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Tag Archives: Eirôn

Molière’s “Tartuffe,” a reading

17 Tuesday May 2016

Posted by michelinewalker in Comedy, French Literature, Molière

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

alazṓn, Casuistry, Doubling, Eirôn, Molière, pharmakos, symbiosis, Tartuffe

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Le Tartuffe by François Boucher (drawing) and Laurent Cars (engraving). (Photo credit: Google images)

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ:

MADAME PERNELLE, mother of Orgon
ORGON, husband of Elmire
ELMIRE, wife of Orgon
DAMIS, son of Orgon
MARIANE, daughter of Orgon, in love with Valère
CLÉANTE, brother-in-law (beau-frère) of Orgon
TARTUFFE, a hypocrite
DORINE, Mariane’s maid
M. LOYAL, a bailiff (l’huissier)
A Police Officer (l’Exempt)
FLIPOTTE, Madame Pernelle’s servant

Le Tartuffe is a five-act comedy in verse. It was first performed in 1664 and banned. It was rewritten and performed in 1667, but remained banned until 1669.

Le Tartuffe: structure

  • the eirôn vs the alazṓn
  • the doubling of the alazṓn

In the Misanthrope, Molière combines in one character, Alceste, the blondin and the barbon, or the young man who wishes to marry and the person(s) who oppose(s) the blondin‘s marriage. In other words, in Le Tartuffe, the eirôn and the alazṓn, or the blondin and the barbon, are separate characters, but Molière seems to have doubled his alazṓn, or barbon. Both Orgon and Tartuffe are blocking characters, or the alazṓn. They are so close to one another that one could suggest a symbiosis.

ORGON to CLÉANTE, Tartuffe (I, 5)
Dear brother, you’d be charmed to know him;
Your raptures over him would have no end.
He is a man … who … ah! … in fact … a man
Whoever does his will, knows perfect peace,
And counts the whole world else, as so much dung.
His converse has transformed me quite; he weans
My heart from every friendship, teaches me
To have no love for anything on earth;
And I could see my brother, children, mother,
And wife, all die, and never care—a snap.

CLÉANTE
Your feelings are humane, I must say, brother!

The Plot

This is how the plot unfolds. Orgon has taken into his home a man feigning devotion, Tartuffe. Tartuffe is also a casuiste, a person who can take sin out of sinning. Because Tartuffe is a deft casuiste, he allows Orgon to act as a tyrannical father, and to do so with impunity. Orgon is so delighted he cannot see that he is being fooled. Yet, without Tartuffe, Orgon could not be a tyrannical father. For instance, when Orgon’s daughter Mariane begs her father to be spared a marriage to Tartuffe, Orgon has to brace himself, because he is at heart a compassionate individual:  

MARIANE to ORGON, Tartuffe (IV, 3)
(…) 
I beg you
Upon my knees, oh, save me from the torment
Of being possessed by one whom I abhor!

ORGON to himself, Tartuffe (IV, 3)
Allons, ferme, mon cœur point de faiblesse humaine !

[Come, come, my heart, be firm! no human weakness!] 

Mariane then asks to be allowed to enter a convent

MARIANE, Tartuffe (IV, 3)
Oh, rather let a convent’s rigid rule
Wear out the wretched days that Heaven allots me.

But Orgon has a good directeur de conscience under whose guidance, he is learning to turn inhumanity into a virtue, which it is not. Knowing the role Tartuffe teaches, Orgon preaches mortification:

ORGON to MARIANE, Tartuffe (IV, 3)
So, mortify your senses by this marriage,
And don’t vex me about it anymore.

Orgon is therefore beguiled. With the exception of his mother, Madame Pernelle, Orgon is the only member of the society of the play not to see that Tartuffe is a faux dévot who does not mortify his senses. However, Orgon so needs Tartuffe, who fits him like a glove, that he cannot see what everyone sees, which is both a recipe for disaster (Orgon is blind) and a source of comic relief (everyone knows and laughs).

‘Gros et gras, le teint et la bouche vermeille’
[stout, fat, fair, rosy-lipped]

Gaston Hall writes that “‘Gros et gras, le teint et la bouche vermeille’ [stout, fat, fair, rosy-lipped], Tartuffe is quite unfitted to play the part of the saintly ascetic. No rascal with the slightest talent for hypocrisy would have dared sit down to dine upon ‘… deux perdrix  Avec une moitié de gigot en hachis’ [two partridges, As well as half a leg o’ mutton, deviled]” (Gaston Hall, p. 14).[1]

For instance, in Act 1, Scene 4, Orgon has just returned from a trip to the country and wants to know what has happened during his absence. However, he is so “tartuffié” that he cannot hear that his wife Elmire has been sick. He asks “Et Tartuffe” [And what about Tartuffe?] four times, and says “Le pauvre homme” [The poor man] four times, whatever he hears.

This scene also contains a second source of comic relief: the word “tartuffié” instead of possessed. Given the devastation visited upon Orgon’s family, the word “tartuffié” is incongruous but it minimizes the degree to which Tartuffe has seduced Orgon. In fact, Orgon is besotted and has begun to twist reality as did 17th-century casuists. Casuistry  constitutes a form of moral jurisprudence, a practice that led Blaise Pascal (19 June 1623 – 19 August 1662) to write his famous Lettres Provinciales (1656-57) and also exerted influence on Molière who mocked it in Tartuffe.

In short, in Molière’s Tartuffe, the character who opposes Mariane’s marriage to Valère is not Tartuffe, it is Orgon, the pater familias of most comedies.

buys_jacobus-zzz-scene_from_moliere_comedy_tartuffe

Tartuffe by Jacobus Buys (Wikimedia Commons)

The Cassette: Orgon threatened

  • the Fronde
  • the cassette

However, as Orgon enjoys threatening his daughter into a mésalliance, which is the normal plot of comedies, Tartuffe is coveting Orgon’s wife and appropriating all of Orgon’s belongings, including a cassette containing incriminating documents. Tartuffe knows about the cassette and urges Orgon not to keep it in his, Orgon’s, possession. If Orgon gives the cassette to Tartuffe, he will be able to deny having this cassette if asked about it, which frees him. He would not have to sin. One of the methods of casuistry is restriction mentale. One says: “I don’t have it.” It may be an incomplete statement, but it isn’t an outright lie. Orgon does not want to sin.

CLÉANTE to ORGON, Tartuffe (V, 1)
How could you trust them to another’s hands?

ORGON
By reason of a conscientious scruple.
I went straight to my traitor, to confide
In him; his sophistry made me believe
That I must give the box to him to keep,
So that, in case of search, I might deny
My having it at all, and still, by favour
Of this evasion, keep my conscience clear
Even in taking oath against the truth.

The above is information we are not given until late in the play, but Dorine mentions “late unpleasantness” at the very beginning of the play (I, 2). Dorine, Mariane’s maid, creates tension. Dorine is our zanni, the astute servant of the commedia dell’arte.

DORINE to CLÉANTE, Tartuffe (I, 2)
His conduct in our late unpleasantness
Had won him much esteem, and proved his courage
In service of his king; but now he’s like
A man besotted, since he’s been so taken
With this Tartuffe. He calls him brother, loves him
A hundred times as much as mother, son,
Daughter, and wife…

At any rate, it seems we have two alazṓn: a reticent pater familias and a man who can make arrangements with heaven.

Tartuffe’s Confession

The truth as lie

At this point, Act III, matters start to turn around. Molière however treats us to a confession that is a truth as lie.

Hidden in a closet (III, 3), Damis, Orgon’s son, has seen Tartuffe attempting to seduce Elmire, Orgon’s wife, and tells his father. Although he is “tartuffié,” Orgon nevertheless confronts Tartuffe, but no sooner does he address him than the faux dévot confesses. Il s’accuse pour s’excuser.

TARTUFFE to ORGON, Tartuffe (III, 6)
Oui mon frère, je suis un méchant, un coupable,
Un malheureux pécheur, tout pain d’iniquité,
Le plus grand scélérat qui jamais ait été.

[Yes, brother, I am wicked, I am guilty,
A miserable sinner, steeped in evil,
The greatest criminal that ever lived.]

Such defence is consistent with devotion and it is, therefore, very effective. In the Catholic Church, the devout confess. After confession, the sinner may have to make amends, but he or she is absolved. However, blind as he is, Orgon does not see a swindler in Tartuffe, but a genuinely devout man. In fact, Orgon  is the one who makes amends (penance). To show to what extent he believes him, Orgon asks Tartuffe to keep his wife company at all times (III, 7).

Consequences

However, the plot has thickened. Elmire had asked Damis not to tell Orgon (III, 5). This warming was prudent on her part as Tartuffe’s confession only serves to convince Orgon that Tartuffe is a holy man, which he isn’t. So the results are catastrophic. As quoted above (IV, 6), Orgon presses the marriage of Mariane to Tartuffe and he disinherits his son Damis.

uio

Elmire convinces Orgon, original painting by A. J. Mazerolle (theatrehistory.com)

Tartuffe, frontispiece by Pierre Brissard, 1682

Tartuffe, frontispice by Pierre Brissard, 1682

A Play-within-a-Play

All else having failed, members of Orgon’s family resort to a somewhat disputably theatrical device: a-play-within-a-play. Elmire tells her husband to crouch underneath a table behind a tablecloth, a form of curtain (IV, 4). From an actor Orgon is transformed into a spectator. He will see and seeing is believing.

According to Molière scholar Georges Forestier, the play-within-a-play is not a mise en abyme (see Related Articles). It is part of the action dramatique, the plot.[2] In the present case, Professor Forestier is absolutely right. Orgon is a doubting Thomas and so tartuffié, possessed, that his family has little choice but to conceal him under a table, which may not be a play-within-a-play, but constitutes a theatrical recourse. Orgon is stunned and slow to come to Elmire’s rescue. She has coughed repeatedly, as arranged, without Orgon emerging from under the table.

Yet Tartuffe does not take from Orgon much more than Orgon gives him. However, there is a difference. Tartuffe is an extortionist and Orgon, a potential family tyrant, but un homme de bien (a good man) at heart. He has truly been besotted. Orgon so needs Tartuffe, a casuist, that not only does he give his daughter to Tartuffe, disinherit his son Damis, foolishly sign himself away to Tartuffe, but he also entrusts to Tartuffe a cassette that contains incriminating papers and which we do not hear about until Act V.

La Fronde: uprisings

We will not discuss la Fronde except to note that under Italian-born Cardinal Mazarin, Chief Minister of the French King from 1642 until his death, there were uprisings called La Fronde. These occurred between 1648 – 1653 and consisted in two campaigns: the Fronde of the parlements and the Fronde of the nobles. Absolutism gave no voice to France’s  parlements and it’s aristocrats, including princes of the blood, possible heirs to the Kingdom of France who played no role in governing France. Moreover, the nobles refused to pay a tax. The war against Spain was costing a fortune. In the end, peasants and members of the bourgeoisie had to foot the bill.

Both Orgon and Argas were involved in these uprisings. When finally, Orgon realizes that he’s been a fool, he tells Cléante, the raisonneur, and starts running upstairs in the hope of retrieving the cassette, but it’s too late. Monsieur Loyal, the bailiff, is already at the door to collect all of Orgon’s possessions. We soon learn from Valère, who must have friends in high places and is in love with Mariane, Orgon’s daughter, that Tartuffe has already used the cassette alleging, later, that his first duty is to serve the king: “Mais l’intérêt du Prince est mon premier devoir” (V, scène dernière).

ORGON to TARTUFFE, Tartuffe (V, scène dernière)
Ungrateful wretch, do you forget ’twas I
That rescued you from utter misery?

TARTUFFE
[I’ve not forgot some help you may have given;
But my first duty now is toward my prince.
The higher power of that most sacred claim
Must stifle in my heart all gratitude;
And to such puissant ties I’d sacrifice
My friend, my wife, my kindred, and myself.]

How ironic. However Valère has made arrangements for the family to flee (V, 6) because Orgon will be arrested, but in true comic fashion, Tartuffe is arrested.

The Final Society

Northrop Frye[3] writes that:

The tendency of comedy is to include as many people as possible in its final society: the blocking characters are form often reconciled or converted than simply repudiated. (Frye, p. 165)

In Act V, scene 3, Cléante remains optimistic. Tartuffe may prove more merciful than we expect.

CLÉANTE to ORGON, Tartuffe (V, 3)
Je voudrais de bon cœur, qu’on pût entre vous deux
De quelque ombre de paix raccommoder les nœuds.

[I wish with all my heart that some pretence
Of peace could be patched up between you two.]

Yet, in both Dom Juan and Tartuffe, salvation does not come from a ruse on the part of the society of the play. In Dom Juan a machine engulfs le méchant homme. In Tartuffe, un Prince ennemi de la fraude saves the family. Molière uses a deus ex machina. We have reached what Northrop Frye calls the “point of ritual death”  (p. 179). The eirôn cannot recover.

As noted above, Tartuffe takes little more than what he has been given by Orgon, but Orgon has given everything, which was foolish. Moreover, Tartuffe does not have to accept marrying Mariane. Nor does he have to take possession of what Orgon has handed over to him. Moreover, were Tartuffe humane, he would not run to the Prince carrying the incriminating cassette.

Doubling the alazṓn

Therefore, although Orgon is forcing Mariane to marry Tartuffe and gives all he has to Tartuffe, including the incriminating cassette, “[t]he pharmakós is neither innocent nor guilty,” writes Frye (p. 41). By doubling the alazṓn (the blocking character), Molière has allowed, on the one hand, greater vilification of Tartuffe, who becomes the pharmakós, and, on the other hand, he has facilitated Orgon’s rehabilitation, as comedy wills. Tartuffe is Molière’s most convincing pharmakós.

Moreover, Tartuffe is the classic alazṓn: a miles gloriosus (Plautus, c. 254–184 BCE; Latin comedy), in which he resembles Dom Juan. (See Alazṓn, Wikipedia.) Elmire resists Tartuffe’s advances by telling him that she may offend heaven: le Ciel. However, in Tartuffe’s eyes, the eyes of a casuist, it is possible to sin without sinning, which is preposterous and leads Tartuffe to hoist his own petard. There is a farcical element in Tartuffe, just as there is a farcical element in the Misanthrope. Let us hear Tartuffe impersonating God, which is casuistry. 

TARTUFFE à ELMIRE, Tartuffe (IV, 4)
Si ce n’est que le Ciel qu’à mes vœux on oppose,
Lever un tel obstacle est à moi peu de chose,
Et cela ne doit pas retenir votre cœur.

[If Heaven is all that stands now in my way,
I’ll easily remove that little hindrance;
Your heart need not hold back for such a trifle.]

Conclusion: the pharmakós and the alazṓn

Comedy is a forgiving. By virtue of comedy’s ancient laws, there will be a happy ending, which, in the case of Molière’s Tartuffe, is brought about by the timely intervention of “un Prince ennemi de la fraude,” a “deus ex machina.” At the end of the play, as we are sitting on the edge of our seats, expecting the Exempt (a police officer) to arrest Orgon, the Exempt arrests Tartuffe.

Tartuffe is made into the guilty and punished half, the scapegoat, or pharmakós, of a doubled alazṓn. Doubling the alazṓn benefits the play. Orgon is part of the play’s final society, which he must deserve, or Elmire would not be his wife and his family so loyal. Nor would a servant, Dorine, speak to Orgon so openly. Orgon cannot re-enter society without redeemable features. We are not in fairyland.

The Truth as Truth

As for Tartuffe, he is as he describes himself when Damis, Orgon’s son, tells his father that he saw Tartuffe trying to seduce Elmire. His confession “gets him off the hook:” il se tire d’affaire. As Will Moore writes, “Tartuffe is sure of Orgon, and Molière is sure of his public” (Will G. Moore, p. 64).[4] But the truth as lie is a reprieve. The truth as lie turns out to be the truth, which is comic irony.

TARTUFFE to ORGON, Tartuffe (III, 6)
Non, non, vous vous laissez tromper à l’apparence,
Et je ne suis rien moins, hélas, que ce qu’on pense.
Tout le monde me prend pour un homme de bien;
Mais la vérité pure est que je ne vaux rien.

[No, no; you let appearances deceive you;
I’m anything but what I’m thought to be,
Alas! and though all men believe me godly,
The simple truth is, I’m a worthless creature.]

As the curtain falls, all are on their way to the wedding of Valère and Mariane.

All’s well that ends well.
(Tout est bien qui finit bien.) 

Love to everyone ♥

Gouache (XVIIIe siècle) de Fesch et Whirsker. (Photo credit: Larousse)

Gouache (XVIIIe siècle) de Fesch et Whirsker. (Photo credit: Larousse)

I have already written that Tartuffe is the punished half of a blocking character. In this post, I have taken this thought further by suggesting a doubling of the alazṓn.

Micheline Bourbeau-Walker, “Tartuffe: masques, machines et machinations,” in Clive Thomson (ed), Proceedings of the 1981 Meeting of the Canadian Association of University and College Teachers of French (Kingston: Signum, 1981), p. 491-509.
ISSN 0700-1525

My PhD dissertation was a study of the pharmakós in Molière:

Micheline Walker, “L’Impossible Entreprise : une étude sur le pharmakós dans le théâtre de Molière,” DAI, 36 (1976) 8103A (Université de la Colombie britannique).

RELATED ARTICLES

  • Edmond Geffroy’s Molière (11 May 2016)
  • Farces and “Grandes Comédies” (8 May 2016)
  • Molière’s Enigmatic Comedies (6 May 2016)
  • Molière’s Tartuffe & Northrop Frye (21 July 2014)
  • The Arnolfini Portrait: mise en abyme (21 May 2014)

Jansenism & Casuistry

  • Jesuits and Jansenists (2 April 2015)
  • Jansenism: a Church Divided (24 March 2015)
  • Casuistry, or how to sin without sinning (5 March 2012)

Sources and Resources

  • Dom Juan is a Internet Archive publication EN
  • Tartuffe is a Wikisource publication FR
  • Tartuffe is an Internet Archive publication and a Gutenberg Project publication [EBook 2027] (translated by Curtis Hidden Page) EN
  • Northrop Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism, Four Essays are a PDF publication

____________________

[1] H. Gaston Hall, Tartuffe, Molière (W. G. Moore, General Editor, Barron’s Studies in French Literature: 1960).
[2] Georges Forestier, Le Théâtre dans le théâtre (Genève: Droz, 1996).
[3] Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, Four Essays (Princeton University Press, 1973) (online)
[4] W. G. Moore, Molière, A New Criticism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1949).

—ooo—

GEORG MATTHIAS MONN (1717-1750)
Concerto for cello, strings and basso continuo in G minor (2. Adagio)

Performed by the Freiburger Barockorchester
Featuring Jean-Guihen Queyras, cello
Conducted by Petra Mullejans

Elmire & Tartuffe

Elmire & Tartuffe

© Micheline Walker
17 May 2016
(revised: 18 May 2016)
WordPress

 

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The Bourgeois

16 Monday Jun 2014

Posted by michelinewalker in Comédie-Ballet, Molière, the bourgeois

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Alazôn, Bourgeois, Eirôn, Jacquerie, Jacquerie des croquants, Jean Sylvain Bailly, Jean-Baptiste Lully, Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, Molière, sans-culottes

356px-le-bourgeois-gentilhomme1

Molière’s Le Bourgeois gentilhomme by Edmond Geoffroy, 1670 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Molière‘s (15 January 1722 – February 1773) Bourgeois gentilhomme, a five-act comedy, premièred on 14 October 1670, at the Château de Chambord, before the court and Louis XIV himself. Although it is a play, i.e. fiction, the Bourgeois gentilhomme may constitute our best portrayal of a rich bourgeois in 17th-century France. By the Grand Siècle, the second half of the 17th century, several levels of bourgeoisie were emerging: “petite,” “moyenne,” “haute,” and “grande bourgeoisie.” Monsieur Jourdain had obviously climbed to the upper half of that ladder. He is sufficiently rich to hire various “masters:” dancing, music, philosophy, all of whom make futile attempts to teach him “aristocracy.”

Edmond Geoffroy

Moreover, as is usually the case in comedies, Monsieur Jourdain is opposing the marriage of his daughter Lucile to the man she loves, Cléonte, a bourgeois. Monsieur Jourdain will not be able to force Lucile into an unhappy marriage because the conventions governing comedy favour the marriage of the young couple. Cléonte will fool Monsieur Jourdain into believing he has been turned into a mamamouchi, a Turkish aristocrat, and he will marry Lucile disguised as the son of the grand Turc.

The “Alazôn” vs the “Eirôn”

In comedies, the young couple, their loyal servants and, at times, avuncular figures always overcome the alazôn of the theater of ancient Greece, the blocking character. Monsieur Jourdain, will be opposed by a collective eirôn. The same stock characters exist in the Commedia dell’arte.

Le Bourgeois gentilhomme is a comédie-ballet. The music was composed by Italian-born Lully (Giovanni Battista Lulli; 28 November 1632 – 22 March 1687) and the choreography was the work of Pierre Beauchamp (30 October 1631 – February 1705). Monsieur Jourdain meets his demise—he is fooled—during the ballet, entitled Ballets des Nations.

“Jacqueries” & “Croquants”

According to popular lore, the mob who stormed the Bastille on 14 July 1789 consisted, to a larger or lesser extent, of famished peasants. It is altogether possible, and  probable, that famished peasants were among the ruffians who stormed the Bastille. For instance, there had been peasant uprisings:

  • La Jacquerie of 1358 (the 14th century), and other popular uprisings often called jacqueries, after the Jacquerie of 1358;
  • La Jacquerie des croquants, 17th- and 18th-century uprisings.

“Croquants” (crushing) was the name given to members of the First and Second Estates who levied taxes from the Third Estate: peasants and bourgeois. The worst of these taxes was “la Taille” a temporary direct land tax that had become a permanent tax in 1439, the 15th century.

However, in all likelihood, the citizens who stormed the Bastille were a diverse group but mostly bourgeois. In the 17th century, there was a “drift to the city.” W. H. Lewis writes that “the least-favoured faubourg [suburb] of the most oppressive town offered a better way of life to the ambitious commoner than did the countryside[.]”[i]

Among the citizens of a town, there were thugs and other malfaisants. As for the word “jacquerie,” Jacques was the name given peasants, hence Jacquou le Croquant[ii], the title of a 2007 film on a young rebel. The film’s monarchy, however, is that of the Bourbon restoration (1815-1830), not the monarchy of l’ancien régime.

The “Sans-Culottes” (without Knee Breeches)

It would appear that the people who stormed the Bastille on 14 July 1789 were a motley group who became a mob.  Among the people who helped radicalize the Revolution, there may have been peasants, but allow me to repeat that France’s Third Estate did not consist solely of peasants and “petit bourgeois.” It was a more varied group that probably included the frequently idealized sans-culottes (without knee breeches).

Idealized sans-culotte by Louis-Léopold Boilly (1761–1845).
Idealized sans-culottes by Louis-Léopold Boilly (1761–1845) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The story has been told otherwise. The popular view is that starving peasants stormed the Bastille. As stated above, starving peasants may have been involved in the storming of the Bastille, but the more likely account is that an angry mob led the charge. (See History Bastille Day) Peasants often inhabited distant “provinces,” too far from Paris. Most lived under the authority of a seigneur who may have been a good person, but not necessarily. We have yet to discuss Mozart‘s Marriage of Figaro (K 492), an opera buffa, on an Italian libretto (the text) by Lorenzo da Ponte, of the second of three plays by Pierre Beaumarchais called the Figaro trilogy.[iii]

 

 

The Syndics of the Drapers' Guild by Rembrandt, 1662.

The Syndics of the Drapers’ Guild by Rembrandt, 1662 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Guilds or Corporations

Bourgeois were persons who started to live in a bourg (as in neighbour, a town) in the 12th century. They were commerçants, tradesmen, doctors, lawyers, etc. According to W. H. Lewis, “to the French noble, [the town] was a portion of his seigneurie which had enfranchised itself from his yoke, obtained many financial privileges, and was growing steadily richer while he [noble] grew poorer and more insignificant.”[iv] Beginning in the Middle Ages, guilds were formed to protect tradesmen who, however, often had to pay costly dues to the guild. Our trade unions date back to these medieval guilds and the people they protected were bourgeois who, by the seventeenth century, were numerous as well as rich and often living in Paris.

Some aristocrats were Mayors, but most stayed away from towns. However, although Monsieur Jourdain does not succeed in marrying his daughter to a nobleman, many aristocrats and their sons married bourgeoises, the ingénue of comedy, because of the dowry they brought. Daughters had to be endowed, which was difficult for aristocrats who spent a fortune living away from the family castle to be near Louis XIV’s court and be noticed by him.

Le Bourgeois gentilhomme is a comedy, a formulaic and Shakespearian “[a]ll’s well that ends well.” However, many bourgeoises were forced to marry a decrepit old man. Molière’s Miser (L’Avare; 1668) is not poor, on the contrary. Yet, given that Anselme is willing to marry Élise without a dowry: “sans dot,” Harpagon, the miser, wants her to marry Anselme. But Anselme turns out to be Valère’s rich father and, therefore, the father of the man who wants to marry Élise, the Miser’s daughter. He is also the father of the young woman, Mariane, who wants to marry the Miser’s son (Cléante).

An Élite Bourgeoisie

By 1789, some bourgeois had risen in status. In fact, they had already done so in the seventeenth century and the town they inhabited could be Paris. Colbert (29 August 1619 – 6 September 1683) a bourgeois, was Louis XIV’ Minister of Finance from 1765 to 1783. We also know Charles Perrault (12 January 1628 – 16 May 1703) who created the fairy tale as we know it, the Contes de ma mère l’Oye [The Tales of Mother Goose] (mid 1690s). His sources were Italian, but as told by Italians, fairy tales were at times too bawdy for children. Perrault was a salonnier (salonist) and his brother Claude Perrault, a medical doctor and architect. Claude Perrault designed the colonnade du Louvre, the east façade, the columns of the Louvre.

The East Façade by Claude Perrault

The East Façade of the Louvre, by Claude Perrault

Painting by Auguste Couder showing the opening of the Estates-General

Painting by Auguste Couder showing the opening (5 May 1789) of the Estates-General (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Estates-General

Consequently, when Louis XVI convened the Estates-General in 1789, the Third Estate was not necessarily the lesser estate. Jean-Sylvain Bailly (15 September 1736 – 12 November 1793; by guillotine), who presided over the Tennis Court Oath (20 June 1789), was a bourgeois, a freemason and the Mayor of Paris. I doubt that he participated in the storming of the Bastille, on 14 July 1789, but sans-culottes may have been participants as well famished peasants. The Revolutions behind the Revolution were, to a large extent, the advent of capitalism and the Industrial Revolution.    

“As the feudal society was transformed into the early capitalist society of Europe, the bourgeoisie were the spearhead of progress in industry and science and of social change.

By the 17th century, this middle class was supporting principles of natural rights and constitutional government against the theories of divine right and privilege of the sovereign and the nobility. Thus, members of the bourgeoisie led the English revolution of the 17th century and the American and French revolutions of the late 18th century. These revolutions helped to establish political rights and personal liberty for all free men.” Armstrong Economics.com

Marat, Danton, Robespierre, Saint-Just

Maximilien de Robespierre and Louis-Antoine-Léon de Saint-Just were not peasants. Robespierre was a lawyer, and Saint-Just’s father, a knight of the Order of Saint-Louis, had been a Calvary Officer who had married the daughter of a notary. Jean-Paul Marat was a medical doctor and Georges Danton, a lawyer.

“In the 18th century, before the French Revolution (1789–99), in the French feudal order, the masculine and feminine terms bourgeois and bourgeoisie identified the rich men and women who were members of the urban and rural Third Estate — the common people of the French realm, who violently deposed the absolute monarchy of the Bourbon King Louis XVI (r. 1774–91), his clergy, and his aristocrats.” (See Bourgeoisie,Wikipedia.)

RELATED ARTICLES

  • Bluebeard Continued & Concluded (15 June 2013)
  • Bluebeard: Motifs & Suspense (Charles Perrault; 14 June 2013)
  • Les Indes Galantes & Le Bourgeois gentihomme: “turqueries” (30 September 2012)
  • Austerity the Republican Way (10 December 2011) (“croquants”)
  • Fairy Tales & Fables (Charles Perrault; 10 November 2011)

Sources and Resources

  • Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Régime and the Revolution EN (Internet Archives)
  • Alexis de Tocqueville, L’Ancien Régime et la Révolution (BnF; Bibliothèque nationale de France)
  • The Middle-Class Gentleman is a Project Gutenberg publication [EBook #2992]
  • Bourgeoisie, Larousse FR
  • Bourgeoisie, Britannica
  • Armstrong Economics.com
  • W. H. Lewis’ Splendid Century is an online publication. W. H. Lewis is C. S. Lewis‘ brother, to whom we owe The Chronicles of Narnia and other brilliant and fanciful works. I have not found a finer account of the 17th century in France than W. H. Lewis’ Splendid Century. Not only is the Splendid Century informative, but it reads like a novel.  Click on Splendid Century. “The Town” is chapter VII.
_________________________
 

[i]  W. H. Lewis, The Splendid Century: Life in the France of Louis XIV (New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1957 [1953]), p. 161.

[ii] “Croquant” is derived from “croquer:” to bite as in to crush. “Croquant” uprisings were often called “jacqueries.” The 2007 film adaptation of a novel by Eugène Le Roy (1836-1907) is entitled Jacquou [Jacques] le Croquant.

[iii] You may remember that Pierre Beaumarchais recruited soldiers who would serve in the American War of Independence, one of whom was Pierre-Charles L’Enfant, the architect and civil engineer who designed the National Mall in Washington. The Figaro trilogy consists of The Barber of Seville (Le Barbier de Séville) 1775 (1773), The Mariage of Figaro (Le Mariage de Figaro), 1778, and The Guilty Mother (La Mère coupable), 1792 (1791). The Barber of Seville is an opera by Rossini and The Guilty Mother (La Mère coupable), an opera by Darius Milhaud.

[vi] W. H. Lewis, p. 160.

Molière by Nicolas Mignard

Molière by Nicolas Mignard

“bourgeoisie”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2014. Web. 14 Jun. 2014
<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked /topic/75834/bourgeoisie>.

“Jacquerie”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2014. Web. 16 Jun. 2014
<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/299166/Jacquerie>.

“sansculotte”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2014. Web. 16 Jun. 2014
<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/522646/sansculotte>.

“Alexis de Tocqueville”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2014. Web. 14 Jun. 2014
<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/597857/Alexis-de-Tocqueville>.

Versailles The Sun King

Versailles
The Sun King

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