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Theme and Structure in L'Avare
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
Although L'Avare is by no means lacking in originality, borrowings from literary sources are particularly heavy. Nearly every important scene, from the farcical intrigues of Frosine to Harpagon's famous monologue, has been traced back to Plautus, Ariosto, Larivey, Boisrobert or even to the commedia dell'arte. Moreover, Molière remains faithful to one of the oldest traditions in comedy: the eternal triumph of youth over age.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1960
References
1 For the sources of L'Avare, see Molière, Œuvres, Les Grands Ecrivains de la France, vii, 3–208. All quotations are from this edition.
2 There is a hint of eroticism in Harpagon's question to Valère regarding the cassette: “Hé! dis-moi donc un peu: tu n'y as point touché?” (v. iii).
3 Engagement, or engager, appears some seven times in the play.
4 This is not the only time when Harpagon equates blood with money: in act five scene three, he refers to his stolen treasure as sang.
5 Thus Bergson's concept of “interférence des séries” rather than of “raideur” provides the best means of explaining laughter in L'Avare: cf. Le Rire (Paris, P.U.F., 1947), pp. 74 ff. and 108. In this connection, see also the penetrating remarks of W. F. Moore in his Molière, a New Criticism (Oxford, 1949), pp. 108 ff. Structurally, most of Molière's comedies are based on the clash of mutually exclusive attitudes: e.g., the blindness of Orgon as opposed to the blatancy and obviousness of Tartuffe.
6 P. Brisson, Molière, sa vie dans ses œuvres (Paris, N.R.F., 1942), p. 211.
7 In a sense, Harpagon's pursuit of Mariane could have been included in this article, for while the miser respects the outward appearance of a normal courtship, he remains in total ignorance of the real attributes of love and marriage.
8 Maître Jacques would undoubtedly side with Mme de Sévigné and La Fontaine in their opposition to “l'automatisme des bêtes.”
9 Harpagon's exclusion is somehow more complete than that of any other character in Molière's comedies—including Arnolphe, the Sganarelle of L'Ecole des maris, Alceste, Tartuffe, and even, so to speak, Dom Juan—because his avarice separates him not only from a given society, but from the rest of humanity, be it militant or damned.
10 The prominence of the word “sauver” at the beginning and especially at the end of the comedy, where it appears no fewer than five times, suggested this comparison.
11 In this respect, Maître Jacques' tribulations scarcely differ from the indignities suffered by the Sganarelle of Le Médecin malgré lui, by Sosie, or by Géronte. They constitute a traditional and probably eternal element in comic literature, running the gamut from the beatings given and received in Punch and Judy shows to the murder of Amédée Fleurissoire in Gide's Les Caves du Vatican.