Reviews

I'm not sure what I was expecting when I first began reading this, but I'm so surprised and impressed by how funny it was. I know that's the whole point of satire, really, but I did especially enjoy the way it's presented in Tartuffe. It was a quick and easy read to get through, highly entertaining the whole way through and peppered with powerful, quotable lines. There's a clear message about the nature of religious faith, and how the lines between piety and hypocrisy can easily become blurred. This is a lesson that's relevant even today, in a world full of people who use religion as an excuse to be bigoted and discriminatory. Despite the Catholic Church banning this play after only a single performance in the 1600s, this is not an anti-religious, didactic story warning against the harms of all religious faith. Instead it is a criticism of the fraudulent emulations of faith observable in many so-called holy men, which I think is a very necessary distinction to make. A couple of the characters make for fantastic study as well, and I definitely get why this is a book that consistently makes it onto the reading list of every college literature class.

"Why put yourself in charge of Heaven's cause?
Does Heaven need our help to enforce its laws?”

"There’s a vast difference, so it seems to me
Between true piety and hypocrisy.
How do you fail to see it, may I ask?
Is not a face quite different from a mask?"

And my own personal favourite line, delivered by the sassy and unapologetic Dorine against Tartuffe (the French word for hypocrite):

TARTUFFE: "Cover your bosom, girl. The flesh is weak, and unclean thoughts are difficult to control.
Such sights as that can undermine the soul."

DORINE: "Your soul, it seems, has very poor defences,
And flesh makes quite an impact on your senses.
It's strange that you are so easily excited;
My own passions are not so soon ignited.
And if I saw you naked as a beast,
Not all your hide would tempt me in the least."

*mic drop*

If that isn't the sickest and most savage burn I've ever encountered in a novel written literal centuries ago, I don't know what is.