‘Tartuffe’: The Dangers of Certainty
A review of ‘Tartuffe’, by Molière; 1664.
One would think it was in the interest of the religious to get across to others that faith can be twisted, that faith was not to blame for wrongdoing, but people were. That did not stop the Catholic Church from denouncing Tartuffe, Molière’s great study of religious hypocrisy, which led to its ban by the Parlement. The setting is a grand but fragile household. Orgon, the master, is the grip of religious feeling. He has invited a holy man, Tartuffe, into his home. Trouble is, Tartuffe is a fraud.
But Orgon does not see it. He speaks of Tartuffe in reverent tones, calling him a man of great humility and piety. The rest of the family are puzzled. His wife, Elmire, sees right straight through the fraud. Damis, their son, rails against Orgon’s naïveté. The maid, Dorine, attacks him openly. But Orgon refuses to hear it. He gives Tartuffe the keys to his home, his wealth, even his daughter’s hand in marriage. And the tighter Tartuffe’s grip on Orgon, the more bonkers the whole thing becomes. Orgon will not accept he has been duped. And so the tension builds.
The comedy in Tartuffe is not the comedy of fools bumbling about. Our laughter comes at the expense of self-righteousness, at those whose outward virtue masks their greed. The comedy is tinged with unease, for what we see in Orgon is not just a fool, but someone wholly convinced that his gullibility is good, that his blindness is a strength, that those around him are cynics. Such is Orgon’s credulity that he will not listen to his own wife, his own children, those who love him most and want the best for him.
The comedy in Tartuffe is not the comedy of fools bumbling about. Our laughter comes at the expense of self-righteousness.
Tartuffe is of course a conman, but not just a conman. He preys on the weaknesses of others. He does not deceive through charm or cunning, but by telling people just what they want to hear. Orgon longs for moral certainty, so when Tartuffe plays the part of the penitant sinner, disgusted with the sins of the world, Orgon becomes putty in his hands. Tartuffe draws his power not from his own intellect, but from the strength of Orgon’s need. He offers Orgon just what he wants: righteousness. In return, Orgon gives him everything.
Molière was careful not to mock religion itself, even if the Church took his play as an assault on faith. The problem is not belief, says Molière; we all believe in things we cannot prove. The problem is blind belief, belief unstudied. Here is Graham Greene:
‘Doubt is the heart of the matter. Abolish all doubt, and what’s left is not faith, but absolute, heartless conviction. You’re certain that you possess the Truth — inevitably offered with an implied uppercase T — and this certainty quickly devolves into dogmatism and righteousness, by which I mean a demonstrative, overweening pride in being so very right, in short, the arrogance of fundamentalism.’
Orgon holds a belief so rigid that it will not bend even in the teeth of an obvious truth. He is not a bad man or, even, an especially foolish one. But he is desperate to salvage something pure from a world that he sees as replete with corruption. In his desperation, he opens to the doors to that very corruption—in fact, the worst kind of corruption imaginable.
So yes, Tartuffe does deal with religious hypocrisy, but it chiefly deals with power: how it is gained, how it is kept, how it can be given away. Tyrants are voted into power not because they have shown any skill. It is because the promise to fulfil the needs of desperate people. Vote for me, say the tyrant, and I will give you what you want most of all. It does not matter how unlikely this is, how little proof there is that this person could give what they say they will give. The need they claim they will satisfy is so strong that the tyrant will be voted in anyway. Power does not lie just in the hands of the strong, but in those who understand desire and can exploit it well.
So yes, Tartuffe does deal with religious hypocrisy, but it chiefly deals with power: how it is gained, how it is kept, how it can be given away.
The real tragedy in the play is that Orgon’s blind faith threatens not just his fortune but his family. This family are the people to whom he should turn; they are the people he can trust. But he turns away from them and they are the ones who suffer for it. When one man is swindled his error ends not just with him. It can ruin those around him. Our errors can make victims of those we love the most, of those who depend on us.
Tartuffe earns its place in the canon because it deals with the timeless: the dangers of certainty, the gulf between words and actions, the temptation to believe those who claim to have all the answers we crave. Every age has its Tartuffes and Orgons. The names change but the pattern remains. And we never seem to learn our lesson. Hence why this play works and keeps working. It warns against the ease with which we give up our reason in exchange for comforting lies. ‘The sleep of reason calls forth monsters’, as the title of a Goya painting puts it.
And Molière delivers this grave and gloomy message not with sermons but with laughter. For laughter is, as McGilchrist tells us, a bridge between things that often seem poles apart. We would rather not think about our need to believe, our profound gullibility. But laughter takes us there, and then leaves us with the question, the discomfort, and a better understanding of the world we inhabit.
