Tartuffe or the Impostor is a French play which was written by Moliere in 1664. The play was performed for the first time in the same year but has since been adapted into films and also performed as a play in the modern classical plays. Tartuffe is a satirical play that uses the characters of the play to show how people easily defied the social order of the days when the play was first performed. Tartuffe is one of the main characters in the play and given the antics and the role he plays it fits that the author of the play named the play after his strongest and most controversial characters. Tartuffe is a house guest at Orgon’s house, and he manages to strip Orgon everything and it takes the intervention of King Louis XIV to restore order in Orgon’s family (Moliere and Campbell, 2013). This paper uses the characters in the play to highlight the use of satire by Moliere in Tartuffe.

Satire is the used in literature to shun out the vices and evils in the society and in the case of Tartuffe it has been used to bring out the evils in Orgon’s house. The first example of satire in the play is the role given to the maid servant Dorine. Dorine is a servant in Orgon’s house but is given much freedom and a huge role in the play. The play was written in 1664 at which time the maid servants were not accorded much freedom and were not even considered as citizens in the society. She unconventionally gets in the way of other people in the house and is involved in plots against Tartuffe in the play. Orgon’s mother Madame Pernelle is critical of Dorine’s behavior and believes that she is crossing the line due to her performance, but this does not change throughout the play. She peculiarly unmasks the true intentions of Tartuffe that is rather unusual given the social status of a maidservant in the 17th century (Moliere and Campbell, 2013).

The writer also uses Elmire, Orgon’s wife to show satire in the play. In the 17th century wives were not accorded the same social status and respect as their husbands and the writer uses Elmire to conspire with her husband to reveal Tartuffe’s true intentions (Moliere and Campbell, 2013). Orgon’s family conspires against Tartuffe in order for Orgon to see who he truly is, but they end up causing more misery to the family as Damis ends up being disinherited by his father. Elmire decides to uncover Tartuffe and in the second occasion she convinces a reluctant Orgon to hide under the table and see Tartuffe for the man he truly was. The character of Elmire has also been uncharacteristically been used by the writer as a person who was in the same level as her husband in order to bring out satire in the play.

Another example of satire is in seen, in the main character Orgon who is convinced of Tartuffe’s good heart that he ends up breaking his family. Tartuffe was able to twist the mind of Orgon and that of his mother from the moment he entered their house as a guest and managed to get everything from Orgon (Moliere and Campbell, 2013). Orgon gives Tartuffe the hand of his daughter and disinherits his son giving the control of his possessions to Tartuffe. The writer uses Orgon

Tartuffe is a well written classical and very interestingly because a guest in a master’s house ends up disinheriting and stripping the master of everything he owns and almost getting the wife in the process.

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