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Tartuffe character analysis essay
Criticise Moliere's Tartuffe
Criticise Moliere's Tartuffe
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“I have revealed enough. Spare me the rest. / I die, and my grim secret dies with me.” (Racine 193) Phaedra has a huge secret: she is in love with her stepson, Hippolytus. She has reoccurring thoughts of suicide, and a desire for this burden to be lifted. Her forbidden passion has a gigantic affect on her mental capability and her ability to be independent. She does not want anyone to know about her repugnant desires for Hippolytus and her mental health slowly begins to weaken as she maintains this information to herself. As we look closer into the life of Phaedra, we find she exhibits a lustful, weak-minded, guilty, gullible, and reliant personality.
Phaedra has a very lustful personality. She lusts over her stepson and cannot control it. This love is forbidden and frowned upon, which is why Phaedra keeps it a secret for so long, just like Tartuffe keeps his love for Elmire a secret in Moliere’s work Tartuffe. “I’ve given the neighboring rooms a full inspection; / No one’s about; and now I may at last…” (Moliere 77) Even though Phaedra’s situation is different than that of Tartuffe’s, it can still be seen as a similar situation in terms of forbidden love. Even if Phaedra wanted to stop lusting over Hippolytus, she cannot. According to Lattimore, Aphrodite announces “she has made Phaedra fall in love with Hippolytus, that Phaedra is keeping it a secret and like to die, but she is a necessary instrument for the young man’s punishment.” (7) She cannot part from this world to save herself the misery because she is needed to inflict punishment on Hippolytus. Without her husband, Theseus, here, imagine how much greater Hippolytus’ appeal is. “With Theseus away for over six months on one of his adventures, she burns with ...
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Works Cited
Braga, Thomas J. “Double Vision in Racine’s Phedre.” The French Review 64:2 (Dec., 1990): 289-298. JSTOR. Web. 11 Mar. 2014.
Critchley, Simon. “I Want to Die, I Hate My Life—Phaedra’s Malaise.” New Literary History 35:1 (Winter, 2004): 17-40. JSTOR. Web. 11 Mar. 2014.
Lattimore, Richmond. “Phaedra and Hippolytus.” Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics 1.3 (Autumn, 1962): 5-18. JSTOR. Web. 11 Mar. 2014.
Racine, Jean. Phaedra. Literature of the Western World. Eds. Brian Wilkie and James Hurt. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2001. 187-227. Print.
Reckford, Kenneth J. “Phaedra and Pasiphae: The Pull Backward.” Transactions of the American Philological Association 104 (1974): 307-328. JSTOR. Web. 11 Mar. 2014.
Roisman, Hanna M. “The Veiled Hippolytus and Phaedra.” Hermes (4th Qtr., 1999): 397-409. JSTOR. Web. 11 Mar. 2014
In the story, the supreme ruler of Athens, Thesius ends up marrying Hippolyta, the Queen of the Jungle. However, during the whole story, Hippolyta never throughly discusses her feelings and ideas about the marriage. She acts as if she has no choice but to marry Thesius. This can be proven by examining Hippolyta's position in the relationship between herself and Thesius. Hippolyta was captured by Thesius during battle and Thesius intimidates Hippolyta into marrying him since he is a supreme ruler and she was defeated by him. Thesius reveals that he capture Hippolyta in battle in the following quote, "I wood thee by my sword/ And won thy love doing thee injuries" (Act I, Pg 7). The above quote and the fact that Hippolyta never discusses her feelings about the wedding leads the re...
Throughout Aristophanes’ “Clouds” there is a constant battle between old and new. It makes itself apparent in the Just and Unjust speech as well as between father and son. Ultimately, Pheidippides, whom would be considered ‘new’, triumphs over the old Strepsiades, his father. This is analogous to the Just and Unjust speech. In this debate, Just speech represents the old traditions and mores of Greece while the contrasting Unjust speech is considered to be newfangled and cynical towards the old. While the defeat of Just speech by Unjust speech does not render Pheidippides the ability to overcome Strepsiades, it is a parallel that may be compared with many other instances in Mythology and real life.
Onians, John. Art and Thought in the Hellenistic Age: The Greek World View 350-50 B.C. London: Thames and Hudson, Ltd., 1979.
During her speech, Aphrodite states her plan which inevitably comes true. She tells: “this young man, this enemy of mines, shall be driven to his death by his father’s curses: something made possible by the three wishes granted Theseus by Poseidon, king of the sea…I must exact from those who do me wrong.” (Hippolytus 49-50). Aphrodite’s desire to punish those who disrespect her without any care for the lives she destroys in the process, illustrates her apparent abuse of power. Her elaborate scheming which uses Theseus and Phaedra without their will in her expedition to obliterate Theseus, is careless in nature and extremely ungodlike. What Aphrodite believes is justice is more so a medium through which she is able to exert her power as a god and satisfy her ego
Grant, M. (1962). Myths of the Greeks and Romans (1st ed.). Cleveland: World Pub. Co.
Toni Hurley, Philippa Medcalf, Christine Murray, Jan Rolph ~ HSC Course Third Edition Antiquity 2 Interpreting The Past, Published in 2008, pages 414-443.
Morford, Mark P.O., and Robert J. Lenardon. Classical Mythology. '7th ed'. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Marra, James L., Zelnick, Stephen C., and Mattson, Mark T. IH 51 Source Book: Plato, The Republic, pp. 77-106. Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, Dubuque, Iowa, 1998.
Hippolytus is secretly in love with his father’s political prisoner, Aricia, and is almost at the point of losing all of the unloving pride that he is so proud to have maintained all his life. At the same time, his step-mother, Phaedra, is almost at her breaking point of revealing her overwhelming love for her step-son. Just like any normal teenager, Hippolytus craves the relationship with the pretty young girl and is appalled at the thought of the relationship that his step-mother is attempting to pursue. Likewise, in Tartuffe there is a young man, Damise, who longs to marry the sister of his sister’s future husband. Damise’s father, Orgon, calls of the wedding between Damise’s sister and her fiancé, Voliere, and instead tells her she will marry his deceitful guest, Tartuffe. Thus, it becomes impossible for Damise to marry Voliere’s sister and Damise is appalled by the relationship of his sister and Tartuffe. Tartuffe, the hypocrite praised by Orgon, tries to warm up to Orgon’s wife when he is not around, making another forbidden relationship that Damise does not want to
Lawall, Sarah,et al. The Norton Anthology of World Literature. 2nd ed. Volume A (slipcased). Norton, 2001. W.W. Norton and Company Inc. New York, NY.
Literature of the Western World, Volume 2. 4th edition by Brian Wilkie and James Hurt. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1997.
Damrosch, David, and David Pike. The Longman Anthology of World Literature. The Ancient World. Volume A. Second Edition. New York: Pearson/Longman, 2009. Pgs. .656-691. Print.
Phaedra says, " my frenzied love's burst forth in act and word. I've spoken what should never have been heard" (Phaedra 181). This shows how much she regrets her decision to verbalize her feelings, because she knows she spoke out of passion instead of reason. Her indignity is so strong in her heart that she cannot even let herself take the responsibility for it. Phaedra claims that, " the Gods have robbed [her] wits"(Phaedra 168) as a way of passing the blame on to someone else in an effort to remove some of the dishonor from herself and onto the Gods. Eventually, she gives into the passion she is feeling, and tells Hippolytus how she feels. Her passion horrifies Hippolytus, because of the wrongness of the situation. Phaedra is so bound to a world of reason that once she decides to explore her feelings she removes her boundaries all together, forgetting how serious the affects on other people are going to be. Meanwhile Hippolytus finds strength of will, driven by passion, to pursue the woman he loves, who was banned by his father Theseus. Hippolytus says, " my reason can't rein in my heart" (Phaedra 176) when he is thinking about the crime he is committing against his father because of his love for Aricia.
1. "The Internet Classics Archive | Phaedo by Plato." The Internet Classics Archive | Phaedo by
As the tale unfolds, it becomes clear that Phaedra is aware that her love for Hippolytus can never be fulfilled, and the shame that she feels from this passion is true. After confessing her love to Hippolytus in Act 2, scene 5, she curses the Gods for torturing her soul by making her love someone against her will, and she even goes as far as to ask for death. The power of shame has overcome her, and she feels that if she can not be with the man that she loves then she wishes to die by his sword as if she were a "monster". When Theseus returns home, her shame is heightened by the presence of him, and by the thought that her incestuous love will be made aware to all. However, this shame quickly turns to the offensive when she allows Oenome to plot a reverse of guilt and accuse Hippolytus of loving Phaedra. The power of shame is no more evident then at this point in the story, because Phaedra, feeling the height of shame after admitting her love to Hippolytus, must face both her husband Theseus, the man she should love, and Hippolytus, the forbidden love. Feeling confused and helpless, Phaedra allows Oenome to place the blame on Hippolytus, and this begins her change from feelings of shame to guilt.