pin_drop (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} pin_drop) wrote,@ 2008-12-03 01:08:00 |
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Francais 111 ldf devoir 3
L’Ecole des Femmes de Moliere is a play about a wealthy merchant, Arnolphe, un misogyniste qui a tres peur d’etre cocqu. To prevent this from happening, he adopts a young girl – la fille d’une paysanne, il croit – and raises her in relative isolation, first placing her in a convent, and later keeping her at his home with only two simple-minded servants for company. He believes that by isolating Agnes, he can create the wife he wants: naive, innocente, honete, et qui n’eprouve ni desir ni deception and with neither desire nor deception in her nature. But Agnes proves more resistant to his plans than he had expected, eventually falling in love with a Horace, an old friend of Arnolphe.
When he wrote the play l’Ecole des Femmes, Moliere’s goal was not only to entertain, but to provide a feminist message about the sexual and intellectual natures of women, and about how women were treated in his society. His main character, Arnolphe, is a man who has a deep hatred of women. The interesting thing about this misogynist is that Arnolphe’s transparent fear of women is deliberately shown as part of his insanity; autrement dit, his misogyny is what makes Arnolphe insane. And the audience is supposed to laugh at his errors, to pull back in horror at his cruelty at keeping her locked up; the audience is supposed to say, how horrible, how illogical, how ridiculous! Arnolphe’s fears are shown as cowardice, his paranoia as insanity, and his behavior toward Agnes as cruelty. He fears women’s intellect and sexuality, and his response is to demonize them. This man is a satire, a total caricature of a misogynist. His exaggeration adds to the hilarity of the play, but at the same time, ses defauts sont vraisemblables, and his story teaches us un lecon qui a beaucoup à faire avec l’actualite du monde de l’epoque. Specifically, this play advocates for a greater level of education for girls, and for a new understanding of women’s intellect and sexuality.
Both of these concerns – the sexuality of women, and their intellectual lives – are presented and debated at the beginning of the play, in the exchange between Arnolphe and Chrysalde. On the surface, the meaning of this exchange between Chrysalde and Arnolphe is that it is impossible to explain to a woman that she must not cheat on her husband, without also explaining to her what adultery is, and in effect, what sex is. If she is kept completely in the dark, she’ll sleep with whomever she wants to because she won’t know she shouldn’t. It’s impossible donc to have a woman who is both virtuous, and completely ignorant. The threat posed by Agnes’ ignorance becomes more real to Arnolphe later on in Acte II, scene v, when he suspects that Agnes might have slept with Horace, simply because she didn’t know she should not.
The interesting thing about what Chrysalde is saying is his implication that women do have an innate sex drive; that on her own and without outside influences, a woman would choose to sleep with someone. It is obvious from Arnolphe’s suspicions in II.v that this fear has also occurred to him. est entre dans son esprit, lui aussi.
Another interesting thing about Chrysalde’s advice is that the larger implication is a plea for the moral education of women. Chrysalde seems to think that women can think for themselves, can judge right from wrong just as men can, and should be educated so that they won’t make poor choices out of ignorance.
Education.
Expliquez le titre: L'Ecole des Femmes. Quels sont les sens divers, les ironies, la signification profonde du titre?
School for girls and women was at this time nonexistant ; a girl from a noble family would sometimes be tutored by a governess, but only to the extent that she would learn to sing or paint or maybe play a musical instrument. The idea of a literal school for girls would have been impossible for Molliere’s audience; it would never have been taken at face value.
Just as Arnolphe is a caricature of misogyny, Agnes’ ignorance is an exaggerated version of the ignorance of all women in general of the time. It is shown as something barbarically unjust. After reading the play the audience feels that Arnolphe’s creepy strategy of shutting Agnes up so she’ll be more tractable, more submissive, is creepy and wrong; she’s smart and frank and sensible (really, the most sensible of all the characters) and desires knowledge (quote that part about where she says so), and he’s done her wrong by keeping her from developing her mind. The larger implication here is that men do women an injustice by shutting them up and keeping them in the dark, and refusing to allow them to develop their minds.
Sexuality.
A modern feminist will look at this text and see that the moral of the story is that women have an inevitable sex drive, that no matter how a girl is raised, it's still there, and women aren't these desireless children. A feminist of today will see Arnolphe as the voice of the old patriarchal culture, which sees girls as innocent and impressionable, with no innate desires of their own. According to this old view of women, girls develop sexual desires only in response to contact with outside forces.
The end: analyze the end of the play, and make a conclusion.
The play also makes a statement, through Agnes, about the female nature. The things Arnolphe believes to be true of women are not remotely true of Agnes: he believes that they are duplicitous, that they have little sense of morality, and that they are incapable of being loyal. Agnes, by contrast, is honest, direct and straightforward; she hides hardly anything from Arnolphe; she has a very moral sense of right and wrong. She wants to avoid sin (quote the part where she says she wants to marry Horace to prevent sin), which implies that she’s religious. Although she obviously has little real idea of what marriage involves or what fidelity and infidelity are, it is clear that her natural inclination is not toward promiscuity: she wants to marry the man she loves before having any kind of sexual contact with him. She’s in fact the exact opposite of what Arnolphe imagines a woman to be. The message Moliere means to send here is that women are not deserving of the bad rep they get from men.
3. Commentez le monologue d'Arnolphe, Acte III, scène v. En quoi est-ce un passage essentiel pour notre compréhension du personnage, et pour la complexité que Molière apporte au comique de la pièce? Jusqu'à quel point est-ce que Molière semble montrer Arnolphe comme être humain? Comme figure ridicule?
4.
All Arnolphe’s friends are feminists, too. They all give him advice (find Chrysalde’s advice at end of play, and at beginning). In fact Chrysalde’s input sort of frames the story: his dialogue with Arnolphe at the beginning introduces the central conflict of the plot, and develops Arnolphe’s character (his insanity), and at the end their conversation (possibly with other people’s input; find out whose) outlines one of the messages of the play. READ IT OVER AND SEE WHAT IT SAYS.
L’Ecole des Femmes de Moliere is a play about a wealthy merchant, Arnolphe, un misogyniste qui a tres peur d’etre cocqu. To prevent this from happening, he adopts a young girl – la fille d’une paysanne, il croit – and raises her in relative isolation, first placing her in a convent, and later keeping her at his home with only two simple-minded servants for company. He believes that by isolating Agnes, he can create the wife he wants: naive, innocente, honete, et qui n’eprouve ni desir ni deception and with neither desire nor deception in her nature. But Agnes proves more resistant to his plans than he had expected, eventually falling in love with a Horace, an old friend of Arnolphe.
When he wrote the play l’Ecole des Femmes, Moliere’s goal was not only to entertain, but to provide a feminist message about the sexual and intellectual natures of women, and about how women were treated in his society. His main character, Arnolphe, is a man who has a deep hatred of women. The interesting thing about this misogynist is that Arnolphe’s transparent fear of women is deliberately shown as part of his insanity; autrement dit, his misogyny is what makes Arnolphe insane. And the audience is supposed to laugh at his errors, to pull back in horror at his cruelty at keeping her locked up; the audience is supposed to say, how horrible, how illogical, how ridiculous! Arnolphe’s fears are shown as cowardice, his paranoia as insanity, and his behavior toward Agnes as cruelty. He fears women’s intellect and sexuality, and his response is to demonize them. This man is a satire, a total caricature of a misogynist. His exaggeration adds to the hilarity of the play, but at the same time, ses defauts sont vraisemblables, and his story teaches us un lecon qui a beaucoup à faire avec l’actualite du monde de l’epoque. Specifically, this play advocates for a greater level of education for girls, and for a new understanding of women’s intellect and sexuality.
Both of these concerns – the sexuality of women, and their intellectual lives – are presented and debated at the beginning of the play, in the exchange between Arnolphe and Chrysalde. On the surface, the meaning of this exchange between Chrysalde and Arnolphe is that it is impossible to explain to a woman that she must not cheat on her husband, without also explaining to her what adultery is, and in effect, what sex is. If she is kept completely in the dark, she’ll sleep with whomever she wants to because she won’t know she shouldn’t. It’s impossible donc to have a woman who is both virtuous, and completely ignorant. The threat posed by Agnes’ ignorance becomes more real to Arnolphe later on in Acte II, scene v, when he suspects that Agnes might have slept with Horace, simply because she didn’t know she should not.
The interesting thing about what Chrysalde is saying is his implication that women do have an innate sex drive; that on her own and without outside influences, a woman would choose to sleep with someone. It is obvious from Arnolphe’s suspicions in II.v that this fear has also occurred to him. est entre dans son esprit, lui aussi.
Another interesting thing about Chrysalde’s advice is that the larger implication is a plea for the moral education of women. Chrysalde seems to think that women can think for themselves, can judge right from wrong just as men can, and should be educated so that they won’t make poor choices out of ignorance.
Education.
Expliquez le titre: L'Ecole des Femmes. Quels sont les sens divers, les ironies, la signification profonde du titre?
School for girls and women was at this time nonexistant ; a girl from a noble family would sometimes be tutored by a governess, but only to the extent that she would learn to sing or paint or maybe play a musical instrument. The idea of a literal school for girls would have been impossible for Molliere’s audience; it would never have been taken at face value.
Just as Arnolphe is a caricature of misogyny, Agnes’ ignorance is an exaggerated version of the ignorance of all women in general of the time. It is shown as something barbarically unjust. After reading the play the audience feels that Arnolphe’s creepy strategy of shutting Agnes up so she’ll be more tractable, more submissive, is creepy and wrong; she’s smart and frank and sensible (really, the most sensible of all the characters) and desires knowledge (quote that part about where she says so), and he’s done her wrong by keeping her from developing her mind. The larger implication here is that men do women an injustice by shutting them up and keeping them in the dark, and refusing to allow them to develop their minds.
Sexuality.
A modern feminist will look at this text and see that the moral of the story is that women have an inevitable sex drive, that no matter how a girl is raised, it's still there, and women aren't these desireless children. A feminist of today will see Arnolphe as the voice of the old patriarchal culture, which sees girls as innocent and impressionable, with no innate desires of their own. According to this old view of women, girls develop sexual desires only in response to contact with outside forces.
The end: analyze the end of the play, and make a conclusion.
The play also makes a statement, through Agnes, about the female nature. The things Arnolphe believes to be true of women are not remotely true of Agnes: he believes that they are duplicitous, that they have little sense of morality, and that they are incapable of being loyal. Agnes, by contrast, is honest, direct and straightforward; she hides hardly anything from Arnolphe; she has a very moral sense of right and wrong. She wants to avoid sin (quote the part where she says she wants to marry Horace to prevent sin), which implies that she’s religious. Although she obviously has little real idea of what marriage involves or what fidelity and infidelity are, it is clear that her natural inclination is not toward promiscuity: she wants to marry the man she loves before having any kind of sexual contact with him. She’s in fact the exact opposite of what Arnolphe imagines a woman to be. The message Moliere means to send here is that women are not deserving of the bad rep they get from men.
3. Commentez le monologue d'Arnolphe, Acte III, scène v. En quoi est-ce un passage essentiel pour notre compréhension du personnage, et pour la complexité que Molière apporte au comique de la pièce? Jusqu'à quel point est-ce que Molière semble montrer Arnolphe comme être humain? Comme figure ridicule?
4.
All Arnolphe’s friends are feminists, too. They all give him advice (find Chrysalde’s advice at end of play, and at beginning). In fact Chrysalde’s input sort of frames the story: his dialogue with Arnolphe at the beginning introduces the central conflict of the plot, and develops Arnolphe’s character (his insanity), and at the end their conversation (possibly with other people’s input; find out whose) outlines one of the messages of the play. READ IT OVER AND SEE WHAT IT SAYS.
