'Til Death Do Them Part: Love, Greed, and Rivalry in Molière's L'Avare

'Til Death Do Them Part: Love, Greed, and Rivalry in Molière's L'Avare Michael S. Koppisch AVARICE HAS A DUAL FUNCTION in L'Avare: it is both the dominant character trait of Harpagon and the sign of a contagion that touches every aspect of his family's existence. From the moment he steps on stage, Harpagon is obsessed with money. His first words are to demand that La Flèche, his son's valet, leave immediately, lest the servant spy on him in the privacy of his own home and discover the whereabouts of his hidden treasure. The play ends with Harpagon eagerly awaiting the moment when he can see once again "ma chère cassette" (5.6). ' By this time, his treasure has become the old man's only friend, "mon support, ma consolation, ma joie," he calls it (4.7). Harpagon 's conviction that, deprived of his money, he can no longer carry on anchors the play's comic vision in a darker realm. Indeed the miser is, arguably, as unhappy before the theft of his ten thousand ecus as he is after it. He frets constantly about how dangerous it is to have so much money around the house (1.4). Burying his money in the garden puts it out of sight, but not out of mind, for Harpagon is terrified that others may have guessed his secret. Were the true extent of his wealth to become known, he would fear for his life: "un de ces jours," he tells Cléante, ' 'on me viendra chez moi couper la gorge, dans la pensée que je suis tout cousu de pistoles" (1.4). Harpagon's greed has turned his life into a nightmare. It has also contaminated the social and moral order of his entire household. Ironically, Harpagon comes to a point when he tells the Commissaire investigating the theft of his box that "s'il [ce crime] demeure impuni, les choses les plus sacrées ne sont plus en sûreté" (5.1). If he fails to grasp that punishing the culprit will make no difference, he is, nonetheless, absolutely right about "les choses les plus sacrées." They have been tainted. As Louis Lacour, the editor of the reprinting of the play's original 1669 edition, says, "il nous semble assister à la décadence d'une famille."2 Harpagon no longer fulfills the most elementary obligations of a father, preferring his money even to the life of his own daughter. Elise's revelation that she had been saved from drowning by 32 Spring 1996 Koppisch Valere, whom Harpagon believes to be guilty of the theft, elicits from her father his nastiest line: "Tout cela n'est rien; et il valait bien mieux pour moi qu'il te laissât noyer que de faire ce qu'il a fait" (5.4). Paternal love has been banished from the repertoire of Harpagon's feelings. Paternal authority fares no better. Harpagon's children refuse to obey him, plot against their father's tyranny, lie to him. Harpagon mistreats his servants , who, in turn, wish their master no good. To defend themselves against Harpagon, members of his household adopt certain of his own worst flaws. This, finally, leaves the family on the brink of turmoil. Jean-Jacques Rousseau centers his brief critique of L Ά vare on precisely this tendency toward the disintegration of a family order: C'est un grand vice d'être avare et de prêter à usure; mais n'en est-ce pas un plus grand encore à un fils de voler son père, de lui manquer de respect, de lui faire mille insultants reproches, et, quand ce père irrité lui donne sa malédiction, de répondre d'un air goguenard, qu'il n'a que faire de ses dons?3 Although he makes no attempt to justify the rapacious Harpagon, the more dangerous transgression, in Rousseau's eyes, is the abrogation of filial duty. The threat represented by the machinations of a miser is limited . He might, at worst, make his children miserable until he mends his ways or dies. However, when the child treats his father just as the father treats...