By Sabian Cuevas

“Tartuffe,” by Molière, first performed in 1664, is a play about that focuses on a man named Orgon in Paris in the 1660s. In the play we get to see the various interactions between Orgon and his family and a man named Tartuffe. Orgon and his mother, Madame Pernelle, practically worship the ground that Tartuffe walks on all throughout the play, whereas the rest of the family sees right through Tartuffe’s masquerade from the start, understanding what a manipulative and deceiving person he truly is. “Tartuffe” ends with a deus ex machina, which not only provides for an unfulfilling and honestly disappointing ending, but it also reveals something about the contemporary social behavior behind the play. To have a play successfully staged and performed, it must be written in a way that revolves around the target audience even if it hurts the integrity of the plot.

When “Tartuffe” first debuted on stage, its “original audience was the royal court at Louis XIV's great palace Versailles” (Baker). This might not look too important at first glance, however, it’s because of Louis XIV’s presence in the audience that the plot of “Tartuffe” unraveled as lazily as it did. “Molière had to remain in the good graces of the king if he wanted to stage the play in public” and so that meant he had to write a play with King Louis XIV in mind (Cummings). Molière knew exactly how to write a play that would win the heart of the most important person in his audience, resulting in a play that would “enjoy a reputation as one of the finest stage comedies in French literature” (Cummings). He would enact the easiest, foolproof method of making the king fall in love with his play, by putting King Louis XIV himself into the play. Imagine King Louis XIV’s face when the ending of the play drew near and the suspense of the play had reached its peak. Everyone in the audience would watch, wondering what would become of Orgon and Tartuffe. The Exempt, an officer of the king in the play, would show up and inform all the characters about how they “have a king who sees into men’s hearts, and cannot be deceived” because “from his heart” he is a king who “remembers good longer than the bad” (Molière 196-7). King Louis would be sure to have his heart warmed and be flattered by the praise being said of him in a play, a play that the entire audience in the royal court would hear and cheer for. What could be more important than watching a play that illustrates you to be some grand hero who might as well have the Eye of Providence itself because you’re so full of justice and without flaw? Definitely not the plot or a proper ending.

The play consists of countless moments of the family being frustrated or in distress because their lives are effectively being destroyed all because of Tartuffe’s machinations and Orgon’s inability to listen to his family and realize that he’s wrong about Tartuffe. Near the end of the play, Orgon ends up in a situation where Tartuffe owns Orgon’s home and has him evicted, and is about to have Orgon imprisoned. There’s not a realistic solution in sight and the play leads the audience into believing that Tartuffe has won and Orgon is out of luck. Molière had written Tartuffe’s character as being too cunning for Orgon and his family to combat. When reading this play for the first time, I presume I’m not the only person who couldn’t see the play ending well. If a happy ending were desired, while still wanting to have an ending that isn’t lazily written as if nothing more than five seconds of thought were put into the ending, it could have had a character with equally impressive charisma and persuasive ability as Tartuffe do something like swindle Tartuffe into giving them the deed and telling the king that the documents were false. Dorine was easily the wittiest character in the play on Orgon’s side, she very well could have risen to the occasion, transforming from a simple maid to the person who could outwit Tartuffe. This is a comedy after all, it could have been acceptable and even aged better than the current deus ex machina ending to have the maid of the house clean up everyone’s mess, as a maid does. It would definitely be a step up from having the king magically be omnipotent and save the day despite never making an appearance nor even being mentioned by name all throughout the play.

Suppose the play were to be rewritten as to avoid providing a lazy cop out via the king by using my idea of having Dorine save the day instead. We can already see that the man of the house is the least competent character imaginable to fix any problem that the main cast of characters has by the fact that he was willing to break both his daughter and his son’s hearts to satisfy his own weird desire to make Tartuffe happy. With Dorine, there have been several moments throughout the play where she’s demonstrated the ability to observe a situation and process more than just surface-level thinking. When speaking to Orgon after he returned from being gone for two days, Dorine toys with Orgon to assess how delusional he is regarding Tartuffe’s manipulation. She tells Orgon about “that headache Madame had” and how she “had a fever” (Molière 150). He replies by interrupting her and saying “and Tartuffe?” (Molière 150). Dorine answers but attempts to refocus the conversation, to which Orgon still continues to inquire about Tartuffe. She tries to shift Orgon’s priorities by emphasizing how poorly his wife was doing. “What a fever! Oh, how she did suffer,” and “Madame agreed to undergo a bleeding” were the things that she told him to try and snap him out of his Tartuffe-induced trance. Dorine, aware of Orgon’s oblivious state of mind ends the conversation by making the witty comment of “I’ll go and let her know how anxious you have been about her health” despite Orgon obviously caring more about Tartuffe more than his own wife. Later, Valère shows up and talks to Mariane about how he’s heard she’s going to marry Tartuffe. Mariane doesn’t make a strong enough case for her opposition toward her father’s plan toward Tartuffe, simply saying “I don’t know” when asked about the plan (Molière 164). Valère didn’t man up and try to maintain his relationship with her, simply giving up on her and advising her to go through with the marriage. The two both end up fighting since neither of them were bright enough to be clear about their feelings nor attempt to come up with a solution. Dorine, being the savior this story deserves, ends their petty and unnecessary fight. “You both are idiots!” she begins, saying that she “left you two alone to fight it out, to see how far you’d go” (Molière 166). Again, Dorine is showing us in the audience that she’s more than capable of using her brain when no one besides Tartuffe will. She outright tells them their fight is “stupid” and that they both clearly love each other (Molière 167). She even says “this marriage to Tartuffe would be a crime, we have to stop it” (Molière 167). She’s already making a better case for herself being the savior of the play than King Louis XIV has at this point. She’s able to read people’s true emotions underneath the act that they’re putting on, and she has a desire to stop Tartuffe. Dorine’s motive could even be that she doesn’t want Mariane to be sad since we’ve already heard her tell Mariane “please don’t go out that door. I’ll help you” and “look at me—I swear. We’ll find a way” before Valère showed up. Dorine cares about Mariane’s happiness which is why she’s bothering helping Mariane with her relationship issues when she’s a maid and she’s not being paid to emotionally comfort someone.

When it comes to dealing with Tartuffe, direct confrontation does not work. Should anyone approach Tartuffe with hostility or malicious intent, they can expect to be met by Orgon. Tartuffe can only be dealt with by using his own tactics against him. When Tartuffe spoke with Dorine and tried to play the role of a saint by telling her to “take this handkerchief” and “cover your bust,” Dorine told him “it seems temptation makes a meal of you” and proceeds to tell him that she could see him naked and not be aroused (Molière 169). Tartuffe claimed that he’d have to leave the room if she kept talking like that, to which Dorine replied “if someone is to go, let it be me” before mentioning that Elmire was coming because she “wants to talk to you, if you’ll hang on” (Molière 170). Tartuffe slips up by saying “of course. Most willingly” and Dorine says to herself “look at him melt. I’m right. I always knew how he felt” (Molière 170). Dorine is very observant, and there is evidence that she’s observant, unlike the king who magically is aware of everything going on despite never being involved in the play. She played Tartuffe into saying what she needed to hear because she wanted confirmation that her suspicions of him were correct. From the beginning, she knew that Tartuffe wanted Elmire, and she was able to turn the tables on him in their conversation and be proven that she’s right. Dorine might not be the only character who has the potential to deal with Tartuffe, as Elmire ends up coming up with her own plan shortly after in the table scene, but there is definitely a case to be made here. Molière had written “Tartuffe” in such a way that the characters are all backed into a corner with no solution in sight at the end of the play. Such an intricate dilemma seems to only be solvable by divine intervention of King Louis XIV, so it seems anyways. But as we can see, Dorine has demonstrated the mental ability needed to outwit Tartuffe. If Molière sought to write a proper, satisfying ending, he could have used Dorine; and he might have done just that. If he weren’t fixated on having the king save the day, he could have easily written up a way for Dorine to outwit Tartuffe and win back the house and possibly even prevented Orgon from being imprisoned. It would have been believable, given the way he had written all of the events up until the deux ex machina ending.

In France in the 1600’s, we can see that playwrights and perhaps even those who create other forms of art felt incentivized to satisfy King Louis XIV in order to ensure their own success even if it meant compromising their own artistic vision and the integrity of their works. Molière sacrificed the integrity of his play’s narrative by choosing a deus ex machina ending that would appease King Louis XIV as opposed to writing a proper ending. “Tartuffe” demonstrates this contemporary social behavior by having a sudden ending without the necessary build-up to be properly executed which points to the idea that the ending must have been written with the external factor of Molière’s audience taking priority over his writing ability.

Baker, Lyman Allen. "Tartuffe as a political parable." English 287: Great Books, 7 Dec. 1996, www.k-state.edu/english/baker/english287/sg-Moliere-Tartuffe-politics.htm.

Cummings, Michael J. “Tartuffe.” Cummings Study Guide, 2005, www.cummingsstudyguides.net/Guides2/Tartuffe.html. Accessed 11 Feb. 2018.

Molière. “Tartuffe.” The Norton Anthology World Literature, edited by Martin Puchner, third Edition, vol. D, W. W. Norton, 2012, pp. 144-197.