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In Tartuffe, what does Moliere convey about common sense and reason?

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"Tartuffe and the Golden Mean"

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Tartuffe, by Jean Baptiste Poquelin, better known as "Moliere," was banned from public performance by King Louis XIV of France in 1664 on religious grounds, banned again in a second version in 1667 (again on religious grounds), and finally permitted to be performed in its third version in 1669.

Tartuffe was written during what is termed the Enlightenment or "The Age of Reason," the guiding principle of which was that reason should rule an individual's emotions and passions. In Tartuffe, Moliere exemplifies and explores the conflict that can arise between reason and passion. In fact, the entire play is a call to reason and common sense.

So we don't lose our way through the range of conflicts and arguments that arise during the play, Moliere provides us with two voices of reason: Cléante, who is Orgon's brother-in-law, and Dorine, Marianne's feisty, outspoken maid.

At the beginning of the...

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play, it's clear to everyone in Orgon's household, and all his relatives and their households that Orgon has lost his mind along with his common and his reason. Orgon is utterly in the thrall of Tartuffe, a person who everyone but Orgon can see is a religious hypocrite and a con man. Tartuffe exploits Orgon's blind devotion to him in order to cheat Orgon out of his home and into disinheriting his own children.

Cléante tries to convince Orgon to view the situation calmly and reasonably and to use common sense. Cléante criticizes Tartuffe as a "hireling zealot," with "uncommon zeal," and as a "worthless scamp":

CLÉANTE: [to Orgon] You're quite sincere in boasting of his zeal;
But you're deceived, I think, by false pretenses.

Dorine is a more direct. Within just a few minutes of start of the play, we can tell that Dorine already has Tartuffe's "number":

DORINE: If we must hark to him, and heed his maxims,
There's not a thing we do but what's a crime;
He censures everything, this zealous carper.
Who complains about everything.
. . .He passes for a saint in your opinion.
In fact, he's nothing but a hypocrite.
. . . I wouldn't trust him . . .without bonds and surety.

By the end of the play, Orgon's wife, Elmire, has joined the chorus of the voices of reason. She exposes Tartuffe as a fraud and hypocrite while her husband listens to their conversation unobserved:

ELMIRE: [to Orgon] Your error has endured too long already,
And quite too long you've branded me a liar.
I must at once, for my own satisfaction,
Make you a witness of the things we've told you.

Even when Orgon finally realizes who and what Tartuffe really is, Cléante tells him how he's still being ruled by his passions and should be more reasonable:

CLÉANTE: So! There you go again, quite off the handle!
In nothing do you keep an even temper.
You never know what reason is, but always
Jump first to one extreme, and then the other.
You see your error, and you recognise
That you've been cozened by a feigned zeal;
But to make up for't, in the name of reason,
Why should you plunge into a worse mistake,
And find no difference in character
Between a worthless scamp, and all good people?
What! Just because a rascal boldly duped you
With pompous show of false austerity,
Must you needs have it everybody's like him,
And no one's truly pious nowadays?
Leave such conclusions to mere infidels;
Distinguish virtue from its counterfeit,
Don't give esteem too quickly, at a venture,
But try to keep, in this, the golden mean.

The "golden mean" was a principle of the Enlightenment, and it means to maintain a middle ground—a balance—between reason and passion: a philosophy that Moliere advocated and promoted throughout Tartuffe.

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