Critical Analysis of te Father-Children Relationship in Moliere's Miser - Essay Example

A Critical Analysis of the Father - Children Relationship in Moliere’s “Miser” In the “Miser” Moliere manipulated the deteriorating father - children relationship to satirize the Parisian aristocratic upper-class society. In this sense, the father - children relationship is essentially an apparatus that was handled to portray the Parisian aristocrats’ weird tendency to accumulate wealth overlooking the basic needs of other members of the society. In the play, the relationship between the father Harpagon and his children is not antagonistic or hostile in its true sense.

Rather the relationship appears to be weird and out of fashion. This weirdness evolves from Harpagon’s weird money-hunger and tendency of accumulating wealth and his children suffer from this behavior. Indeed, the comic aspect of the play is ultimately the projection of this peculiar behavior of Harpagon. Also for this very reason, the relationship between Harpagon and his children evokes no fear, but laughter. The question what money is for was superimposed over the father - children relationship throughout the whole play.

By distorting the traditional role of a father and the disheartening the common expectations, Moliere rather attempts to ridicule the wealthy people’s greed for money. He propounds that when money is meant for bringing happiness and for fulfilling man’s basic, it ironically brings endless unhappiness and misery for himself, as well as for his family members. Even the children do not have enough clothes to wear because of their father’s unwillingness to spend money. Both the children and their mother suffer from Harpagon’s tight-hold on money.

The unhappiness of the family members is vividly evident in Elise’s speech: “It is but too true that every day he gives us more and more reason to regret the death of our mother” (Act I Sc V). Indeed, by raising the children’s voice against their father, Moliere rather propounds the hollowness and ironies of the upper-class Parisian society. This hollowness is evident in Cleante’s voice: “Oh, my father, riches are of little importance when one is sure of marrying a virtuous woman” (Act I Sc I).

Harpagon goes against the wishes of his children only for the reason that he needs more wealth. His hunger for wealth obviously overlooks the emotional part of his relationship with them. He opposes the children’s marriage with the ones whom they love because he needs more money even at the age of sixty. At this age he even wants to marry Marianne, whom his son Cleante desires, with a view to get a dowry of twelve thousand francs. Traditionally a father’s desire to marry his son’s beloved is peculiar.

Further this peculiarity is screwed up by Harpagon’s age and intention to get some dowry. At this point, Moliere’s audiences are forced to ask what money is for. Moliere shows that Harpagon’s greed for money transgresses the decency of father - son relationship. The aristocrats of Moliere’s society are affected with this very feverish greed for money. Indeed, Harpagon and other members like him are sickened and blindfolded by money. They are devoid of respect and earn the hatred of their nearest ones and also of the rest of the society.

In scene while exchanging hot dialogues with his father Cleante utters this very truth about the society’s hatred to men like Harpagon: HARPAGON. It is you who are ruining yourself by loans so greatly to be condemned! CLEANTE. So it is you who seek to enrich yourself by such criminal usury! HARPAGON. And you dare, after that, to show yourself before me? CLEANTE. And you dare, after that, to show yourself to the world? (Act IV Sc I). Apart from divulging the corrupting greed for money, Elise’s relationship with Harpagon reveals much of the patriarchic grip of Moliere’s society on the women.

Being a woman Elsie cannot choose her own suitor. Love again becomes undermined by Harpagon’s greed for money. Anselme is wealthy. Referring to Mr. Anselme’s wealth Harpagon says that Anselme is “a staid and prudent man, who is not above fifty, and of whose riches everybody speaks” (Act I Sc VI). Therefore, Elise should marry him, though he is a widower. A father who has been sickened by the greed for wealth can unscrupulously sacrifice his daughter’s happiness. Elise says that she will commit suicide if she is forced to marry Anselme.

Under the choking authority of Harpagon’s patriarchic wish Elise does not have any other way but to commit suicide. This suicidal tendency of Elise essentially refers to her desire to get relief from her father’s grip. Near the beginning of the play the audience learns that Harpagon’s later wife also was in a better condition that the children are now in, as Elise says, “It is but too true that every day he gives us more and more reason to regret the death of our mother” (Act I Sc V).

By devising the comic but deteriorating relationship Moliere attempts to show that the aristocrat members of the Parisian society are themselves the victims of their own usury and misery, as Harpagon children themselves suffer from their father’s behavior. This self-victimization is evident in the fact that children Cleante and Elise have turned against their father and endeavored to get off their father. Also the father - son relationship reveals the choking grip of the Parisian patriarchy on the female counterpart of the society.

Work Cited Moliere, Jean-Baptiste Poquelin. The Miser. Gutenberg. 11 Feb. 2003. Web. .