Orgon's Obsession in Moliere's Tartuffe

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14 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
15 Viewpoints Fall 2010 any common sense at all and, at the same time, is speaking primarily about Christianity, people rioted and some authorities demanded that the play be banned on the basis that Moliere had ridiculed both religious and secular authorities for their lack of piety and absence of reason. We can see a perfect example of the combination of the absences of these two qualities—piety and reason—when Cleante says, “Good God, man! Have you lost your common sense?” (26). Because Orgon follows what seem to be the tenets of Christianity, and at the same time his character portrays a person lacking reason and rationality, some audience members misconstrued Moliere’s message and assumed that the playwright had argued that Christianity was synonymous with a lack of the ability to reason with clarity and intelligence. In his 1963 article “Tartuffe, Religion, and Courtly Culture,” published in French Historical Studies, Emanuel Chill addresses how the dévots, the followers of Cardinal Pierre de Berulle, found the play extremely offensive. Chill explains that the original version of the play was probably even a lot stronger in its social criticism than the versions we have today. Reflecting on the content of the original version and the decision making process of the theatre company to edit the work, Chill notes, “it is clear that the surviving remnant of the Company was moved to exert great pressure against Tartuffe, and that its ‘excitation’ resulted in the royal prohibition of its public performance” (Chill 155). Thus, in 1664, the play was banned because of the bad effect it produced in challenging authority. In his PMLA essay “Tartuffe and the Mysteries” (1977), Marcel Gutwirth states, “The challenge laid down by the comedy of Tartuffe was of a magnitude the age could not afford to ignore. Moliere’s plea for the purity of the play’s intentions had been swept aside with the gruff retort: ‘It is not the business of the stage to be preaching the Gospel’” (Gutwirth 36). Orgon’s obsession with Tartuffe reaches its climax in Act III when Damis, Orgon’s son, attempts to uncover Tartuffe’s true face. As Damis listens to Tartuffe’s advances on Elmire, he cannot help himself and bursts out of hiding in order to prove Tartuffe’s treachery. When Orgon arrives on the scene, however, Orgon acts in the same irrational, absurd way that defines his character thus far in the play. He is now completely deceived, which plays into the hands of Tartuffe perfectly. Instead of denying the accusations, Tartuffe maintains his pious posture and then over-exaggerates the role of a sinner. Tartuffe says, “Yes Brother, I’m a wicked man, I fear: a wretched sinner, all depraved and twisted, the greatest villain that has ever existed” (97). This moment in the play is ironic because Tartuffe actually admits to his wrongdoing, but since Orgon blindly believes that Tartuffe can do no evil, he refuses to listen to the accusation and consequently turns on his own son, Damis. Orgon has become so obsessed with the notion of Tartuffe’s saintly piety that he kicks Damis out of his house – hardly an act that would come from a religious, or even a sane person. Orgon ends the scene by saying to Damis, “Well go quickly then. I disinherit you; an empty purse is all you’ll get from me – except my curse!” (102).
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Orgon's Obsession in Moliere's Tartuffe

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