Appearance versus Reality
Social pretension ties to a second theme: appearance versus reality. All through the play, M. Jourdain has forbidden his daughter, Lucile, to marry her true love, Cléonte, because Cléonte is middle class. Instead, her father wants her to marry an aristocrat. At the end of the play, Cléonte disguises himself as the Sultan of Turkey and asks for Lucile's hand. The foolish M. Jourdain is now very enthusiastic about the marriage because he believes his daughter is marrying up. He lacks the discernment to see through the outer packaging to the true worth or identity of the person underneath. Once again, Moliere, himself middle class, emphasizes that it is internal merit that defines the worth of a person.
Right of a Woman to Choose Her Own Mate
The play also asserts the theme of the right of a woman to choose her own mate. Lucile and her mother both assert this right strongly. When asked if it would be permissible for Lucile to forget Cléonte in favor of a better match, her mother says:
I would strangle her with my own hands if she did something like that.
Lucile herself says:
No, my father, I told you, there is no power on earth that can make me take any husband other than Cléonte. And I will go to extreme measures rather than. . . .
However, when she recognizes, as her father cannot, that the "Turk" is Cléonte, she quickly changes her tune:
It is true that you are my father; I owe you complete obedience; and it is for you to dispose of me according to your wishes.
The notion of companionate marriage is tied to the rise of the middle class: Moliere supports this bourgeois freedom but shows as well how a wise woman will use whatever weapons are at hand to get her way.
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