Love And Marriage In Molière's Tartuffe

Love and Marriage

Throughout the semester a lot of attention has been paid to the ideas of love and marriage. Love and marriage where what I initially thought were an important part of the enlightenment period and the nineteenth century. These concepts are addressed in many of the works of literature we have worked with thus far. However, these concepts do not seem to be near as important as I anticipated them to be.

In Molière’s drama Tartuffe the concepts were held to a higher standard than they were in other works. In Tartuffe marriage and love seemed to be appreciated. The characters cared for each other and their relationship. This is evident as Elmire tries to convince Orgon she is telling the truth about Tartuffe sharing his true feelings for her. This shows that Elmire cares

This is really evident in Leo Tolstoy’s story The Death of Ivan Ilyich. In this story Ivan Ilyich and his wife, Praskovya Fëdorovna, have a marriage much different than the one identified in Molière’s Tartuffe. The Marriage in Leo Tolstoy’s story starts out great “until his wife became pregnant” (Puchner, 2013,pg. 821). From the point of his wife’s pregnancy forward their marriage and attitudes towards it changes drastically. For instance, later in the text Ivan Ilyich refers to their marriage as “not always conducive to the pleasures and amenities of life, but on the contrary often infringed both comfort and propriety, and that he must therefore entrench himself against such infringement”(Puchner,2013, pg.821). Later in the text he also refers to their marriage as being only required for its “conveniences-dinner at home, housewife, and bed-which it could give him, and above all that propriety of external forms required by public opinion.” (Puchner, 2013, pg. 822). This tells the reader that love and marriage are only sought for the “convenience”, and because it is important for the way that society views