[In the following essay, Koppisch discusses the role of greed and rivalry in Molière's L'Avare.]

Avarice has a dual function in L'Avare: it is both the dominant character trait of Harpagon and the sign of a contagion that touches every aspect of his family's existence. From the moment he steps on stage, Harpagon is obsessed with money. His first words are to demand that La Flèche, his son's valet, leave immediately, lest the servant spy on him in the privacy of his own home and discover the whereabouts of his hidden treasure. The play ends with Harpagon eagerly awaiting the moment when he can see once again “ma chère cassette” (5.6).¹ By this time, his treasure has become the old man's only friend, “mon support, ma consolation, ma joie,” he calls it (4.7). Harpagon's conviction that, deprived of his money, he can no longer carry on anchors the play's comic vision in a darker realm. Indeed the miser is, arguably, as unhappy before the theft of his ten thousand écus as he is after it. He frets constantly about how dangerous it is to have so much money around the house (1.4). Burying his money in the garden puts it out of sight, but not out of mind, for Harpagon is terrified that others may have guessed his secret. Were the true extent of his wealth to become known, he would fear for his life: “un de ces jours,” he tells Cléante, “on me viendra chez moi couper la gorge, dans la pensée que je suis tout cousu de pistoles” (1.4). Harpagon's greed has turned his life into a nightmare.

It has also contaminated the social and moral order of his entire household. Ironically, Harpagon comes to a point when he tells the Commissaire investigating the theft of his box that “s'il [ce crime] demeure impuni, les choses les plus sacrées ne sont plus en sûreté” (5.1). If he fails to grasp that punishing the culprit will make no difference, he is, nonetheless, absolutely right about “les choses les plus sacrées.” They have been tainted. As Louis Lacour, the editor of the reprinting of the play's original 1669 edition, says, “il nous semble assister à la décadence d'une famille.”² Harpagon no longer fulfills the most elementary obligations of a father, preferring his money even to the life of his own daughter. Elise's revelation that she had been saved from drowning by Valère, whom Harpagon believes to be guilty of the theft, elicits from her father his nastiest line: “Tout cela n'est rien; et il valait bien mieux pour moi qu'il te laissât noyer que de faire ce qu'il a fait” (5.4). Paternal love has been banished from the repertoire of Harpagon's feelings. Paternal authority fares no better. Harpagon's children refuse to obey him, plot against their father's tyranny, lie to him. Harpagon mistreats his servants, who, in turn, wish their master no good. To defend themselves against Harpagon, members of his household adopt certain of his own worst flaws. This, finally, leaves the family on the brink of turmoil.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau centers his brief critique of L'Avare on precisely this tendency toward the disintegration of a family order:

C'est un grand vice d'être avare et de prêter à usure; mais n'en est-ce pas un plus grand encore à un fils de voler son père, de lui manquer de respect, de lui faire mille insultants reproches, et, quand ce père irrité lui donne sa malédiction, de répondre d'un air goguenard, qu'il n'a que faire de ses dons?³

Although he makes no attempt to justify the rapacious Harpagon, the more dangerous transgression, in Rousseau's eyes, is the abrogation of filial duty. The threat represented by the machinations of a miser is limited. He might, at worst, make his children miserable until he mends his ways or dies. However, when the child treats his father just as the father treats him, the very order on which family relations are founded is called into question. The contours of the relationship between father and son become hazy in L'Avare, as Harpagon discredits himself and Cléante increasingly takes liberties with the role of father. Rousseau focuses on the dissolution of the special bond between father and son because this is a crisis both fundamental to the play's action and indicative of the chaos that threatens Harpagon's family.

Desire for riches invades every quarter of life in this household, bringing with it confusion and disorder. The discourse of love itself, usually free from such concerns, has been contaminated—directly and indirectly—by money. The first impediment to her love for Valère that Elise mentions is, of course, “l'emportement d'un père,” but her real reservation is that Valère will have a change of heart, a “froideur criminelle dont ceux de votre sexe payent le plus souvent les témoignages trop ardents d'une innocente amour” (1.1; my emphasis). To his assurance that he, Valère, is different, Elise replies that all men sing the same tune: “Tous les hommes sont semblables par les paroles; et ce n'est que les actions qui les découvrent différents” (1.1). Distinguishing one man from another may not be as simple as it would seem. Similarities have, perhaps, more force—and are more troubling—than difference. And as for Valère's behavior, his own description of it makes one understand the young woman's hesitation. In order to be close to his beloved, Valère has insinuated himself into Harpagon's household by pretending to be a servant. Such a ploy may be justified in the name of love, but Valère has gone further than is prudent, hoping to seduce the father along with his daughter. His tactic is at best hypocritical, even though his adversary is a despicable old miser. Valère draws Elise's attention to the fact that he is merely playing a role, pretending to be something that he is not: “Vous voyez comme je m'y prends … sous quel masque de sympathie et de rapports de sentiments je me déguise pour lui plaire, et quel personnage je joue tous les jours avec lui …” (1.1). The goal is couched in terms of acquisition: “acquérir sa [Harpagon's] tendresse.”

Valère, moreover, is pleased with himself for having succeeded famously in deceiving his future father-in-law: “J'y fais des progrès admirables,” he gloats. Valère's self-satisfaction derives in part from his sense that he is acting on a principle in which he believes, but this principle reveals a singular cynicism: “et j'éprouve que pour gagner les hommes, il n'est point de meilleure voie que de se parer à leurs yeux de leurs inclinations, que de donner dans leurs maximes, encenser leurs défauts, et applaudir à ce qu'ils font” (1.1). Whether or not this role is played well matters little, he goes on. All men are taken in by flattery. It cannot be helped that “la sincérité souffre un peu au métier que je fais.” “Un peu”? What might constitute “beaucoup”? In any event, Valère now enunciates a maxim not unrelated to Elise's initial concern that all men are alike: “mais quand on a besoin des hommes, il faut bien s'ajuster à eux; et puisqu'on ne saurait les gagner que par-là, ce n'est pas la faute de ceux qui flattent, mais de ceux qui veulent être flattés” (1.1). Refusing all responsibility for his dishonest behavior, Valère sweeps away a major difference between flatterer and flattered. Real guilt lies with the victim of flattery, rather than with its perpetrator. On at least one level—that of culpability—the difference between trickster and dupe has been reversed. The two may not be identical, but a barrier separating them has broken down. As differences crumble, the distinction between the noble, magnanimous Valère who saves Elise's life by risking his own and the wily pretender may also be called into doubt. At the very least, Valère has demonstrated that he is neither honesty and goodness incarnate nor an absolute scoundrel. Verbs often associated with financial dealings—“gagner,” “acquérir”—signal the impact of money and greed on human relations in Harpagon's family, as Elise, at the end of this scene, implores Valère to do his best to “gagner l'appui de mon frère” (1.1).

Money impinges more directly on Cléante's love for Mariane. The young girl lives with her sick mother in a state of near penury. By discreetly providing for the family's financial needs, Cléante would like to lighten Mariane's burden: “Figurez-vous, ma sœur, quelle joie ce peut être que de relever la fortune d'une personne que l'on aime” (1.2). Only Harpagon's stinginess prevents his son from fulfilling this desire. Curiously, the sole way of expressing his love that occurs to Cléante is a gift of money: his father's tight-fistedness, he says, leaves him “dans l'impuissance de goûter cette joie, et de faire éclater à cette belle aucun témoignage de mon amour” (1.2). The juxtaposition of the words “impuissance” and “joie” suggests the strength of Cléante's feelings toward a father “[qui] s'oppose à nos désirs” (1.2). Cléante's choice of a gift in kind is not unique in Molière's theater. Dom Garcie de Navarre would have liked to bestow upon Done Elvire just such a present; Alceste harbors the same dream; and Orgon was so generous to Tartuffe that the impostor was able to return half of what he received without, apparently, noticing the loss. Could it be that Cléante, like those others and, indeed, his own father, might use money as a means of acquiring power? The suspicion cannot be proven. Nor, however, is Cléante so high-minded as to remove it from the realm of possibility. Money and love are, for better or for worse, inextricably linked in Cléante's mind.

The power of wealth on the imagination of Harpagon is, of course, overwhelming. Knowing full well that Mariane is not rich, he allows, somewhat vaguely, that “si l'on n'y trouve pas tout le bien qu'on souhaite, on peut tâcher de regagner cela sur autre chose” (1.4). Harpagon nevertheless hopes to extract a dowry from the mother of his intended. The contradiction is a glaring one but gives no pause to the miser, who insistently questions Frosine about whether she had explained that “il fallait … qu'elle [Mariane's mother] se saignât pour une occasion comme celle-ci” (2.5). That he would pursue a woman without visible wealth in itself shows the depth of his feelings for her. Still, he cannot conceive of a marriage that will not make him a richer man. For his children's marriages, money determines who the spouse will be. Elise is to wed Anselme, “dont on vante les grands biens” (1.4) and “[qui] s'engage à la prendre sans dot” (1.5). Cléante will become the husband of a widow, presumably rich. No value, no institution—love, marriage, family—is sacred where financial gain seems possible. The very institutions and beliefs on which Harpagon's existence is built are undermined by his overwhelming desire for wealth.

The breakdown of order is here vividly represented, as elsewhere in Molière's theater, by characters' resort to physical violence as a replacement for rational discourse. No sooner has he appeared on stage than Harpagon threatens La Flèche with a sound thrashing because the valet asks perfectly logical questions: “Tu fais le raisonneur. Je te baillerai de ce raisonnement-ci par les oreilles” (1.3). Jacques receives a beating for telling his master the truth (3.1) and, at the play's conclusion, is momentarily in danger of being hanged for having lied about the theft of the money box. Truth and falsehood incite the same reaction—violence. Poor Jacques also comes in for a beating by Valère, who, in his treatment of the servant, behaves exactly like Harpagon. When Cléante refuses to bow to parental authority by giving up Mariane, Harpagon's attempt to impose himself is violent: “Je te ferai bien me connaître, avec de bons coups de bâton” (4.3). All that guarantees his power over his son is the rod. Harpagon is regularly reduced to violence as he tries to shore up a crumbling order. After losing his treasure, he will go so far as to prescribe violent acts against himself as a means of uncovering the truth about the theft. Truth itself, apparently, cannot exist without the exercise of violence. The dilemma confronting Harpagon is simply that violence engenders greater violence and, ultimately, chaos, not an order that he can dominate from his position as head of the family. As the action of the play unfolds, turmoil overtakes Harpagon's household.

The old miser Euclio in Plautus' Aulularia, which is the primary source of Molière's play, shares Harpagon's obsession with a large fortune. Both have found for their daughters a suitor who does not insist on a dowry, both are unnecessarily suspicious of anyone who might conceivably rob them, both treat others, especially servants, rudely. Molière found in Plautus the idea for some of the best comic bits of his play. Harpagon's first encounter with La Flèche (1.3), the miser's famous monologue (4.7), and the extended misunderstanding between Harpagon and Valère over the theft (5.3) all have specific counterparts in the Latin play.⁴ Molière has turned to Plautus with great profit. However, having found the givens of his plot in the Roman tradition, Molière proceeds to create a work that is in every way more radical than his model. Although the protagonists of the two plays suffer from the same malady, Euclio realizes that money is the cause of his woes and would almost prefer to be done with his riches rather than continue to be burdened by them. Nor does he allow money to destroy the good order of his household. Plautus' conception of the comic hero clearly leaves open the possibility of redemption from his madness. Euclio's obsession is less destructive than Harpagon's because it does not overwhelm every other value in his life. The single-mindedness of Harpagon, by contrast, is absolute.

This mania, whose intensity makes it so typical of Molière's theater, must be viewed in the context of another, more crucial addition to the plot of Plautus' play. Harpagon, unlike Euclio, is in love, and he loves the same woman as his son. The rivalry between father and son has a powerful impact upon affairs of the purse, as well as affairs of the heart. What Molière has done by changing Plautus in just this way is to shift the entire focus of his play away from the emphasis on a predetermined character trait that alone explains a character's dilemma. If only Euclio can be less greedy, master a flaw in his personality, all will once again be well. Lyconides will marry Phaedria, and Euclio will be freed from the suffering caused by his wealth. Although the text of the Aulularia is not complete, it is clear from the second argument that this is precisely what happens:

Auro formidat Euclio, abstrudit foris.
Re omni inspecta comressoris servolus.
Id surpit; illio Euclioni sem refert.
Ab eo donatur auro, uxore et filio.(5)

Such a resolution in L'Avare—or in any other Molière play, for that matter—would be virtually unthinkable. Good Moliéresque maniac that he is, Harpagon leaves the stage as he had stepped onto it, obsessed with his chest full of money. His final act is to have Anselme pay the Commissaire, which frees Harpagon to “voir ma chère cassette” (5.6). The miser remains unaltered, but turmoil does not ensue. In fact, a measure of order is restored to the household.

For, in L'Avare, the knot to be undone by the comic dénouement is not, as in Plautus' play, simply greed. Greed is, rather, the sign of a deeper malaise. Harpagon is already a wealthy man and has no ostensible reason to worry about his money. That he is incapable of putting aside, even for a moment, thoughts of it indicates how thoroughly Harpagon identifies himself with his money. Through his accumulated wealth and through it alone, is he able to relate to the world in which he lives. Harpagon's every human sentiment is filtered through his miserliness: “En un mot, il aime l'argent, plus que réputation, qu'honneur et que vertu” (2.4). This explains why he is, again in the words of La Flèche, “de tous les humains l'humain le moins humain” (2.4). The servant does not exaggerate. Harpagon's conception of himself depends upon his wealth. He is attached to his “chère cassette” in the same way as Monsieur Jourdain to social status or Argan to illness. His money itself is both real and unreal: real because it does indeed exist and unreal because it cannot, in and of itself, change his life. Not surprisingly, the money box remains buried in the garden throughout the play. To dig it up would change nothing. What money does allow Harpagon, however, is a way of asserting his control over others.

As the father of Cléante and Elise, Harpagon has by right a large role to play in deciding whom they will marry. Money solidifies his paternal authority by eliminating any uncertainty about an otherwise difficult decision. Valère prevaricates in his response to Harpagon's famous “sans dot”: “Vous avez raison: voilà qui décide tout, cela s'entend … Ah! il n'y a pas de réplique à cela … Il est vrai: cela ferme la bouche à tout. Sans dot” (1.5). Harpagon believes every word of it. Rather than complicating the issue, financial considerations make good sense of it. Both power and right are on Harpagon's side. Cléante experiences his father as a tyrant and swears to his sister that unless things change, “nous le quitterons là tous deux et nous affranchirons de cette tyrannie où nous tient si longtemps son avarice insupportable” (1.2). At the heart of Harpagon's imperious control over the lives of his children is greed, “son avarice.” Stinginess also sets him apart from everyone else in the play. Being a miser makes Harpagon different, and he must defend himself against attack on every side: “Je ne veux point avoir sans cesse devant moi un espion de mes affaires, un traître, dont les yeux maudits assiègent toutes mes actions …” (1.3). The military image of a siege translates perfectly the configuration of Harpagon's relations with others: they against me, a fortress of strength. As he himself puts it, even his children have joined the ranks of the enemy: “Cela est ètrange, que mes propres enfants me trahissent et deviennent mes ennemis” (1.4). By cunning or by force, the enemy must be defeated, brought under control, made subservient to a more powerful master.

Harpagon's strategy is a simple one, easily recognizable to readers of Molière. He will marry off his children to well-heeled mates from whom the family will, hopefully, benefit and keep Mariane for himself, pinching his pennies all the while. Needless to say, Cléante and his sister have ideas of their own about the future. In a curious way, Harpagon is right to see his children as his enemies, for they become rivals with him in a struggle over their own destiny. Elise takes badly the news of her father's intention that she marry Anselme. Going so far as to threaten suicide if forced to marry, she flatly rejects Harpagon's proposal. The dialogue between father and daughter is a model of imitative belligerence. Elise and Harpagon speak the same language, use the same words. All that distinguishes the words of one from the words of the other is an occasional direct negation of what has just preceded or will shortly follow. Harpagon's obstinacy is met by the obstinacy of his daughter, her tartness by his irony:

Elise—Je vous demande pardon, mon père.

Harpagon—Je vous demande pardon, ma fille.

Elise—Je suis très humble servante au seigneur Anselme; mais, avec votre permission, je ne l'épouserai point.

Harpagon—Je suis votre très humble valet; mais, avec votre permission, vous l'épouserez dès ce soir.

Elise—Dès ce soir?

Harpagon—Dès ce soir.

Elise—Cela ne sera pas, mon père.

Harpagon—Cela sera, ma fille.

Elise—Non.

Harpagon—Si.

Elise—Non, vous dis-je.

Harpagon—Si, vous dis-je.

Elise—C'est une chose où vous ne me réduirez point.

Harpagon—C'est une chose où je te réduirai.

Elise—Je me tuerai plutôt que d'épouser un tel mari.

Harpagon—Tu ne te tueras point, et tu l'épouseras.

(1.4)

A standard comic technique—having two interlocutors contradict each other with much the same words—is more than a clever way of eliciting laughter. That both parties to the disagreement use the same language suggests a real identity between them. Each contradicts the other in the hope of having his—or her—own way. In this particular instance, Elise seems to be right and her father wrong, although the daughter should treat her father with more respect. Harpagon's behavior and Elise's response to it endanger the good order of the household by suggesting that there is a similar basis for parental authority and a child's disobedience. The duel ends in a draw, the father's authority challenged and no resolution of the quarrel in sight. Assuming opposite stances, Elise and Harpagon behave similarly. Their only recourse seems to be to a third party.

Valère's position as trusted servant of Harpagon and secret lover of Elise makes him at once an “ideal” choice as judge—father and daughter agree on his probity!—and the person least likely to be able to resolve the dispute. Without even knowing the subject of the quarrel, Valère declares Harpagon in the right: “vous ne sauriez avoir tort, et vous êtes toute raison” (1.5). As soon as the old man leaves the room, Valère explains to Elise that favoring Harpagon had merely been a ploy. Valère is really on Elise's side. Despite his double talk, he knows very well where his sympathy lies. So does the audience. At this early point in the play, it is neither necessary nor desirable that the conflict be resolved. Valère's duplicity, however, merely hides the fact that there is no rational resolution possible to the dilemma created by Harpagon's rivalry with his children. This unhappy truth will be apparent as Harpagon takes on his son.

Cléante explicitly—and cynically—recognizes his father's authority over him at the beginning of his first conversation with his sister: “je sais que je dépends d'un père, et que le nom de fils me soumet à ses volontés.” But let there be no mistake about it: Cléante says this only “afin que vous ne vous donniez pas la peine de me le dire” (1.2). What he really wants is to check Harpagon's power. The son sees his father as an obstacle to success and will shortly learn that Harpagon is also his rival for the affection of Mariane. The two distinguishing comic features of Harpagon—his inappropriate love for Mariane and his preoccupation with money—both place him in rivalry with his son. It is this rivalry and its ramifications that motivate much of the action in Molière's play. Rivalry also leads directly to the disintegration of a family order founded on differences among members of the household.

The scene in which Cléante realizes that Maître Simon has arranged for him to borrow money at usurious rates from none other than his own father is reminiscent of the debate between Harpagon and Elise. Using the same comic device, Molière puts similar words into the mouths of his characters. This time, however, the similarity of the two characters is emphasized as each accuses the other of criminal behavior. Rather than contradicting each other, father and son see each other as mirror images of themselves. The dialogue blurs the distinction between usury and profligate borrowing:

Harpagon—Comment, pendard? c'est toi qui t'abandonnes à ces coupables extrémités?

Cléante—Comment, mon père? c'est vous qui vous portez à ces honteuses actions?

Harpagon—C'est toi qui te veux ruiner par des emprunts si condamnables?

Cléante—C'est vous qui cherchez à vous enrichir par des usures si criminelles?

Harpagon—Oses-tu bien, après cela, paraître devant moi?

Cléante—Osez-vous bien, après cela, vous présenter aux yeux du monde? (2.2)

The difference between borrower and lender, like that between flatterer and flattered, disappears as Harpagon and Cléante are reduced to the same level. When Cléante asks which of them is more guilty, Harpagon responds by ordering his son to leave. For there seems to be no clear-cut answer to that query.

At the moment he invites Mariane to his house and introduces her to his family, Harpagon is unaware that she and Cléante are in love and takes as mere impertinence his son's open opposition to Mariane's becoming “ma belle-mère” (3.7). Since she understands perfectly well what he really means, Mariane praises Cléante's honesty in expressing his feelings. His candor takes a curious turn as Cléante goes on to declare his love: “souffrez, Madame, que je me mette ici à la place de mon père, et que je vous avoue que je n'ai rien vu dans le monde de si charmant que vous” (3.7). To Harpagon's objection, Cléante retorts that “c'est un compliment que je fais pour vous à Madame” (3.7). What Cléante does in order to vie with his father is simply to replace him. Their struggle for the hand of Mariane results in the son's speaking for, standing in for the father. Harpagon recognizes this and resents it: “Mon Dieu! j'ai une langue pour m'expliquer moi-même, et je n'ai pas besoin d'un procureur comme vous” (3.7). His self-assertion is necessary if he is not to be eliminated altogether. The barrier between father and son, which should protect the role of each, is momentarily lowered in this scene—momentarily and dangerously. For Cléante does not stop at speaking for his father. Having taken the first step, he continues by presenting to Mariane a diamond ring taken from Harpagon's finger. The miser is beside himself at the thought of the expense of this gift but can do nothing to get it back without compromising his love. Rivalry, which could be expected to separate the factions, here does the opposite. In a sense, Cléante and Harpagon become one. Cléante wants Mariane to have the ring and forces it on her. Harpagon wants the opposite but dares not contravene his son's “generosity.” On the surface, at least, the two act as one. The comic effect of the scene derives in part from Harpagon's impotence when faced with a rivalry that levels differences. In their dispute over money, Cléante and Harpagon behaved similarly. Where love is involved, Cléante slips into the role assumed by his father.

This unexpected effect of the rivalry between Cléante and Harpagon is what Rousseau found so disturbing. When it finally occurs to him that his son might also love Mariane, Harpagon tricks Cléante into admitting his passion and then orders him to give up his love. Cléante must also marry the woman his father has picked for him. In other words, Harpagon wants both to defeat his son and make him obedient to his father's will. Nowhere is Harpagon's desire for power more straightforwardly articulated. Cléante's will, however, is no less strong. He refuses to acquiesce. On the contrary, the young man embraces rivalry with his father and the terrible struggle it implies: “je vous déclare, moi, que je ne quitterai point la passion que j'ai pour Mariane, qu'il n'y a point d'extrémité où je ne m'abandonne pour vous disputer sa conquête” (4.3). Recognizing the deadlock at which he has arrived with Cléante, Harpagon resorts to the order of difference upon which his whole existence has been founded: “Ne suis-je pas ton père? et ne me dois-tu pas respect!” (4.3). Cléante's response is devastating in its confirmation that rivalry has erased even this difference: “Ce ne sont point ici des choses où les enfants soient obligés de déférer aux pères, et l'amour ne connaît personne” (4.3). Love does not distinguish between father and son. Harpagon's threat to beat his son, his readiness to give in to violence, represents the irrational, chaotic state to which rivalry has reduced his family.

Once again, a third person is called upon to adjudicate the dispute. This time, Maître Jacques will be the judge. The role of justice in L'Avare is to prevent the onslaught of chaos by maintaining an order based on difference. By deciding that one party or the other is right, justice marks a distinction between the two. Harpagon's repeated choice of servants as mediators indicates how badly he wants to control events. It also undermines the potential efficacy of the system of justice, for it is unlikely that Harpagon would accept a judgment against himself rendered by a servant. The structure of the scene in which Harpagon and Cléante appear before Maître Jacques reveals why the power of justice to maintain differences is sapped by rivalry. Harpagon and Cléante present virtually identical cases. Both love a woman whom they want to marry, each is prevented from doing so by the importunities of the other. Harpagon thinks it wrong that Cléante will not obey him. Cléante accuses his father of a love inappropriate for a person of his advanced age. As if to underline their identity, Maître Jacques answers both Harpagon and Cléante in the same manner. To Harpagon's complaints about his son, he says: “Ah! il a tort.” And to Cléante of his father, Maître Jacques declares: “Il a tort assurément” (4.4). For Maître Jacques, Harpagon and Cléante are identical in their stubbornness, and he treats them similarly. His would-be “resolution” to the dilemma is no less artificial or more satisfactory than had been the miser's peremptory dismissal of his son after their quarrel about money or Valère's hesitation to side with Elise against Harpagon come what may. Just as he had told each man that the other was wrong, Jacques also assures each that the other has capitulated. Harpagon is overjoyed to learn that his son will obey him, and Cléante believes that his father will let him marry Mariane. When, in the course of their reconciliation, they discover the truth, Harpagon curses his son, who answers with the phrase that incurred Rousseau's wrath:

Harpagon—Et je te donne ma malédiction.

Cléante—Je n'ai que faire de vos dons. (4.5)

The face of justice in this scene is altogether farcical. Maître Jacques is hardly a worthy judge of any cause, let alone one that concerns his master. On the other hand, the task of the real representative of justice, when he appears later in the play, will be no easier nor meet with any greater success.

As the difference between those who are right and those who are wrong becomes increasingly problematic, justice loses its capacity to function decisively. Harpagon thinks of nothing but hoarding money and is rightly accused of avarice by his family and servants. He, in turn, condemns them for going to the opposite extreme with their spendthrift ways. Money, in L'Avare, is a preoccupation shared by characters of every stripe. Their attitudes toward it divide them into two groups: Harpagon and the others. In the final analysis, however, it is impossible to say that right is on the side of one or the other. Rivalry between Harpagon and members of his family makes them all behave similarly, albeit in the name of opposing principles. The Commissaire, called by Harpagon to unravel the mystery of the theft of the strong box, makes no headway because Harpagon can give him no clues. Harpagon believes that everyone is guilty. To the reasonable question “Qui soupçonnezvous de ce vol?” his response is categorical: “Tout le monde” (5.1). Justice itself is ensnared in the net that Harpagon casts out, losing its special—and necessary—quality of disengagement and impartiality. Should the culprit not be found, Harpagon will lump justice together with all the other guilty parties: “si l'on ne me fait retrouver mon argent, je demanderai justice de la justice” (5.1). It is in the context of this leveling of all differences that Harpagon's famous monologue must be read.

Beside himself at the loss of his precious money box, Harpagon laments his fate. The tone and substance of his monologue, based on a similar speech of Euclio, reveal the depth of the crisis triggered by the theft. Without realizing it, Harpagon lays bare the truth of his situation. Money has meant far more to him than the financial security that comes with wealth. It has been his “cher ami … mon support, ma consolation, ma joie” (4.7). Life is worth living only if Harpagon can recover his money. Along with it, the miser has lost a firm grasp on himself. No longer can this most egotistical of creatures be certain who he is: “Mon esprit est troublé, et j'ignore où je suis, qui je suis, et ce que je fais” (4.7). The most telling manifestation of Harpagon's alienation is his absolute inability to make fundamental distinctions between various groups of people. Friends and enemies, servants and family members, all are dissolved into one single category: thief. Since all are identical, all are to be treated in the same way. Indeed, Harpagon does not even spare himself: “Je veux aller quérir la justice, et faire donner la question à toute la maison: à servantes, à valets, à fils, à fille, et à moi aussi” (4.7). The miser's own identity is lost in the undifferentiated mass of humanity subsumed under the name “voleur.” Even the audience is included in his suspicions. His tirade pushes to the limit a tendency to suspect everyone, to deny distinctions that make it possible for society to function. Harpagon has always been distinguished by his wealth and the sense of power it has brought him. Now, however, his enemies mock him. Crazed, he stares at the audience and realizes that everyone is laughing at him: “Ils me regardent tous, et se mettent à rire” (4.7). His madness consists in his being swallowed up by their laughter. Harpagon becomes one of them, a thief. When he reaches out for the arm of a suspected culprit, it turns out to be his own arm that he has seized. This scene is not, as some have claimed, exaggerated.⁶ It is, rather, the powerful comic representation of a crisis that is the natural outcome of imitative rivalry. He who would be superior to others is reduced to the same level as those he intended to dominate and, in the process, loses his own identity.

This is a kind of death, and Harpagon links the theft of his money to his own demise. The opening words of his monologue—“Au voleur! au voleur!”—are counterbalanced by “à l'assassin! au meurtrier!” (4.7). In the next lines, he equates being robbed with being “perdu,” being “assassiné,” and having his throat slit. More references to death than to the robbery occur in the first lines of Harpagon's speech, and the miser's last words are a threat of multiple executions followed by his suicide: “Je veux faire pendre tout le monde; et si je ne retrouve mon argent, je me pendrai moi-même après” (4.7). In other words, the monologue begins and concludes on the theme of death. Addressing his lost money, Harpagon gives vent to his despair: “sans toi, il m'est impossible de vivre. C'en est fait; je n'en puis plus; je me meurs, je suis mort, je suis enterré” (4.7). He looks for a savior to bring him back to life: “N'y a-t-il personne qui veuille me ressusciter, en me rendant mon cher argent, ou en m'apprenant qui l'a pris?” (4.7). Although the comic impact of Harpagon's obsession with death is undeniable, the presence of the spectre of death throughout the play makes it a powerful image.⁷

Harpagon is terrified of being killed, and his monologue in Act IV, with its repetition and intensification of much that he says elsewhere, is the culminating point of his fear. One of the reasons for which he resents Cléante's extravagant spending is that it might encourage people to think of Harpagon as a rich man, thereby endangering his life: “les dépenses que vous faites seront cause qu'un de ces jours on me viendra chez moi couper la gorge, dans la pensée que je suis tout cousu de pistoles” (1.4). Now precisely that has happened: “On m'a coupé la gorge” (4.7). Earlier, Harpagon would have liked to have the inventor of “ces grands hauts-de-chausses” hanged for an invention that can serve to hide stolen goods (1.3). Now the once-powerful master will hang himself after having others hanged for the crime. He shares their fate with those whom he would dominate. Like his chest, which he had “enterré dans mon jardin” (1.4), Harpagon in his unhappiness is now himself buried: “je suis enterré” (4.7).

Avarice is a fortification that Harpagon has erected to protect himself against the unknown and, ultimately, death. As La Flèche explains to Frosine, the very sight of a borrower, who might ask him to part with money, strikes Harpagon “par son endroit mortel” (2.4). Money is the miser's only defense against death. Therefore, he cannot take lightly the threat of losing it. What money does is give substance to an existence without other solid, visible underpinnings. Harpagon needs money for the same reason that Pascal's hunter needs the hare. Piling it up diverts his attention from his own emptiness. Riches serve him well as a basis for creating an identity different from that of others, and on this difference can be founded his conviction that he is superior to them. Molière, of course, knows as well as Pascal that even though Harpagon's wealth may be very real, the superiority that he would construct upon it is imaginary, always likely to crumble. And try as he might, Harpagon cannot suppress the truth. This is why he lives in constant fear of being robbed. The least suggestion that he might lose money brings him face to face with the possibility of his own annihilation. When La Merluche runs on stage and accidentally knocks Harpagon down, the miser is certain that his creditors have paid the lackey to do him in: “Ah! je suis mort,” he cries as he falls (3.9). Robbery, for him, is the equivalent of murder.⁸ If Harpagon's belief that he can avoid death by barricading himself behind his wealth is mad, it does, nonetheless, help explain his aberrant behavior.

Furthermore, the rivalry in which he engages with such fervor runs the risk of ending with the death, real or symbolic, of at least one of the combatants. To rob Harpagon of his money is to steal his identity, and, as he himself says, there is no reason to go on living without his money. Likewise, were he to lose the struggle of wills with his son, his identity as a superior being would be crushed. Cléante is not unaware of the mortal dimension of his battle with his father. The avarice of a father, he tells La Flèche, can reduce a son to wishing his father dead (2.1). Harpagon does not realize that he is himself the father in question when Maître Simon tells him that his prospective creditor “s'obligera, si vous voulez, que son père mourra avant qu'il soit huit mois” (2.2). His insouciant response—“C'est quelque chose que cela”—is loaded with irony. Nor is Cléante the only person who looks forward to Harpagon's death. Jokingly commenting on his youthfulness, Frosine assures the miser that he will live to a ripe old age: “Il faudra vous assommer, vous dis-je; et vous mettrez en terre et vos enfants, et les enfants de vos enfants” (2.5). In retrospect, her joke becomes less droll when later we hear her explain to Mariane that it would be “impertinent” of Harpagon not to die within three months of their marriage (3.4), thus making his wife a rich widow. What Frosine's comment suggests is that death awaits Harpagon whether he wins or loses his struggle with Cléante for the hand of Mariane. This rivalry, it would seem, inevitably degenerates into annihilation and death.

Death is present at every turn in L'Avare, and the existence of individual characters takes form around a core of resistance to it. In the first scene of the play, Elise evokes the day she might have drowned had not Valère saved her from the waves' fury. From that moment on, she has thought of nothing but Valère. This episode, in which she narrowly escaped death, has given meaning to her life. Mariane and her mother, who never appears on stage, have been haunted by the presumed death of the girl's father.

Shortly after discovering that his money has been stolen, Harpagon learns from Valère that Elise has agreed to marry him. Harpagon has lost both his money and his daughter. He does not trust his servants, his son has turned against him, and justice has no power to restore order: “Voiciun étrange embarras,” says Frosine (5.4). Harpagon's household is on the brink of chaos.⁹ Figuratively, at least, Harpagon is threatened with death: “On m'assassine dans le bien, on m'assassine dans l'honneur” (5.5). Anselme, to whom he says these words, will restore a measure of order. For he, quite by chance, turns out to be the long-lost father of Mariane and Valère, the “late” Dom Thomas d'Alburcy, whose family believed he had perished at sea while seeking exile from Naples. Dom Thomas, convinced that his family had perished as well, had come to France and taken up a new identity. He was about to seek consolation in a new family with Elise as his wife. With encouragement from Anselme and the promise from Cléante that his money will be returned, Harpagon consents to the marriage of his son to Mariane and his daughter to Valère. Overcome in love by the force of events, Harpagon clings all the more fiercely to his greed, insisting that Anselme give his children money for their weddings, underwrite the expenses of the weddings, buy him a new suit for the ceremony, and provide the Commissaire's salary.

At first blush, this conclusion to the play seems altogether artificial and, therefore, unsatisfactory. Only by pure coincidence is a semblance of order restored. However, the comic dénouement of L'Avare makes perfect sense and follows logically from everything that has preceded it. The return to order at the end of the play is literally snatched from the clutches of death. Had Dom Thomas really died, as well he might have under the circumstances and, indeed, as everyone thought he had, there might have been no resolution of the crisis possible without Harpagon's demise. Keeping out of the way of death has been at the root of the way in which Harpagon has organized life. To trick death, that ultimate destruction of the will, has been the miser's goal. He has made sense of a meaningless existence and averted a confrontation with the absence of meaning by avoiding death. The resurrection of Dom Thomas does that too, but it has no more finality either.

The comic resolution provided by Anselme is by no means a final one, and this, really, is the meaning of the end of L'Avare. If the “étrange embarras” can be eliminated only by the return to life of a man believed to have been long since dead, it is apparent that this “embarras” is resistant to all but the most powerful of remedies. Death will, in the end, overcome attempts to conquer it, and rivalry's relentless movement toward death cannot be stopped in its tracks. As in other plays of Molière, the monomaniac remains unrepentant and unreformed. A crisis of order in the household brought about by Harpagon's rivalry with his son has been narrowly averted. That his avarice has remained untouched by the momentary return to order leaves the permanent risk of a new and equally devastating crisis. L'Avare is among the more somber of Molière's plays. Not the least of the reasons for this is the clarity with which the play's conclusion demonstrates the destructiveness of the plague of rivalry.

Notes

1. Molière, L'Avare, in Œuvres complètes, ed. Georges Couton, 2 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1971), Vol. 2. The Couton edition is used throughout for citations from L'Avare.

2. Molière, L'Avare, ed. Louis Lacour (Paris: Librairie des Bibliophiles, 1976), vii.

3. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Lettre à M. d'Alembert, in Du Contrat social (Paris: Garnier, 1962), 149-50.

4. See Couton's introduction to L'Avare, 508-09.

5. Plautus, Aulularia or the Pot of Gold, in Plautus, trans. Paul Nixon, 5 vols. (London and Cambridge, MA: William Heinemann and Harvard UP, 1916-38), 1, 232-33. “Anxious about his gold, Euclio hides it outside the house. Everything he does having been witnessed, a rascally servant of the girl's assailant [Lyconides] steals it. His master informs Euclio of it, and receives from him gold, wife, and son.” (Euclio's daughter Phaedria is already pregnant by Lyconides, whence the “son.”)

6. See Molière, L'Avare, in Œuvres, eds. Eugène Despois and Paul Mesnard, 13 vols. (Paris: Hachette, 1873-1900): “Molière, à l'exemple de Plaute, a cru qu'en cet endroit un peu d'exagération ne dépassait pas les droits de la comédie. Autrement peut-être, la scène risquait-elle d'être trop voisine du tragique” (7:175).

7. As Georges Couton has it, “Cela pue à la fois l'argent et le cadavre” (513).

8. Reference has already been made to Harpagon's monologue in Act IV, where he speaks of robbery and murder as one. Later, during his comic misunderstanding with Valère, Harpagon, still believing that Valère is a thief, calls his future son-in-law's crime “un assassinat de la sorte” (5.3). The image of assassination is used again in this way in 5.5.

9. As René Girard points out in La Violence et le sacré (Paris: Grasset, 1972), the breakdown of differences often leads to chaos.