How Women Were Regarded During the Age of Enlightenment, Essay Example

Thesis Statement

Women of the Age of Enlightenment were required by the society to be ignorant and subjects of their wives. Their job was to be mothers, wives, and nothing more. Nonetheless, Moliere’s play contrived a dynamic society in which women were rising up on their own, to challenge the demeaning role assigned to them.

Introduction

The School for Wives was a 17^th Century theatrical comedy written by Moliere, the French playwright. The play, premiered at Palais Royal in 1662, is considered one of his greatest achievements. The School for Wives depicts a male character, Arnolphe, intimidated to extreme levels by femininity. He thus resolves to marry a young and naive ward (one of his own). He makes some clumsy advances to that end but does not succeed, since the woman chooses to bestow her love to another (Bates 175-179).

Molière’s play was Christmas novelty but nevertheless a statement of how women were regarded during the Age of Enlightenment, an age in which Moliere is a major literary figure.  Incidentally, this was the initial attempt to pen his art ever after Armande had become his wife. It is thus remarkable that, his initial comedy would be produced with passion and concerns growing upon him from the marriage ethics. This perhaps gives the truest account possible out of a dramatist to the social role and status assigned to women during those times.

Women in the Age of Enlightenment

Arnolphe, the chief personage of the play is a middle-aged rogue, who was actually played in the premier by Moliere himself. After having inspected the society keenly for 42 years (his age), experienced love and love’s pain, he had arrived at a conclusion that, womankind were an untrustworthy lot. As such, the only safeguard a man could result to prevent a wife’s honor was to ensure the wife was extremely ignorant.  An ignorant wife could not befool her husband. A foolish wife could not fool a wise husband after all, Arnolphe thought.  Ideally therefore, we see that in the age at which Moliere was writing, a girl was supposed to know nothing at all, besides how to pray, to sew, to spin and to love only the man she pledged to, regardless of her consent. As Arnolphe says, a woman’s library should only have two books, Maxims of Marriage and the bible. To implement these theories, Molière’s character rigidly enacts strict seclusion on his espouse, ensuring that she is brought up at a convent school (Carmody 17-18).

Yet even with the society being so mean and belittling to women, Moliere seems to be indicating an awakening of the womenfolk in the person of the young lady. Agnes displays an intelligent simplicity that though unconsciously, finally outwits Arnolphe. She chooses to bestow her affections not to the pledged man, but upon gallant Horace. In a way, it indicates that women were in a way getting to be a little bit liberal in choosing their mates, more than the society was yet ready to allow. Nonetheless, the women remain ignorant, by virtue of limited access to education. They remain domesticated within homes being good wives and good mothers.

Arnolphe at 42, grooms Agnes from the age of 4 to merely become a wife.  It seems that during the Age of enlightenment, women were solely regarded as marriage materials and nothing more. A woman was as good as getting married, that was their sole purpose, their fate in life. That is not all. Women were to be provided for and not to make an income of their own by any means. Arnolphe financially supports Agnes to live in a secluded convent from the age of 7 to the age of 17. She is taught nothing that could help her in sustenance. All she knew was how to be a wife and a mother. As such, when Arnolphe decides it is time to marry her, he simply transfers her to one of his homes. Such financial dependence indicates that women were much more of puppets to be manipulated by those men with the means.

Agnes finally holds her choice of a suitor and that renders all the scheming of Arnolphe useless. Were women changing? Well, Agnes represents the womenfolk during the Age of Enlightenment. Her name suggests an artless, simple girl. But her character gradually develops with the plot. In scene one, she is simply an ingenious, uneducated maiden. However, she gradually changes, to be an earnest, logical and even intelligent woman (Worthington 339-340).

Conclusion

The School for Wives is based on the whims of an insecure man who schemes and contrives to illustrate to the world exactly how one should rig an infallible marriage by forging an alliance with the perfect bride. That perfect bride is ignorant and domesticated to the core. This suggests a very demeaning role for women during Moliere’s time (the Age of Enlightenment). A woman should only be a good wife and mother and her only knowledge should be within the covers of a bible. Nonetheless, the failure of Arnolphe to domesticate Agnes and Agnes resolute will to challenge social norms indicates a change in the status of women from a mere marriage object.

Works cited

Bates, Alfred. The Drama: Its History, Literature and Influence on Civilization, vol. 7. Ed. London: Historical Publishing Company, 1906.

Carmody, Jim. Rethinking Realism in Moliere’s “The School for Wives”: Scenographic Variations on the Place de ville. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1989

Worthington, R and Henri Van Laun. The Dramatic Works of Molière. New York: Cengage Press, 1880.