The Characters in Tartuffe

Jean-Baptiste Poquelin or better known by his stage name, Moliere, first began performing the play Tartuffe in 1664. The play was received very well by the public of Paris and was also performed for King Louis XIV even though the subject manner was considered controversial for the time. The time period in which Moliere wrote the play in was during the Age of Enlightenment, which was a time when people were beginning to actually think for themselves rather than blindly accept the traditional views. It was also an attempt for people to develop as individuals and become more than just nameless subjects under a monarch. Tartuffe is social commentary on the period before the Age of Enlightenment with a message encouraging individualism and reason. Moliere no longer accepts that people should obey traditions simply because they are traditional and he uses his power and status to fight for the common person that he saw as voiceless against the throne. He uses the situations in the play to shed light on the problems that people face and uses the characters to highlight the problem’s of society that have been transformed into normality. The characters in Tartuffe are used to personify problems within Europe and through them Moliere is able to shift the European peoples’ views during the time of the Enlightenment towards a more free thinking society.

At the time that Tartuffe was written, Europe was beginning to merge into a new time period that would be known as the Age of Enlightenment. This was a time when many new philosophers and philosophies were being expressed and citizens of Europe were branching out to grab onto new ideologies. People were beginning to challenge the ideals that were simply handed to them and expected to accept. T...

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