Suggested THEMES in Tartuffe
What is the purpose of Tartuffe?
How does Tartuffe’s hypocrisy reveal several social and political conditions in need of
correction?
Choose a quotation from Tartuffe that states a theme and prove how the play demonstrates the
theme.
1. Manage to take the middle course instead of jumping between absurd extremes.
2. Blind, irrational, unseeing faith can generate problems.
3. Fanatical religious belief can create political consequences that make the eyeless faith of
the “true believer” vexatious and disturbing.
4. “-Isms” provide proof of blind belief that turns a deaf ear to anything that threatens--and
perhaps ought to threaten--that belief.
5. Blind faith makes it a weakness of character to waver, strength of character to persist-even in the face of obvious evidence to the contrary.
6. Although the mind usually translates contradictory evidence to a belief as temptation, the
true believer would rather die than yield.
7. A zealot does not hesitate to cause others to die--all in the firm and righteous conviction
that he is showing courage and strength of character.
8. The actions of dedicated, self-sacrificing true believers can cause hideous crimes.
8. belief relates to religion, philosophy, politics, poetry, or art.
9. Religious piety is a cloak to conceal motives from the gullible.
10. Ridicule of individuals in society is not the same as ridicule of society (or religion).
11. Human behavior that strays from an acceptable standard and veers toward an extreme
in either direction is unacceptable.
12. Human behavior that strays from society’s standard and veers toward an extreme in
either direction invites criticism.
13. Gullibility can be the result of innocence, inexperience, or stupidity.
14. The exaggeration of character produces satire and humor to expose individual error.
15. Reasonable or rational thinking is necessary for common sense to prevail.
16. Reason and logic are of the highest importance in Neo-classical ideals, and Neo-classical thought
that by using these powers they could understand the universe and God.
17. The return of classical ideas can serve as guidelines for everyday life.
18. Reason and logic imply Neoclassical order or pattern to organize society and individual lives in a
highly ordered way.
19. The abdication of sovereign authority by any man causes chaos, especially if that authority transfers
to an extreme individual lacking reason and morality.
20. People are on the whole incapable of governing themselves, making it necessary for the
subjects of the realm to obey the king.
21. Disobedience to the monarch is not merely a crime but a sin.
22. True religion requires respect for the senses, desire, and reason.
23. Order and Reason suffer when an authority surrenders his judgment to a bad counselor.
24. An individual, under the guise of serving the best interests of the people or an authority,
may in fact have selfish and mercenary motives.
25. Religious devotion may be a disguise for moral corruption.
26. Although Moliere agrees that men should run their households like absolute monarchs
and does not contest the divine right of kings, his point is that reason, order, vigilance,
justice, and mercy must be present if men are to be competent and responsible.
27. An authority should prudently weigh the advice of all whose interest is in question.
28. An authority must never delegate his judgment to another: he remains responsible for
the wisdom of whatever advice he takes.
29. An authority must always retain the independent exercise of his own powers of mind.
30. Judgment itself must always be ruled in turn by reason and common sense.
31. The religious policy of a nation must consider sober and humane reason rather than the
intensity of faith (which is to be suspected as an expression of irrational passion).
32. If an authority errs with religion or the advice he takes, he risks the displeasure of God
and will make a fool of himself before mankind who will defame him as ridiculous and pitiful.
33. Informal sanctions can be powerful. (sanctions = carrot and stick)
34. An emphasis on reason and order is a pathway to the Enlightenment.
35. Fools go to bizarre lengths to persist in erroneous thinking.
36. A villain can pervert human rationality with a cynical lack of moral scruple to satisfy
sexual lust, greed for wealth, power and social standing, or sheer pleasure in subverting
legitimate authority.
37. If an absolute authority were to abdicate his authority to another through bad counsel
and failure to employ reason, only a miracle could save him from disaster
38. Since miracles are not rational, responsible authorities rely on sober reason and do not
manage their responsibilities by depending on miracles.
39. Elegant flattery of a authority can imply concealed criticism.
40. The implication that a cautious absolute authority does not relinquish his own judgment,
especially not to extreme religious fervor, is inseparable from elegant flattery.
40. Religious hypocrites use an insincere appeal to religion to commit fraud.
41. Appearances may be deceptive.
42. Propriety and morality are not the same.
43. Duping other people through the manipulation of reality to cause harm is evil.
44. Extreme and self-punishing zealotry is absurd.
45. The hypocrite’s pretense of morality and piety deserves punishment, shame, and
rejection.
46. Without attacking sincere religion, mockery questions the foolhardiness of anyone who
falls victim to hypocrisy in any form.
47. A person does not have to be highborn to be high-minded.
48. Female resistence to subservience in a male-dominated society challenges convention,
patriarchy, and gender roles.
49. Satiric laughter exposes the hypocrites and their perverse obsessions.
50. Even a respected citizen can fall prey to flattery, trickery, and lies.
51. Evidence is essential to making a decision.
52. The restoration of a just social order and the punishment of deviants from that order
contributes to the well-being of society.
53. The degree by which people are driven by their own obsessions to be blind to the needs
of others is a measure of their morality.
54. Belief in another’s goodness makes some individuals feel powerful.
55. . Order must be restored in the family for order to operate in the kingdom; and it is only
by the exercise of authority that order exists.
56. The family is a microcosm for larger patterns of social organization.
57. Capable of creating its own destruction, young love makes quick assumptions.
The Art Challenge of the Ending
At the climax of Tartuffe, Orgon and his family are suddenly saved from certain ruin by an outside
influence. This kind of ending in dramaturgical/playwriting terms is called a deus ex machina (or "god
from the machine"). In the theatre of the Ancient Greeks, tragedies were often resolved by the entrance
of a god who arrived on stage via machinery just in time to save the good or wronged or to punish
evil. Today, the term is used to refer to the resolution of a conflict through the intervention of a person or
thing from outside of the dramatic action; it is often used critically to suggest an inorganic/artificial or less
than dramatically compelling resolution. Ask your students to describe the turn of events in Tartuffe that
can be categorized as a deus ex machine.
HUMORS in 17th c . medicine
In 17th century France, all people were thought to be ruled by the humors: blood, phlegm, choler and melancholy.
Women were generally thought to be affected by cold and wet humors (phlegm and melancholy), making them
changeable and deceptive. Men, on the other hand, were thought to be ruled by hot and dry humors (blood and
choler), making them levelheaded and aggressive. There was a common misconception that a woman’s womb was
like a hungry animal desiring fertilization; when it was not “fed,” the womb would control the woman’s actions,
leading to depression or hysteria.
Critics in more recent times have detected Molière’s imprint on writers of the theater of the absurd in the 1950s
and on other experimental movements.