Blog Post 3 - Tartuffe IV-V

Blog Post 3 – Tartuffe Acts IV-V

Tartuffe: Your love is the restorer of my soul;

And yet I must beg leave, now, to confess

Some lingering doubts as to my happiness

Might this not be a trick? Might not the catch

Be that you wish me to break off the match

With Mariane, and so have feigned to love me?

I shan’t quite trust your fond opinion of me

Until the feelings you’ve expressed so sweetly

Are demonstrated somewhat concretely…

And you have shown, by certain kind concessions,

That I may put my faith in your professions…

Assuage my keen desires, and feel no dread:

The sin, if any, shall be on my head…

No one shall know our joys, save us alone,

And there’s no evil till the act is known;

It’s scandal, Madam which makes it an offense,

And it’s no sin to sin in confidence.

(Act IV, Scene V, 56-66, 109-110, 118-121)

At the end of Act IV, Elmire sets a clever and deceitful trap for Tartuffe in one last effort to prove to Orgon his true character. She meets Tartuffe in a private room where he believes they are alone and she attempts to convince him of her love for him, in hopes of leading Tartuffe to act immorally on his attraction to her and show his true character. While the room seems private to Tartuffe, the setting for this major scene is, in fact, quite deceiving. Elmire instructed Orgon to hide under a large table to witness the scene and hopefully discover what kind of man Tartuffe truly is.  Although Tartuffe is incredibly interested in Elmire’s supposed affection for him, he is naturally distrustful of her since he himself is an untrustworthy man, stating, “I shan’t quite trust your fond opinion of me.” For this reason he asks that Elmire demonstrate her feelings for him with actions instead of just words so he can know for certain that she means what she says. Despite not taking Elmire’s word for her love, not even he imagined how sly Elmire was in her plan and never considered that her own husband was actually in the room with them listening to his every word. Elmire is, in a sense, forced to stoop to Tartuffe’s immoral, dishonest, and deceitful ways in order to expose him. This makes Tartuffe’s earlier comment that “any wrongful act… may be redeemed by purity of intention” incredibly tongue-in-cheek because she is, in a sense, using his own logic against him and beating him at his own game. Tartuffe’s comments at the end of the passage that “no one shall know our joys, save us alone,” and “it’s no sin to sin in confidence” are made extremely ironic by the setting in which he says them, since they are not actually alone and Orgon is there to witness everything. Tartuffe merely exposes his own deceitful ways and his lack of morality and character

The setting for this scene not only causes a turning point in the play, since Orgon finally comes to his senses and recognizes what kind of man Tartuffe really is, but it also embodies the point of the play as a whole. One must always be wary of dishonest and deceitful men since it is easy to be blind to deception if you are not careful, but also that, in the end, the truth will always come out, and a life of deception will eventually catch up to you and get you in trouble. Tartuffe was just as blind to Orgon’s presence in the scene described as Orgon was to Tartuffe’s true character, but, just as Orgon revealed himself after a period of time to Tartuffe, so did Tartuffe’s dishonest and immoral ways.