Orgon's Obsession in Moliere's Tartuffe

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Viewpoints Fall 2010
and tell Madame that you’ve expressed keen sympathy and anxious interest” (Moliere 23).
Through this statement, we can see that Dorine is just as puzzled as the audience is and that
she can do nothing but laugh in utter disbelief at the hypnotized Orgon.
What does Orgon find so magnificent about Tartuffe that causes him to display such an
infatuation? The playwright answers this question in Act I, Scene V, when Orgon recollects the
first time he met Tartuffe. Although Orgon offers a reason both for his interest and for his belief
as to why Tartuffe seems like such a religious and humble man, the audience can see that his
judgment is extremely weak. Orgon attempts to explains his interest in Tartuffe—“He *Tartuffe+
is a man who…a man who…an excellent man” (25)—and in his stuttering statement, we can see
how Orgon has lost his ability to rationally evaluate anything at all. What Orgon says next is
extremely irrational. He comments, “My mother, children, brother, and wife could die, and I’d
not feel a single moment’s pain” (25). After Orgon makes this claim, the audience likely expects
him to come to his senses and realize the severity of telling his brother-in-law that he would
feel nothing if his family died. However, Orgon continues to justify his thinking, ignoring the
sarcasm of Cleante’s comment, “That’s a fine sentiment, Brother; most humane” (25). By
freeing his soul “from earthly loves, and every human tie,” Orgon is almost trying to become a
missionary figure in his obsession with Tartuffe, putting aside his own earthly cares in favor of
what he perceives to be more spiritual matters: the person of Tartuffe himself. Orgon believes
that Tartuffe is a saint because he flaunts his humbleness around the church while publicly
performing minor tasks in church, often praying loudly, and how modest he is when accepting
only small gifts. It is obvious to all of the other characters and to the audience as well that
Tartuffe merely uses religious acts in order to appear religious himself. It almost seems as if
Orgon is joking when he says, “Last week, his *Tartuffe’s] conscience was severely pricked
because, while he was praying, he had caught a flea and killed it, so he felt, too wrathfully”
(Moliere 26). However, Orgon simply reveals his own misguided fixation on Tartuffe’s apparent
unassailable goodness.
Cleante then makes a remark that caused much controversy in Versailles and
throughout France in 1664 when the play was first performed. He replies, “There’s a vast
difference, so it seems to me, between true piety and hypocrisy: How do you fail to see it, may I
ask? Is not a face quite different than a mask?” (27). This remark is perhaps the essence of
Moliere’s motivation for writing this play. In the 1660s in the official French royal court of
Versailles and throughout France, there were more than a few highly prominent and
supposedly religious and pious people in power that Moliere could clearly see were hypocrites
and not people of God with pure intentions. Moliere endeavored to expose these deceptive
authorities or at least provoke questions within his audience. Also, since Moliere wrote during
the beginning of the Age of Reason, people were beginning to demand adherence to common
sense in decision-making and behavior that was rational. As the character Orgon displays hardly