Misanthrope Essay - Wylie Per. 1

In “The Misanthrope”, there is love, betrayal, and deceit, yet it is considered one of the great comedies. Moliere fills the stage with his familiar French society, supplemented with plentiful numbers of suitors and coquettes, trivial court cases, and bittersweet irony. In one of his scenes, the flirt Celimene is exposed as a liar when her numerous suitors read aloud her letters to each other, the content praising the recipient and showing bitter disgust towards the others. Thoughtful laughter results, not only because the manner of her exposure is comedic, but because it mirrors the unsaid selfish desires of mankind.

Act five, scene four consists of Celimene’s many suitors reading to each other her private letters to them. In each, she thouroughly insults another suitor to put the recipient at ease, falsely assuring him that he is the best of the bunch. While each was content with the lie told to him, outrage swelled when the hurtful truth was discovered. Moliere, in this single scene, turned Celimene the Liar into Celimene the Tenderhearted, causing the liarity of the gentlemen’s outrage to evolve into deep thought. Celimene was trying to keep each of her suitors happy, guarding each of their delicate egos with letters of encouragement. Yet her work is meaningless when the men compare letters, and the kindness and softness of her deed is forgotten. Moliere creates this complex, thoughtful laughter towards the scene by questioning the boldness of delicately handling others egos.

Celimene’s actions with the other men in the scene also mirrors real life. People doubt their self-worth, so they constantly ask for affirmations: “Do I look good in this dress?” and “You don’t think I look old, do you?”. Do these people expect and honest reply? Of course not! What they desire is for the sun to continue shining and a brief reply that keeps their egos soaring. Moliere creates a parallel of this human characteristic in the suitors. They are vying so much for Celimene’s love and ask for her honest opinion of them, yet want no honesty. Celimene is instead later chastized for telling theme exactly what they wanted to hear.

Moliere mirrored and innate human characteristic in this scene, exaggerating reactions and actions to make it comedic. But he also instilled the thought of, “What would happen if all of the lies told to keep others happy were exposed?”. This thoughtful laughter causes us to question the very values our society is built upon, and notice how unstable our self-worth and security with ourselves really is.

Miranda Gontz