has Women and Irony in Molière’s Comedies of Marriage. John D. Lyons, Oxford University Press. © John D. Lyons (2023). DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198887379.003.0010

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seen what he says he has seen (5.3.1675ff.) But we should start with the beginning, where we find her having much to say about what people see, while at the same time she tries to keep everyone else from saying anything. Madame Pernelle is rushing out of her son’s house, where she has been greeted in Orgon’s absence by the rest of the family, led by Orgon’s second wife, Elmire. The mother-in-law does not like what she has seen. In fact, she cannot bear it: ‘C’est que je ne puis voir tout ce ménage-ci’ (‘I cannot stand to watch all these goings-on’; 1.1.7). Of course, it is easy to see that for Madame Pernelle the problem is personal and linked to her domineering character. Yet this rather long scene also sets out a set of more general ideas about social values (about what to do and what to say) that are at the foundation of the plot and that are discussed in exquisite detail in the pivotal scenes in acts III and IV between Tartuffe and Elmire. From this scene emerges a triangle of acts, articulated in three verbs: to say, to see, and to do—in declining order of importance. There is, according to Orgon’s mother, a strict hierarchy in access to speech. She is among those at the top, those who pronounce moral lessons and judgements. Her many declarations and reprimands in this scene are protests against those—the entire family, it seems—who do not recognize the authority that she represents. She flees a place where, as she says, ‘On n’y respecte rien, chacun y parle haut, / Et c’est tout justement la cour du roi Pétaut’ (‘Nothing is respected, everyone speaks aloud, and it’s just like Bedlam’; 1.1.11–12). The only other person whose right to speak she endorses is someone who does not appear on stage until the third act, Tartuffe. The others should keep quiet and listen to him: ‘C’est un homme de bien, qu’il faut que l’on écoute’ (‘He is a man of virtue, and must be listened to’; 1.1.42). In Madame Pernelle’s conception of the world, saying is closely linked to seeing, but whether it is good to speak about what one sees clearly depends on a certain categorization of persons. Tartuffe watches Orgon’s family diligently. As the servant Dorine says, ‘il contrôle tout, ce critique zélé’ (‘He checks everything, this zealous critic’; 1.1.51) Considering the power that Tartuffe exerts in the Orgon household, it is easy for recent readers to suppose that this ‘contrôle’ means straightforwardly that the newcomer directs or commands the actions of the family members, but in seventeenth-century French the term still meant the action of verification or checking to make sure that lists, accounts or other documents matched. One document would be the ‘roll’ and

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the other document, that was meant to match exactly, would be the ‘conterroll’ (contreroulle).¹ So Tartuffe is said to be watching everything and verifying that what he sees matches some set of prescriptions or standards that, it seems, none of the characters in this opening scene of the play subscribe to. Except, of course, Madame Pernelle, who agrees with Dorine that Tartuffe is constantly checking but adds, ‘Et tout ce qu’il contrôle est fort bien contrôlée’ (‘And everything he checks is very well checked’;1.1.52). It is not simply that he is always watching; he also speaks about what he sees, and the most of the family does not like what he says, though Madame Pernelle also finds his instructions to be exactly what is needed. It seems that, in her view, the task of the family members is to adjust what they do so that it will correspond to the expectations that Tartuffe has—in other words, so that everything will look the way he wants it to look. It may seem that the difference between the early modern contrôle and the modern ‘control’ is so slight that it is mere quibbling to insist on it. But as the play unfolds, the seventeenth-century nuance that stresses the careful matching of appearance (visual) and discourse becomes ever more crucial. Already in the first scene the potential gaps or slippage between what appears and what does not appear and between what people do and say—the relationship among saying/seeing/doing—these issues are touched upon in brief but significant exchanges. Madame Pernelle finds, for instance, that her granddaughter Mariane is something other than she appears to be or than she says she is: ‘vous faites la discrète, / Et vous n’y touchez pas, tant vous semblez doucette; / Mais il n’est, comme on dit, pire eau que l’eau qui dort, / Et vous menez sous chape un train que je hais fort’ (‘you play the good girl, and seem so sweet, but, as they say, the most dangerous water looks placid; and out of sight you are carrying on in a way that I hate’; 1.1.21–24). Mariane may look innocent (perhaps in this respect she can content Tartuffe by making things look the way they should be), but her grandmother supposes that she is not. In the case of Orgon’s second wife, Elmire, the problem is perhaps the opposite. Elmire does not look the way she is supposed to look. Whatever her private conduct may be, Elmire appears too well dressed to fit the picture of a virtuous wife: Votre conduite en tout est tout à fait mauvaise; Vous devriez leur mettre un bon exemple aux yeux, ¹ OED: roll, ‘An official record or document, (originally) inscribed in a rolled piece of parchment or paper; (in later use) printed on paper or maintained electronically. Also, figurative’.

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While it is fine, in Madame Pernelle’s view, that Tartuffe talk about matters of appearance, it is important to keep other people from talking. Keeping up appearances is of paramount importance, and so, she says, Ce n’est pas lui tout seul [Tartuffe] qui blˆame ces visites, Tout ce tracas qui suit les gens que vous hantez, Ces carrosses sans cesse à la porte plantés, Et de tant de laquais le bruyant assemblage Font un éclat fˆacheux dans tout le voisinage. Je veux croire qu’au fond il ne se passe rien; Mais enfin on en parle, et cela n’est pas bien. He’s not alone, child, in complaining Of all of your promiscuous entertaining. Why, the whole neighbourhood’s upset, I know, by all these carriages that come and go, With crowds of guests parading in and out And noisy servants loitering about. In all of this, I’m sure there’s nothing vicious; But why give people cause to be suspicious? (1.1.86–92, emphasis added)

Madame Pernelle’s interactions with family members and with their servant Dorine raise important questions about who is talking, what people are saying, and what is the specific topic of what Elmire’s brother Cléante calls ‘sots

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discours’ (‘silly talk’ 1.1.95). First, who is talking? Madame Pernelle seems to have no problem at all with what Tartuffe has to say. In fact, she says that he should be listened to. On the other hand, she would like everyone else to be quiet. So, she and Tartuffe are the ones with the right to speak within the household. Outside the household, she wants to head off what people—the on—are saying. And it seems that this on, the general, public voice, is saying quite a lot. Cléante, responding to Madame Pernelle’s declaration that steps need to be taken to keep ‘people’ from talking, essentially admits that indeed they are talking quite a bit: Hé, voulez-vous, Madame, empêcher qu’on ne cause? Ce serait dans la vie une fˆacheuse chose, Si pour les sots discours où l’on peut être mis, Il fallait renoncer à ses meilleurs Amis: Et quand même on pourrait se résoudre à le faire, Croiriez-vous obliger tout le monde à se taire? Contre la Médisance il n’est point de rempart […] Efforçons-nous de vivre avec toute innocence, Et laissons aux Causeurs une pleine licence. They need no cause; they’ll talk in any case. Madam, this world would be a joyless place If, fearing what malicious tongues might say, We locked our doors and turned our friends away. And even if one did so dreary a thing, D’you think those tongues would cease their chattering? One can’t fight slander; it’s a losing battle […]. (1.1.93–102)

Causer (to chat or gossip) in early modernity was not an especially good thing. In fact, it was among the lowest forms of discourse, as Cléante so pointedly notes with his ‘sots discours’. What is thus said is, according to Nicot’s dictionary, ‘pesle-mesle, et à tort et à travers’ (‘pell-mell, all mixed up’).² But it might apparently also contain something true, but something that someone would wish to keep secret. This is one of the connotations given in the first Academy dictionary for causer: ‘Ne garder pas le secret; comme, Ne luy dites ² Jean Nicot, Thresor de la Langue francoyse (Paris: chez David Douceur, 1606), vol. 1. Cited from Dictionnaires d’autrefois (University of Chicago): https://artflsrv03-uchicagoedu.proxy01.its.virginia.edu/philologic4/publicdicos/navigate/1/2903/.

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que ce que vous voudrez que tout le monde sçache, car il cause’ (‘To not keep a secret; Don’t tell him anything except what you wish everyone to know, because he talks’).³ So, about the identity of the people talking, Madame Pernelle and Cléante take quite opposite stances. The only two authorized speakers in her view are herself and Tartuffe, while the brother of her daughter-in-law takes a sort of free market approach, one in which the talk which is cheap (talk without factual connection with the actions of the person talked about) will blow around without importance. But these two opponents do seem to identify the on, the causeurs, as being outside the family. If this is true, then Madame Pernelle’s approach is not entirely arbitrary. There seems to be a method in her authorization of Tartuffe’s controlling discourse. Since he is installed within the family, while at the same time he shares the negative, blaming views of those outside, his function is to check to make sure that there is nothing perceptible, nothing visible, about the family that could provoke médisance. What people are saying and the specific focus of their talk is the key issue, and here in the first scene Molière has masterfully created the framework for the most important part of the play, the scenes between Tartuffe and Elmire in acts III and IV. Madame Pernelle, Tartuffe, and the external critics, the on, are all talking about Orgon’s wife Elmire. Dorine’s statement, the one that set off Madame Pernelle’s declaration that on en parle, et cela n’est pas bien, was about Elmire’s conduct, on one hand, and Tartuffe’s attitude towards Elmire, on the other. Elmire has visitors. We can suppose that these visitors are men. Would visits from women lead Madame Pernelle to say (with perhaps doubtful sincerity) that she is willing to believe that nothing is happening (Je veux croire qu’au fond il ne se passe rien)? And we know that her mother-in-law blames Elmire for dressing too well, dressing in a way that could be seen as meant to please men other than Elmire’s husband (1.1.30–32). Finally, Cléante’s impassioned dismissal of the public engaged in médisance is clearly a defence of his sister’s reputation. Everyone seems to be concerned about Elmire. This fact is so obvious and so central that it sets up the great gag of the first scene in which Orgon himself appears, the scene of the famously repeated exclamation, ‘le pauvre homme!’ (‘the poor man!’). In that scene we discover that the only person who does not seem to be focused on Elmire is her husband. But as the play begins what is at issue is Elmire’s conduct and various people’s reaction to it. Most viewers and readers of Molière plays seem to find nothing remarkable about this, but the ³ Académie Française, Le dictionnaire de l’A cademie française (Paris: Coignard, 1694).

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very fact of the remarkability of the surveillance of a mature married woman is worthy of our attention. Why are we, the public of the play (as opposed to the public in the play), so focused on Tartuffe and perhaps secondarily on Orgon rather than on Elmire? Lionel Gossman, for example, in a brilliant chapter on Le Tartuffe, mentions Tartuffe on every page, but only discusses Elmire in a fifth of the chapter.⁴ It is strange that we are looking at Tartuffe, while Tartuffe is looking at Elmire. Perhaps we, like Orgon, are so besotted with this newcomer to the household that we fail to see what everyone else sees. From Madame Pernelle’s perspective, Elmire is excessively visible. She dresses ‘like a princess’; her stepchildren look to her as a model—an example— but Madame Pernelle disapproves of what they see; there are many visitors to Orgon’s house, and they are clearly not coming to see Orgon. The target of Madame Pernelle’s ire is Elmire, implicitly but with striking clarity accused of behaviour unbecoming to a married woman. And finally, outside the household are the people who are watching and hearing the constant and tumultuous arrival of the men who are coming to see Elmire, the centre of all these concentric circles.

What Do They All Want? What is at stake in Le Tartuffe? That is, who risks what, and who stands to gain something? The answer to that question is rather simple. The play is about a male acquiring possession of women and the women’s reaction to this transaction. The two women in question are Mariane and Elmire, Orgon’s daughter and wife. One of the pursuits happens openly while the other is covert. The first of these, Tartuffe’s quest to marry Mariane—or at least his acquiescence to Orgon’s plan for his daughter to marry the family’s guest—appears in the last scene of the first act and then occupies the whole second act of the play. So, while the play’s title directs attention towards the hypocrisy of a single individual, the first issue to be resolved is the matter of Mariane’s marriage. At the end of act one Cléante attempts to ascertain Orgon’s reasons for delaying the already-agreed wedding between Mariane and Valère. So, what happens in the first scene of act II appears to Mariane as an astounding reversal of the situation. It looks a non-heroic version of the reversal that occurs in ⁴ Lionel Gossman, Men and Masks (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1963), 101–144. Elmire’s name appears in passing after the first twelve pages of the chapter, but her character is only discussed in detail in the last eight pages (135–143). Likewise, Pierre Force, in a rich book-length study of Molière, does not devote any attention to Elmire (Molière, ou le prix des choses [Paris: Nathan, 1994]).

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Corneille’s Le Cid, from a quarter-century earlier. A marriage that was settled, agreed upon happily by all parties (in Le Cid between Chimène and Rodrigue and in Le Tartuffe between Mariane and Valère), is suddenly, astoundingly, called off. The difference from the earlier reversal in Corneille’s tragi-comedy is that here in Molière’s play the change apparently comes about because of an arbitrary decision and not because of an incident that, in the commonly accepted customs of the time, made the marriage seem impossible. In the first scene of this second act Molière emphasizes the arbitrariness of the father’s pronouncement about his daughter’s marriage. To appreciate this, we need to recall what arbitrariness was for the seventeenth century. Today we may most often think of ‘arbitrary’ as a pejorative term. The Trésor de la langue française gives, among its definitions, ‘Characteristic of what lacks rational rigour’. And the OED somewhat similarly notes ‘Derived from mere opinion or preference; not based on the nature of things; hence, capricious, uncertain, varying.’ It certainly does seem to Mariane that marriage to Tartuffe is not based on reason. But it is fully ‘arbitrary’ in another sense that was not necessarily pejorative in Molière’s day, in a sense that the OED describes as now obsolete: ‘To be decided by one’s liking; dependent upon will or pleasure; at the discretion or option of anyone. Obsolete in general use.’ We can see that in some ways the poles of these definitions are interrelated in a way that has great dramatic importance. The less rational or natural (‘based on the nature of things’) a decision is, the more clearly the sheer power of the decider appears. In the early modern, non-pejorative sense of the term, the power to decide ‘arbitrarily’ would simply mean that the person performing the decision—and this really is the performative, as defined by later speech-act theory—does not have to justify or motivate the decision by giving reasons. Within the context of both dramatic practice and theory of drama in early modern France, there is, however, a tension between the depiction of characters exercising arbitrary authority, on one hand, and the playwright’s arbitrary creation of a sequence of events. If there is one single point on which all participants in seventeenth-century debates about dramaturgy agree, it is that viewers and readers of plays should understand why things happen. Indeed, events are not only supposed to occur because of a discernible cause but to occur according to a set of foreseeable causes (the so-called verisimilar). This is not to suggest that Molière in any way disrupts the conventions of the French theatre of his day, but simply to point out that audiences and critics were highly sensitive to acts within plays that position themselves on the boundary between the inexplicable (and therefore unacceptable and

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unbelievable) and the expected (following from a series of preceding events or utterances). And therefore, the suspicion of the ‘arbitrary’ in the sense that is now dominant (capricious, unjustifiable) hangs over Orgon’s decree that his daughter should marry Tartuffe.⁵ Molière uses the contrast between the verisimilar (non-arbitrary) and the non-verisimilar (arbitrary) to great comic effect in the first scene of the second act. We see Mariane proceeding according to expectation, according to what is ‘based on the nature of things’, and according to previous events and experience. Therefore, the scene begins with Mariane blithely accepting what her father says with the assumption that it will make sense: ORGON: […] Que dites-vous de Tartuffe notre Hôte? MARIANE: Qui, moi? ORGON: Vous. Voyez bien comme vous répondrez. MARIANE: Hélas! j’en dirai, moi, tout ce que vous voudrez. ORGON: C’est parler sagement. Dites-moi donc, ma Fille, Qu’en toute sa Personne un haut mérite brille, Qu’il touche votre cœur, et qu’il vous serait doux De le voir, par mon choix, devenir votre Époux. Eh? MARIANE: Eh? ORGON: Qu’est-ce? MARIANE: Plaît-il? ORGON: Quoi? MARIANE: Me suis-je méprise?

⁵ In the seventeenth century kings did in fact exercise ‘arbitrary’ power regarding the marriage of many aristocrats.

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ORGON: Comment? MARIANE: Qui voulez-vous, mon Père, que je dise, Qu’il me touche le cœur, et qu’il me serait doux De voir, par votre choix, devenir mon Époux? ORGON: […] tell me, what do you think of Tartuffe? MARIANE: What do I think? ORGON: Yes. Don’t speak hastily. MARIANE: Dear me! I think whatever you think I should. ORGON: Well said. Now this is what you ought to think. He is a man of most unusual merit; He moves your heart, and you’d be overjoyed To have me pick him out to be your husband. Eh? MARIANE: Eh? ORGON: What? MARIANE: What did you say? ORGON: What? MARIANE: Did I hear rightly? ORGON: What? MARIANE: Who is it that it would make me overjoyed To have you fix upon to be my husband? (2.1.438–448) In the ensuing exchange, Molière makes it clear that only the force of Orgon’s command and Mariane’s entirely dependent status can bring about this marriage. Dorine’s arrival occasions an inventory of all the reasons that this marriage is implausible. In terms of dramatic function, we can recognize this scene and the following one in which Dorine is alone on stage with Mariane as continuing the exposition, that is, as serving to provide us with information about the characters. Since Tartuffe only appears in act III, the audience knows about

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him only what the other characters say. In speaking with Orgon, Dorine says that he is a bigot (religious hypocrite), that he is a gueux (extremely poor), that his pretence of aristocratic status is doubtful—‘c’est lui qui le dit’ (‘so he says’; 2.2.495)—and that there is something obviously and overwhelmingly repulsive about Tartuffe that makes him unfit for marriage with Mariane (‘Ferez-vous possesseur, sans quelque peu d’ennui, / D’une fille comme elle un homme comme lui?’ (‘Doesn’t it trouble you that a man like him / Should be possessor of a girl like her?; 2.2. 503–504). Dorine implies very clearly that Tartuffe’s repulsiveness is related to a combination of ugliness and disgusting temperament that render him unthinkable as a sexual partner. Mariane, if married to Tartuffe, will necessarily seek sexual satisfaction elsewhere: ‘d’une fille on risque la vertu, / Lorsque dans son hymen son goût est combattu’ (‘You’re putting a girl’s virtue to the test / By forcing her to a distasteful marriage’; 2.2.507–508), and this consequence is so clear that it would be a sin to permit the wedding to go forward (2.2.549–550). Orgon even concedes that Tartuffe is not a young man (2.2.559). In speaking with Mariane alone, Dorine develops her depiction of Tartuffe even more vividly. In this further sarcastic evocation we again encounter doubts about his social status. He is ‘noble chez lui’ (‘he is noble at home’), hence, not here in Paris (2.3.646), and has ‘l’oreille rouge et le teint bien fleuri’ (‘His ears are rosy red, like his complexion’; 2.3.647) and Dorine earlier described Tartuffe as ‘gros et gras’ (‘big and fat’; 1.2.234). Dorine’s inventive imagination produces a picture of provincial life clearly at variance from the higher-class and more refined pleasures of Paris to which Mariane is accustomed. By the time Tartuffe comes on stage in the following act, we have been thoroughly primed to view him not only as a cleverly manipulative hypocrite but as much older than Mariane, crude, lower-class, and physically loathsome. But how much of what Dorine says should we believe? Her purpose, after all, is to persuade Orgon to respect his earlier agreement to allow Mariane to marry Valère and then to incite Mariane to take an active role in resisting the marriage now imposed upon her by Orgon. Dorine, in short, is far from being a disinterested observer. The one quality of Tartuffe that appears consistently throughout the play is his religious hypocrisy. We find this accusation in the very first scene of the play; we find it exemplified in Orgon’s own rhapsodic evocation of his meeting with Tartuffe; and we see Tartuffe’s virtuoso manipulation of religious language and concepts in act III. But the other accusations are less sure. There is considerable latitude left to stage directors, actors, and readers as they fill in what is left open in Molière’s text.

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What is incontrovertible, though, is that Mariane loathes Tartuffe and wishes to marry Valère. And so, as viewers or readers of the play we can surely take Dorine’s side as she applies shock therapy to awaken in Mariane the resolve to combat her father’s decision. It must be that Dorine is right… Or is it? She is invariably described as the frank-speaking servant whose commonsense contrasts with the lunacy of those around her. She almost approaches the status of a raisonneur, though without the education and polish of Cléante, whose positions in opposition to Tartuffe and to Orgon’s delusions she echoes.⁶ Yet Dorine offers no concrete plan to get Mariane out of her predicament. Mariane’s despair is a more realistic presentation of the situation of a daughter faced with a father’s arbitrary command to marry. Valère interrupts Dorine precisely now when Dorine seems about to offer a plan, saying ‘On peut adroitement / Empêcher…’ (‘We can skillfully / Prevent…’; 2.3.683–684). Mariane and the spectator need to wait quite a while before Dorine can continue with a presentation of options. The delay, occasioned by a lovers’ quarrel between Mariane and Valère, builds suspense as we look forward to what the ingenious servant can devise, but it turns out that both the dramaturgy of Molière’s play and the plans of the characters amount to the same thing: delay. In short, a form of active passivity. Although Dorine claims “Nous en ferons agir de toutes les façons” (“There are lots of things that we can do”; 2.4.795), she simply advises Mariane to invent excuses for waiting, feigning illness, a bad omen, and so forth. Finally, the only power that Mariane has is to refuse consent (“c’est qu’à d’autres que lui [Valère] / On ne vous peut lier, que vous ne disiez ‘oui’” (“The great thing is that nobody can bind you / To anyone without your saying yes”; 2.4.807–808). So, while Mariane can prevent a marriage with Tartuffe, she remains entirely captive in her father’s hands, much like Agnès and Isabelle in the two schools for marriage. Yet just at this moment of apparent impasse, as we are waiting for Orgon finally to force Mariane to marry Tartuffe or face some horrendous consequence, another woman comes to rescue Mariane. We noted earlier that the play concerns the pursuit of two women by the same man. At the end of act II, the first of those pursuits has come to a point where there seems no escape but

⁶ Michael Hawcroft describes in detail Cléante’s role as raisonneur. Hawcroft also notes several times the way Cléante and Dorine interact in their observations of Orgon’s folly (84, 87, 89–91, 93). Although the raisonneur is traditionally someone above the level of domestic servant, we should not neglect the acuity of Molière’s female characters in penetrating both disguise and delusion (Molière: Reasoning with Fools (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 78–113). Noel Peacock has also hinted at Dorine’s importance, noting that in the second scene of the play Cléante uses her as a screen, ‘cowering behind Dorine to avoid further contact with Mme Pernelle’ (Noel A. Peacock, ‘The Comic Role of the Raisonneur in Molière’s Theatre’, Modern Language Review 76, no. 2 (4 April 1981): 307).

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only waiting. Now the other pursuit enters its active phase: Tartuffe’s attempt to seduce Elmire. These two threads are not separate and parallel but instead intertwined. Elmire throws herself in the way of Tartuffe as a means of protecting her stepdaughter.⁷ This plan, the first event in the play that offers a plausible challenge to Orgon’s arbitrary decision, is announced by Dorine to Damis: ‘Laissez agir les soins de votre belle-mère. / Sur l’esprit de Tartuffe elle a quelque crédit; / Il se rend complaisant à tout ce qu’elle dit, / Et pourrait bien avoir douceur de cœur pour elle’ (‘let your stepmother / Handle the fellow… / She has some influence on Tartuffe’s mind. / He acts in a very obliging way to her. / Maybe he has a kind of weakness for her’; 3.1.834–837). This statement does not yet offer a turning-point in the plot but signals a shift from what we could call the homosocial economy to the heterosexual economy. Whether or not Orgon’s attraction to Tartuffe should be described as homoerotic, and there is a considerable body of criticism that proposes this view, so far the play has shown bonding between men to be the paramount factor. Orgon’s stated aim is to make Tartuffe part of his family. As he told Mariane, ‘je prétends, ma fille, / Unir par votre hymen Tartuffe à ma famille’ (‘I intend, daughter, / to unite through your marriage Tartuffe with my family’; 2.2.453–454). Mariane is a token serving to negotiate Tartuffe’s status within the family; acquiring Mariane’s hand, Tartuffe acquires much besides, and as far as we know Tartuffe places little value on Mariane herself. From the other perspective, from Orgon’s standpoint, it seems as if he is giving Mariane to Tartuffe to acquire Tartuffe as a member of the family, to anchor him so that he remains available. Tartuffe finally appears in the second scene of act III, unbeknownst to him watched by a hidden Damis (thus setting up the trap of the hidden internal spectator that we see again in act IV when Orgon is invisibly present for Tartuffe’s performance). His first scene is marked by the mention of several objects, one of which we see and three of which remain as ‘virtual’ props: small, mobile objects that could be used on stage but which in this instance are only mentioned. All four serve to characterize Tartuffe. The three virtual accessories are a hair shirt and a small whip (both instruments of penitential ⁷ Julia Prest sees Elmire as even more active in seeking sexual pleasure: ‘rather than being a female exemplar who helps resolve the Tartuffe situation as is often stated, her function within the play is in many ways a disruptive one; she is a catalyst to the disintegration of the Orgon household and in practice contributes little toward the resolution of a plot that teeters on the brink of a tragic outcome’ (‘Elmire and the Erotics of the ménage à trois in Molière’s Tartuffe’, Romanic Review 102, no. 1–2, January 2011: 129). Prest’s view is very close to the one we are presenting here, in that it is highly plausible that Elmire finds Tartuffe an attractive alternative to her husband. This general line of reasoning finds its scenic expression in Jacques Lasalle’s 1983 production of Tartuffe (the film version of which is Gérard Depardieu’s Tartuffe, 1984).

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practice) and coins. We hear about them in Tartuffe’s first lines—the very first things he says in the entire play, and thus particularly important in establishing the spectator’s first direct impression of this controversial individual: Laurent, serrez ma Haire, avec ma Discipline, Et priez que toujours le Ciel vous illumine. Si l’on vient pour me voir, je vais aux Prisonniers, Des aumônes que j’ai, partager les deniers. Put my hair shirt away and my flagellator, Laurent; and pray for heaven’s continual grace. If anyone wants me, say I’m off to the prison To give away the charity given me. (3.2.853–856)

The visible object, a stage-prop in the most literal sense, is a handkerchief that Tartuffe offers to Dorine to cover her décolleté: ‘Avant que de parler, prenez-moi ce mouchoir’ (‘Before you speak, please take this handkerchief ’; 3.2.859). In asking the servant to cover her breast ‘ce Sein, que je ne saurais voir’ (‘Cover that bosom which I must not see’), he draws attention to Dorine’s body, considered as sexually arousing. Though their verbal exchange is brief, it is significant that it is about sex, or perhaps more precisely about the erotic, that is, about the imaginative processing or construction of the body as sexual. The very first things that we hear about in this scene, our first sight of Tartuffe, concerns sexualized bodies, his and Dorine’s. While the hair-shirt and the whip may not have acquired the popular status of erotic accessories that they so vividly enjoyed after Sade, the imaginary relation between religious discipline, pain, and the erotic was far from unknown to early modernity.⁸ At the very least, the mention of these two devices, which are both symbolic and useable, draw attention both to Tartuffe’s body as such, as one which is clothed and unclothed and as one that is the locus of sensation. They also designate Tartuffe’s body as that of a sinner, and the mortification of the flesh can easily lead to speculation that the flesh is being mortified specifically to atone for (and to forestall) sins of the flesh. Although Dorine interprets Tartuffe’s opening mention of his haire and his discipline by exclaiming ‘Que d’affectation et de ⁸ Domna C. Stanton, ‘Sexual Pleasure and Sacred Law: Transgression and Complicity in “Vénus dans le cloître”’, L’Esprit Créateur 35, no. 2 (1995): 67–83. See also Emily Hunter McGowin, ‘Eroticism and Pain in Mechthild of Magdeburg’s “The Flowing Light”’, New Blackfriars 92, no. 1041 (2011): 607–622.

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forfanterie’ (‘Eyewash and affectation…’; 3.2.857), Tartuffe’s implied sinfulness is fully consistent with his subsequent claim to be sexually aroused by the glimpse of Dorine’s breast. What is so wonderfully ambiguous in Molière’s characterization of this male character is that hypocrisy and truth can be signified together by Tartuffe’s gesture with the handkerchief. As we learn later, he does have sexual thoughts, desires, and intentions. He is highly aware of the female body. And a gesture that could be pure hypocrisy, the wish to appear to be exceptionally scrupulous and to live in complete austerity, may also be a manifestation of a real struggle for self-control. The immediately following scene (a meeting requested by Elmire) continues the representation of Tartuffe as an aggressive sexual being. Molière has Tartuffe immediately broach the subject of Elmire’s health, no doubt to mark once more the difference of attitude between Orgon and Tartuffe regarding Elmire. In fact, Tartuffe pronounces the word santé twice within his first four lines of dialogue and enquires in detail about the fever that Elmire had suffered. While the spectator is well prepared to consider Tartuffe an imposter, there is no reason to consider his interest in Elmire insincere. He seems to have nothing to gain in terms of his position within the household by flattering her. Neither she nor anyone else in the family has as much influence on Orgon as Tartuffe does. His interest in Mariane—if indeed Tartuffe has any interest in Orgon’s daughter—can easily be explained in terms of material gain and even more broadly social status. That is exactly what Dorine’s insistence on his poverty suggests. But Elmire can offer Tartuffe only herself. She is here to bargain with him, knowing that he is attracted to her and thinking that she can use that attraction to her person (in the physical sense) to save Mariane from the suddenly decided marriage. Tartuffe first clarifies for Elmire that his attempts to limit the visits she receives are not the result of any hostility. This links nicely with Dorine’s interpretation in the opening scene of the play and the suggestion that Tartuffe is jealous of Elmire and wants to keep other men away from her. Once Elmire accepts his assurance of benevolence, Tartuffe’s approach to Elmire becomes very quickly physical. This is not what one would have expected from such an expert manipulator of appearances and from someone so able to mimic the discourse of piety. On the other hand, we know that another of Tartuffe’s gifts is an exceptional ability to recognize the needs or wishes of those whom he wishes to influence and from whom he expects to obtain something. Out of all the people he saw in church, how otherwise would Tartuffe have found Orgon, whose character he seems quickly and unerringly to have recognized? So here in the case of Elmire we can suppose that he recognizes a woman in

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a particularly vulnerable position. A woman who has, in his view, something very desirable and important to give him: her sexual self. The term ‘sexual self ’ is not crystal clear. Can it ever be? Are the contours of the sexual desires and the sexual identity of any individual ever entirely clear, to the person herself or himself or to other people? Yet the term allows us to avoid simply reducing a person to a body, what would easily, in the seventeenth century, have been conceivable as a machine. Instead, Elmire’s sexual self is animate—that is, again in the terms of the time, a machine that contains anima (ˆame or esprit). Tartuffe seeks Elmire’s consenting sexual, physical, interaction—the body and the mind together. He is clearly more interested in Elmire than in Mariane, who may be as young as Mariane, though perhaps older, given that Mme Pernelle thinks that Elmire should be a role model for Orgon’s daughter. Elmire may be more beautiful than Mariane. She may have a more pleasing character. She may, most of all, convey in some perceptible way that she is seeking male attention. She may simply radiate a mature charm. Elmire’s mother-in-law suspects as much, and Tartuffe may also make this supposition. Tartuffe does not waste much time trying to elicit from Elmire any evidence that she holds him in esteem. This is not a courtship like that in Corneille’s Le Menteur in which the protagonist seeks the benevolence of the woman he pursues by impressing upon her his achievements. Instead, Tartuffe takes Elmire’s hand and squeezes her fingers, then puts his hand on her knee which he caresses at sufficient length for Elmire to exclaim that she is ticklish and for her to move her chair away. Tartuffe’s next gesture is presumably towards her breast, since he comments on lace, ‘Mon Dieu, que de ce Point l’ouvrage est merveilleux!’ (‘Really, this lace is marvellously done!’; 3.3.919). There is likely to be lace edging Elmire’s bodice. While touching her in these two instances, Tartuffe pretends to be enjoying the sensuality of the fine fabric, and these references to textiles continue a metonymic practice that begins the previous scene, when Tartuffe offers his handkerchief to cover Dorine’s tempting breast. Exactly what he did with Dorine is left to the discretion of the person staging the play. Does Tartuffe place the mouchoir in Dorine’s hand? Or does he attempt to place it on her chest, thus giving him a chance for the kind of caress that he subsequently bestows on Elmire? We know, at least, that in the early performances he handed over the handkerchief without further looking at her—ostentatiously performing a strict, self-imposed chastity that we soon discover is entirely false.⁹ In any event, Molière imparts to clothing a very strong ⁹ ‘Il tire son mouchoir de sa poche, et le lui présente sans la regarder,’ wrote François de La Mothe Le Vayer reporting the first performance of the play in the ‘Lettre sur la comédie de l’imposteur’, in Œuvres complètes, 2:1177.

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erotic charge right from the first scene of the play, where Madame Pernelle blames her daughter-in-law for dressing in a way that will attract the wrong kind of attention from men other than her husband. The lace gives Tartuffe a pretext no only to touch but to look closely at Elmire’s upper body, seemingly to admire in detail the minute perfection of the lace, and to comment in laudatory terms that can be taken as praising both the clothing and the person wearing it. At this moment Elmire is certain of the power of her charms to influence Tartuffe, and she begins negotiation, asking him if it is true that that Orgon is going to give Mariane in marriage to Tartuffe. He immediately indicates that marriage to Mariane is not his principal aim: ‘Ce n’est pas le bonheur après quoi je soupire’ (‘That’s not the happiness I languish for’; 3.3.926).

The First Meeting: Tartuffe as Seducer There are two scenes in which Elmire and Tartuffe converse. They are so similar that the term ‘variant’ is appropriate for describing them. It is as if we see the ‘same’ scene replayed, as if a playwright wanted to tweak details before settling on a definitive form. We know, of course, that this is not the case, and yet both act III, scene 3, and act IV, scenes 5 and 7, are theatrical in a way that the rest of Tartuffe is not. It is tempting to describe them as forms of play-within-a-play, complete with an internal spectator. The first time around, Damis, hidden in a small nearby room, is watching and listening to his stepmother with Tartuffe, while the second time around it is Orgon, under a table, who is hearing his wife with Tartuffe. In the first instance, Elmire and her pursuer are not aware that they are being watched. So, we may conclude that only the second time around are the conditions present for true theatricality, except that Tartuffe the first time, is still performing as a dévôt (a devout person). We can evaluate his bravura performance in different ways, depending on the intention we attribute to him—in this, as in so much else, the Tartuffe offers a plethora of interpretative (and directorial) possibilities. Most of what Tartuffe says in III, 3 has a double meaning. Our choice is between a set of ‘ironic’ utterances (in the sense of saying one thing with the understanding that will be understood to mean the opposite) and a set of deliberately deceitful utterances. Certainly the audience of the play enjoys the way Tartuffe codes his sexual approach to Elmire in the language of piety, but what remains open is Tartuffe’s understanding of Elmire’s understanding of Tartuffe. That is, does Tartuffe suppose that Elmire is dupe of his pretense of religiosity? And does

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he suppose that she will believe what he says—that she will be deceived at his performance of innocent intentions? Or is this a form of erotic play, in which he believes that she will enjoy the wit—indeed, the galanterie—of his irony? In turn we need to ask what Elmire is up to. When she says, ‘C’est que vous n’aimez rien des choses de la Terre’ (‘You don’t love the things of this earth’; 3.3.929), does she actually believe that? Or is she hoping that by saying that—given that the entire family except for Orgon and his mother consider Tartuffe a hypocrite—she will oblige him to remain in his role and thus back off from any more aggressive move? Whatever her intention, Elmire’s profession of belief in Tartuffe’s religious sincerity leads to the first of the two long speeches in which he recounts in passionate terms his adoration of Elmire. The first of these (3.3.933–960) remains in a relatively intellectual register, essentially dogmatic theology. He reasons that Elmire is the sensible representation of God, insofar as the beauty of God can still be perceived in a world after the Fall. Taking a position closer to that of the Jesuits and to François de Sales than to the Jansenist view of Pascal, Tartuffe claims that in his admiration for Elmire he is loving God in Elmire’s image, and he offers his heart to her as if she were God himself. Her guarded response expresses surprise. She urges Tartuffe to more selfcontrol and to consider his reputation as a devout person (‘Un Dévot comme vous, et que partout on nomme…’ (‘A pious man like you, so widely known—’; 3.3.965). This statement remains unfinished, interrupted by Tartuffe, yet it is worth noting that Elmire’s language remains equivocal; perhaps more opaque than her interlocutor’s, but still sufficiently favourable to Tartuffe as to justify his assumption that she is open to his advances. And in fact, perhaps she is. She has taken a wait-and-see position that allows her to appear to him as a perfectly faithful and modest wife without rejecting his courtship, one that she recognizes as such by her use of the key word galant: ‘La déclaration est tout à fait galante’ (‘This is a gallant declaration indeed’; 3.3.961). Just as Tartuffe has located a discourse from Christian sources that still allow leeway to have a worldly application (which, precisely, is part of the appeal of de Sales, whose emphasis on sweetness and beauty would be less immediately frightening to those not yet deeply initiated into Catholic devotional austerity), so too Elmire has chosen an adjective with a highly permissive range. On one hand galant conveys the meaning of being sociable and polite (‘Honneste, civil, sociable, de bonne compagnie, de conversation agreable. Galant homme. galante femme’) without sexual implications; yet on the other hand it may also imply flirtation and courtship:

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Il signifie aussi, Un homme qui cherche à plaire aux Dames, & dans ce sens on met Galant aprés de substantif. C’ est un homme fort galant. On dit, d’ Une femme coquette, qu’ Elle est galante […] Mais il se dit plus ordinairement de celuy qui fait l’ amour à une femme mariée, ou à une fille qu’ il n’ a pas dessein d’ espouser. Le mary & le galant ne s’ accordent pas. il en fait le galant, pour dire, Il en fait l’ amour. It also means, A man who seeks to be attractive to Ladies, and in this sense one places Galant after the noun: C’ est un homme fort galant. One says, of a woman coquette, that Elle est galante […] But it is said most often about a man who courts a married woman, or an unmarried woman he does not intend to marry. The husband and the galant cannot be combined. he acts the gallant, to mean, He is in amorous pursuit.¹⁰

Tartuffe finds in Elmire’s comment the permission that he seeks to become more specific, to the point of suggesting an adulterous relationship. Whereas only a few verses previously he had justified his ‘passion’ as compatible with religious strictures and not a diabolic temptation (3.3.945–946), he now admits that his feelings show that he is no angel (‘je ne suis pas un ange’ (‘I am not an angel’; 3.3.970). More concretely he assures her that if she were willing to share her favours with him (‘vos bontés’ 3.3.983; ‘faveurs’ 3.3.992), he would be much more discreet than worldly lovers, the boastful ‘Galants de Cour’. At this point Elmire makes it clear without equivocation that she knows exactly what sort of pleasure Tartuffe proposes that they share. And ‘share’ seems to be the right word. It is worth pausing here to consider what Tartuffe has offered Elmire. He has in no way suggested that he will coerce her or even offer her something in return for her ‘favours’ other than mutual pleasure. In other words, he presumes that Elmire will be interested in an adulterous relationship provided that it is kept secret. He is sure of her desire or her need and sure that he can satisfy that need. He presents himself as Tartuffe, object of erotic desire, a quite different view of his character and his person than that earlier conveyed by Dorine to Mariane. Again, Elmire does not refuse him, nor does she manifest any kind of distaste. This could be simple diplomacy on her part, since, as she shortly says, she is going to bargain with him. What she offers Tartuffe is silence—which is one of the things that he had offered her. She does not offer the favours that he seeks; though, on the other hand, she does not exclude them. She simply says that she will not tell her husband about the matter at hand: ‘Je ne redirai point ¹⁰ Académie Française, Le dictionnaire de l’A cademie française.

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l’affaire à mon Époux’ (‘I’ll not repeat the matter to my husband’; 3.3.1015). What she requests in return is that Tartuffe promote Mariane’s marriage to Valère and renounce any material gain (that presumably would be part of the marriage settlement). She does not ask him to cease his courtship. Perhaps she would have, or perhaps not. In any event, we will never know how that thread of this story would have gone, since at this precise moment Damis bursts out of his hiding place and destroys the delicate negotiation. If negotiation is defined as ‘A discussion or process of treaty with another (or others) aimed at reaching an agreement about a particular issue, problem, etc., esp. in affairs of state; an instance of negotiating’ (OED), then the term seems to fit what Tartuffe and Elmire are doing. One aspect of negotiation has probably always been mutual uncertainty on the part of the negotiating partners. Neither Tartuffe nor Elmire wishes to give away the information of exactly what they are willing to offer and what they will require in return. For both secrecy is paramount, and both are in a potentially compromised and compromising position. At stake for each of them is a carefully constructed and maintained outward image. Tartuffe is poor and apparently without other access to power in Paris except through Orgon, and the latter is under the spell of an ineffable vision: un homme … un homme, enfin (‘a man … a man, then…’), a sort of je ne sais quoi of Tartuffe’s piety. Elmire is a well-dressed, socially active, perhaps flirtatious married woman who nonetheless seems to have established a reputation of virtue. Of virtue? What assurance do we have on this point? The answer is not far to seek, since Tartuffe himself is the witness. He would not risk his reputation—his only capital—by trying to seduce someone who would ‘out’ him. They are thus potentially perfect partners if they can agree on terms. And we, the spectators, do not actually know what those terms might have been. Tartuffe does not know what Elmire will finally offer to reinstate Mariane’s marriage with Valère, and we do not know what he will demand or give. And the spectators of the play theoretically know less than either of these two negotiators, because the process is then interrupted. For spectators of this play in the seventeenth century it must have been obvious that this scene (3.3) fits a paradigm of enormous interest for worldly and scientific circles of the time: the problem of the interrupted game, the hypothetical situation that has become known from Pascal’s work on the problem of points. One of the most important things to note about this moment in the play is that so far only one thing has happened: Orgon has changed his mind about Mariane’s betrothal to Valère and has decreed that she will marry Tartuffe. And so, we have arrived almost exactly at the mid-point of Tartuffe (verse 1000

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out of 1962 verses) when Damis bursts out of his hiding-place and destroys Elmire’s work. But Elmire is the only one in the play who has taken a concrete initiative to overturn Orgon’s diktat. No one else has proposed anything except delay—in fact, the play that Molière has constructed consists of delay (as does Le Misanthrope three years before, as well as Les Fˆacheux of 1661). We seem, therefore, to be on the verge of a breakthrough, the second actual event in the play. And it is Elmire who has called for the negotiation, who has seized the initiative, and not Tartuffe. What did Elmire have to offer at the beginning of this now interrupted scene? As far as we know she had absolutely nothing to give Tartuffe except … herself. Sensing—as many in the family, and particularly Dorine, apparently do—that the family guest is besotted with Orgon’s wife, Elmire could certainly have hoped that she could use some form of affectionate or physical enticement to Tartuffe in exchange for renouncing the planned wedding. But it would necessarily have been some major concession on her part for the obviously randy hypocrite to give up the prospect of marrying a much younger woman and the associated financial advantages. Or, Elmire may have calculated that Tartuffe would make a sexual advance that was sufficiently explicit so that she could blackmail him into accepting her demand. That second option was definitively wasted by Damis’ interruption, since this information, or accusation, would only have value as long as it was held in reserve. What Damis did was take the capital that Elmire created and give it away without obtaining anything in return.

The Second Seduction Scene: Elmire as Seducer The second conversation between Elmire and Tartuffe takes place in act IV, scene 5, almost like an exercise in dramatic improvisation, in which a director asked the actors to change places. Now it is up to Elmire to try to seduce Tartuffe, in many senses playing the tartuffe herself. While in act III the two partners to a negotiation are unaware of being watched and are playing only for one another, in the later scene one knows that there is an unseen audience while the other fears as much. The initiator of both scenes is Elmire, and yet in the earlier instance Tartuffe does most of the talking. This is understandable, for the ball is in his court (so to speak): the mere fact that Elmire has offered to meet with him privately is already an enormous favour and an opportunity. He takes very slight initial steps to avoid showing his intentions too quickly, but only because he is not yet sure how far Elmire will let him go. But having been

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surprised once before (by Damis), now he is aware that he may be watched, and he is extremely suspicious about Elmire’s motives. We only need compare Tartuffe’s initial greeting in the first and the second scene to see how differently he presents himself. In the earlier instance he opens with a warm and flowery compliment in a devout register (‘Que le Ciel à jamais, par sa toute bonté…’ (‘May heaven, by its high, omnipotent mercy…’; 3.3.879), whereas now he starts with a statement that is so lacking in formulas of politeness that it verges on hostility: ‘On m’a dit qu’en ce lieu vous me vouliez parler’ (‘I understand you wish to speak to me’; 4.5.1387). There is no longer any trace of the religious rhetoric of before; here we have only two adversaries, a woman and a man. Elmire must now seduce Tartuffe and, reckoning as she does with his extreme suspicion, she must herself adopt a symmetrically extreme position. Now there is only one thing that she can offer: a sexual relationship with Tartuffe. What she seeks from Tartuffe is now not a concession, not that he call off the marriage with Mariane and not even that he renounce the inheritance that he will now receive from Orgon. The stakes are much higher for Elmire than they were in the preceding act, but the only thing that she is now asking from Tartuffe is that he explicitly state that he is ready to engage in such a relationship. Elmire speaks now in the language of a partnership, one that is already established; she speaks in terms of a nous, a ‘we’, in terms of shared interests. Speaking of Damis’ eruption into their earlier conversation she says, ‘Une affaire pareille à celle de tantôt, / N’est pas assurément ici ce qu’il nous faut’ (‘We certainly don’t want a repetition / Of what took place a little while ago’; 4.5.1391–1392). Whereas the earlier encounter between them was exceptional and a concession from her to him as two separate entities, now Elmire presents the two of them as a couple, free to meet in private as they wish, without incurring any risks. Orgon, as she says, ‘veut que nous soyons ensemble à tous moments’ (‘He wants us to be constantly together’; 4.5.1404). What follows is perhaps the most interesting passage of the play, indeed, one of the most unusual in all of seventeenth-century French literature. We often speak of a play-within-a-play, and indeed we can consider this scene precisely as such. But for the moment let us consider it as a discourse-withina-discourse. Just as we can frame one proposition within another and thus alter the apparent meaning of one or the other, so here we have a framing discourse and a core discourse. We, the audience of the play, hear both, as does the internal spectator Orgon, whereas Tartuffe only hears the core. The framing discourse, that is, the introductory comment that offers itself as the key to decode what is coming, is what Elmire tells Orgon after he hides

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himself under the table: ‘je vais toucher une étrange matière’ (‘I am going to deal with an unusual subject’; 5.4.1369). The husband is supposed thus to take nothing of what Elmire says at face value; all is false. Only Tartuffe should believe what she says. Once she has framed her following statements in this way, of course, she is protected. She has absolved herself of any responsibility for her subsequent statements. The statement that she then makes, at length, is quite remarkable for its plausibility, and is worth pondering in detail. Ah! Si d’un tel refus vous êtes en courroux, Que le cœur d’une femme est mal connu de vous! Et que vous savez peu ce qu’il veut faire entendre, Lorsque si faiblement on le voit se défendre! Toujours notre pudeur combat dans ces moments, Ce qu’on peut nous donner de tendres sentiments. Quelque raison qu’on trouve à l’amour qui nous dompte, On trouve à l’avouer toujours un peu de honte; On s’en défend d’abord; mais de l’air qu’on s’y prend, On fait connaître assez que notre cœur se rend; Qu’à nos vœux par honneur notre bouche s’oppose, Et que de tels refus promettent toute chose. C’est vous faire sans doute un assez libre aveu, Et sur notre pudeur me ménager bien peu: Mais puisque la parole enfin en est lˆachée, À retenir Damis me serais-je attachée? Aurais-je, je vous prie, avec tant de douceur, Écouté tout au long l’offre de votre cœur? Aurais-je pris la chose ainsi qu’on m’a vu faire, Si l’offre de ce cœur n’eût eu de quoi me plaire? Why, if you’re angry that I once rebuffed you, Little you understand a woman’s heart! You don’t know what it’s trying to convey, When it defends itself so languidly! Our modesty must always make a struggle Against the emotions which may rise in us. Even though overmastered by our feelings, We always find it shameful to admit them. At first we fight against them; but our manner Ought to make evident the heart’s surrender.

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Is Elmire in fact telling Tartuffe the truth? What she says about the conventional rhetoric of a woman’s reluctance to appear interested in, let alone attracted to, a male suitor is entirely confirmed by other literary sources. How much these reflect actual contemporary social life is another issue, but since we are dealing with the conventional representation of society as portrayed by both female and male authors, Elmire’s series of statements about her earlier conduct towards Tartuffe is consonant with the way a woman attracted to a man would behave in a work of fiction. Of course, it is meant to sound convincing, even to an interlocutor as sceptical as Tartuffe is right to be at this moment. Elmire is, at the very least, a very informed observer of the mores of her time and an excellent speaker. Had Damis not interrupted the previous tête-à-tête, Elmire’s purely verbal consent to a relationship with Tartuffe might have sufficed. It is unlikely that any male of the time would have expected to obtain physical consummation of a sexual relationship at the first conversation. But now he realizes that his negotiating position has improved. Elmire is making advances towards him, instead of the other way around as it was in the previous act. This in itself is reason for him to be suspicious. Why is Elmire so urgent; indeed, so much more urgent than she was only a short while before? He now sees it as a ploy, an ‘artifice honnête’ (4.5.1445) to delay the marriage—which, in fact, it is not, since the trap that Elmire has set now has escalated beyond that aim to the level of completely debunking Tartuffe’s pretence of devoutness. But perhaps there is something else going on here, something that in the following decade would gain considerable notoriety thanks to the writing of Marie-Madeleine de Lafayette: an aveu. Perhaps this scene is overdetermined. Perhaps several things are happening at once, even though those things are in practical terms contradictory. The literature of the seventeenth century is

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full of paradoxical and contradictory impulses, gestures, and actions. In this instance, could Elmire sound convincing because she is sincere? Could her sincerity be a particularly deep form of hypocrisy? Could Elmire be feigning to feign that she is amorously attracted to Tartuffe?¹¹ She has arranged a situation in which she can, first, express sexual desire openly without fear of the physical consequences. She is, after all, counting on the protection of her husband. Secondly, she can make a confession of quite immodest ‘unladylike’ feeling without being blamed by that very husband. This situation, in which she seems to be forced to say what she (perhaps) wishes to say but is by the conventions and rules of her society not allowed to say, belongs to the same family of ironic speech acts that we have seen in L’École des maris. There, Isabelle told her guardian exactly what she desired but did so in deliberately inverted terms. Everything she said she desired was what she found repellent, and everything she said she did not want, was exactly what she wanted. Her guardian and would-be husband served as a transmission device through which the coded messages could pass to her suitor. In Le Tartuffe we again have the configuration of woman, suitor, and guardian/husband, and there is also a message from the woman to her suitor. The men’s participation in the transmission of the message is absolutely essential for the proper understand of the message, and, once again, the woman expects one of the men to understand her intended meaning and the other man to understand the opposite of her intended meaning. But for the spectator the situation in Le Tartuffe is more complicated since we must decide which of the two men is correctly understanding (or is meant correctly to understand) Elmire’s meaning. What does Elmire really want? The portion of the text we have just quoted ends with Elmire’s own decoding of her signifying activity up to the beginning of this present scene (4.5) when she reviews for Tartuffe all that she did during and immediately after act III, 3, and finishes with the question, ‘Aurais-je pris la chose ainsi qu’on m’a vue faire, / Si l’offre de ce cœur n’eût de quoi me plaire?’ (‘Would I have taken the matter as I did, / If I had not found pleasure in your offer?’). If this is indeed the truth, if she did these things with the intention not only of defending Tartuffe but indeed with the so far secret enjoyment of his courtship, then the reason she can say this in complete safety in the presence of her husband is that she knows that her husband will be understanding the exact opposite because ¹¹ Here we differ from some critics who see Elmire as not having control over what is happening in this scene. Roxanne Decker Lalande writes that ‘Elmire must now continue to play out her role in a scene over which she has no control’ (Intruders in the Play World: The Dynamics of Gender in Molières Comedies (Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996), 141.

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she is addressing Tartuffe. From what Elmire told her husband in the preceding scene, he is to understand that she means the opposite of what she tells Tartuffe, just as Valère is to understand the opposite of what Isabelle has told Sganarelle in L’École des maris. If, on the other hand, Elmire were to declare directly to Orgon that she was amorously inclined towards Tartuffe, would he have taken her utterance as ironic? However far-fetched the question may be, and of course, this hypothetical utterance is without context, there is no reason to suppose that Orgon interprets his wife’s utterances as being ironic. However, the presence of Tartuffe is an arrangement or dispositif that would reassure him of such an ironic intent. The words pass through Tartuffe, so to speak, before arriving to Orgon, somewhat in the way Isabelle’s words in the earlier play pass through Sganarelle before arriving to Valère. We see here the paradigmatic case of someone speaking in a situation of persecution.¹² A person not daring to express opinions or wishes openly can nonetheless express them by simultaneously expressing them and, as far as the authorities are concerned, disowning them. So Orgon, as the authority of the household, will assume that what Elmire is saying to Tartuffe is necessarily false because she would not sincerely say these things to another man in his presence. What is more complex here is that Elmire is in a dramatic text, and as a result there are not two, but three receivers of the message: Tartuffe, Orgon, and the spectator. What is the spectator to make of what she says? We can look for comparable situations within the literature of the period. Ten months after the first performance of Le Tartuffe, Racine’s Britannicus appeared on the stage of the Hôtel de Bourgogne.¹³ The similarity of Elmire’s second conversation with Tartuffe (4.5) and of Julie’s meeting with Britannicus in the tragedy (2.6) has often been noted.¹⁴ In both cases a woman speaks about her feelings to the man who occasions or thinks he occasions those feelings; and in both cases the man to whom the woman is overtly speaking is, unlike the woman, unaware that a second man is listening. In both cases what the woman says about her love—and how she says it—is conditioned by her consciousness of being spied upon. Yet the situation in Britannicus is the inverse of what we find in Tartuffe, since Junie is trying to keep her lover from revealing his true feelings about Néron and is trying also to banish from what she says any overt declaration of love. In Le Tartuffe, Elmire on the contrary professes her love

¹² On Strauss, see introduction, pp. 20–22. ¹³ Tartuffe appeared on 5 February 1669, and Britannicus on 13 December 1669. ¹⁴ Raymond Picard, ‘Les tragédies de Racine: comique ou tragique?’, Revue d’histoire littéraire de la France 69, no. 3/4 (1969): 468.

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for Tartuffe (the ‘faible que pour vous, vous voyez qu’ont les Gens’ (‘The inclination a person may have for you’; 4.5.1476) precisely to provoke her suitor into revealing his true attitude towards the listening Orgon. In both situations the woman must choose what she says in function of the double audience. The invisible listener is the one with the greater authority, the greater apparent ability to inflict punishment if he is displeased with what he hears. Junie does not want to say to Britannicus that she does not love him, but she fears to declare her love for him because of the horrible consequences of the jealous wrath of Néron, who has instructed her ‘Renfermez votre amour dans le fond de votre aˆme. / Vous n’aurez point pour moi de langages secrets’ (‘Close up your love in the bottom of your soul. / For me you will have no secret language’; 2.3.680–681). In Elmire’s case, she needs to declare her love for Tartuffe, while making sure that Orgon believes that she is doing so under constraint. Orgon must believe that his wife is speaking insincerely, while Tartuffe must believe that she is speaking sincerely. Junie’s case seems rather simple in comparison to Elmire’s situation, for we have no reason to doubt the various accounts of her love for Britannicus, which becomes even more obvious in subsequent scenes after II, 6.¹⁵ But can the spectator of Le Tartuffe be sure of what Elmire would say if she could speak with entire freedom? Are her professed tender feelings for Tartuffe entirely false? Does she simply flatter Tartuffe for the sole purpose, as she tells her husband, to ‘Faire poser le masque à cette aˆme hypocrite’ (‘To make that hypocritical soul take off its mask’; 4.4.1374)? Jacques Lasalle’s emphatically revisionist staging of Le Tartuffe for the Théˆatre National de Strasbourg (1983) makes a good case for considering alternatives to the conventional view of Elmire. Instead of presenting Elmire as plainly repulsed by the intruder into her family, Lasalle draws attention precisely to the ambiguity of her words, and hence to the potential ambivalence of her feelings. Body language, glances, tone of voice, the rhythm, pauses, and emphasis of certain words—in all these ways the exchange between Tartuffe and Elmire (played by actors who were married in real life) is charged with erotic attraction. When Orgon at long last (4.7) interrupts Tartuffe’s courtship, Lasalle’s staging confers on two verses pronounced by Elmire a raison d’être that they lack in other interpretations. After Orgon’s initial, and as usual intemperate, outburst, Elmire turns to Tartuffe and says, ‘C’est contre mon humeur, que j’ai fait tout ceci; / Mais on m’a mise au point de vous traiter ainsi’ (‘It’s not in my nature to have done all this, / But I’ve been forced to treat you in this ¹⁵ Britannicus III, 7; V, 1, 3, 4; V, 8.

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manner’; 4.7.1551–1552). Why would Elmire say this to a man whose opinion and feelings were of no importance whatsoever to her? She seems to be apologizing to Tartuffe rather than expressing (as she might very well have done) her sense of triumph at having out-deceived the deceiver. Moments later, with Tartuffe’s revelation of the two-phase stupidity (signing his property over to Tartuffe and giving Tartuffe a box containing incriminating evidence) that now puts Orgon entirely in Tartuffe’s hands, all mention of a possible relationship between Elmire and Tartuffe disappears. After this all the attention turns to the desperate situation in which the family finds itself. Its house and probably much else besides has become the intruder’s, and it seems possible that Orgon will be arrested for complicity in a plot against the monarchy. However, the fact remains that the strange interactions of Elmire and her pursuer occupy—quite literally—the central portion of the text.¹⁶ It is perhaps even more important that Elmire’s major activity in the play (one might even say her only function in the play) is to use her charm to obtain concessions from the intruder into the family. Otherwise, she is almost a mute figure. In act I she has 7.5 verses; she does not appear in act II; and in act V she has only 9 verses. But in acts III and IV she has, respectively, 51.5 and 155.5 verses. And the high point of her performance consists of her effort to bait Tartuffe into revealing his sexual intentions. We do not have to believe that Elmire ever would have entered a sexual relationship with Tartuffe to find merit in Lasalle’s representation of an erotic bond between Orgon’s wife and his protégé. What matters much more in the context both of this play and of early modern French society is that Elmire quite plausibly would like to be in a better relationship than the one she has in her marriage with Orgon. With this in mind, what she says about her situation and about the male ignorance of women’s thoughts and feelings has a value that transcends the occasion of its expression: ‘Que le cœur d’une Femme est mal connu de vous!’ (4.5.1412). We can even speculate about the potential irony of Elmire’s statement to Orgon, prior to her effort to seduce Tartuffe: ‘Je vais […] / Faire poser le masque à cette aˆme hypocrite’ (4.4.1374). Of course, she is speaking of Tartuffe, but could the ‘mask’ also be her own?

¹⁶ Le Tartuffe in the definitive form in which we have it, is 1962 verses long. The middle verse of the play is verse 981, which is in act III, scene 3, during the first of the two conversations between Tartuffe and Elmire.

10 Amphitryon The Case of the Perfect Lover

Amphitryon, performed in 1668, shows Molière’s keen awareness of the themes that most touched the cultural world of mid-century France. Although the playwright’s name is rarely mentioned in connection with the novels of MarieMadeleine de Lafayette, which cast such a cruel and revealing light on love and marriage in the following decade, we find in Amphitryon two issues central to her most important works: male insecurity and the difficulty of reconciling passionate love with the institution of marriage. Lafayette’s Zayde, histoire espagnole (1670), tells the story of women and men who are not yet married, unlike the central human characters of Amphitryon, but who wrestle with a similar case of apparent identity theft (the theme of the ‘double’) that long troubles a courtship. And Lafayette’s later, celebrated Princesse de Clèves (1678), posits the incompatibility of two male roles, the lover and the husband. The disenchantment that is so often noted as a prevailing mood of the last third of the century in France seems, in Lafayette’s work to derive from a fusion of, on the one hand, critical writings about marriage by numerous women since at least the mid-sixteenth century, and, on the other, of an Augustinian world view that came to dominate French Catholicism. Molière, who has repeatedly been described by scholars as sceptical and epicurean, is probably the very last writer one would suspect of any sympathy with either of these currents of thought, and yet he was an exquisitely attentive observer of his contemporaries’ preoccupations and knew how to extract laughter from the bleakest of situations.¹

¹ Robert McBride, The Sceptical Vision of Molière: A Study in Paradox (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1977), Antony McKenna, Molière Dramaturge Libertin (Paris: Champion, 2005), and James F. Gaines, Molière and Paradox: Skepticism and Theater in the Early Modern Age, Biblio 17 (Tu¨bingen: Narr Verlag, 2010).

Women and Irony in Molière’s Comedies of Marriage. John D. Lyons, Oxford University Press. © John D. Lyons (2023). DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198887379.003.0011

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A Tragedy in a Comedy For Amphitryon Molière turned to Plautus’s play of that name (187 BCE) and followed the plot closely. The central event is Jupiter’s descent to earth in the form of the Theban general Amphitryon to sleep with the general’s virtuous wife Alcmène. The French playwright introduced only one new character, Cléanthis, Sosie’s wife, while raising the general stylistic level to befit the seventeenth-century conception of aristocratic politeness. The Latin play was the first to be designated in antiquity as a ‘tragicomedy’ (tragicomoedia), but the term could for modern readers be misleading. We may suppose that tragedies require bloodshed and even death, but Plautus makes a point of explaining in the prologue spoken by Mercury that what makes his play ‘mixed’ (commixta) is that there are noble characters: ‘I’ll make sure it’s a mixed play; it’ll be a tragicomedy. Well, I don’t think it would be appropriate to turn completely into a comedy a play where kings and gods come on stage. What then? Since a slave has a role here as well, I’ll make it, as I said, a tragicomedy.’² This distinction in genre disappears from Molière’s play, which is designated a comédie, and accordingly there remains no trace of Plautus’s remark, via the personage of Mercury, about tragedy. But if we really pay attention to the character of Alcmène, wife of the eponymous hero Amphitryon, the tragic core of the plot emerges into sharp focus. First, her husband accuses her of adultery, and on that basis, as we know from dramatic and narrative tragedies of the period, he might very well kill her. And the central incident of the story is a rape—not even a seduction—though disguised. Finally, Alcmène’s absence from the stage at the end of the play is an emphatic absence, rather than an understatement. In a study about what women wish for in marriage and how they express themselves on that topic, it may seem surprising to include a play in which the central woman character appears in only three scenes (act I, scene 3; act II, scenes 2 and 6). Yet the whole play is in an important sense about Alcmène. It revolves around her, it concerns her, and her lack of control over what happens to her makes this play the darkest of all Molière’s comedies. It could be described as a tragedy wrapped in two layers of comedy.

² Plautus, Amphitryon, Loeb Classical Library, trans. and commentary Wolfgang David Cirilo de Melo, vol. 60, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: 2011), 18–19, vv. 58–64.

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Sosie coward and inadequate husband

Amphitryon hero and cuckolded husband Alcmène deceived and repudiated wife

This structure is one that we have, in fact, observed elsewhere in our study of Molière’s presentation of the situation and aspiration of women. The Précieuses ridicules, for instance, can be seen as a light satire of affectation and provincial uncouthness, but that satire has as its basis and as its conclusion the violent affirmation of the right of male suitors to be treated with deference. Here, the comical, even farcical, performance of the cowardly servant Sosie serves to distract from, or to buffer, the more serious and unhappy situations of Amphitryon and especially Alcmène. Within the cultural horizon of seventeenth-century France there are many reasons to perceive a kinship between both Plautus’s and Molière’s Amphitryon and tragedy, if only because neo-Aristotelian poetics so strongly emphasized recognition and mistaken identity as constituent elements of tragic plots. And mistaken identity in tragedy concerned in particular the identity of members of the same family. Aristotle’s prime example of a tragic plot, Oedipus King, includes the incestuous marriage of Oedipus and Jocasta. And even though Jocasta had no idea of the true identity of the man who fathered her children, she committed suicide. Plautus’s prologue steers the spectators’ attention away from this aspect of tragedy, away from misrecognition (and its subsequent recognition) towards the element of class or condition. But it does not take a great deal of imagination for us to see how close comedies of marital infidelity or suspected infidelity can come to tragedies—witness Shakespeare’s Othello. Many of Molière’s comedies involve plots in which a character presents himself or herself as other than he or she really is. Men may claim to be physicians when they are not, they may present themselves under assumed names, they may claim, as does Tartuffe, to profess values in which they do not actually

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believe. But rarely do they go so far as to assume the identity of another person with the result that the latter is perceived as being non-authentic. Amphitryon has today a resonance that it could not have had at the time, since in the twenty-first century everyone fears ‘identity theft’. In the current use of the term such a deceptive fabrication of another ‘person’ with someone’s name can lead to devastating consequences, perhaps even life-threatening ones (in the case of an identity used for criminal purposes), but this modern practice is indirect, document-based, and abstract. It depends on words (usually written) and numbers. The kind of impersonation that appears in Amphitryon is quite different. It supposes a complete replication of the human being to the very most minute detail. While it is a ‘theft’ (in that it does take something away, the unicity of the person and all the abilities that go with that unicity), it is also a reproduction. There is not only one person and a representation of that person, but there are also two outwardly and physically identical persons, such that the most intimate friends and kin cannot distinguish the two. In the case of early modernity such a situation takes place in a society in which ‘identity’ is even more essential than today. One can well ask, ‘how is it possible to find anything more essential than identity? Identity is one’s very being.’ Yet we tend to conceive identity more as existential than as essential. This concept is misleading, yet tenacious. Increasingly those who escape from modern mythology (just as make-believe as that of antiquity) recognize that gender and race (in the sense of distinctions based on skin colour and body type) control people’s life outcomes. But we continue for the most part to construe identity as the result of a combination of what people do and of randomness. Some people work hard, think creatively, have an opportunity, and seize it. Others have a different experience. In both cases what results is an ‘identity’ that was the result of action and event. In contrast, for early modern people, and for the nobility, a fixed identity was theirs from the moment they were born, and there was little they could do to alter it. One is born a duke, a count, a king, or one is born a gardener, a printer, a peasant. With luck, an older brother will die, and a younger will inherit the title and property. Inventiveness, virtue, courage, and hard work will have at best only marginal impact on one’s status or ‘identity’. In Molière’s play there are two humans whose unique identity is denied, and they have very different experiences, modulated according to classical, Aristotelian, views of the distinction between the comic on one hand and the tragic and epic on the other. For the servant or slave Sosie the simple denial of his being as the only Sosie is the most shocking, indeed the only problem. He has,

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as we say, great difficulty wrapping his head around the thought that he is now not himself and yet he is alive. And thus, he wonders what, or rather who, he will be if he’s no longer ‘Sosie’. Sosie’s problem is more essential than his master’s, it concerns his very being and understanding of himself. Aside from his very being, his being ‘Sosie’, he has lost little. Amphitryon, on the other hand, seems little concerned with any threat to his right to call himself Amphitryon. He never refers to the Jupiter who impersonates him as another ‘moi’ as does Sosie (2.1.736). He does not bother himself with questions about reality and delusion. When he first hears from Sosie about his valet’s apparently impossible experience of encountering another himself, Amphitryon’s reaction is a sequence of incredulity, anger, and exasperation, all focused on what he considers the unreliability of the slow-witted lower classes. This is a typical comic routine that appears in other comedies of Molière (such as Arnolphe’s dealings with his servants in L’École des femmes) along with wordplay that by dint of repetition becomes ever more impressive and more absurd: Ce Moi, qui s’est de force emparé de la Porte. Ce Moi, qui m’a fait filer doux: Ce Moi, qui le seul Moi veut être: Ce Moi, de Moi-même jaloux […] It was that me who’s more robust than I; That me who wouldn’t let me in the door; That me who fed me humble pie; Who wants to be the only me, And looks on me with jealous eye… (2.1.812–815)

From the spectator’s point of view, however, the humour comes from the fact that the nonsense represents accurately the facts of the situation. The apparently lame-brained or drunken valet is saying what is true while the reasonable, intelligent nobleman who has not lost touch with normality and common-sense is in the wrong. At this point Amphitryon himself enters the twilight zone of disorientation. But his confusion, unlike Sosie’s, is focused upon and results from his relationship with Alcmène. This is extremely important and sets love and marriage at the centre of Amphitryon’s identity crisis. Encountering his wife who is on the way to the temple to thank the gods for her husband’s military success, he finds

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that she is less thrilled to see him than he had expected. The very first thing that Amphitryon wishes is to be seen by his wife in a favourable light: Fasse le Ciel, qu’Amphitryon vainqueur, Avec plaisir soit revu de sa Femme; Et que ce jour favorable à ma flamme, Vous redonne à mes yeux, avec le même cœur: Que j’y retrouve autant d’ardeur, Que vous en rapporte mon Âme. May victorious Amphitryon Be welcomed by his loving wife anew! May Heaven, which restores you to my view, Restore as well the peerless heart I won, And may that heart look fondly on Your spouse, as he now looks on you! (2.2.851–856)

Alcmène’s spontaneous response, the exclamation of surprise, ‘Quoi! de retour si tôt?’ leads to a considerable number of remarks from the discomfited husband about the parameters of time. Love, as he points out, is measurable in the perception of time: Certes, c’est en ce jour, Me donner de vos feux, un mauvais témoignage; Et ce Quoi si tôt de retour, En ces occasions, n’est guère le langage D’un Cœur bien enflammé d’amour. J’osais me flatter en moi-même, Que loin de vous j’aurais trop demeuré L’attente d’un retour ardemment désiré, Donne à tous les instants une longueur extrême; Et l’absence de ce qu’on aime, Quelque peu qu’elle dure, a toujours trop duré. Those words, I’m forced to say, Don’t welcome me in very ardent fashion. On such occasions as today, To say, ‘What! Back so soon?’ is not the way To manifest a burning passion. I dared suppose that in this case

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You’d feared for me, and missed me; was I wrong Yearning for someone, when desire is strong. (2.2.857–867)

This is quite a fine observation about love, surprising in the mouth of a character whose claim to historical standing is military, and yet who here speaks as if he were an habitué of the Hôtel de Rambouillet, that gathering place for the most polite and witty people of Molière’s day. The playwright gives us in this scene a much more noble, delicate, and indirect apprehension of the situation than was the case with Sosie. Although the equivalent scene in Plautus also hinges on Alcmena’s amazement that her husband has so quickly returned (or rather, that he did not really leave after his night with her but simply lingered nearby to ‘test’ her), Molière makes Amphitryon worthy to be one of the interlocutors in a Scudéry novel as they discuss the nuances of love, the ways of gauging the intensity and probable duration of a passion. Molière’s Amphitryon continues in this vein, affirming, among other things, that ‘Lorsqu’on aime comme il faut, / Le moindre éloignement nous tue; / Et ce dont on chérit la vue, / Ne revient jamais assez tôt’ (‘When we are truly amorous, / The briefest parting is an agony, / And the one whom we delight to see / Cannot come back too soon for us’; 2.2.872–875). Plautus’s character instead immediately begins scolding his wife, making the whole situation into an occasion to enforce conjugal discipline: ‘you used to greet me on my arrival before and to address me the way modest wives normally greet their husbands. On my arrival I’ve found you at home without that habit’ (2.1.711–713).³ A lovers’ quarrel nonetheless ensues in Molière’s play during which Alcmène’s references to the night that she just passed with ‘Amphitryon’ become ever more explicit. At this point there is a shift in Amphitryon as he realizes that he, like Sosie, has a double. It is, of course, to be expected that he would be devastated to think that another man has spent the night with his wife, but what is perhaps surprising, given his fine earlier disquisition on the impatience of lovers, is that his very first thought is for his honour: Ô Ciel! quel étrange embarras! Je vois des incidents qui passent la Nature; Et mon honneur redoute une aventure Que mon Esprit ne comprend pas!

³ Plautus, Amphitryon. Loeb Classical Library, trans. and commentary Wolfgang David Cirilo de Melo, vol. 60, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011.

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His attention here has shifted from his love for Alcmène to his reputation, to how he will be viewed particularly by other men. Thereafter Amphitryon undergoes a torment that is portrayed in all its irony—if by irony we understand a fundamental reversal in which the literal sense of the words has a contrary (reversed) meaning for the hearer. In this case everything that should be good and welcome becomes bad and unwelcome in Amphitryon’s hearing. As Alcmène recounts in detail what she and ‘Amphitryon’ did together the previous evening and night, all the pleasant things, the signs of love and pleasure, sting the husband repeatedly. For instance, when Alcmène describes the way she greeted the returning ‘Amphitryon’ her husband wishes that ‘he’ had not been so warmly greeted: Alcmène L’Histoire n’est pas longue. À vous je m’avançai, Pleine d’une aimable surprise: Tendrement je vous embrassai; Et témoignai ma joie, à plus d’une reprise. Amphitryon, en soi-même Ah! d’un si doux accueil je me serais passé. Alcmène The tale’s not long. I hastened forth to meet you, Full of a pleasurable surprise, Held out my longing arms to greet you, And showed my joy by many happy cries. Amphitryon (aside) Ah! That sweet welcome galls my jealousy. (2.2.996–1000)

On one hand what Amphitryon hears is that his wife loves him and was happy to see him; this should be good news for her husband. But because it was

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someone else who received this greeting and these caresses, all the good news turns to bad news. There is no logical way to provide a new sense of ‘good news’ under the circumstances of the self-alienation into which the husband has been plunged. Although he now says that he would have been better off without such a loving welcome, the alternative would have been that Alcmène would not have been happy to see him and would not have kissed him, and that would have also been bad news about her feelings for him. The ironic reversal of conjugal pleasure turning to pain is even more intense when he hears how intensely Alcmène enjoyed the embraces of the passionate ‘Amphitryon’. What follows is one of the most unusual passages of early modern French literature, for testimonies by women of their own pleasure with their husbands are vanishingly rare. Alcmène describes what had happened between them the night before, telling the apparently amnesiac husband (for she has no way of knowing why he needs to be told what he did just a few hours previous), Votre Cœur, avec véhémence, M’étala de ses feux toute la violence, Et les soins importuns qui l’avaient enchaîné; L’aise de me revoir; les tourments de l’absence; Tout le souci, que son impatience, Pour le retour, s’était donné. Et jamais votre amour, en pareille occurrence, Ne me parut si tendre, et si passionné. with vehemence and art You told me all the passion of your heart (Which martial cares had held in slavery), Your present joy, the pains of being apart, How the thought of me had made you smart With fierce impatience to be free; Oh, never had I known you to impart Your love in such a sweet, impassioned key. (2.2.1003–1010)

Amphitryon, in an aside, expresses his suffering at this account: ‘Peut-on plus vivement se voir assassiné!’ (‘Could a man be put to death more painfully?’; 2.2.1011). The third step of this voyeuristic torture, the moment when Alcmène and ‘Amphitryon’ went to bed, finally drives her human husband to exclaim, ‘ce n’était pas moi’ (‘it was not I’; 2.2.1025).

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Amphitryon finds himself forced to request of his wife details of an incident that can only bring him pain—since he does not share the tastes of the legendary King Candaules, who wished to share his wife’s beauty with Gyges.⁴ Candaules, in other words, wished to have the viewpoint of a third person, enjoying the enjoyment of his wife’s beauty through the intervention of another man. One of the cogent coincidences of this implicit intertext is that Candaules, king of Lydia, was the last of the Heraclids to rule that country. And the Heraclids, as their name indicates, were the descendants of Heracles, Amphitryon’s ‘son’ with Alcmena through Jupiter’s mating with her.⁵ What can we suppose Alcmène is thinking while she recounts what had happened and how she felt? She does not know why her husband has made the strange request that she recount what they had done together, but Molière has arranged that her words convey her enjoyment, as she clearly savours the time she spent with Amphitryon (or, from our point of view and that of Amphitryon himself, with ‘Amphitryon’). We have seen numerous cases in which the women of Molière’s theatre can only express their desire and their aspirations in ironic, reversed, and deliberately coded terms. Here Alcmène is speaking frankly and literally (as far as we can tell), even though the situation itself is an ironic one. That is, the meaning of her words—the understanding of them by the hearer—is the opposite of the simple sense of what she says. In this case the hearers are two: Amphitryon himself and the spectator or reader of the play. But beyond the comic value of this reversal and beyond the pain that the husband feels as he listens, what is important is that the playwright has contrived a situation in which a woman can express enjoyment of an amorous and erotic relationship. It is revealing, both in terms of the cumulative thematic repertory of Molière’s comedies and in terms of his understanding of his audience, that Alcmène’s narrative of what transpired between her and ‘Amphitryon’ is more ample and more enthusiastic than in the corresponding passage of Plautus’s text (where the matter of Amphitryon’s gift to her takes up more time). While the situation itself is highly implausible and only sustains itself dramatically by virtue of the conventional mythic basis of the story with the resultant willing suspension of disbelief, only an implausible situation permits this kind of

⁴ See Kirby Flower Smith, ‘The Literary Tradition of Gyges and Candaules’, The American Journal of Philology 41, no. 1 (1920): 1–37. ⁵ The erotic taste of husbands for such voyeurism takes its name, ‘candaulism’ from this last Heraclid (see Herodotus, The Histories: Norton critical edition, ed. Walter Blanco, trans. Jennifer Tolbert Roberts [New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013], 6–8 [book 1, sections 7–14]. Its most prominent early modern textual representation is Cervantes’s ‘El curioso impertinente’, an episode of Cervantes’s Don Quijote.

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discourse. Hence, paradoxically, Alcmène’s frankness belongs in the category of ironic expression along with what we hear from the Elmire of Le Tartuffe and the Isabelle of the École des maris. In any event Alcmène must presume that Amphitryon has, for some purpose of his own, decided to split himself into two roles, the one active (who was with her in bed the night before) and the other passive (the one who wishes to hear about what they did together). While we understand the play as being a play about doubles, in the sense of the Doppelga¨nger, and Amphitryon understands that he has a look-alike impostor, for Alcmène the doubling—or denial—can only be something internal to her husband. At first she shows relatively little alarm. In fact, she plunges into recollection of the happy, passionate moments that she spent with her husband and takes pleasure therein. It is only when Amphitryon bursts out with the claim that it was not ‘he’ who spent the night with her that Alcmène becomes bitterly disturbed. Since she did spend the night with her husband, his outburst, ‘It was not I’ (2.2.1025) is an insulting provocation, the flimsy pretext for his intention to insult and mistreat her and to accuse her of adultery (2.2.1055). The reason this turn of events is so important is that Alcmène’s husband in his current, hostile form is such a complete opposite, such a complete reversal of the husband with whom she spent the night. What follows Amphitryon’s accusation, when he calls Alcmène ‘Perfide’ (2.2.1029), is a quarrel quite different in tone from the lovers’ quarrel (dépit amoureux) of other comedies (such as Mariane and Valère in Le Tartuffe, II, 4), since Alcmène, with a recourse not open to French women of Molière’s day asserts her right to separate from her husband. Supposing that her husband’s preposterous claim that he did not spend the night with her was only a pretext to end their marriage, she announces her intention to seize the initiative: ‘Tous ces détours sont superflus: / Et me voilà déterminée, / À souffrir qu’en ce jour, nos liens soient rompus’ (‘all this is superfluous: / For I’m determined, on my side, / This day to loose the chains uniting us’; 2.2.1045–1047). This is the only scene in the play during which we see Amphitryon and Alcmène together on stage. We are left to imagine what their conversation might be like once they both know that the man with whom Alcmène spent the previous night was Jupiter and that she was pregnant with Jupiter’s son. In stark contrast to this single encounter of the two human and aristocratic spouses are two other sets of performances of conjugal interaction. There are the appearances of Cléanthis, Sosie’s wife, first with ‘Sosie’ (Mercure) and then with Sosie himself. And there are the two extremely significant encounters of Jupiter as ‘Amphitryon’ with Alcmène. These two appearances of the divine

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lover set forth the most important statements and performances of the criticalfeminist argument to be found in this play. Jupiter is not only the ‘double’ of Amphitryon; he also explicitly makes a distinction that effectively divides the male role vis-à-vis women into two, so that a man can always be seen potentially as double—as the double of himself. And one of the two roles is the good one, while the other is to be shunned, or at least to be considered only an unfortunate. Jupiter, rather than Alcmène, is the one who expresses what he calls a ‘scruple’ about Alcmène’s love: …si je l’ose dire, un scrupule me gêne, Aux tendres sentiments que vous me faites voir; Et pour les bien goûter, mon amour, chère Alcmène, Voudrait n’y voir entrer, rien de votre devoir: Qu’à votre seule ardeur; qu’à ma seule personne, Je dusse les faveurs que je reçois de vous; Et que la qualité que j’ai de votre Époux, Ne fût point ce qui me les donne.

There’s one small thing that troubles me a bit; It would be even sweeter if I knew That duty did not enter into it; That the soft looks and favours that you show me Stemmed from your passion and my self alone, And were not tributes to a husband, shown Because they’re something that you owe me (1.3.569–576)

In the context of the play the significance of these lines, so evident to the spectator or reader, escapes Alcmène and occasions humorous appreciation of the équivoque (or as one says in English ‘double entendre’). The god seeks to be loved for ‘himself ’ even though he is unwilling to reveal the self which would cause the virtuous wife to flee in horror. But while this dramatic irony provides a very routine comic pleasure of the sort enjoyed from antiquity to today, Jupiter’s statement of desire reflects a set of serious and often controversial issues from early modern society. While Jupiter’s initial statement of his desire centres unsurprisingly on the male desire to be appreciated (or validated) for ‘himself ’, the conversational exchange with Amphitryon’s wife exposes the limits of women’s’ power with respect to love, sex, and marriage. She responds,

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C’est de ce Nom pourtant, que l’ardeur qui me brûle, Tient le droit de paraître au jour: Et je ne comprends rien à ce nouveau scrupule, Dont s’embarrasse votre amour. It’s because you are my spouse that my devotion Has any right to be expressed; I don’t quite understand this sudden notion That’s making trouble in your breast. (1.3.577–580)

Marriage is obligatory in several senses. Despite the spontaneous and allencompassing desire that Alcmène feels (and her terms make it clear that this is a physical desire), only within marriage can this desire be satisfied according to social constraints. Conversely, and understood though not made explicit here, even if Alcmène felt no inclination to her husband she would be obliged to fulfil her sexual and reproductive duty. Since she is, up to this point, a happily married woman, who finds all she wants in Amphitryon, she has apparently not bothered herself about the finer points of galanterie, that is, about play, pleasure, and what we would call the psychology of emotions—those aspects that in literary history have been described as analyse, as when M.-M. de Lafayette’s novels are called romans d’analyse. In Jupiter’s explanation of his ‘scruple’ Molière displays a virtuoso irony of the dramatic kind, that is, where the significance of the words is available to the theatrical or literary audience but not to the character in the play: Ah! ce que j’ai pour vous d’ardeur, et de tendresse, Passe aussi celle d’un Époux; Et vous ne savez pas, dans des moments si doux, Quelle en est la délicatesse. Vous ne concevez point qu’un Cœur bien amoureux, Sur cents petits égards s’attache avec étude; Et se fait une inquiétude, De la manière d’être heureux. En moi, belle, et charmante Alcmène, Vous voyez un Mari; vous voyez un Amant: Mais l’Amant seul me touche, à parler franchement; Et je sens près de vous, que le Mari le gêne. Cet Amant, de vos vœux, jaloux au dernier point, Souhaite qu'à lui seul votre Cœur s'abandonne; Et sa passion ne veut point,

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As is so often the case in his comedies, the speaker is literally speaking the truth, uncovering what is taking place, and yet the immediate listener—the person directly addressed—does not (and is not expected to) understand this truth. The playwright underscores this form of irony with the adverb franchement (frankly), pointing to the literalness of his utterance but in a way that cannot possibly be understood by Alcmène. The insistence on the literal and serious import of his words appears later in the scene when he tells Alcmène that what he is saying is not frivolous but ‘plus raisonnable […] que vous ne pensez’ (‘There’s much more sense in what I say / Than you

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suppose, Alcmena dear’; 1.3.612–613). The choice of the verb voir (to see) is exquisite, because it conveys Alcmène’s perception of the person speaking to her. There are many forms of ‘identity theft’, but what is specific to the Doppelga¨nger theme is the visual replication of a person. So, when Jupiter says that Alcmène sees in him a husband and a lover, he is both stating her experience and at the same time winking at the spectators who know that she is mistaken. In stating that the husband ‘bothers’ him (le gêne), what Jupiter says has one meaning for Alcmène and two for the spectator. Both Amphitryon’s wife and the spectator can understand that ‘Amphitryon’ is referring to his quality or role as husband, as one of the many roles that a person can have in life, such as, for instance, military commander. So, we can understand that the husbandly side, the official aspect of his relation to Alcmène, bothers him. He wishes her to consider him only as the object of her spontaneous, unconstrained desire. Yet only the audience can understand that ‘the husband bothers him’ in the sense that Amphitryon’s arrival from the battlefield interferes with Jupiter’s dalliance with Alcmène. In this aspect the word mari does not refer to Jupiter-‘Amphitryon’s’ role as husband but to an entirely distinct person, the physical entity who is at that very moment approaching the palace. Subsequently Jupiter’s words veer back from this comical equivocation to the anti-marriage doctrine that from time to time, and despite the risk of censure, was making itself heard. Marriage is a nœud, a knot or bond, and this term would in most contexts have no negative connotations, but here the bond or binding suggests constraint, coercion, and hence even the possibility of having to undergo something repugnant. The bond is not associated with love (it is not the nœuds de l’amour) but with Hyménée, in other words with the institution that officializes a relationship, and that is only an irritating and unpleasant duty. Jupiter is therefore bothered by the thought that Alcmène’s interactions with him—their lovemaking—might be the result of constraint or at least of resigned compliance rather than sincere and uninhibited amorous love. This is an unpleasantness of a curiously dialectical kind. We could look on it as selfish, as centred on Jupiter’s own pleasure and even vanity (this matter of being loved ‘for himself ’), but we can also look on it as generous, insofar as he does not want Alcmène to have to do anything that she does not find pleasurable. He wants her to be free, while at the same time to choose him. He expresses a vision of a society of free association, a society of pleasure, the exact contrary of the Church’s teaching on marriage as we find it in François de Sales.⁶

⁶ See the Introduction, pp. 8–11.

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An important nuance of Jupiter’s position here—his statement of what he wishes—is that he does not express the desire to be loved as Jupiter. There is something utopian about the vision that he presents. It is not a matter of a rivalry between Jupiter and Amphitryon. That is the basic plot onto which Molière has grafted a more complex, interesting, timely, and culturally significant message. If it were merely a rivalry between two male persons, one divine and one human, for the love of a woman, then Jupiter could simply reveal himself and hope to be loved, or at least preferred, for his greater powers. The Christian doctrine of the Annunciation, familiar to Molière’s first audience, contains Mary’s acquiescence to bear the child of God the Father for the simple and explicit reason that it is the wish of God, and Mary is respectful (apparently without question) of the divine will. In striking contrast, Jupiter, in Amphitryon, does not wish to be loved as Jupiter but rather to be loved as a lover, in other words, not as a god. If he were to reveal his identity he would add the kind of constraint or inauthenticity that he so vehemently rejects. He seeks to pare away the identities that Alcmène perceives in him, such as victorious general, husband, respected Theban, so that she can love him purely as a lover. In Molière’s play we see ‘Amphitryon’ (that is, Jupiter) in act I before we see the real Amphitryon in act II. We do not glimpse Alcmène’s husband in his best light. As we have noted, he is—unlike Jupiter—quite preoccupied with his role as husband, his public role as husband, and not extremely attentive to the subtleties of a man’s relationship with the woman he loves and is married to. But we do see Jupiter a second time with Alcmène, in act II, scene 6, where ‘Amphitryon’ tries to repair the damage caused by the human husband’s outrage. This scene results from the dispute (the quiproquo or misunderstanding) between the real Amphitryon and Alcmène in act II, scene 2, and such a scene of reconciliation between ‘Amphitryon’ and Alcmena exists already in Plautus (verses 882–955). Let us return to the key issue raised in Jupiter’s speech as ‘Amphitryon’ when he distinguished between the ‘husband’ and the ‘lover’ (I, 3). Molière was keenly attentive to the issues discussed by his contemporaries, and he would have identified two important and related themes of discussion in the salons of his day: the distinction between husbands and lovers, on one hand, and male insecurity with respect to their attractiveness as lovers. These themes were amply developed in the conversations of the intelligentsia of the period, as we can infer from texts purportedly deriving directly from such conversations, such as La Rochefoucauld’s Maximes, as well as from the novels of Madeleine de Scudéry and Marie-Madeleine de Lafayette. We need not suppose that

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Molière was referring to any of the printed versions of such discussions; his plays amply demonstrate a knowledge of the key flashpoints of gender relations that animated the conversations of his day. A decade or so before Amphitryon, there is much talk of lovers and husbands in Scudéry’s Clélie, histoire romaine (1654–60), which has come down in literary history as the source of the celebrated carte de tendre. And a decade after the first performance of the play, Lafayette’s Princesse de Clèves (1678) took up the distinction between lover and husband in a much more sombre vein. In Clélie, as Jo¨rg Steigerwald has pointed out, discussions of the finer points of friendship and love distinguish between what a person owes to a spouse in marriage (which is a relationship framed by duty) from what a person gives to someone he or she loves, which is based on mutual pleasure.⁷ Lover and husband are thus distinct roles, though not necessarily contradictory ones in this galant theorization. But this distinction can be an opposition, a real problem, as we can see from this lengthy statement by a woman character in Clélie: Je vous assure, dit Valérie, qu’il est plus difficile que vous ne pensez, d’être un bon mari, un agréable amant, et un fort honnête homme; car pour être amant, il faut être esclave; pour être mari avec honneur, il faut être maître; et pour être un fort honnête homme, il ne faut être ni le tyran, ni l’esclave de sa femme. Je soutiens même qu’il y va de l’honneur de celles qui ont de bons maris, de leur laisser une autorité qui paraisse aux yeux du monde, quand même par excès d’amour, ou par quelque autre cause, ils n’en voudraient pas avoir, et qu’une fort honnête femme ne doit jamais souhaiter qu’on dise qu’elle est la gouvernante de son mari, mais seulement qu’elle a du crédit sur son esprit, qu’il l’estime, qu’il la croit, et qu’il l’aime, et non pas qu’il lui obéit aveuglément, comme s’il était incapable de se conduire par lui-même. Mais aussi ne trouvai-je pas bon, qu’un mari fasse éternellement le mari, et le mari impérieux…⁸ I assure you, said Valérie, that it is more difficult than you think to be a good husband, an agreeable lover, and a gentleman; because in to be a lover, one must be a slave; to be a husband with honour, one must be a master; to be a true gentleman, one must neither be the tyrant nor the slave of one’s wife. I maintain even that for the honour of the women who have good husbands, they must cede to them an apparent authority, even if the husband, ⁷ Jo¨rn Steigerwald, ‘L’oiconomie des plaisirs. La Praxéologie de l’amour galant: à propos de la Clélie’, Zeitschrift fu¨r Franzo¨sische Sprache und Literatur, 118, no. 3 (2008): 252. ⁸ Madeleine de Scudéry, Clélie: histoire romaine, ed. Chantal Morlet-Chantalat (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2001), vol. 3, 130.

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through excessive love or for some other reason, did not wish to have such authority, and that a respectable woman should never hope that people say that she dominates her husband, but only that she has a certain influence on his thinking, that he respects her, that he believes her, and that he loves her, and not that he obeys her blindly, as if he were unable to conduct himself alone. But neither do I find proper that a husband be always a husband, and an imperious one…

Two years after the first performance of Amphitryon, Marie-Madeleine de Lafayette published her novel Zayde, in which two of the principle male characters are tormented by the fear of having a Doppelga¨nger.⁹ Both the Spanish nobleman Consalve and Alamir are in love with the title character, the mysterious Zayde, and each is convinced that she is in love with the other. But what makes Lafayette’s novel particularly useful as a way into the contemporary questionings about the male ‘self ’ and male insecurities about who is loved when a woman loves a man, is that both Consalve and Alamir suffer constantly from a sense of dispossession from himself when dealing with women. Consalve’s case is relatively simple and is based on a simple misunderstanding. He thinks that Zayde is in love with a man who looks like him. In other words, he thinks he has a Doppelga¨nger. But Alamir’s worry is more immediately pertinent to what Jupiter says to Alcmène when he distinguishes the ‘lover’ from the ‘husband’. Alamir too longs to be loved simply as a lover, and he shuns two roles that he perceives as corrupting love: his identity as potential husband and his identity as the Prince de Tarse. He engages in complex and even mortally dangerous manoeuvres to conceal his identity from a series of women with whom he is infatuated to maintain the ‘purity’ of their love. In one instance, for example, when he has courted a woman under the name of a subaltern, he finds himself in an impasse. He wanted to see a young woman named Elsibery, ‘mais pour la voir, il fallait se faire connaître pour le Prince de Tarse, et c’était à quoi il ne pouvait se résoudre. Le plaisir d’être aimé par le seul agrément de sa personne, le touchait si fort qu’il ne voulait pas s’en priver’ (‘yet to see her, he would need to make himself known as the Prince of Tarsus, which was precisely what he could not allow. The pleasure of being loved for the attractiveness of his person alone touched him so strongly that he couldn’t bear giving it up’).¹⁰ In order to go further, he must reveal his name and rank, ⁹ Marie-Madeleine de Lafayette, Zayde, histoire espagnole, in Œuvres complètes, ed. Camille EsmeinSarrazin, Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 2014), 89–278. Originally published under the name of Segrais. ¹⁰ Zayde, 232. English translation from Lafayette, Zayde: A Spanish Romance, trans. Nicholas D. Paige (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 155. Hereafter page references will be first to the French edition and then to the English translation.

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but in revealing his social identity he feels certain that his ‘self ’ will no longer be the object of the woman’s love: ‘je ne saurais me résoudre à apprendre ma naissance à Elsibery; je perdrai en la lui apprenant ce qui a fait le charme de mon amour; je hasarderai le seul véritable plaisir que j’aie jamais eu.’ (‘there is no way I can resign myself to apprising Elsiberry of my true birth; in telling her, I would lose what made for the charm of my love in the first place; I would put the only real pleasure I’ve ever known at risk…’).¹¹ Indeed, as soon as he does reveal his identity, his feelings for Elsibery suffer, but not because of anything she has done. It is entirely a result of his own incapacity to accept that his ‘self ’ and his social identity are inseparable. He finds henceforth that any expression of affection on his lover’s part is suspect: ‘cette joie lui fut suspecte: il crut que le Prince de Tarse y avait part, et qu’Elsibery était touchée du plaisir de l’avoir pour amant’ (‘for him this joy was cause for suspicion: he thought that the Prince of Tarsus had something to do with it and that Elsibery was touched by the pleasure of having such a man for a lover’).¹² And the word mari, that title so shunned by Jupiter, is poisonous to Alamir, because he supposes that women wish to possess him not as lover but as husband. Before falling in love with Elsiberry he had courted Naria, but as soon as she mentioned marriage Alamir lost interest: ‘Naria croyait m’aimer […] mais elle aimait mon rang, et celui où je pouvais l’élever. Je n’ai trouvé que de la vanité et de l’ambition dans toutes les femmes; elles ont aimé le Prince, et non pas Alamir […] Naria m’a parlé de m’épouser, aussi bien que les autres’ (‘Naria thought she was in love with me, but she was in love with my rank and the rank I could give her. I’ve never found anything but vanity and ambition in women; they have loved the Prince, but not Alamir…. Naria spoke of marrying me just as every other woman has’).¹³ Lafayette’s representation of male characters embodies a new ideal of male love and helps us understand the importance of Jupiter’s vehement expression of the wish to separate his role as lover from his role as husband. What Amphitryon’s Doppelga¨nger tells Alcmène derives from the ongoing discussions about gender, love, and marriage that are reflected in many sources in Molière’s day. There is, of course, the paradox that in Amphitryon as in Lafayette’s Zayde the male characters wish to maintain all their privileges and prerogatives while enjoying the fantasy of some elusive authenticity that would assure them that the woman had neither been coerced into an amorous relationship nor attracted by the man’s social attributes. Yet this dream of an entirely free, ¹¹ Zayde, 241 /163. ¹² Zayde, 242 /163. ¹³ Zayde, 226–227 /151.

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truly idyllic, love relationship is related to a long-standing fascination with an ideal love that was hard to reconcile with the economic, social, political, and religious constraints institutionalized in marriage. The discussions of love and the depictions of its incompatibility with marriage that appeared in the early to mid-seventeenth century seem to be a revival of the fin amors of the twelfth century. How can a husband be certain that his wife’s ‘love’ is not simply the performance of a duty? How can a husband be sure that he is loved ‘for himself ’?¹⁴ Within Molière’s comedies, Jupiter’s expression of this worry is quite exceptional. Neither Alceste in Le Misanthrope, Tartuffe or Orgon in Le Tartuffe, and certainly not Arnolphe in L’École des femmes trouble themselves about what might make them lovable or desirable in the eyes of the women they are courting or to whom they are married. There are faint intimations of the problem in some Corneille plays, but these are never expressed in the strict, oppositional terms that we see in Jupiter’s contrast of lover and husband. Dorante in Corneille’s Le Menteur seeks ways to increase his attractiveness to women and thinks that if he presents himself as a warrior he will have more success with women than if he admits the truth that he has a legal education and absolutely no military experience. However he never parses his identity in any serious way, does not expect his outward show of profession to be any more than a pretext as what we would call a pick-up line (phrase d’accroche, technique de drague), and never expresses the slightest worry that his material prospects or family connections will in any way vitiate the purity or the sincerity of the love he hopes to obtain from one of the women to whom he is attracted. In Corneille’s Le Cid and in Cinna, the eponymous male characters consider that it goes without saying that they will be loved because of their merit, that is, because of the successful exercise of violence within a political framework (i.e., in an act of importance to the state). Although they are aware, even tormented, by the contradictions inherent to this conception of love, they do not situate these contradictions within their conception of their ‘self ’ but rather within the complexities of the society to which they belong. In other words, Rodrigue in Le Cid fights in a duel against the father of the woman he loves precisely because he knows that her love for him depends on his bravery and commitment to duty. In this way he has a unitary conception of himself. In contrast to the refinement and scruple of Jupiter’s speeches to Alcmène stand the frank carnality and sensuality of the woman character that Molière invented when he adapted Plautus’s play. Cléanthis, Sosie’s wife, does not have ¹⁴ Michel Feher, ‘L’amour conjugal chez Denis de Rougemont, ou la gracieuse absurdité du mariage’, Esprit, no. 235 (8/9) (1997): 33–51.

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a corresponding model in the Roman play.¹⁵ Did Molière add this figure simply to give a role to members of his company? Is Cléanthis there to give a certain symmetry to the whole? Whatever the point of departure for this character, in the text that we have Cléanthis is part of an upstairs/downstairs contrast in the expression of women’s views of sexuality. In the case of Jupiter as ‘Amphitryon’ we have a paragon of galant male interaction with a woman. But Mercure as ‘Sosie’ is eager to depart, clearly not attracted to the woman his role assigns him to, and thus provokes from her scolding and lessons on what he should do. We learn from their exchange that ‘Sosie’ is doing the opposite of what a woman expects from a man. He is in a hurry to get away, brusque and laconic, not realizing the importance of words. So Cléanthis must spell out for him what she wants: ‘partir ainsi d’une façon brutale, / Sans me dire un seul mot de douceur pour régale?’ (‘So! You take leave of me in brutal style, / Without one loving word or tender smile!’; 1.4.638–639). Mercure confirms a contrario Jupiter’s repudiation of the husbandly role. Casting oneself in the role of the husband means no longer needing to court a wife but prevailing on the basis of obligation and duty. Whereas the role Jupiter wishes to perform, and that Alcmène so much appreciates, is the role of the perennial lover or suiter. For Mercure’s ‘Sosie’ it is just so; the husband, as time passes, runs out of things to say: ‘Quinze ans de Mariage épuisent les paroles; / Et depuis un long temps, nous nous sommes tout dit’ (‘In fifteen years of marriage, talk runs dry. / We’ve said our say to each other, long ago’; 1.4.642–643). The exchange with Cléanthis continues in this vein, with Sosie’s wife emphasizing the difference between ‘Sosie’s’ behaviour and ‘Amphitryon’s’ so that taken together Molière presents the right way and the wrong way for men to speak with women. Mercure is, we know, not really Sosie, and he is the god of orators, and thus master of speech (and master of deception). Just as Jupiter incarnates an idealized form of Amphitryon, Mercure ‘idealizes’—in an ironic, reversed, and paradoxical way—Sosie. In this context ‘to idealize’ means to represent the idea of Sosie, the representation of Sosie as the antithesis of his master, much as Sancho Panza is the antithesis of Don Quixote. So, an ideal in this sense does not mean ‘better’ in an ordinary sense, but rather closer to the pure conception of the character. The representation of character types such as the braggart, the irascible man, the coward, the miser, and so forth, was a highly developed area of poetic and artistic (beaux arts) in Molière’s day and clearly one of the playwright’s strong points. ¹⁵ Plautus’s play includes a woman servant named Bromia, who has little in common with Molière’s Cléanthis and is not married to Sosia.

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So, when we hear this ‘Sosie’ speaking to Cléanthis, we find the ideal lover, Jupiter’s ‘Amphitryon’, in an inverted form. The idea that, as Mercure says, ‘In fifteen years of marriage, talk runs dry’ we find a conception of discourse that is radically at odds with the galant form of language, which cannot exhaust itself and which does not aim at simple empirical reference but aims at giving pleasure through the exchange of words themselves. Sosie himself, the human one, does not encounter his wife until later (II, 3) and does not perform such a grotesque representation of oafishness. The comic device is parallel, in an upstairs-downstairs way, to the encounter of the real Amphitryon with his wife and the subsequent need for the husband to learn what had happened on his supposed earlier return. In terms of dramatic structure, the two parallel scenes in which Amphitryon and then Sosie each request from his wife a narrative of what transpired during ‘his’ previous visit are quite unusual in the theatre of the period. Narratives, récits, are much used in French theatre at this time, usually to inform the audience of off-stage events. In Amphitryon, on the other hand, we hear characters retell several incidents that we have already seen. For the spectator or reader of the comedy there is an effect of what centuries later, on television, became known as the ‘instant replay’. But the difference is that the ‘replay’ or récit permits us to understand how the woman participant experienced the earlier incident. We hear how Alcmène and then Cléanthis experienced the interaction with the impostor husbands, and we also see how their real husbands react both to the incident and to the wife’s feelings about it.

What Women Want Le Tartuffe and Amphitryon are very different plays with very different stories, but they have in common that the life of a married couple is a key part of the plot. These plays belong to a minority, since most comedies concentrate on the incidents that precede marriage. And others, such as Les Femmes savantes and George Dandin, that do represent the unhappy life of a married couple, make the love affair or courtship of another, younger couple the major motor of the action. The relationship between the couple in the existing marriage and the nascent couple in a courtship takes various forms in these plays. For instance, in both Le Tartuffe and Les Femmes savantes a married woman has little happy interaction with her husband, and this unhappiness has an impact on the opportunity for a happier relationship in the case of a younger woman. In Le Tartuffe, Elmire engages in negotiations with a view to allowing

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her stepdaughter to marry the young man the stepdaughter loves, while Elmire herself holds out the possibility (whether this is realistic or not) that she will engage in an extramarital affair with a man much more ardent than her husband. In the case of Les Femmes savantes, on the other hand, a mother tries to force her daughter to marry the man to whom the mother herself is attracted (we need not assume that Philaminte is sexually attracted to Trissotin, but clearly she finds him a more prestigious and interesting potential husband than her own). What Le Tartuffe and Amphitryon make clear is that the simple happy ending of most comedies, when two young people who may not know one another very well (e.g., L’École des maris) are finally allowed to marry, is only a beginning. Molière’s sceptical view of marriage reflects that of novelists in his period, particularly his contemporary Marie-Madeleine de Lafayette. What a wife wishes for, these plays seem to say, is a man who remains a lover and who does not settle into the habits of a husband. The lover is constantly seeking to please, whereas the husband, assured of possession, is no longer attentive, and perhaps not even faithful. This conceptual centre of the plays displays itself more explicitly in Amphitryon, where among the principal characters only the god Mercure is unmarried. Both Alcmène and Cléanthis are dissatisfied with their husbands. In the case of Alcmène, this unhappiness arises after she has had an experience with a husband who is (unbeknownst to her) literally divine. As an aristocratic woman within the habits of the seventeenth-century French stage she does not express her wishes as crudely and directly as does Cléanthis, but the message is the same: women want the courtship and the loving attention to continue.

Conclusion Don Juan and Célimène: adversaries or allies?

Comedies usually conclude with a wedding. But Molière’s Le Festin de Pierre (the play that has traditionally been known as Dom Juan or Don Juan) begins with one, or rather with the sequel to a wedding. It is fitting that this brief study of Molière’s comedies of marriage and the role of irony as a tactic should conclude with some consideration of this controversial comedy. With this play several threads of our discussion come together with particular clarity: the theme of women’s’ aspirations to control their destiny, the use of verbal and situational irony in the comedies, the implicit and sometimes explicit critique of the Church, the patriarchal family structure, and the institution of traditional marriage itself, and the role of pleasure in social life.

The Galant Context To understand Don Juan’s interactions with women we need to think about what gives him pleasure and what draws women to him. Throughout Molière’s comedies there is a pattern of opposition between, on one hand, the pleasuredenying imposition of a marriage partner and, on the other hand, the pleasureseeking aspiration to free choice of spouse. We can state this more simply as the contrast between marriage resulting from the father’s choice and marriage resulting from the daughter’s or son’s choice in a process of courtship. In the tradition of paternal choice, there is no room for courtship. To the extent that anyone is ‘courted’ in the traditional model, that person is the father, as in Tartuffe’s conquest of Orgon’s affections in Le Tartuffe. Only when the father’s control is weakened can the pleasure of the marriage partners themselves (and particularly that of the woman) emerge. This pleasure is not simply anticipation of the emotional and physical pleasures to come after the wedding but instead the enjoyment of courtship, flirtation, mutual discovery, overcoming of obstacles, and deferral. This is what Molière’s contemporaries called galanterie. Galanterie was a concept promoted by and associated with women, particularly with the writings of Madeleine de Scudéry, and linked with other Women and Irony in Molière’s Comedies of Marriage. John D. Lyons, Oxford University Press. © John D. Lyons (2023). DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198887379.003.0012

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terms such as préciosité, salons (or ruelles), honnêteté, and politesse. Before wading into the thicket, we can note the main lines of what was at stake. Everything in galant sociability threatened, to a greater or lesser extent, the power and the values of the father-dominated family and the more austere teachings of the Catholic Church. The galant society was one in which men and women interacted for the purpose of pleasure. Traditional marriage was an institution in which men and women were not supposed to interact for the purpose of pleasure. In galant society men were expected to speak and act in ways pleasing to women, and for the critics of galanterie, as Lewis Seifert has shown, to grant women the power to determine norms of conduct and discourse was considered by many male contemporaries to be a betrayal of masculinity.¹ But what about marriage? The plots of comedies as well as of most early modern novels move towards the union of a pair of lovers. Since antiquity the plots of comedies and novels (such as the Aethiopica of Heliodorus) required obstacles to separate the lovers, creating suspense and ratcheting up longing). Scudéry was not only the theorist of galanterie but also a novelist with a tendency towards plots like those of Heliodorus with almost hyperbolic obstacles and delays arising to prolong the loving couple’s union. But her novels also theorized delay as an aesthetic and psychological requisite of love.² The galant aesthetic values deferral and the enjoyment of exploratory interaction between men and women. This can be overtly a form of courtship, but may also be at least initially only a friendship, or even a rivalry. The ambiguity itself can be delicious, in a situation in which women are going to make the decisions: whom to marry, or not to marry at all. Molière’s most explicit representation of the galant model comes early in his career, in Les Précieuses ridicules, which is often seen as an attack on women’s influence in society. It is the contention of this study that far from opposing the preference of the young women characters in that play, Molière uses humour to establish the social aesthetic of Cathos and Magdelon as fundamentally sympathetic in its opposition to Magdelon’s father Gorgibus (who simply wants to arrange marriages for them strictly on the basis of money) and to the two

¹ The male of the galant salon was satirized as effeminate: ‘In an obvious caricature of the commonplace injunction to seek out the refining influence of women, Sorel claims that his galants desire nothing other than to become wholly like them’ (Lewis Carl Seifert, Manning the Margins: Masculinity and Writing in Seventeenth-Century France [Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009], 84). ² Gerard-Chieusse writes ‘La vision précieuse, comme nous avons pu le voir chez Madeleine de Scudéry, fait du mariage et de l’accomplissement érotique les deux principales menaces contre la pérennité de l’amour, une vision que Mme de Lafayette ne manque pas de partager.’ (Madame de Lafayette et la préciosité, 671).

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suitors the father approves, Du Croisy and Lagrange, who consider themselves entitled to ask whatever they want of women and make no attempt whatsoever to learn to please and persuade.³ Like the ‘incels’ (involuntary celibate males) of the twenty-first century, these two suitors feel entitled to marry the two young woman without learning what the women want and without making themselves attractive partners. They are ‘deeply suspicious and disparaging of women, whom they blame for denying them their right to sexual intercourse’.⁴ In the seventeenth century, as today, women did not agree that males have a ‘right’ to demand sexual pleasure and marriage from any woman. On the other hand, the model of conversational interaction so important to the seventeenth century allowed men the opportunity to be pleasing and held forth the possibility that, with social skills, charm, personal hygiene, and luck, they might find a partner. This is precisely what Cathos expects of suitors, and she protests that Du Croisy and Lagrange are simply taking for granted that they have a ‘right’ when instead they need to merit the attention of women: Le moyen de bien recevoir des gens qui sont tout à fait incongrus en galanterie? Je m’en vais gager qu’ils n’ont jamais vu la carte de tendre, et que billets doux, petits soins, billets galants, et jolis vers sont des terres inconnues pour eux. Ne voyez-vous pas que toute leur personne marque cela, et qu’ils n’ont point cet air qui donne d’abord bonne opinion des gens? venir en visite amoureuse avec une jambe toute unie; un chapeau désarmé de plumes […] How could one properly receive people who are completely ignorant of gallantry? I wager that they never saw the carte de tendre and that tender notes, obliging gestures, courtly messages, and pretty verses are unkown worlds to them. Don’t you see that their very appearance shows that, and that they don’t have that certain air that makes you think well of people? to come courting without the proper hose and with a hat lacking feathers […] (Les Précieuses ridicules, 4.p.11)

Magdelon touches an even more essential aspect of the galant when she emphasizes the process of courtship, which takes time, and which offers its own pleasures even while marriage (and thus socially permitted sexual pleasure) is deferred: ³ Speckhard, Anne, Molly Ellenberg, Jesse Morton, and Alexander Ash. ‘Involuntary Celibates’ Experiences of and Grievance over Sexual Exclusion and the Potential Threat of Violence Among Those Active in an Online Incel Forum’, Journal of Strategic Security 14, no. 2 (2021): 89–121. ⁴ Niraj Chokshi, ‘What Is an Incel? A Term Used by the Toronto Van Attack Suspect, Explained’, The New York Times, 24 April 2018.

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Mon père, voilà ma cousine qui vous dira, aussi bien que moi, que le mariage ne doit jamais arriver, qu’après les autres aventures. Il faut qu’un amant, pour être agréable, sache débiter les beaux sentiments; pousser le doux, le tendre, et le passionné, et que sa recherche soit dans les formes. Premièrement il doit voir au Temple, ou à la promenade, ou dans quelque cérémonie publique la personne dont il devient amoureux; ou bien être conduit fatalement chez elle […] Il cache, un temps, sa passion à l’objet aimé, et cependant lui rend plusieurs visites […] Father, my cousin will tell you, just as well as I, that marriage should never occur until after the other adventures are over. A lover, in order to be acceptable, should be able to toy with noble fancies, and play the gamut of emotion, sweet and tender and impassioned. And he should woo according to the rules. First he should see the future object of his affections in church, or on the promenade, or else he should make a fatal visit to her house […] For a while he hides his passion from the loved one, but nevertheless he pays her a few calls… (Les Précieuses ridicules, 4.p.10)

Ian Maclean sums up the aspirations of many women who read Scudéry’s novels (and later Lafayette’s) as ‘a universe in which love is deified, but only that which has been purified from constraint, from considerations of convenience and financial gain, from the dangers of habit and monotony. It is, in fact, the love of the world of the novel, where the lover displays infinite patience, where adventures and dangers serve to keep passion alive, where marriage is always just out of sight’.⁵

Don Juan’s Ironic Approach to Marriage In most of the plays we have studied in this book, women use irony against literalistic men. Women either say one thing to mean another (that is, to convey a non-literal meaning to the intended receiver) or/and they manage in various communicative ways to reverse the situation and create situational ironies (so that the male adversary’s tactics are turned against him). But in the case of Le Festin de Pierre, the male protagonist is by far the most skilled in verbal irony. And he implements a form of performative irony that is central to our topic: he ironizes the institution of marriage itself. There are various ways in which ⁵ Ian Maclean, Woman Triumphant, Feminism in French Literature, 1610–1652 (Oxford, New York: Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press, 1977), 153.

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we recognize irony in discourse. There is Leo Strauss’s proposal that irony can be signalled to a particularly select audience by a hapax, that is, by a single mention of a dangerous concept that the speaker denounces. In Strauss’s view, simply transmitting the idea may be enough to keep it alive for future generations to adopt and implement in better times.⁶ On the other hand, repetition combined with contradiction is more likely to make the irony apparent, so that the speaker’s meaning is understand not only by a happy few but by many. Either way, in terms of transmitting a controversial message, what is important is to make it stand out in contrast to the background, that is, to the prevailing norm. This second path is the one that Don Juan (or Molière through the character of Don Juan) takes regarding marriage. By marrying again and again, in an age when marriage was a commitment for life, he empties the institution of meaning. Le Festin de Pierre begins with a discussion of marriage.⁷ Don Juan’s valet Sganarelle is talking with Gusman, the valet of Elvire. She has come to find Don Juan, who has recently helped her escape from a convent, married her and then disappeared. Gusman is shocked to hear Sganarelle describe her quest as useless, and asserts, on behalf of Elvire, ‘Mais les saints nœuds du mariage le tiennent engagé’ (‘But the man is bound by the sacred ties of marriage; 1.1.p.850). Sganarelle does not expressly deny that Don Juan married Elvire, but tells Gusman than Don Juan has often ‘married’ women and that this legal and religious institution is without value to his master: ‘un mariage ne lui coûte rien à contracter’ (‘it costs him nothing to be wed’) and he is ‘un épouseur à toutes mains’ (‘a full-service marrier’; 1.1.p.851). Marriage is also the topic of Don Juan’s conversation with Sganarelle in the following scene, where the aristocrat denounces the ridiculous practice of monogamy, the idea that one should ‘se piquer d’un faux honneur, d’être fidèle, de s’ensevelir pour toujours dans une passion, et d’être mort dès sa jeunesse pour toutes les autres beautés qui nous peuvent frapper les yeux’ (‘to be proud of a false honour, to be faithful, to bury oneself eternally in a single passion, and to be dead, from youth onward for all the other beauties that might appear’; 1.2.p.852). These words are part of a veritable manifesto of non-monogamy. Indeed, the manifesto-like quality of Don Juan’s statement is underscored by Sganarelle’s immediately subsequent comment, ‘comme vous débitez; il semble que vous ayez appris par cœur cela, et vous parlez tout comment un Livre’ (‘the way ⁶ See in Introduction, pp. 20–22. ⁷ Le Festin de Pierre is very often discussed without reference to marriage. For a recent example see Romain Bionda, ‘La Vérité du drame: lire le texte dramatique (Dom Juan)’, Poétique: revue de théorie et d’analyse littéraires 181, no. 1 (2017): 67–82.

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you talk; it seems as if you learned that by heart, and you talk just like a book’; 1.2.p.853). This theoretical disquisition is followed by a practical application. Don Juan tells Sganarelle that he has come to the place where he and Sganarelle are speaking (‘cette Ville’) to follow a young woman: ‘la personne dont je te parle est une jeune fiancée, la plus agréable du monde, qui a été conduite ici par celui même qu’elle y vient épouser’ (‘the person I am telling you about is a young fiancée, the most attractive in the world, who has been brought here by the man she has come to marry’; 1.2.p.855). In the next scene, when Elvire arrives, apparently in the hope that she was wrong to believe that he had abandoned her. She asks to hear, ‘de votre bouche les Raisons de votre départ’ (‘from your own lips the reasons for your departure’; 1.3.p.857). The audience of the play already knows the reasons, and initially Don Juan refuses to answer, but then he decides to give an ironic, even sarcastic, reply; one that is not a lie but clearly intended to be understood by Elvire as a mockery.⁸ He claims that he has been troubled by religious scruples, given that he had helped her flee from a convent: Je vous avoue, Madame, que je n’ai point le talent de dissimuler, et que je porte un cœur sincère, je ne vous dirai point que je suis toujours dans les mêmes sentiments pour vous, et que je brûle de vous rejoindre, puisque enfin il est assuré que je ne suis parti que pour vous fuir, non point pour les raisons que vous pouvez vous figurer, mais par un pur motif de conscience, et pour ne croire pas qu’avec vous davantage je puisse vivre sans péché; il m’est venu des scrupules, Madame, et j’ai ouvert les yeux de l’ˆame sur ce que je faisais […]. I assure you, Madam, that I have no talent for dissembling, and that my heart is utterly sincere. I shan’t tell you that my feelings are unchanged, and that I burn to be with you again, for the plain truth is that, when I took my departure, I was in flight from you—not at all for the reasons which you may imagine, but for pure reasons of conscience, and from a conviction that it would be sinful to live with you any longer. I’d begun to feel qualms about my ⁸ Richard Goodkin writes of Elvire’s quest, ‘Done Elvire is searching for a discourse of desire which in another genre might well be developed at length, but that theater does not allow a forum for that development; by contrast the novel does’ (How Do I Know Thee? Theatrical and Narrative Cognition in Seventeenth-Century France [Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2015], 183). Goodkin’s comment on Elvire wish for verbal reassurance from her former lover follows Goodkin’s brilliant analysis of Les Précieuses ridicules, in which he shows the affinity of seventeenth-century women for the novel, or, in Goodkin’s pithy formulation, ‘Men are from theater, women are from narrative’ (Goodkin, 169). Jacques Guicharnaud emphasizes that Don Juan is not lying to Elvire but rather being deliberately ironic: ‘Il ne désire pas qu’Elvire croie à son scrupule; bien au contraire, il veut qu’elle sache qu’il ment.’ To make your interlocutor aware that you are saying the opposite of what you know to be true is not, we know, ‘lying’ (Molière; une aventure théˆatrale: Tartuffe, Don Juan, Le Misanthrope. [Paris: Gallimard, 1963], 218).

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conduct, Madam; I opened the eyes of my soul, and bade them look upon my actions… (1.3.p.858)

Because she had taken religious vows as a nun, she is the sinner, and to remain with her (and hence to maintain his own vows at the time of the wedding) would be sinful: ‘j’ai cru que notre mariage n’était qu’un adultère déguisé’ (‘I realized that our marriage was nothing but an adultery in disguise’; 1.3.p.858). Don Juan’s performance of ironic ‘sincerity’ takes its place as one of the most artful and insulting retorts in Molière’s comedies, rivalled surely only by Célimène’s reply to Arsinoë’s reproaches in Le Misanthrope.⁹ However odious this declaration to Elvire is, Don Juan’s words contain an element of truth. Both partners to this marriage engaged in a defiance of the repressive institutions by which men and women—but especially women—were limited in early modernity. A man was expected to marry for the purpose of transmitting property and status from one generation to the next, and not for the purpose of emotional or physical satisfaction. And women were required to marry the man chosen by their father, or to remain unmarried (and controlled by their father or brothers), or to enter the convent. All three scenes of the first act of Le Festin de Pierre are thus a critique of compulsory marriage, and this third scene extends the critique to the specific alternative form of marriage that was available to (or forced upon) women: the possibility of becoming ‘spouses of Christ’.¹⁰ Throughout this first act of Le Festin de Pierre we can see that a striking characteristic of Don Juan’s doctrine of amorous pleasure is repetition. What he specifically rejects is the singleness of the institutional commitment of matrimony. Molière’s play differs in this respect from the subsequent development of the Don Juan figure in Lorenzo da Ponte’s libretto for Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni (Il dissoluto punito ossia il Don Giovanni, 1787), in which there is an emphasis on sheer quantity.¹¹ Molière’s Don Juan on the other hand simply always wishes to be pursuing and enjoying a new attraction. His goal is to maintain a certain quality of pleasure, living in the present, enjoying the newness of the experience, and not competing with anyone for a record of women ⁹ Molière, Le Misanthrope, ou l’Atrabilaire amoureux in Œuvres complètes, 1: 689–691 (3,4). On Don Juan’s irony see the chapter ‘Anamorphoses’ in Patrick Dandrey, Dom Juan ou la critique de la raison comique (Paris: H. Champion, 1993), 113–142. ¹⁰ The Catholic Encyclopedia, article ‘Nuns’ (https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11164a.htm). ¹¹ The famous aria ‘Madamina, l’elenco è quello’ is sung by Don Giovanni’s servant Leporello in act one of Don Giovanni to Elvira, stressing the quantity of women his master has seduced: 640 in Italy, 231 in Germany, 100 in France, 1003 in Spain.

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seduced. In rejecting marriage, Molière’s protagonist affirms the primacy of pleasure, the woman’s right to select her partner, the woman’s right to expect to be courted.¹² Yes, Don Juan is a deceiver. As he appears to each woman in turn, he is too wonderful to be true. But at the moment they encounter him, women recognize that he embodies something they want. He offers to respect them, to please them, and not to use physical or institutional violence to force them to submit themselves. It is, of course, all based on an illusion, the illusion that he loves them. But this illusion corresponds to a real desire.

Don Juan and Célimène In a brilliant, now classic article, Jules Brody explored the similarities of Le Festin de Pierre and Le Misanthrope, and in particular the similarities of the two characters of Don Juan and Célimène.¹³ Although Brody never goes so far as to describe Don Juan as a male version of Célimène, his comments point us towards that conclusion. ‘There are’, Brody writes, ‘strong personalities in Molière who manage somehow to assert their individuality without ever being grazed by comedy, as if their existence were exempt from the laws governing the common destiny of mankind. Don Juan and Célimène, for example, succeed, in the very situations where their antagonists fail, in imposing themselves upon the world […] they are never made to pay the price of ridicule’.¹⁴ Both of them use ‘politeness’ as a ‘staple currency’ to pay debtors and suitors. Politeness in this context is interchangeable with irony, as Brody acknowledges when he later remarks on Don Juan’s ‘ironic acknowledgments of indebtedness’ which ‘have, as if by magic, made his words mean the opposite of what they say’.¹⁵ We can build on Brody’s insights to recognize that both characters charm their many lovers and suitors. Both appear to be exactly what men (in the case of Célimène) and women (in the case of Don Juan) desire. Both use language ironically. Sometimes the irony is immediately apparent to their interlocutor, ¹² Joan DeJean argues that Molière’s Don Juan is ‘easily the least sexy of that character’s incarnations’ (e.g., when compared to Mozart’s) and that ‘[Molière’s masterpiece] displaces energy away from sexuality and onto money and mercantile concerns.’ This does not, however, seem to be the experience of the women characters in the play, though it is true that the protagonist’s wealth and fashionable elegance are part of his erotic appeal. (DeJean, ‘The Work of Forgetting: Commerce, Sexuality, Censorship, and Molière’s Le Festin de Pierre’, Critical Inquiry 29, no. 1 (2002): 59. ¹³ Jules Brody, ‘Don Juan and Le Misanthrope, or the Esthetics of Individualism in Molière’, PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 84, no. 3 (1969): 559–576. ¹⁴ Brody, 559. ¹⁵ Brody, 563.

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but other times the receiver only later becomes unhappily aware of a difference between apparent and real meaning. These two protagonists also have in common that they do not submit to the institution of marriage, though both have already been married, though in his case the marriages have lost any real meaning. In different ways, however, they enjoy the process that leads towards marriage. Since Célimène is already a widow at age twenty (and no longer in mourning, hence independent for presumably more than a year), we can surmise that her father had chosen for her a wealthy, much older husband. Not having enjoyed the experience of being pursued by numerous potential husbands, she is enjoying the process of courtship, every day feeling that she is desired, unequalled, admired for her wit as well as for her beauty. Both she and Don Juan must juggle several potential partners simultaneously, trying to keep each of them unaware of the full extent of her and his dealings with their rivals. And most of all, the plays in which we find Célimène and Don Juan do not end with the marriage of the protagonist. As Brody writes, Le Misanthrope, ‘the play by Molière that deals most explicitly with the problem of happiness’ shares with Le Festin de Pierre that it is ‘the only one, along with Don Juan, to lack a happy ending’.¹⁶ Of course this is true in the traditional sense that comedy should end with a marriage.¹⁷ Don Juan understands how to please women in social interaction. This makes him the enemy of the male establishment, which we have seen represented by the Sganarelle of L’École des maris, the Arnolphe of L’École des femmes, and Alceste in Le Misanthrope, who wish to keep women away from the salons, from what Arnolphe calls the belles assemblées, where his young female ward would risk learning that women can act independently of fathers and husbands and even encounter men quite different from Arnolphe himself.¹⁸ These men from whom she should be kept away, resemble her suitor Horace as well as the group denounced by Sganarelle as young dandies (jeunes muguets).¹⁹ However, within the large number of men who interact socially with women, it is important to distinguish Don Juan from the men who do not master the galant code and fail to please women. The most egregious examples are those of Acaste and Clitandre, who amuse Célimène but never win her affection. Besides a lack of perspicacity regarding Célimène’s actual tastes and ¹⁶ Brody, 574. ¹⁷ In Le Misanthrope the secondary characters Philinte and Éliante marry, but the protagonists Alceste and Célimène do not. ¹⁸ Molière, L’École des femmes, 1:437 (3, 2, 784–786). ¹⁹ Molière, L’École des maris 1:88 (1,1,24).

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feelings, there are two major and obvious ways in which these ‘marquis’ differ from Don Juan. First, in judging success in their quest, they are primarily concerned with one another and not with Célimène. They are playing a game as rivals with other men, trying to impress men more than they impress the woman they are ostensibly courting. Second, they are self-centred, even narcissistic, to the point that it seems that Célimène’s judgement (or that of any other women) is secondary. Don Juan, in contrast, concentrates on the woman or women, to whom he is attracted. There is no equivalent in Le Festin de Pierre of Acaste’s lengthy encomium to himself, beginning, ‘Parbleu, je ne vois pas, lorsque je m’examine, / Où prendre aucun sujet d’avoir l’Âme chagrine’ (‘Parbleu, when I consider myself / I see no reason to be discontent…’).²⁰ Acaste even feels (again, incel-like) that it is unreasonable of women to expect that men make significant effort to please them.²¹ Through the examples of Célimène and Don Juan we can detect a significant coexistence, if not collaboration, between two social groups represented in the literary imaginary of the seventeenth century, coquettes and libertins. Célimène is called a coquette both in the text of Le Misanthrope and in the critical tradition.²² And although the term libertin is not used in the text of Molière’s play, Don Juan fits the most hyperbolic model of the atheistic freethinker, not by his theorizing but, as with marriage, by his irony. In fact, his mockery of God and his mockery of marriage are tied together when he tells Elvire’s brother that he abandoned his recent bride because of his deep religious feeling, ‘J’obéis à la voix du Ciel’ (‘I am obeying the voice of heaven’; 5,3.p.900). The coquette and the libertin were both viewed in conservative (and male) circles in the seventeenth century as agents of subversion. These character types, designated by shifting, overlapping terms (for example, précieuse is often used for galante or for those whom scholars today usually call ‘salon women’), are often associated both in seventeenth-century writings and in the subsequent critical tradition.²³ In year of the creation of Les Précieuses ridicules, Félix de Juvenel published his Le portrait de la coquette ou La lettre d’A ristandre à Timagène, in which he warned men against the seductive power of witty, socially skilled women.²⁴ Octave Nadal similarly associates coquettes and précieuses with the struggle for

²⁰ Molière, Le Misanthrope, ou l’Atrabilaire amoureux, 1:684 (3,1,781–782). ²¹ Molière, 685 (3,1,807–822). ²² Molière, Le Misanthrope, ou l’Atrabilaire amoureux, 1: 656 (1,1.219). René Jasinski, Molière et Le Misanthrope (Paris: Librairie Nizet, 1951), 165–179. ²³ Faith Evelyn Beasley, Salons, History, and the Creation of Seventeenth-Century France: Mastering Memory (Aldershot; Burlington, VT: Ashgate Pub., 2006). ²⁴ Félix de Juvenel de Carlencas, Le portrait de la Coquette ou la lettre d’A ristandre à Timagène (Paris: C. de Sercy, 1659).

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freedom: ‘The précieuses tried to seize a freedom ceaselessly threatened by the whimsy and anarchy of instinct; to that end they use as weapons coquetry, coldness, enigmas and silences…’²⁵ Perceiving the association of précieuse and libertin as paradoxical, Jean Auba asks of his analysis, ‘does it not permit us to draw together, rather paradoxically, préciosité and libertinage? Between these two attitudes, at first glance, we see only conflict. On one had the insinuating gracefulness of the précieux, its refined and elegant “dance”, there stands in opposition the brutality of the libertin.’²⁶ Auba is here attempting to correct the reductive view of libertinage, its association with the abduction of women, with merely physical satisfaction. He continues, ‘The mystery [of desire] exercises the same fascination on the précieux and the libertin.’²⁷ It is easy for studies of seventeenth-century French literary culture to fall into the habit, already traceable to satirists in Molière’s day, of assigning sexual desire to male subjects and distaste for physical sexuality to female subjects. Myriam Dufour-Maître has pointed out the misleading nature of this dichotomy. In recent studies, which give more place to the galant over the précieux, she writes, ‘It is striking […] to see the centrality of belle galanterie and the way libertine seduction, debauchery, prudishness and préciosité are pushed to the margins, seen as excesses or deviations. We need to recall the multifaceted, contradictory, and polemical character of galanterie, which was in its day the object of “intense ideological questioning” of a highly problematical codification linked specifically to the gender and behaviour of women.’²⁸ What the emphasis on the belle galanterie does, in other words, is to efface physical sexual activity of women from galant culture while also marginalizing those women whose emphasis was on reining in sexual aggression. Belle galanterie is discursive, symbolic interaction without the physical. It consecrates an ideal of disembodied and unfulfilled longing. The mystery of desire in Molière’s comedies is also the irony of desire. The interaction of men and women asserting attraction and pleasure as the sole ²⁵ ‘Les Précieuses ‘tentaient de conquérir une liberté sans cesse menacé par le caprice et l’anarchie de l’instinct; à cette fin, elles s’armaient de coquetteries, de froideur, d’énigmes et de silences…’ Octave Nadal, Le sentiment de l’amour dans l’œuvre de Pierre Corneille (Paris, 1948), 48. ²⁶ Jean Auba, ‘Préciosité et Libertinage,’ Littératures 5, no. 1 (1957): 8. ²⁷ ‘[N]e permettrait-elle pas de rapprocher assez paradoxalement, préciosité et libertinage? Entre ces deux attitudes, on ne voit, au premier abord, qu’opposition. A la grˆace insinuante du précieux, à sa “danse” fine et élégante, s’opposerait la brutalité du libertin.’ Auba, 9. ²⁸ ‘On peut être frappé […] par la centralité de la “belle galanterie” et par le rejet à ses marges, comme excès ou déviances, de la séduction libertine, de la débauche, de la pruderie et de la préciosité. Il convient peut-être alors de rappeler le caractère pluriel, contradictoire et polémique de la galanterie, objet en son temps d’un “intense questionnement idéologique”, d’une codification hautement problématique liée précisément au genre et à la conduite des femmes.’ (Myriam Dufour-Maître, ‘Trouble dans la galanterie? Préciosité et questions de genre,’ Littératures classiques 90, no. 2 [4 October 2016]: 109).

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acceptable basis for a potential union in marriage exhibits a double tendency in the worldly comedy of seventeenth-century France. Through common verbal irony, courtship both aims towards the satisfaction of sexual, amorous, desire while also enjoying deferral, delay, or returning to the starting point. As the sole socially acceptable institution for sexual love, marriage looms on the horizon as the end (la fin) in both senses of the term. It is the goal, but also the termination, the abolition of what had been precious in a relationship in which both partners were free. Célimène and Don Juan express this idea in different ways but share with one another this ambivalence. As La Rochefoucauld wrote, ‘Il est malaisé de définir l’amour; tout ce qu’on peut dire est que dans l’ˆame c’est une passion de régner, dans les esprits c’est une sympathie, et dans le corps ce n’est qu’une envie cachée et délicate de jouir de ce que l’on aime après beaucoup de mystères.’ (‘It is difficult to define love; all one can say is that in the soul it is the passion to dominate, in the mind a sympathy, and in the body it is only a hidden and delicate desire to enjoy what one loves after many mysteries.’ )²⁹ Don Juan clearly goes beyond the belle galanterie. But he shares with Célimène the ideal of always renewing the experience of being desired, of always remaining unsatisfied. And according to one important reader, Sarah Kofman, Don Juan ‘would be playing, indirectly and unwittingly, the role of an emancipator of women, freeing them from any definitive link and subordination to men’.³⁰ Célimène and Don Juan are not alone. Molière’s comedies, in which young women and girls flee the marriage imposed upon them by fathers and guardians, share with many women writers of the period a pessimistic view of marriage and an ambivalent view of love itself. Marie-Madeleine de Lafayette’s La Princesse de Clèves experiences both a marriage to a man she does not love and the passionate experience of love for a man she dare not marry for fear that marriage itself will end their love. This paradox is at the core of Molière’s amusing comic vision, and we should understand amusement as his contemporaries did, and as Célimène did. Amuser did not simply mean to give someone a pleasant experience. To amuse was to delay: ‘Arrester inutilement, faire perdre le temps, repaistre de vaines espérances…’ (‘to stop needlessly, to waste time, to feed someone ²⁹ François La Rochefoucauld, Œuvres complètes., eds. L. Martin-Chauffier and Jean Marchand (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), 412 (maxime 68, 1678 edition). ³⁰ Don Juan ‘jouerait indirectement, à son insu, le rôle d’un émancipateur de femmes, les libérant de toute attache définitive et de leur subordination aux hommes’ (Sarah Kofman and Jean-Yves Masson, Don Juan: ou le refus de la dette [Paris: Galilée, 1991], 118–119. Kofman goes so far as to say that ‘il ne cherche pas les femmes pour les posséder, les engrosser, en faire des mères’ (118). While Sarah Kofman locates Don Juan in proximity to the maternal and in opposition to the paternal, Éric Turcat notes the masculine side of Don Juan’s wife Elvire (‘Elvire et le projet donjuanesque’, Cahiers du dix-septième: An Interdisciplinary Journal 18 [2017]: 27).

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with empty hopes…’).³¹ The Academy dictionary particularly associates this delay with marriage, as in the example, “il a long-temps amusé cette fille en luy promettant de l’ épouser” (he kept her waiting for a long time while promising to marry her’). Perhaps she enjoyed being amused. Perhaps she was amusing him. Certainly they amuse us.

³¹ Dictionnaire de l’A cadémie française (Paris: Coignard, 1694).

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Index abduction, 7–8, 13, 20, 162, 170, 238. See also marriage, clandestine; rapt adultery, 150, 206, 215, 234 antiphrasis, 16 Auba, Jean, 238 Aulnoy, Madame de, 14 Beasley, Faith, 11 Beauvoir, Simone de, ixn5 Bernard, Catherine, 14 Bernier, François, 14 Biet, Christian, 92, 97, 101 Bloom, Harold, ix Booth, Wayne, 15–18 Bossuet, Jacques-Bénigne, 13 Bourqui, Claude, 76 Braider, Christopher, 23 Brody, Jules, 235–236 Bussy-Rabutin, Roger de, 13 Call, Michael, ix, 22, 46 Candaules, 5n10, 214 candaulism, 214 canon law, 6 Castiglione, Baldassare, 73 Catholic church, 5–8, 13, 52, 150, 168–171, 205, 219, 229. See also canon law; devoutness; sacrament; Sales, François de celibacy, 13–14, 230 Cervantes, Miguel de, 140, 142, 214 childbirth and children, 6–7, 9, 48, 125–127, 132, 134–135, 150n7 Cholakian, Patricia, 92 Colie, Rosalie, 74 Conroy, Derval, 14n48 coquette, 11–12, 14, 47, 51–52, 96, 161, 195, 237, 238n25 Corneille, Pierre, 3, 8, 13, 42, 60, 74, 97, 142, 238n25 Cinna, 224

La Place Royale, 60 La Veuve, 8, 92 Le Cid, 3, 13, 184, 224 Le Menteur, 3, 42, 60, 84, 141, 192, 224 Rodogune, 3 courtship, vi, viiin3, 1, 3–4, 11–12, 34, 37, 42, 74–75, 77–78, 80, 97n8, 99, 141–142, 154, 157–158, 166–170, 172, 192, 194, 196, 201, 203, 224, 226–230, 236, 239 Cristellon, Cecilia, 5 Dandrey, Patrick, 19, 234 de Man, Paul, 16 Defaux, Gérard, vi DeJean, Joan, 21, 235n12 Depardieu, Gérard, 189 Descartes, René, 61, 63, 80, 110–111, 140 devoutness, 8–11, 14, 171, 193–194, 198, 200, 218 Dufour-Maître, Myriam, 238 edicts, royal, 6 education, ix, 29–30, 47–48, 53, 55, 59, 61–62, 66, 68–71, 124. See also idiocy; novels; précieuses and preciosity; salons Ekstein, Nina, 18 emancipation, ix, 12, 14, 77, 172 eroticism, 42, 60, 62, 80, 168, 189–190, 193–195, 203–204, 214, 229, 235 feminism, vi, ix, xi, 92, 129, 172 Fontanier, Pierre, 41 Fontenelle, Bernard le Bouvier de, 79–80 Force, Pierre, 93, 183 Forestier, Georges, 12, 59, 163n6 Gadamer, Hans Georg, ix Gaines, James, 165n2, 175n1

252

INDE X

galants and galanterie, 11, 13–14, 34, 38– 39, 89, 159, 166, 168–169, 194–195, 217, 221, 225–226, 228–230, 236, 238–239. See also honnêteté; novels; salons George Dandin, viii, x, 24, 109, 123, 125, 146–158, 226 Goodkin, Richard, 97n38, 101n46, 108, 134, 168n5, 233n8 Gossman, Lionel, 92, 93n24, 103n49, 183 Guarini, Battista, 78 Guicharnaud, Jacques, 233n8 Haase-Dubosc, Danielle, 6n16, 7–8 Hanley, Sarah, 6–7 Hawcroft, Michael, x, 30, 188n6 Heliodorus, 3, 229 Herodotus, 5 Hirsch, E.D., ix honnêteté, x, 8, 35–36, 50, 55, 75, 93–94, 98, 104, 125, 144, 168, 200, 221, 229 idiocy, 46–49, 51, 53–57, 59–60, 66–67 incel, 230, 237 irony, vi, 1, 15–25, 37, 41, 55, 57, 83, 89, 117, 141, 154, 157, 212, 228, 231, 235, 237, 239. See also antiphrasis; preterition dramatic irony, 15, 17–20, 55–56, 61, 63, 83, 88–89, 118, 162, 216 situational irony, 18–20, 55, 83–85, 117, 154, 164, 228, 231 verbal irony, 17–20, 22, 25, 60, 62, 64, 83, 85, 87–88, 91, 116, 141, 154, 158, 162, 231, 239 jealousy, 71, 109–115, 118 Jeanneret, Michel, 11 Juvenel de Carlencas, Félix de, 14, 47, 49, 237 Kofman, Sarah, 239, 239n30 La Fontaine, Jean de, 14, 18–19 La Mothe Le Vayer, François, 192n9 La Rochefoucauld, François de, 103–105, 220, 239 La Sablière, Marguerite de, 14 Laclos, Choderlos de, 11n34

Lafayette, Madame de, 3, 12, 14, 65, 79, 105, 109, 111, 117, 125, 140, 153, 200, 205, 217, 220–223, 227, 229, 231, 239 Lafayette, Marie-Madeleine de, 12, 14, 65, 105, 109, 117, 125, 200, 205, 217, 227, 229, 231, 239 La Princesse de Clèves, 3, 12, 45, 111, 239 La Princesse de Montpensier, 12, 153 Zayde, 140, 205, 222–223 Lalande, Roxanne, 201n11 Lasalle, Jacques, 189n7, 203–204 Lenclos, Ninon de, 11 libertins, 11, 13–14, 40–41, 52, 77, 237–238 Lougee, Carolyn, 150n7 Maclean, Ian, 231 Magne, Émile, 14 Marie de France, 5 marriage, clandestine, 6–7, 81 May, Gita, 92 Menander, 3 #MeToo, vi Meurdrac, Catherine, 7–8 Meurdrac, Marie, 124 Michaut, Gustave, 75–76 Mishriky, Salwa, 75 misogyny, vii, 5, 12. See also coquette; incel; Rousseau, Jean-Jacques Molière Amphitryon, 205–227 Don Garcie de Navarre, 71, 109–118 Don Juan, see Le Festin de Pierre George Dandin, 24, 146–158 L’Amour médecin, 74 L’Avare, 23, 74 L’École des femmes, 1, 4, 19, 22, 27, 32, 46–70, 73, 79, 99, 134, 158, 209, 224, 236 L’École des maris, 2, 4, 8, 18, 27, 29–45, 68, 74, 201–202 L’Impromptu de Versailles, 123 La Critique de l’École des femmes, 19, 22 La Jalousie du barbouillé, 109 Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, 123, 160, 173 Le Festin de Pierre, 4, 21, 141, 228, 231–237 Le Malade imaginaire, 123 Le Médecin malgré lui, 74

INDE X Le Médecin volant, 74 Le Misanthrope, vi, 23–25, 51, 70–71, 73–108, 111, 119, 123, 197, 224 Le Tartuffe, 2, 23, 109, 123, 130, 134–136, 170–171, 175, 177–204, 215, 224 Les Femmes savantes, 23, 44, 97, 123–145, 172n8, 226–227 Les Précieuses ridicules, 23, 44, 97n38, 165–173, 229–231, 233n8, 237–238 Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, 159–164 Sganarelle ou le Cocu imaginaire, 109 Montemayor, Jorge de, 78 Moore, Will, x Morvant, Églantine, 92n32 Navarre, Marguerite de, 5, 81 Nicole, Pierre, 103, 105–107 Norman, Larry F., 4, 101, 104–105, 107, 172 novels, 3, 12, 38, 50, 74, 78–79, 109, 111, 127, 137, 139–141, 168–170, 205, 217, 220–222, 229, 231. See also galants and galanterie; Lafayette, Madame de; précieuses and preciosity; Scudéry, Madeleine de; Urfé, Honoré de Orléans, Anne-Marie-Louise de, 8 Pascal, Jacqueline, 15 pastoral (literary genre), 73–75, 77–83, 148 Peacock, Noel A., ix, 134n6, 172n8, 188n6 Peters, Jeffrey, 92–93 Plautus, 3, 175, 206–207, 211, 214, 220, 224–225, 225n15 précieuses and preciosity, 11–12, 14, 41, 97n38, 105, 165–167, 169–173, 229–231, 233n8, 237–238 Prest, Julia, 189n7 preterition, 19n68, 22–24, 41–45, 85–89, 92, 116, 132, 157, 165 Racine, Jean Andromaque, 3 Britannicus, 202–203 Phèdre, 3, 78

253

rapt, 6–7 Riggs, Larry, 11, 99 Rotrou, Jean, 74, 78 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 92–99 sacrament, 5–6, 8, 158 Sales, François de, 8–10, 53n5, 171, 194, 219 salons, vi, 11n33, 13, 47, 49, 53–55, 57, 99, 165, 220, 229, 236 Sannazaro, Jacobo, 81 Sarraute, Nathalie, 105 Scudéry, Madeleine de, 3, 12, 14, 54, 168–169, 228 Artamène, 3, 169 Clélie, 3, 12, 38–39, 79, 141, 169, 221 Seifert, Lewis Carl, 229 Sévigné, Marie-Chantal de, 13–14, 79, 105 sincerity, x, 4, 56, 81, 92–96, 100–105, 201, 224, 234. See also truth Souvré, Madeleine de, 105 Sperber, Dan, 17n58 Stanton, Domna, 12 steganography, 44 Steigerwald, Jo¨rn, 221 Strauss, Leo, 20–22, 88, 232 Suchon, Gabrielle, 13–14 Tasso, 78 Terence, 3 Trent, council of, 5–6, 150n6 Trithemius, Johannes, 44 truth, 24–25, 69, 80, 86, 92–97, 99, 101–107, 109, 116, 131–132, 137, 148, 154, 191, 200–201, 218. See also sincerity Tucker, Holly, 126–127 Turcat, Éric, 239 Urfé, Honoré de, 78–79, 168 Valincour, Jean Baptiste Henri de Trousset, 11n33, 45 viol, 7 Wadsworth, Philip A., 148 widows, viii, 6–8, 13–14, 77, 129, 236 Wilson, Deirdre, 17n58