The Comedy of Manners, Social Responsibility, and Cancel Culture

The Comedy of Manners, Social Responsibility, and Cancel Culture: A Seemingly Endless Thesis for Cerebral People

by

Rachel Gorgas

A THESIS SUBMITTED IN FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE HONORS PROGRAM AND THE DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF ARTS

in

World Literature and Culture

THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO

March 2021

© Rachel Gorgas, 2021

Abstract This thesis studies the American phenomenon called cancel culture, a contemporary movement that removes people from social circles for disobeying collective codes of behavior. The thesis argues that cancel culture reflects the literary genre of the comedy of manners, a style that satirizes society’s social standards. To understand how these mannerisms dictate human behavior, the comedy of manners serves as a blueprint for further exploration into a present-day culture. The masters of this genre, French playwright Molière and Anglo-Irish author Oscar Wilde, communicate the universal theme of unspoken, implicit rules to their audience through comedy. The use of comedy delivers social commentary and enforces norms while also fostering an approachable and light-hearted atmosphere. In doing so, comedy offers a safe space for the discussion of collective, conventional behavior. I argue that a close examination of the literary tradition explains a trend that has led to the 21st century cancel culture and expected aftermath.

The ideology and actions behind cancel culture have always existed in civilizations. Therefore, I seek to determine if the study of the comedy of manners through a historical lens will explain the origins of the recent manifestation of cancel culture. Beginning as a literary tradition with a foundation in ancient Greece, the purpose of the comedy of manners is to expose social conventions digestible to the public. Humans are subjected to becoming the object of the spectacle through social acts. This paper will assess the French bourgeoisie’s hypocrisy of social behavior in Molière’s Le Misanthrope and its eligible significance in contemporary culture.

Wilde’s illustration of societal expectations in An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest reflects how he became “cancelled” for breaking norms in Britain’s Victorian era. Both authors compel audiences to observe how unwritten laws govern our choices in the public sphere, specifically public figures who are more susceptible to the effects of cancel culture.

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Table of Contents

Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………………i Table of Contents………………………………………………………………………………….ii Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………………....iii Act 1: Scene 1: Our Contemporary Understanding of Social Critique………………………..…..1 Scene 2: The Origin of Comedy…………………………………………………..………6 Act 2|Scene 1: L’art de plaire du classicisme français………………….………………...…… 13 Scene 2: The Inquisitive Case of Public Mirrors…………………………………..…….22 Scene 3: French social codes in Molière’s Le Misanthrope………………………….…..26 Intermission………………………………………………………………………………...…….33 Act 3|Scene 1 The Qualifications of Victorianism (1837-1901)……………...…………………34 Scene 2: A Wilde Life: “Art for Art’s Sake”………………….…………………………40 Scene 3: Wildean Behavior of Bunburying: The Contradictions of Victorianism……………………………………………....……………….……41 Act 4: Scene 1 The Importance of Cancellation: How Wilde’s Scandal Points Towards Cancel Culture………………………….………………………………….….…48 Scene 2: The Comedy of Manners’ Legacy on Public Scandals, Comedy, and Cancel Culture……………………………………………………………………..…..51 Works Cited……………………………………………………………………………...…..…..57 Appendix……………………………………………………………………………………..…..61

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Acknowledgements I want to thank my advisor Seth Lerer for his dedication to supervising me on this journey, for his encouragement, insight, and unwavering support for both this project and my studies at UCSD. I am honored by how he has directed me towards literary sources, guided me through this process, and how he has given me advice and helped me become a stronger writer. I cannot express my gratitude enough.

Thank you to my UCSD classmates and friends who have inspired me through my writing and have also written incredible theses. Anna, August, Avery, Natalie, Stephanie, and David, thank you for your solidarity, feedback, friendship, and support. Thank you for always being there to encourage me with positivity and assistance.

Thank you to Alyssa Simons, who has helped me plan my UCSD courses and has assisted me with the honors thesis requirements and graduation process.

I thank all of my family and friends for being supportive of my thesis work and UCSD education. Thank you to my father, Greg, for listening to my thesis proposal and asking important questions. Thank you to my mother, Sandi, for her kindness in listening to countless drafts of mine. Thank you to Jacob for directing me towards pop cultures, such as Dave Chappelle stand-up comedy shows. Thank you, Jared, for your creative support and for making me laugh throughout the process. Thank you, Jack, for your technical assistance.

Finally, I’d like to thank all my brilliant professors who have inspired my educational studies and have taught me incredible literature. Thank you to Seth Lerer, John Kirwan, Pam McDonough, Larissa Heinrich, Andrea Mendoza, Catherine Ploye, Pasquale Verdicchio, Erin Suzuki, Natalye Harpin, Marina Vlahaki, Max Parra, Daisuke Miyao, Fatima El-Tayeb, Yelena Severina, Yingjin Zhang, and Alain J.-J. Cohen. I am beyond grateful to have learned so much through these literary scholars.

My research was made possible by support from University of California, San Diego, through the World Literature and Cultures major.

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Act 1| Scene 1 Our Contemporary Understanding of Social Critique “I want to see if you can guess who it is I’m doing an impression of.” Dave Chappelle clears his throat.

“Okay, here it goes: uh, duhh. Hey! Durr! If you do anything wrong in your life, duh, and I find out about it, I’m gonna try to take everything away from you, and I don’t care when I find out. Could be today, tomorrow, 15, 20 years from now. If I find out, you’re fucking-duh-FINISHED!” He stumbles on his next words. “Wh-who’s that? That’s YOU!” Chappelle deliberately points to the audience while elongating his pronunciation of “you.” The crowd erupts in a roar of laughter.

In 2019, American stand-up comedian Dave Chappelle took the stage to deliver these zany remarks about his impossible-to-please audience. However, to understand the implications of Chappelle’s joke, one must contextualize themselves in contemporary American culture.

Society’s current social critique method has a history dated as far back to ancient Greece, yet only in the past several years has the internet developed new terminology for social criticism.

The primary example is claiming an individual “cancelled” or “deleted” for operating outside of social convention.1 American internet culture created an umbrella term for this language and named this phenomenon in 2017: cancel culture. Given that the term is fairly new, it is unrecognizable to writing sources such as Google Documents finding the term “cancel culture” as a grammatical error. Cancel culture can best be defined as a means of ostracizing someone who fails to adhere to society’s unspoken codes of behavior, primarily those in the public display.

1

See figure 1 in the appendix.

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In our technologically advanced culture, social boycotting entails the discouragement of social media presence, decreased job opportunities, and the lack of general public support.2 Inspired by movements such as #MeToo,3 the communal public may agree to socially shun a person like Harvey Weinstein, R. Kelly, or Bill Cosby for their sexually-charged indecent behavior and crimes. This is commonly agreed upon as a positive tactic because cancel culture fosters a social justice environment in which survivors can effectively speak out against their assailants without requiring judicial and legal help. However, cancellation and the merciless mob mentality go as far as to threaten Ellen DeGeneres’s allegedly mean behavior to her employees. To a certain extent, this is justified because cancel culture demands “greater accountability from public figures.”4 The collective sensation of cancellation requires a performative element to the public through the internet users outwardly broadcasting someone else’s misbehavior, such as the Twitter post in figure 1. In doing so, society calls out the appalling act and draws the attention needed to cancel someone. The majority of people are not losing their livelihoods because of their past offensive remarks. Rather, cancel culture largely preys upon celebrities or public figures who have a platform. As a result, these individuals are villainized to teach the public correct social behavior. These unwritten codes may be perplexing due to their dynamic nature: what is socially unacceptable now was not socially unacceptable in the past.

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For the most part, individuals in the public eye, such as actors, writers, TV hosts, and singers, are most susceptible to cancel culture. They are subjected to public criticism because the whole world watches them perform, whether on or off the stage. For example, Chris Harrison, the host of the reality TV show The Bachelor, was recently “canceled” for his racially insensitive remarks on an Extra interview with Rachel Lindsay. As of February 2021, he is taking a “temporary” leave from the show, demanded by the public. At the University of Michigan, Lisa Nakamura defines cancel culture as “a cultural boycott.” The Bachelor audience signed a massive petition for his removal from the show.

3 According to the Maryville University, the #MeToo movement is a “source of solidarity for women from all backgrounds who have experienced sexual harassment, most often, though not always, perpetrated by a male colleague.”

4 What It Means to Get 'Canceled' (Merriam Webster 2021).

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Cancel culture is implicitly powerful because it exists in specific conditions. The rules that govern public etiquette are those that are unwritten, inferred, and communally considered righteous. Thus, why people are “canceled” in colloquial terms falls upon those who break these social contracts. Being ignorant of the unwritten law is inexcusable. The motives behind cancel culture are to enforce proper social behavior, educate the masses, and humiliate a person to conform to societal conventions. A minor example of unacceptable behavior for the common person is bringing twenty items to the “fifteen items or less” check-out line at a grocery store.

Another example is neglecting to bring your shopping cart back to the return area. However, the majority of the American population away from the spotlight is often pardoned from outcast humiliation. On a grander scale, public figures are subjected to cancellation if one is caught saying homophobic or racist remarks or if someone mirrors the actions of Senator Ted Cruz fleeing to Cancun during a severe Texas climate crisis. Cancel culture implies that it identifies a transgression that the canceled person does not think they have made.

Another example of cancellation is the infamous case of Lori Loughlin, more splendidly known as Aunt Becky from Full House, and the college admissions scandal. In 2019, new sources publicly exposed a criminal conspiracy that altered undergraduate admission decisions at top American universities. Thirty-three parents of college applicants were accused of paying over 25 million dollars to William Rick Singer between 2011 and 2018. The schemer used a portion of the money to bribe college admission officials and dishonestly escalate student test scores from the SAT and ACT for extremely wealthy college applicants. One of the highly publicized college applicants was Olivia Jade, nineteen-year-old Youtuber and beauty influencer at the time and, more importantly, the daughter of our once beloved Aunt Becky. 5 5

I only use Aunt Becky because American fans of Full House were absolutely devastated to find her in this scandal. The internet users created many internet jokes and memes out of Aunt Becky’s character, allegedly going to jail. See figure 2 in the appendix.

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Olivia Jade was attending the University of Southern California when news erupted that her parents faked her eligibility to join the school’s rowing team. This scandal triggered national outrage. Although most of the college applicants’ parents were wealthy elites, few such as Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman remained in the public eye as actresses. These celebrities were placed in the center of cancellation due to their social presence and were held more harshly accountable for their offenses. In other words, the world made a spectacle and an example out of Felicity Huffman and Aunt Becky specifically to teach the public of this indecent, immoral behavior. They were not the first to cheat the academic system, and they will certainly not be the last. Rather than publicly shaming all of the 33 parents involved, American society focused on condemning these celebrity figures, Huffman and Loughlin, to reinforce unwritten social codes.

Olivia Jade disappeared from the internet for approximately a year. At the same time, 16 of the 33 parents who had not pled guilty to the initial charges were charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering. Every parent paid lawful consequences, but news sources highly publicized Loughlin’s case. The Hallmark channel fired Lori Loughlin, and the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Loughlin and her husband Mossimo Giannulli, which endured for over a year. After admitting their guilt, the final verdict sentenced both of them to jail: Loughlin must serve two months in jail, and Giannulli must serve six months. Society criticized them for indecent behavior and cheating the academic system; therefore, the family experienced the effects of cancel culture to the highest extreme among their counterparts.

More than two years after the scandal, Olivia Jade broke her silence and joined the Red Table Talk, hosted by Jada Pinkett Smith, Adrienne Banfield-Norris, and Willow Smith on December 8th, 2020. The interview intended to reintegrate Jade back into the public realm due

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to the effects of cancel culture outcasting her in the first place. In the interview, Jade spoke about her accountability among the controversy: I really felt most moved by the fact that we did all of this and we're so ignorant and I feel like a huge part of having privilege is not knowing you have privilege. And so when it was happening, it didn't feel wrong. It didn't feel like that's not fair. A lot of people don't have that. I was in my own little bubble focusing about my comfortable world. I never had to look outside of that bubble. I also felt very misunderstood.6 Stated to her fault, the logic of cancel culture is that the person who committed the indecent act failed to believe what they did was wrong. This may explain why she initially broke her social media silence with a photo of her flipping off the camera on August 11, 2019. 7 Olivia Jade was temporarily shadowbanned8 on the social media application Instagram, which means an app user cannot directly search her name and find her account easily. Although Jade has resumed posting Youtube videos on her channel, this speaks to how figures fall in and out of public graces.

And the world laughed. They made jokes, internet memes, and broadcasted funny skits inspired by the public scandal, such as Saturday Night Live’s Cut For Time: College Admissions.

The world mocked the college admissions scandal, and they specifically ridiculed Olivia Jade through comedy as a primary example of the situation. She was comically canceled, which calls upon the purpose of comedy in this manner: society accepts comedy as a form of delivering societal faults because it is a shared response to release the tension of disruptive behavior.

Cognitive neuroscientist Scott Weems argues that humor is “a great way for us to have evolved so we don’t have to hit each other with sticks.”9 Furthermore, humor is a tool that allows for the 6

Olivia Jade Speaks Out: Red Table Talk (Happy Scribe 2021) 00:13:03.

See figure 3.

8 Shadowbanned is best defined as a block from a social media site without the user's knowledge. What this does is create their posts practically invisible to other users on the platform.

9 Mary O’Hara, How comedy makes us better people (BBC, 2016) 10.

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psychological processing of events. Comedy functions as a coping mechanism when we encounter tragedy, wrongdoings, or confusing situations that breach normative ideology. In fact, research by scholars such as Avner Ziv discovered that satire has grown in popularity to reform societal codes and reinforce expected behavior.10 This points to our contemporary cancel culture, constructed to teach the public how to behave.

Scene 2 The Origin of Comedy In the college admissions scandal, the comic intention was to comprehend a societal important moment in a more palatable way and ridicule the offenders through parody or satire.

Many scholars such as Albrecht Weber and Ernst Windisch claim that satirical comedy and theater began in ancient Greece with Old and New Comedy around 320 BC.11 The Greeks had their superstars: Aristophanes, the most reputable author of Old Comedy, and Menander, the best-known figure of Athenian New Comedy. I argue that New Comedy is the precursor linked to the comedy of manners, Molière, and Oscar Wilde.12 New Comedy plays were sitcom representations of middle and lower-class life, featuring stock characters such as the conniving slave, the young lovers, the altruistic prostitute, and the crabby older man, to name a few.13 An example of a New Comedy tale involves a young man in love with a woman, but the maiden’s grouchy old father disapproves of the lovers’ union and attempts to destroy their bond.14 This model situation has without a doubt impeccable 10

O’Hara, paragraph 13.

Steven F. Walker, The Birth of Theater (The Wilson Quarterly, 2004) 106.

12 Eva Kushner and Jean O’Grady, Old and New Comedy (University of Toronto Press, 2009) 291.

13 Plautus (Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th Edition, 2020,) 1.

14 This was the plot of Menander’s Dyskolos (316 BC), translated as “The Grouch,” “The Misanthrope,” or the “Bad Tempered Man.” The plot involves a grumpy old father who tries to prevent his daughter from marrying a wealthy young man named Sostrates. The old man, Knemon, is primarily against the union because Sostrates is rich, and he is suspicious of acquiring wealth not through inheritance but by suddenly stumbling upon it.

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similarities to Lady Bracknell’s helicopter parenting in the courtship between Jack and Gwendolen in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest (1895): Pardon me, you are not engaged to anyone. When you do become engaged to someone, I, or your father, should his health permit him, will inform you of the fact.15 Gwendolen’s mother, Lady Bracknell, dismisses the engagement between the couple because she has not approved of the matter. Therefore, this literary tradition of the grouchy old man in likeness to the grouchy old woman (Lady Bracknell) was passed down from Menander’s Dyskolos in the form of a stock character or trope. In addition, comedies from ancient Greece significantly influenced literary figures such as Shakespeare and Molière.

A popular storyline in New Comedy fabricated ridiculous sequences of events, which often resulted in a joyful resolution from the previous conflicts within family and societal groups.16 In An Ideal Husband (1895) by Oscar Wilde, Sir Robert Chiltern is blackmailed by Mrs. Cheveley. He undergoes a turbulent chain of events until the issue is resolved and his wife accepts him for his true identity: SIR ROBERT: Gertrude, is it love you feel for me, or is it pity merely?

LADY CHI.: It is love, Robert. Love, and only love. For both of us a new life is beginning.17 Mrs. Cheveley’s menacing threat to expose Sir Robert is reconciled, and he is free to live in merriment and bliss with his wife. Similar to the reconciliation in Menander’s Perikeiromene (307 BC),18 the plot in Wilde’s work is a formula that dates back to ancient Greek comedies.

15

Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest (Black’s Readers Service Company, 1927) 438.

Kathryn Gutzwiller, Menander, New Comedy and the Visual (Mnemosyne 2016) 534.

17 Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband (Black’s Readers Service Company, 1927) 428.

18 In Perikeiromene, the play focuses on the relationship between Glykera and her husband, Polemon.

Her husband, a Corinthian mercenary, is domestically violent towards her, which leads to the unfolding of the plot: Glykera is in pursuit of finding her father and reconciling her marriage to Polemon. Although this is not the same plot as Wilde’s An Ideal Husband, Lady Chiltern is greatly upset at her husband for 16

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Furthermore, Menander’s New Comedy provoked an imitation of life through prosōpa ēthika,19 reflective of particular characters' virtuous actions and ethical choices.20 By illustrating noble behavior or the lack thereof, Menander enforced the moral codes in ancient Greece.

Humor in the comic, satiric aspect concealed his seriousness for these standards, but he was instructive of proper behavior nonetheless. In First Adelphoi, a malicious old man named Antipho wishes to wed his daughters to wealthy husbands for two reasons: money generates friendship, and money will give Antipho the ability to make his servants work longer. Antipho’s ethics conflict with the true virtue in the play, iterated through his daughter, Pamphila: “‘I feel no differently from him now he is poor than I did before when he was rich.’”21 Pamphila's integrity differs from her father’s to exaggerate his immoral views. Menander’s plays tended to satirize corrupt values for the sake of teaching his audience moral codes. Therefore in ancient Greece’s social criticism, satire concealed and also conveyed the author’s righteous principles.

Molière’s Tartuffe (1669) reflects this literary tradition through a plot that exposes religious hypocrisy against pure piety. Religious ideology drives the master of the household, Orgon, who is under the presumption that he has been raised to trust pious people as morally immaculate. Tartuffe enters the play masked in false piety, symbolizing obvious religious hypocrisy instead of honest values and integrity. He boasts in Catholicism to hide his conniving goal of gaining all of Orgon’s assets, including his wife, Elmire. On the other hand, Orgon’s brother-in-law, Cléante, functions similar to Pamphila as he stands to correct Tartuffe’s immoral behavior: “so those whose hearts are truly pure and lowly/ Don’t make a flashy show of being

being dishonest and concealing his true past. In the end, they agree to reconcile their relationship.

Therefore, the theme of love and acceptance in Wilde’s play is strikingly similar to Menander’s Perikeiromene.

19 This term is loosely translated as “morals” according to Gutzwiller.

20 Gutzwiller, p. 534.

21 T. B. L. Webster, Menander: Plays of Adventure and Satire (University College, London, 1948) 188.

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holy.”22 Cléante, like Pamphila, offers convincing moral advice not only to Orgon but the play’s audience as well. If one is truly pious, they do not have to make a spectacle of it. Moral philosophy such as humility and integrity was a New Comedy tradition passed down to Molière.

Another key component to New Comedy was the portrayal of realistic situations.23 Opposite of Old Comedy Aristophanic, unattainable heroes, New Comedy engaged in social interaction’s everyday problems. This notion was also a prominent dilemma in Wilde’s comedy of manners. A realistic situation might have been discovering one’s true identity,24 such as Ernest Worthing admitting to Algernon and eventually Gwendolen that his real name is Jack. In Molière’s Tartuffe, Orgon reevaluates his opinion of the imposter Tartuffe, representing an ancient Greek circumstance: replacing one’s false opinions with true ones. Other New Comedy themes consisted of depicting the world, rediscovered identities, reunions with families, and happy marriages.25 Although New Comedy centered on individuals and their behavior, each character is not unique to anything we see in reality. Authors such as Menander relied on stock characters to conceptualize a larger scheme of how human beings interact with each other. Thus, New Comedy themes allowed for the exploration of vicissitudes in characters who, although they are not actually ourselves, remind us of ourselves.26 The relatability element was essential to not only telling a realistic story but to resonate with the audience.

The depiction of performers’ physical masks to give their character dynamic personalities was a visible aspect in New Comedy theater. Chris Vervain, a visual artist and mask maker, best

22

Molière translated by Richard Wilbur, Tartuffe ( Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company) 189.

Sander M. Goldberg, Models and Memory in the Comedy of Menander (Comparative Drama 1993) 328.

24 Goldberg, p. 329.

25 In fact, The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde includes all those themes. Victorian values depicted how the world operated in 19th century Britain. Jack Worthing reclaims his true name, Jack is reunited with his niece, Cecily, and in the end, Gwendolen forgives him, hinting at their future marriage.

Wilde used all the components of New Comedy in revitalizing the comedy of manners.

26 Goldberg, p. 336.

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depicts this facet through her recreation of New Comedy masks.27 Designed to conceal the performer’s whole face and head, these masks were referred to as “helmet” masks. Slightly larger than the human head and made out of plaster and linen, they accompanied a suitable costume to complete a trope. The masks and their facial features intended to resemble real-life faces, and this disguise allowed the performer to embody their character fully.28 Worn by a performer with an appropriate costume, they constituted a complete disguise and immersion into their role. In the example of the slave in figure 4, the eyes' gaze pointed towards opposite directions to portray contrasting character traits when the actor moved in different positions.

If wearing masks helped define a character’s role in the play, the masks then invited the spectators to gauge characters, their actions, and their ethical significance to their environments.

The imperfectly designed masks also indicated imperfect character flaws found in human beings.29 Even when characters violated social expectations, such as Knemon’s ill-temper in Dyskolos, the comic resolutions acted on fairness or rather Knemon’s incomplete fairness in Menander’s play. Knemon, the misanthropic grouchy man, molds life into a burden for himself and others. Even though few historical accounts may reveal what Knemon’s mask would have looked like, one can assume he had grumpy expressions and characteristics.

At the end of Dyskolos, Knemon realizes that society functions best with human interaction, yet he remains unpleasant even after being rescued from the well.30 Knemon represented a type of person that one may encounter in one’s lifetime. This is intended to arouse See figure 4 in the appendix.

Chris Vervain, Performing Ancient Drama in Mask: The Case of Greek New Comedy (New Theatre Quarterly 2004) 249.

29 Gutzwiller, p. 537.

One can tell that the New Comedy masks were far from perfect and often appeared multi-faceted, such as different eye gazes to show the dynamic character and their actions as they evolved throughout the play.

30 This is the central conflict for Knemon. He pushes everyone away until he accidentally falls into a well. Shortly after, he is rescued by Gorgias and Sostratos, but even after his rescue, Knemon remains grumpy and unpleasant to others.

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the audience’s discontent and to reinforce social norms and proper behavior. Nobody wants to resemble the grouchy old man, yet some people may become like him. Therefore physical masks performed as general identities to characters that inferred their role in Athenian society.

Particularly in Menander’s plays, the conflict and resolutions, according to Petrides, were “mirrors of life.”31 I will explore the concept of plays mirroring life in the following chapters about Molière.32 Rather than wearing physical masks, Molière and Wilde’s characters wear metaphorical masks through language and character depiction, hence the importance of mannerisms in the comedy of manners. Most famously in Molière’s works, Tartuffe wears the mask symbolizing false piety. Orgon describes Tartuffe’s mask by his behavior that reinforces his seemingly religious persona: “he used to come into our church each day/ And humbly kneel nearby, and start to pray.”33 This description allows the audience to paint Tartuffe’s mask as a falsely pious person. He performs a role through actions to convince people that he is an honest person when in reality, he is far from it. He exudes pious behavior to Orgon and those in church, yet to Orgon’s family, he exposes himself as a rogue or pícaro.34 Tartuffe’s performative acts of kneeling at a church and praying in front of others symbolize piety. Yet, it is a mask nevertheless as the spectators discover the man beneath the mask.

If using physical masks gave specific personality traits to New Comedy characters, Molière, inspired by Dyskolos, created tropes such as the hypocrite or the imposter to unveil the

Gutzwiller, p. 537.

See Act 2|Scene 2.

33 Molière, p. 187.

34 I am inclined to use the term pícaro because Tartuffe is a low-class citizen in a corrupt aristocratic society, employing his wits and trickster mentality to succeed in his selfish motives. However, he is far from a hero.

31

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metaphorical mask. Molière directly referenced the concept of one wearing a mask when Cléante argues that Tartuffe hides behind one: 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?35 Tartuffe’s mask provides an illusion for Orgon, and Cléante directly scolds his brother for falling into Tartuffe’s trap. In reference to the mask, Molière intended to reveal “the hypocrite” or “the imposter” trope in French bourgeois society. Like Menander’s social criticism in New Comedy, Molière strategically observed his generation’s manners and often ill manners to give his characters applicable identities befitting his time.36 In Molière’s theater, the prescribed masks or identities of characters allowed his Parisian audience to perceive and participate in society comically.

Dating back to ancient Greece, the foundations of comedy gives us an understanding of social life in other societies, such as France in the 1600s and Britain in the late 1800s. Tartuffe is ostracized from the play’s world when the king, Louis XIV, discovers his wrongdoings against Orgon’s family. This enforced social behavior in the same way that cancel culture in the 21st century imposes our own moral guidelines. Like Menander, Molière and Wilde’s job was to use stage comedy to teach the spectators the unspoken rules in society and how they operated in their specific worlds. The next act will contextualize Molière’s theater in 17th century France to elaborate on this phenomenon of social contracts, his plays as “mirrors of life,” and social criticism through satire.

Molière, p. 189.

George Meredith, An Essay on Comedy and The Uses of The Comic Spirit (The New Quarterly Magazine 1877).

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Act 2|Scene 1 L’art de plaire du classicisme français ''All the satires of the stage should be viewed without discomfort. They are public mirrors, where we are never to admit that we see ourselves; one admits to a fault when one is scandalized by its censure.''

-Moliere (1663)

In the 17th century France, the world became the stage, citizens were the spectacle, living was a call to act, and drama was an expression of life. Like every civilization, those who influenced the era established manners, attitude, style, and speech to each circumstance or situation. James Doolittle argued that French classicism was a phenomenon defined as a spirit or an attitude of mind.37 This so-called spirit has piqued literary interest as to why we still discuss classicism today, as many of its principles remain relevant in a contemporary landscape. This chapter will identify Molière’s significance under French classicism (1600-1685) and Louis XIV’s ruling from 1643 to 1715. The primary principles of the era applied concepts such as moral purpose, orderliness, and good taste. Inspired by Aristotle, Horace, and classical Greek and Roman magnum opuses, these elements enforced codes governing literature and the arts in France.38 Classicism was deeply multi-faceted. One had to express a balance between penséesvraies and expressions justes, a harmony between emotion and reason, and an equilibrium between restraint and insinuation.39 Although many scholars have commonly misconstrued classicism into a distinct ideology, the era encompassed a great diversity of interests pour tous. All could enjoy piety or atheism, antiquity or modernism, and feudalism or 37

James Doolittle, Protest in Seventeenth-Century French Classicism (The University of Chicago 1966) 202.

38 In 1668, Molière used Plautus’ Amphitruo for inspiration of his French Amphitryon. This verifies that ancient Greek New Comedy inspired Molière.

39 Philip A. Wadsworth, New Views of French Classicism, in Relation to the Baroque (American Association of Teachers of French 1952) 173.

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absolutism.40 This explains why classicism reflected such vitality and richness. In terms of literature, classicism addressed that there must be two defining elements: les bienséances, indicating that literature must respect the moral codes and good tastes, and la vraisemblance, meaning that actions within literature must be believable to a certain extent. The pivotal focus and essential component of literary classicism deeply embodied the Horace precept: to please and educate.

Above all else, the fundamental component to French classicism was l’art de plaire à la cour: honnêteté.41 The art of pleasing meant that one had to be honest, truthful, and sincere.

French classicism’s rudimentary rule was to mold an image of oneself based on conformity and actuality to express the social, psychological, and moral appearance of a person beyond their physical persona.42 Perhaps this is why Tartuffe is one of Molière’s most memorable plays: Tartuffe was the antithesis of l’homme honnête. Furthermore, to please the public, specifically the church, Molière revised Tartuffe (1664) until the king approved it in 1669. Molière understood he had to please the public; he wrote and performed La Critique de L’École des femmes (1663) in response his initial play’s discomfort in L’École des femmes (1662).43 In application, an ideology of honnêteté infused Molière’s theater with a mentality based on conforming to the era’s expectations. His plays became a mirror, an image of representation, and an imitation of everyday human interaction.44 Under these terms, Molière gave life to the meaning of honnêteté and transformed his audience into a second comedy in which his spectators could identify with the rules of honnêteté. As the audience laughed at the plays’ ridiculous Wadsworth, p. 175.

“The art of pleasing the court: honesty.”

42 Doolittle, p. 203.

43 Georges Van Den Abbeele, Moralists and the Legacy of Cartesianism: A New History of French Literature (Harvard University Press 1989) 331.

44 Gérard Defaux, The Comic at Its Limits: A New History of French Literature (Harvard University Press 1989) 337.

40

41

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mannerisms, they laughed at themselves because they were prescribed the same rules.

Remember, a good French classical artist must have la vraisemblance, a certain extent of realness. And yet, it is because of this imitation of everyday life that one must personify honnêteté to please and reflect the philosophy of the French bourgeoisie. Classicism connected pleasantry with usefulness, and this overarching idea powerfully impacted French literature by combining aesthetic pleasure with instructive enlightenment on moral problems. Such problems consisted of misanthropy, hypocrisy, obligations opposed to their desires, and zest for life.45 The nobleman was the type of person who best embodied French classicism, whose duty it was to reflect honnêteté.46 The nobleman lived under particular moral codes, such as one must indubitably respect the king’s will as law.47 Those who were more likely to influence the social sphere had the responsibility to be courteous and chivalrous and illustrate the notion noblesse oblige or “nobility obligates.” Although a commoner could be an honnête, it was much more likely to apply to those gently born48 or born into wealth. Under an absolutist regime, a nobleman’s material success must have largely depended on the goodwill of one’s superiors, and the finest of the practical arts must have been l’art de plaire à la cour.49 Therefore, this era’s primary influencers were an elite group of Louis XIV and his court, the nobility, the intellectuals, the higher clergy, and the upper-middle-class or bourgeoisie. In fact, the court’s bureaucracy, consisting of the rich bourgeois who established a new nobility, set the standard for influencing French classicism throughout the kingdom.50

45

Van Den Abbeele, p. 327.

A French nobleman falls into a class of people with high political and social status, such as the bourgeoisie.

47 Doolittle, p. 202.

48 Gently born indicates one who has the qualities attributed to a noble birth.

49 “The art of pleasing the court.”

50 The higher clergy had their own section of influence and exercised their own independence of thoughts to invoke orderliness.

46

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Moral codes such as l’art de plaire à la cour could only be enforced by a supreme, authoritative, domineering power. Authority points to a collection of entities under Louis XIV as a movement of social order. Regulated by Richelieu, l’Academie Française was mainly responsible for enforcing pure, codified French language. The council developed a standard for correctness to use the proper vocabulary of the language spoken at court. However, the most excelled French was spoken at court because the courtiers were the locus of power and authority in all areas, not because they were the best educated.51 This was crucial to the way of life under French classicism because the court’s authority concreted a kind of code by which those who aspired to be noble were willing to be ruled. Within Louis XIV’s court, classicism established a code of belief and conduct derived from morality and enforced by authorities.

The king claimed executive power and the right to prescribe particular moral codes.52 After Jules Cardinal Mazarin’s death, Louis XIV seized power to the throne and established a monarchy ruled by “une loi, une foi, un roi.”53 While l'Academie Française formed the French language’s precise rules, Louis XIV influenced the arts’ direction, producing the era’s social expectations and norms. To centralize his power, Louis XIV held court festivals, les fêtes, at Versailles; the most widely known fêtes took place in 1664, 1668, and 1672.54 These court festivals fabricated two foundations: it created a new bond between the monarch and his subjects, and Louis XIV transcended ordinary humanity into a god-like figure. In 1662, he performed in a court festival ballet that crowned him the titles of the “Sun King” and Apollo. 55 Ira Wade, The Conditions of French Classicism:Intellectual Origins of the French Enlightenment (Princeton University Press 1971) 352.

51 Doolittle, p. 204.

52 Wade, p. 352.

53 “One law, one faith, one king.”

Jean-Marie Apostolidès, From Roi Soleil to Louis le Grand:A New History of French Literature (Harvard University Press 1989) 315.

54 Apostolidès, p. 315.

55 Apostolidès, p. 317.

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Through the success of his Versailles court festivals, Louis XIV became the pinnacle of the arts.

To his leisure, he filtered through all French art, and his mark of approval emblemized worthiness. Out of the many highly esteemed guests, Molière participated in the court festivals.

It has been said that Molière wrote fourteen plays to fulfill the desires of the king solely.56 When Molière and his traveling troupe returned to Paris in 1658, they performed before the king, and he granted Molière a theater at the Petit-Bourbon palace.57 As a playwright and dramatist, Molière began writing plays that combined old French farce with Italian commedia.58 Under French classicism’s prescribed rules, one may identify Molière as a moralist writer not in the sense of resembling a moralistic person, but one who studied morals and wrote about them in the framework of moeurs or customs.59 In agreement with la vraisemblance, Molière used comedy to show humanity as it was, to employ comedy on stage that remarkably resembled social intercourse so that one may have recognized oneself.60 Thus comedy became a school of manners while the audience was its students. The responsibility of comedy was to remedy humanity’s flaws while also entertaining the public.

Molière understood that human beings were naturally sensitive to reason, so comedy became the vehicle that exposed these errors and extended the logic out to its humorous extreme.

His plays took realistic people who lived in a comfortable world of honnêteté to the comic stage.

In turn, laughter became the collective expression of reason and morality to correct immoral behavior. For example, the ridiculous egotism of Alceste in Le Misanthrope, or Tartuffe’s obvious conniving schemes in Tartuffe, evoked laughter and simultaneously encouraged

56

Robert W. Goldsby, Classic Routines: Molière on Stage: What’s So Funny? (Anthem Press 2012) 121.

Mechele Leon, History: Rewriting the Story of Molière and Louis XIV (University of Iowa Press 2009) 54.

58 Mechele Leon, Performance: The ‘High/Low’ Molière (University of Iowa Press 2009) 35.

59 Van Den Abbeele, p. 327.

60 Defaux, p. 337.

57

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corrective behavior. On the stage, society was able to judge and condemn these characters as laughable, quirky individuals. They also recognized that classicism heavily weaved the illustration of social codes. Their easily identifiable characteristics, such as the misanthrope or the imposter, undoubtedly isolated characters such as Alceste or Tartuffe from the rest of society to highlight the well-mannered and conformist society of honnêteté.

Molière studied the social codes of his era and wrote them into his plays. He put French bourgeois society, their speech, hypocrisy, and values on trial.61 Philinte in Le Misanthrope alludes to France’s domineering politesse and its hypocritical values as a social norm: When someone greets us with a show of pleasure It is polite to give him equal measure, Return his love the best that we know how, And trade him offer for offer, vow for vow.62 Alceste is unable to accept this social code, one of politeness masked in potential dishonesty. If one is nice to someone’s face but despises them otherwise, he calls it meaningless and false, and he proclaims, “to honor all men is to honor none.”63 Honor in this regard was the adherence to a conventional standard of conduct or what was morally right in Parisian society. Alceste objects to this notion because he sees unearned flattery as dishonesty and is therefore tested in his beliefs when Orante asks Alceste to listen to his sonnet.

Molière wrote Alceste’s character as an exaggerating fool whose profession of excellent principles disguises his arrogant egotism: “all are corrupt; there’s nothing to be seen/ In court or town but aggravates my spleen.”64 Alceste is in opposition with the mores of his society, so

61

Van Den Abbeele, p. 339.

Molière, p. 17.

63 Molière, p. 18.

64 Molière, p. 20.

62

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Philinte stands to correct his rationality: “this philosophic rage is a bit extreme;/ You’ve no idea how comical you seem.”65 One may argue that Molière cleverly and humorously mocked the notion of honnêteté through Alceste. Many pretended to be a French nobleman under classicism’s prescribed rules who would have never been completely honnête. Alceste declares that “all are corrupt” without self-identifying into the category of “all.” He belongs in the “all” just as much as anyone else in the play. Therefore, France lived under hypocritical moeurs, and Molière decided to show the public their faults. Alceste is outnumbered and protests the authoritative morality. For doing so, he appeared laughable and ridiculous to the French bourgeoisie.

Therefore, Act 1|Scene 1 in Le Misanthrope is an exchange of social criticism between Philinte and Alceste. They cannot agree on the moral code, so the alternative is to make accommodation for societal foolishness, convert the dilemma into an amusing spectacle, make it instructive yet pleasurable, and form a euphoria of amusement.66 Due to this socially critical exchange, one can confidently assert that Molière was a skeptic of his entire social order.

Throughout his playwright career, Molière wanted to expose the bourgeoisie’s hypocrisy. He condemned an unequal social system that allowed the wealthy and gently born elites to exert their privileges as if they represented ultimate justice, servants were their pets, women were their property, and as if every audience member looked through the lens of the Sun King.67 In Molière’s theater, the audience consisted of the royal court, the majority who responded to what they enjoyed on stage, and the minority who judged Molière’s plays according to the unspoken moral codes.68 Even though Molière was complimented for his portrayal of Molière, p. 20.

Defaux, p. 339.

67 Thomas M. Disch, Molière, the Servant with No Masters (The Hudson Review 2001) 441.

68 Marcel Gutwirth, The Autocritical Dramaturgy of Classicism: A New History of French Literature (Harvard University Press 1989) 313.

65

66

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human character, critics argued he lacked the essential aspects of classicism such as social ideals, good taste, refinement of language, and prestigious sentiments.69 Other critics claimed that Molière’s plays lacked thrilling action70 or that his plays were “unoriginal, obscene, and irreligious.”71 Molière’s goal was to provoke laughter among the nobleman, faire rire les honnêtes gens, directed toward the king in the audience. This became a success that made comedy more advanced in dramatic achievement.72 Within Molière’s lifetime, the Catholic Church condemned those who indulged in the art of theater. It scorned those who attended plays, and it especially punished professional actors through ex-communication from the church.73 The church saw the theater as a tempting sin and believed that those affiliated with folly entertainment neglected daily life’s important responsibilities. The theater was an impermissible delight, and Molière’s decision to become a playwright provoked tension with the church. Molière was on the verge of “cancellation” from the public eye for his religious hypocrisy critiques, and the church took it personally.

Molière wrote Tartuffe from 1663 to 1664. Inspired by the church’s moral instruction monopoly, Molière transformed the classical theater into comedy that ridiculed the piously fraudulent individuals. For Molière, the theater was the social art that exposed the religious con-artists or those piously deluded.74 It would appear as a benevolent deed to reveal ill-mannered behavior. Still, when Molière performed the play in front of the king and his court, they immediately claimed it was polemical. The king and his court enjoyed the play, but they knew that the Catholic church would not delight in the showcase of religious hypocrisy. In

69

Leon, p. 35.

Gutwirth, p. 313.

71 Leon, p. 54.

72 Gutwirth, p. 313.

73 Disch, p. 442.

74 Gutwirth, p. 314.

70

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Molière’s defense, he responded that “comedy rebukes our manners laughingly,” but the church would not be pleased.75 As predicted, the Archbishop of Paris influenced the king to ban the play’s performance before the public. He saw it as his duty to uphold moral standards and protect the Church from religious attacks on doctrine. The Catholic church perceived Molière’s Tartuffe as a mockery of religion and an attack on religious values. For these reasons, Louis XIV allowed Molière to revise the play until it was better suited for the public in 1669.

Louis XIV was a powerful ally against Molière’s enemies. Twenty-eight out of thirty-two plays premiered before the king and were performed at the court.76 During Tartuffe’s lengthy ban, the king rewarded Molière’s company with seven thousand livres and awarded the troupe the title Troupe de Roi.77 The Sun King prevented Molière from complete social ostracisation. Molière knew that the king protected him, and he proved so through Oronte’s character in Le Misanthrope: If, for example, there should be anything You wish at court, I’ll mention it to the King.

I have his ear, of course; it’s quite well known That I am much in favor with the throne.78 Despite Molière’s ex-communication from the church, his wife Armande asked Louis XIV to intervene and give Molière a Christian burial when he died. Even though the monarch was publicly silent on this issue, with King Louis XIV and the Archbishop of Paris’ assistance, Molière was buried on sacred grounds.79 Molière was deeply bound to the king, and in doing so, he was protected at all costs.

Gutwirth, p. 311.

Leon, p. 55.

77 Leon, p. 55.

78 Molière, p. 33.

79 Leon, p. 54.

75

76

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Molière had his critics, but Parisian commoners, the unrefined bourgeoisie, and the king enjoyed Molière’s satiric, honest, and crude comedy. In the age of enlightenment, there was a shift in popular ideology: metaphysics began suppressing religious theology, the state overruled the church, and science substituted morality to an extent.80 This may inform how Molière was able to push the boundaries of religion and at the same time avoid complete “cancellation.” The church tried to “cancel” Molière, but the king possessed supreme authority and had the final jurisdiction of his fate. The next couple chapters will further evaluate Molière’s Le Misanthrope under French classicism’s mores, drawing on the metaphorical mirrors and masks that illustrate how social interactions are based on performative behavior.

Scene 2 The Inquisitive Case of Public Mirrors Molière left behind a legacy of crafting and perfecting modern satirical comedy.81 He developed his comedy in conversation with his foremost audience member: the king, both the performer and the spectator. Having the king in the audience meant that the focus was on him rather than the spectacle on stage. As an audience member of such high status, the king implied that the play’s purpose was to generate a response from the observer. Moreover, the audience checked their own responses to the play against the observer’s response from the king. If the king liked the play, it was digestible for the rest of the audience. This is how French classicism enforced the manners and social guidelines of its era.

Molière noticed a sensational trend as he sought to appease the king: he called his comedies “public mirrors,”82 in which comic portrayal generated audience self-recognition and 80

Wade, p. 359.

Larry F. Norman, The Public Mirror: Molière and the Social Commerce of Depiction (University of Chicago Press 1999); Kindle, loc 22.

82 Norman, loc 27.

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accountability. Human folly and the ridiculousness of French mannerisms enabled Molière to write such comical plays. The spectators enjoyed his satire based on their peers, yet they dismissed the satiric blame on themselves. Larry F. Norman argues, “comedy is a provocative portrayal.”83 Comedy stimulated a powerful emotion or strong response measured against the social contract of 17th century France. Its deliverance was tantalizing, risqué, highly potent, and even controversial.84 Norman’s assertion of comedy’s “portrayal” is interpreted as if Molière sketched portraits of social interchange through writing and reality magnified on stage. This gave his audience entertainment and visual representations to observe themselves, such as looking at one's reflection in a mirror.

Within King Louis XIV’s reign, he enacted a decree that the monarchy must confiscate all private silver to melt into coins paid for military campaigns.85 The rich forfeited their fine jewelry and lavish interior decorations made out of precious silver. The wealthy ushered in mirrors as the replacement for such prestigious symbolism and wealth. The aesthetic movement towards mirrors corresponded to the artistic and aesthetic focus on light and optics in 17th and 18th century Europe.

The bourgeois classes popularized the mirror. Louis XIV’s Hall of Mirrors in the Chateau de Versailles is the most famous example of a mirror as a status symbol and a result of class-based hierarchies of social imagery.86 Molière was ahead of his time when he turned the 83

Norman, loc 30.

This explains why contemporary stand-up comedy is a socially dangerous profession. To ridicule the manners of one’s time is to make oneself vulnerable to public defensiveness and criticism. In addition, comedians such as Louis C.K. dared the public to “cancel” him, and they very much did so. Our contemporary public does not outwardly support the disgraced Louis C.K. I say this because many people still privately love his comedy. Still, it is socially unacceptable to publicly announce one’s love for his work due to his sexual misconduct in the recent past. This statement is general commentary and not written to support Louis C.K. Furthermore, with dynamic and ever-changing social codes, one may say something offensive without realizing the mistake they have made.

85 Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology & the Ancient World, The Rise of the Mirror as Commonplace (Brown University).

86 See figure 5 in the appendix for a visual representation.

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physical mirror into metaphorical symbolism and social representation in his plays. As scholar Michel Foucault explored, the classical representation theory describes how Molière’s era became known as “the age of representation.”87 French classicism still had lingering baroque tastes for the mise-en-abyme, meaning a story within a story, an image within an image, and a play within a play.88 Like the classicism component of la vraisemblance, classical representation resembled real-life depictions of people, places, and circumstances.

To better understand this theory, Michele Foucault wrote about the painting Las Meninas (1656) by Diego Velázquez, the most famous Spanish Golden Age artist. 89 The painting was the artist’s perception of a “realistic” portal of reality, known as classical representation. Las Meninas consists of Velázquez on the left, standing behind a life-size canvas and holding a wooden palette and a paintbrush in his hand. Towards the middle of the painting lies Infanta Margarita, dressed in a lavish gown with her maid attending to her needs. Other members of the court, a canine, and the queen’s chamberlain are to the right of the painting, most of them gazing at the object in front of them. Right above Infanta Margarita, the viewers' eyes glance at a mirror with King Philip IV and Queen Mariana in its reflection. They are watching the models while the models are directly gazing at the king and queen. The fact that the king and queen are the viewers and the spectacle in this painting is similar to how Molière audiences watched his plays through the lens of Louis XIV, who was also the spectacle and royalty as a performance.

The all-encompassing picture of the royal court intended to portray real people in the Spanish Golden Age; however, Las Meninas fails as an accurate presentation of that specific occasion. This painting is peculiar in its depiction of the royal court, which leads to Foucault’s conclusion that Las Meninas could never accurately represent real-life portrayal. If Velázquez 87

Norman, loc 40.

Norman, loc 43.

89 See figure 6 in the appendix for Las Meninas (1656).

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had to watch the models to paint the picture, the painting’s realistic version would not include him. Foucault argues, “we are observing ourselves being observed by the painter, and made visible to his eyes by the same light that enables us to see him.”90 This strange scenario cannot exist in reality because the painter in the painting stands next to who he painted: the royal court.

Rather than having the royal couple in the painting as models, they are the observers revealed through a mirror in the background. Many scholars speculate why Velázquez decided to reveal the observers of the portrait. Some insist that the mirrors bring attention to the monarchs’ presence as both models and spectators. The royal couple occupies the same position as we do in viewing the work; therefore, we are looking through the king and queen’s lens.

However, the actual occasion through the lens of the painting did not include the artist’s self-portrait, the royal court as the spectator, and the king and queen as the spectacles and the spectators. This representation may tell historians about the past, but it is merely a flawed representation nevertheless.

With this ideology, Foucault denied classical representation as pure. When the viewer is directed to the mirror in the painting, the artist revealed what we are supposed to see. Although the mirror is visible, none of the models are actually looking at the mirror except for the viewer.

The mirror allows us to unrealistically see the invisible, interior, and exterior elements on the canvas. Just as Louis XIV became the spectacle and the spectator, the king and queen in the mirror are the objects of spectacle and the spectacle at the same time. This meta experience creates a self-conscious act, asking for participation between the observer and the artist.

This is exactly what Molière accomplished in his plays. Through a hazy mirror displaying the king and queen, Foucault argues that the “entire picture [Las Meninas] is looking

90

Michel Foucault, Las Meninas: The Order of Things, (Taylor and Francis e-Library) 7.

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out at a scene for which it is itself a scene.”91 In Molière’s depiction of social manners in 17th century France, the play’s audience watched the stage without realizing that they were the stage.

Molière’s theatre implied classical representation because the viewer found truth within the play, yet one could distance themselves from the acting on stage without feeling personally attacked.

Molière’s theater employed classical representation in comedy to imitate and copy the public while generalizing the portrait to avoid individual defensiveness.92 The stage became a mirror to paint human folly. Art and reality seemed to clash in Las Meninas like Molière’s theater. Art was born to challenge reality. Las Meninas was a meta piece: an artist within his art who became art himself. Similarly, Molière played characters who he wrote into his plays. For example, in his own productions, Molière acted as Orgon in Tartuffe.93 Prior to his death in 1673, Molière acted as the hypochondriac Argan in Le malade imaginaire (1673). Molière’s art imitated French life, and he used metaphorical mirrors and classical representation to make the audience become the spectacle.

Scene 3 A detailed observation of French social codes in Molière’s Le Misanthrope “The struggles of this period of anarchy and willfulness were resolved, or rather brought under control in the new formalism of the Court and the absolute monarchy in the seventeenth century. The behavior of each individual was rigorously prescribed for him by a code which he had to accept if he wanted to be accepted, in turn, into the society of his fellows. There was, however, no knowing or controlling what a man was beneath the mask he wore” - Lionel Gossman, Men and Masks: A Study of Molière

Molière first performed Le Misanthrope on June 4, 1666. The play centers on Alceste, a man who believes he exemplifies authenticity among a social circle full of seemingly inauthentic Foucault, p. 15.

Norman, loc 1650.

93 Lionel Gossman, Men and Masks (John Hopkins Press 1963) 101.

91

92

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people.94 Alceste is the biggest example of an antagonizing protagonist. He is the misanthrope, one who disdains humankind and isolates oneself from the rest of society. He is highly critical of others because he believes that he is above everyone else. Alceste is the one who “cancels” others and, in return, “cancels” himself from the rest of his peers. He sees the faults of everyone else and wishes to expose people for their inauthentic manners.

The play begins with a verbal exchange between Alceste and his friend, Philinte. Alceste is utterly agitated at Philinte for his artificial social behavior: Then when I ask you “Who was that”, I find That you can barely bring his name to mind!

Once the man’s back is turned, you cease to love him And speak with absolute indifference to him!95 The opening scene employs satirical dialogue, where the characters describe and judge current manners.96 According to Donneau de Visé’s preface to the first edition of Le Misanthrope, Molière did not hope to construct a comedy full of strenuous action; rather, he wanted to produce a play to speak against the manners of the time.97 The characters dance around wearing metaphorical masks of ingenuine pleasantry that alter and adapt according to their surroundings.98 Although Alceste’s social criticism is disturbing and unsettling, his remarks are somewhat justified. The social persona of inauthenticity is apparent throughout the play, and it is due to social codes that force others to wear a mask of concealed dishonesty. Only when the masks come off is when society protests in response.

94

Gossman, p. 66.

Molière, p. 16.

96 Norman, loc 1985.

97 Norman, loc 1956.

98 Gossman, p. 67.

95

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In Act 1|Scene 1 of Le Misanthrope, Philinte asks Alceste how else people should interact with each other if not pleasant. Alceste offers a solution: “I’d have them be sincere, and never part/ With any word that isn’t from the heart.”99 This response, however noble, would break the moral codes of politesse in French classicism. Philinte argues that Alceste’s suggestion is impossible to execute: “wouldn’t the social fabric come undone/ If we were to be wholly frank with everyone?”100 Philinte’s question indicates that one’s social life is a limitless comedy. As Gossman claims, every person plays as many parts as he has friends and foes, and at no point is a person truly themselves.101 Alceste objects to this social phenomenon and insists that appearances erase genuineness: “let the heart speak, and let our sentiments/ Not mask themselves in silly compliments.”102 Moreover, when Oronte asks Alceste to listen to his sonnet, Alceste is quick to cleverly allude that appearances are fake, and life is a performance: “all parts are better played when well-rehearsed;/ Let’s put off friendship, and get acquainted first.”103 Alceste desires to remold French society’s disarrayed illusion and false mentality into a world where social performances reflect genuine morality. He wants to gaze beneath his peer’s masks, so while they refuse to unmask themselves, he attacks with unruly statements.104 Throughout the play, others tease Alceste due to his love for Célimène, the one who embodies l’art de plaire that Alceste despises. Reflective of 17th-century French salon conversations, Célimène wishes to please everyone, and in doing so, she wears a mask and performs in front of others. Whereas Alceste disdains French manners, Célimène perfectly fits in with society’s mores. For example, when asked to choose between the men in Act 5|Scene 2, she

99

Molière, p. 17.

Molière, p.19.

101 Gossman, p. 67.

102 Molière, p. 19.

103 Molière, p. 32.

104 Gossman, p. 68.

100

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responds, “I think it altogether too unpleasant/ To choose between two men when both are present...”105 Célimène dutifully obeys l’art de plaire, embraces the social codes, and agrees to hide behind a mask. Therefore, Molière critiqued French manners through Célimène’s character.

He revealed that one could not simply be themselves at risk of exposing their thoughts and who they truly are.

In Act 2|Scene 5, characters are marveled by Célimène’s ability to paint people’s characters. Célimène is the vessel that conveys verbal satire, depicting judgments of others within their social environment. Characters such as Célimène unmask what they think of their contemporaries, designed for the audience to decode French mannerisms.106 For example, Célimène delivers a devastating unveiling of Alceste’s hypocrisy as the misanthrope: Why, Sir? Because he loves to make a fuss.

You don’t expect him to agree with us, When there’s an opportunity to express His heaven-sent spirit of contrariness?

What other people think, he can’t abide; Whatever they say, he’s on the other side; He lives in deadly terror of agreeing; ‘Twould make him seem an ordinary being.

Indeed, he’s so in love with contradiction, He’ll turn against his most profound conviction And with a furious eloquence deplore it, If only someone else is speaking for it.107 105

Molière, p. 137.

Norman, loc 2036.

107 Molière, p. 66.

106

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These words follow Alceste’s attempt to uncover Célimène by arguing that she persistently adheres to l’art de plaire and performs in front of others. However, as Célimène delivers these words, she succeeds in showing exactly what Acleste accused her of doing. In this paradoxical situation, Célimène holds a mirror to Alceste to reveal his role in society. Alceste, the spectator who criticizes his spectacles, is just as guilty of human folly. His hypocritical behavior becomes the object of observation. His character is examined, and his hypocrisy lies in how he judges others as much as they judge him. Célimène’s argument is vindicated when he responds by egotistically criticizing her for mocking him. Not only do the characters in Le Misanthrope comment on each other and society, but they also comment on the commentary of others. Alceste believes his job is to break this heavily flawed public mirror, yet he is part of the problem by interacting with others. The conversations throughout the play function to both criticize social behavior and the linguistic mannerism of others.108 Molière insinuated that language mixed with social interaction is how people get “canceled.” At the end of the play, no suitor chooses Célimène as their lover. Due to her indecisiveness and inability to break l’art de plaire, she shamefully exits the stage without truly winning a man’s heart. Alceste desires to “flee this bitter world,” a world he could not escape because it is the act of socializing that gives him his false sense of superiority. The audience laughed at the play’s ridiculousness, yet Molière’s critique on societal mannerisms was entirely accurate.

Molière’s assessment of mannerisms in the 17th century played an important role in guiding France’s aesthetic norms. In a society surrounding the rich bourgeoisie, the Parisian audience noticed these mannerisms and competed against feeling separate from them. Molière had to paint society specific enough to satirize their contemporaries and entertain his audience.

108

Norman, loc 2072.

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Yet, he did so without making them realize that no one is different and everyone is at fault. This idea resembles contemporary cancel culture. Everyone participates in cancel culture, yet no one wants to be the one to blame for its consequences. In other words, participants in cancel culture recognize faults in others but themselves. One rarely chooses to cancel themselves, so part of the unmasking is the blindness to their faults or the inability to see the problems they cause.

This points towards the literary tradition infused with classical representation because Molière’s theater had to be real enough to amuse the audience but distant enough to not personally attack individuals. This is also applicable with stand-up comedy when Dave Chappelle pointed out that the audience was the joke’s target. Therefore, both artists critiqued their public with satire. Molière called it a “second comedy,” where the spectacle shifts from the stage to the audience’s reaction.109 Molière did not paint people as better than they were; he painted people as they were. At the beginning of Le Misanthrope, Philinte offers a solution to 17th century cancel culture, such as what should be pardoned: Come, let’s forget the follies of the times And pardon mankind for its petty crimes Let’s have an end of rantings and of railings, And show some leniency toward human feelings, This world requires a pliant rectitude; Too stern a virtue makes one stiff and rude Good sense views all extremes with destestation, And bids us to be noble in moderation.110

109

110

Norman, loc 132.

Molière, p. 23.

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Rather than dwelling on one’s mannerisms to criticize others, Philinte calls for empathy and forgiveness. French society held people to impossibly high standards, so Philinte offers “moderation” to remedy extreme cancellation. This is applicable for the ethics of cancel culture in 21st Century America, and this thesis will elaborate more on the subject in Act 4.

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Intermission Molière paves the way for Oscar Wilde Now that we have discussed Molière’s impact on underlying codes in his era, I will take a brief intermission to introduce the following chapters. Molière’s plays were quite influential in developing comedy in literature, which established the literary texts in England’s Restoration theater. During the mid-17th century in Britain, the English Civil War (1642-1651) provoked a national ban on plays. After the restoration of the monarchy in 1600, Molière’s theater and literary contributions to the comedy of manners became the model for Restoration theater. For example, William Wycherley wrote The Country Wife (1675), inspired by Molière’s L’École des femmes (1662). Wycherley’s The Plain Dealer (1676) was also modeled after Molière’s Le Misanthrope (1666). Therefore, we consider traditional satire from restoration comedies in England derived from Molière and his plays. Furthermore, this English tradition of satirical comedy prevailed in Oscar Wilde’s work, such as his play An Ideal Husband (1895) and, more famously, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), which playfully mocks the mannerisms of the Victorian middle class. The next act will contextualize Wilde in the Victorian era, record social codes and mannerisms under Queen Victoria’s reign, and respond to how his life mirrors contemporary cancel culture.

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Act 3|Scene 1 The Qualifications of Victorianism (1837-1901) In the opening act of An Ideal Husband (1895) by Oscar Wilde, Lady Chiltern declares, “oh, I love London society! I think it has immensely improved.”111 There is no denying that London gained significant advancements that altered the British empire entirely during Queen Victoria’s reign. Urban industrialization, capital economics, empirical science, and colonial imperialism rapidly shifted towards a new way of life for British subjects. By the second half of the 19th century, London’s progress surpassed Paris. It became the superior of Western civilization, growing from a population of two million when Queen Victoria entered the throne to six and a half million at her death in 1901.112 Britain’s primary goal in the age of industrialization was to build a wealthy and powerful empire. Sir Robert in An Ideal Husband asserts, “at all costs one must have wealth.”113 Britain’s “costs” were great; the expeditious, unregulated change led to socio-economic problems such as unlivable wages for the working class, child labor, and unsanitary living conditions. Capitalizing on colonized territories helped Britain become the owner of a quarter of all the territory on earth during the Victorian age. Sir Robert references Britain’s dominance with International Canal schemes, specifically the Suez Canal in 1854 that gave Britain access to India with great “imperial value.”114 The control of other countries meant that Britain was capable of economic and social superiority.

In 1851 Prince Albert opened the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park, which presented a gigantic glass greenhouse titled the Crystal Palace. The exhibition was symbolic of Britain’s 111

Wilde, p. 368.

Greenblatt et al., The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Victorian Age (W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 2018) 2.

113 Wilde, p. 386.

114 Wilde, p. 376.

112

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championship over modern technology, displaying models of industry and science.115 In The Importance of Being Earnest, Algernon notes that “science is always making wonderful improvements in things.”116 Religion still influenced morality and elitist thinking, but movements such as Marxism, Darwinism, the anti-liberal movement, and the Oxford movement drifted society away from the Church of England. Religious virtues of morality were static, but people’s values were dynamic and alterable according to their preferences.

The most prominent change in early Victorianism was the Reform Bill of 1832, which enabled lower-middle-class men to vote. Furthermore, the 1835 and 1841 general elections’ results verified that the monarch could no longer manipulate or dominate Parliamentary politics, nor refuse the electorate’s final verdict.117 Lady Markby in An Ideal Husband provides her input into the political change in Britain: “really, now that the House of Commons is trying to become useful, it does a great deal of harm.”118 The amount of “harm” might have been the opportunity for upward social mobility and the introduction to the middle-class lifestyle. The political outcome gave power to the people who influenced society rather than solely aristocracy and previous absolute monarchies, such as Louis XIV in France. Many British citizens believed that the accessible middle-class was a cure to the corrupt aristocracy.119 However, the middle class did not represent socio-economic status as much as a cultural symbolism that exercised social control.120

Greenblatt et al., p 10.

Wilde, p. 461.

117 Martin Hewitt, Why the Notion of Victorian Britain Does Make Sense (Indiana University Press 2006) 399.

118 Wilde, p. 369.

119 Simon Gunn, Class, Identity and the Urban: the Middle Class in England, C. 1790-1950 (Cambridge University Press 2004) 34.

120 Gunn, p. 36.

115

116

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A middle-class representative took responsibility for oneself, family, and community, dependent on their own individual interpretation. In The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), Jack tells Algernon that he sees it as his duty and responsibility to take care of Cecily: “when one is placed in the position of guardian, one has to adopt a very high moral tone on all subjects. It’s one’s duty to do so.”121 Later in Act 2, Miss Prism agrees and affirms Jack’s moral obligation: “I know no one who has a higher sense of duty and responsibility.”122 Moreover, the Christian Church believed they instilled morals such as earnestness, thriftiness, and seriousness. Algernon tells Jack that “one must be serious about something, if one wants to have any amusement in life.”123 Victorian morality expected seriousness combined with dutiful behavior.

Middle-class values believed that it was one’s duty to assist the lower class and “to be a bit better” than one’s neighbors, as Mrs. Cheveley would say.124 However, the general carelessness towards lower class issues such as child labor, unsanitary living, and prostitution proved contradictory to piety’s façade in Victorian beliefs. In the opening scene of Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, Algernon ponders the uneventful duties of the lower class: Lane’s views on marriage seem somewhat lax. Really, if the lower orders don’t set us a good example, what on earth is the use of them? They seem, as a class, to have absolutely no sense of moral responsibility.125 Moral responsibility opened a huge potential for strict social codes that discouraged any cultural differences. Wilde satirized the middle-class ideology of the need to help those who are underneath their class status. If a Victorian’s duty is to help a lower class person, what ought the lowest class to do? Wilde also played with the benevolence of the middle class in An Ideal 121

Wilde, p. 433.

Wilde, p. 444.

123 Wilde, p. 460.

124 Wilde, pp. 378.

125 Wilde, p. 430.

122

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Husband in which Mrs. Cheveley critiques helping the lower classes: “and philanthropy seems to me to have become simply the refuge of people who wish to annoy their fellow-creatures.”126 Wilde hinted that there was a lack of pure intention to help the lower class despite the expectation to indulge in philanthropic work.

Mostly, all Victorians maintained appearances, good conduct, and manners, even though citizens breached these moral standards. This was partly because Victorians did not realize Christianity was heavily embedded in these codes.127 At one point, when Cecily is distraught that both she and Gwendolen are supposedly engaged to “Ernest,” Cecily chooses to break her manners: “do you suggest, Miss Fairfax, that I entrapped Ernest into an engagement? How dare you? This is no time for wearing the shallow mask of manners.”128 Cecily, who was originally kind and generous to Gwendolen, shatters her false appearance towards her upon discovering Gwendolen’s engagement to “Ernest.” Thus when these manners broke due to self-interest, it was satirized to portray contradictory Victorian behavior.

Although there were significant industrial changes in Britain, Victorian morality remained rigid in patriarchal values and societal codes. Women were expected to embrace motherhood and embody The Angel of the House129 as the caretaker of domestic propriety, and

126

Wilde, p. 371.

Gertrude Himmelfarb, Manners into Morals: What the Victorians Knew (The Phi Beta Kappa Society 1988) 224.

Homosexuality was against Victorian codes, but Victorians did not highly publicized it in hegemonic fear that it would influence the youth. See Scene 4 for more details of how homosexuality was against Victorian morality. Ironically, the Marquess of Queensberry, who charged Wilde for “posing as a sodomite,” was an atheist who hated homosexuality even though the condemnation of same-sex love originates from religious doctrine. This furthermore proves that Victorians did not realize how deeply embedding Christianity was to their morality.

128 Wilde, p. 457.

129 The Angel of the House (1854) by Coventry Patmore was a narrative poem that described his wife, who was submissive, pure, and completely devoted to her husband and family. In Victorianism, this poem fostered a standard and ideal model of femininity. In Patmore’s beliefs, women belonged in the domestic sphere. Women were expected to embrace their husband’s life path; they were caretakers of their children and homes.

127

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they were still considered second-class citizens. In An Ideal Husband, Lady Markby claims that intellectual women are unattractive because it makes the noses of women large: “and there is nothing so difficult to marry as a large nose, men don’t like them.”130 This ridiculously foolish statement conveys that women were expected to aspire towards marriage as the main priority rather than intellectually-oriented goals. Furthermore, Wilde created a satirical comment of women who belong in the domestic sphere through Gwendolen in The Importance of Being Earnest: “The home seems to me to be the proper sphere for the man. And certainly once a man begins to neglect his domestic duties he becomes painfully effeminate, does he not?”131 I have the impression that under rigid patriarchal views, Wilde’s Victorian audience would have laughed at this seemingly absurd statement.

Another depiction of the Victorian age is education, specifically for men. The Victorian middle-class’s success fostered a set of principles of individuality and progress, moving from a society based on rank and privilege to free exchange. The belief was that one could achieve economic and social success through hard work and education. Although the aristocrats remained stagnant in their lack of work ethic, the middle class knew they had to work hard for their individual profits and upward mobility. Lord Caversham in An Ideal Husband evaluates his son who “leads such an idle life.”132 Lord Goring’s romantic interest comically rebukes his statement by sharing that Lord Goring rides horses, attends the Opera, changes his attire multiple times throughout the day, and attends fancy dinners to his own leisure.133 While the wealthy could experience pleasure without work, education became the gateway to achieving other

130

Wilde, p. 380.

Wilde, p. 445.

132 Wilde, p. 367.

133 Wilde, p. 367.

131

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classes’ success. Sons who did not have the opportunity to go to elite boarding schools could attend local grammar or private schools.

From the perspective of many Victorians, Britain’s industrial and political imperialism was a positive accomplishment. However, some felt extremely anxious about the overwhelming change in Britain. Some believed they lost an enjoyable old way of life and adopted a new one that felt too foreign; technological advancements occurred too quickly for some to process the change. Lord Goring’s older father, Lord Caversham, reflects this mentality: “can’t make out how you stand London Society. The thing has gone to the dogs, a lot of damned nobodies talking about nothing.”134 Although Lord Caversham is a fictitious character, he represents those who had self-reflective and anxious melancholy during its radical transition.

After the age of Victorianism, Virginia Woolf argued that had her Victorian father not passed away when he did, she would not have become an author. She noted that “living for others, not ourselves” was a conventional idea imposed on “timid natures who dare not allow their souls free play.”135 Performing for others in a way that expressed good and proper behavior was an essential part of Victorian manners. The following scene will provide a brief biography of Oscar Wilde to understand his life and introduce his play, The Importance of Being Earnest, which captures Victorian manners so fitting to its time. Act 3|Scene 3 will go into greater detail of Wilde’s critique on Victorian codes, and Act 4|Scene 1 will elaborate on his trial as a pre-dated form of contemporary cancel culture.

134 135

Wilde, p. 373 Himmelfarb, p. 226.

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Scene 2 A Wilde Life: “Art for Art’s Sake” “Morality does not help me. I am born antinomian.”

- Oscar Wilde in De Profundis In Oscar Wilde’s original version of The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), Algernon is sent to Holloway prison, not for homosexuality like Wilde in the spring of 1895, but for mild gluttony by running up food bills at the Savoy.136 Furthermore, Jack declares that he has received a telegram informing his imaginary brother’s death in a Paris hotel. Wilde could not have predicted that he would be sent to Holloway prison only after several months until he was officially convicted. Nor could he imagine his death five years later in a hotel in Paris where he lived out his exile.137 The two instances where his writing morphed into his life’s realities were oddly coincidental and reflective of his career. The similarities of his writing and life in these instances were peculiarly almost identical. During the last years of his life, he confided in his friend, André Gide, noting that he seemed to have put his “genius into his life” while writing his talent into his work.138 This chapter will provide a brief biological sketch of Oscar Wilde’s life, leading up to The Importance of Being Earnest and his famous trials. Wilde was a man of Bunburying, a man who wore multiple masks until his demise. His life under Victorianism impacted his art and influenced the mannerisms and morals in The Importance of Being Earnest. One can observe Wilde’s life to identify how the moral guidelines under Queen Victoria’s reign led to his “cancellation” in 19th century Britain.

136

Richard Ellmann, Oscar Wilde (Vintage Books 1988) 442.

Greenblatt et al., p. 810.

138 Greenblatt et al., p. 810.

137

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Oscar Wilde was born in 1854 in Dublin to Sir William and Jane Wilde. Mr. Wilde was a prominent surgeon in Dublin, while his wife was a spirited writer and socialite. Oscar began studying classics at Trinity College in Dublin and excelled into exemplary scholarly achievement at Oxford. After his graduation in 1878, he moved to London to establish himself as a writer and poet. Under aestheticism, he lived by the notion of “art for art’s sake,” and in 1882, he traveled to America to provide successful lecture tours. He became known as the spokesperson of aestheticism, carrying witty, natural, and fluid conversations. Wilde became a compelling and charismatic character dressed in flamboyant attire as a means of self-expression and a thirst for attention. To mask his suppressed homosexuality, Wilde married Constance Lloyd in 1884 and had two sons with her.

Wilde’s most magnificent success came from writing comedies staged in London and New York from 1892 to 1895. However, he began a whirlwind romance with Lord Alfred Douglas in 1891, who introduced Wilde to the underground prostitution and gay community. In 1895, he completed his masterpiece play, The Importance of Being Earnest, and it was first performed on February 14th, 1895. Wilde’s play satirized contradictory Victorian morals such as earnestness. The next scene will analyze Wilde’s play and his intentions behind critiquing Victorianism.

Scene 3 Wildean Behavior of Bunburying: The Contradictions of Victorianism This thesis wove Wilde’s quotations from The Importance of Being Earnest throughout Act3|Scene 1 to document Victorian codes’ influence in his literary work. This chapter will provide a deeper analysis of how Wilde critiqued Victorianism in his play.

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Wilde’s comedy The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) was staged into three acts, beginning with Algernon Moncrieff’s flat on Half-Moon Street. Algernon invites Jack Worthing to his flat before his aunt Lady Bracknell and his cousin Gwendolen arrive for tea. Jack calls himself Ernest London, but Algernon interrogates Ernest's real identity after discovering Jack’s cigarette case with his real name: “but why does your aunt call you her uncle?...Besides, your name isn’t Jack at all; it is Ernest.”139 Jack confesses that his name is not actually Ernest and that he goes by the name Jack in the countryside. Algernon suggests that he is a master of Bunburying,140 the central tool the two characters employ to navigate their conformist surroundings.

The question of Jack’s true identity from this point on becomes the focal dilemma of the play. Gwendolen, his love interest, has an ideal to “love some one of the name Ernest,”141 which is troublesome considering that “Ernest” is really Jack. Therefore, Wilde turned the Victorian ideal of being “earnest” into a pun and a satiric joke of Victorian values. Immediately, the audience learns that Gwedolen’s affection is less about Jack's actual identity; rather, she loves him for his name. The moral code of honnoteté in French classicism is depicted as earnestness in Victorianism. Earnestness is the main standard of social conduct, yet it is also the problem that makes life so difficult for the characters.

The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People is a provocative title. If the characters actually realized their absurdity in manners and remarks, the satire would

139

Wilde, p. 432.

Bunburying is when one uses excuses to live a double life. In Algernon’s case, he created an invalid friend named Bunbury to go to the country whenever he likes. He uses the Bunbury excuse when Lady Bracknell asks why Algernon will not be attending her dinner party. In Jack’s case, he invents an imaginary younger brother named Ernest, the name he calls himself in town. When he visits ward Cecily in the countryside, he goes by his true name, Jack. His imaginary brother Ernest allows Jack to make excuses and leave for London whenever he pleases.

141 Wilde, p. 437.

140

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be dismantled.142 Therefore, Wilde used satire to reflect a rigid code of behavior that constitutes a way of life in Victorian society, a social convention that Victorians pretended to ignore. As a play considered within the comedy of manners genre, hypocrites’ exposure and false appearances are verbally witty to ridicule underlying codes. For example, Algernon complains to Jack about Lady Bracknell’s dinner party seating arrangements: She will place me next Mary Farquhar, who always flirts with her own husband across the dinner-table. That is not very pleasant. Indeed, it is not even decent...and that sort of thing is enormously on the increase. The amount of women in London who flirt with their own husbands is perfectly scandalous. It looks so bad.143 Algernon, a playful and unconventional character, does not think it much fun to sit next to a woman who flaunts her virtue and spoils the pleasure of extramarital flirtation. His resentful tone indicates that he disdains convention and moral conduct of behavior, and these ideals are reflective of the actual Victorian morality. Algernon’s urge to resist societal conventions specifies how Wilde felt living through Victornianism.

Lady Bracknell’s character functions as the epitome of Victorian contrariness. As a plot function, she acts as an obstacle to Jack’s engagement with Gwendolen, but her speeches convey that she is not ignorant of her conventional mindset. Upon Jack and Gwendolen’s engagement, she asks Jack about his yearly income. At the end of the play, she only accepts Cecily and Algernon’s romance after finding out that Cecily is wealthy: A hundred and thirty thousand pounds! And in the Funds! Miss Cardew seems to me a most attractive young lady, now that I look at her. Few girls of the present day have any

142 143

Reinert, p 15.

Wilde, p. 434.

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qualities that last, and improve with time. We live, I regret to say, in an age of surfaces”144 In middle-class Victorian society, one’s financial status mattered. Wilde used this Victorian sensibility to convey how fickle people were when it came to monetary attributes.

French classicism in Molière’s comedy differed from Wilde’s theater in this regard.

French classical society employed two modes of classification: (1) fixed social categories such as gender and class and (2) characteristics used regardless of fixed categories such as wit, honnêteté, and piety.145 In Louisism, the exchange of reputation declared that the second classification method was more significant than the former. This is applicable in Molière’s theater, in which he criticized the rich bourgeoisie through piety, honnêteté but never through their financial status. Focusing on the false piety in Molière’s Tartuffe, for example, anyone can be modeled after Tartuffe, regardless of age, gender, class, and region. Because Molière appealed to the aristocracy, the first classification was irrelevant. This contrasted against Wilde’s middle-class audience because one’s economic success highly depended on one’s work ethic, whereas Molière’s aristocratic audience needed not to brood over financial mannerisms.

Although Lady Bracknell’s lust for money is justified through Victorianism, she contradicts herself again: “...I do not approve of mercenary marriages. When I married Lord Bracknell I had no fortune of any kind.”146 The juxtaposition of her earlier statements and her disapproval of money-oriented behavior conveys a compromise between her own expectations rooted in stubbornness and conventional Victorian ideals. Like Pamphila argued in Menander’s First Adelphoi, marrying for love is more important than marrying for wealth. Lady Bracknell accepts that nothing can get in the way of two people wanting to be together. However, this is 144

Wilde, p. 465.

Norman, loc 1540.

146 Wilde, p. 466.

145

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where the contradictory behavior of Victorian society enters the scene. The characters attempt to embody a morality reflected through high society, but conventional hypocrisy is exposed through mannerisms.

Cecily best iterates the centering code of conduct when she meets Algernon, who is masked as Jack’s evil brother, Ernest: If you are not, then you have certainly been deceiving us all in a very inexcusable manner. I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.147 This is humbling for Algernon because earlier in the play, he enjoyed sharing the act of Bunburying with Jack. Now, Algernon encounters a paradoxical morality, the root of Victorian manners’ problem. The characters enforce the play’s irony: Algernon employs Bunburying to escape hypocritical convention, yet he turns into a hypocrite by pretending to be an imaginary person, Ernest. Jack conducts the same mischievous behavior when he arrives at the Manor House and tells Dr. Chasuble and Miss Prism that his brother Ernest died in a hotel room in Paris.148 Thus Bunburyism for both Jack and Algernon is a means of escape from Victorian convention just as much as Bunburyism became a way for Wilde to escape frustrating social norms of repressive Victorianism.

The term Bunburying serves as an alternative to a conventional society that ignores human nature. Bunburying allows one to experience life to the fullest, whereas convention suppresses experience. When Algernon claims he is serious about Bunburying, he is serious about his critique of social conventions. Algernon critiques Jack for participating in the seriousness of Victorian morality that fails to recognize alternative life values, ones that can 147 148

Wilde, p. 446.

Wilde, p. 448.

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bring more pleasure and joy. In doing so, Wilde argued against Victorian hypocrisy. To be a Bunburyist is to free oneself of the hypocritical Victorian convention. A Bunburyist realizes that they are hypocritical in nature but cannot avoid hypocritical convention altogether; escaping convention is a mere act of hypocrisy by leading a double life and failing to adhere to Victorian morality. Algernon and Jack pretend to be Ernest in the same way that a conformist pretends to be earnest. Under pretension, they are hypocritical.

Therefore Wilde’s main argument signaled that all regular Victorians who sought to respect their conventional society were naturally Bunburyists who lived a double life. Victorians wore metaphorical masks to perform societal norms in front of others. Wilde’s concept of performative masks in The Importance of Being Earnest was not the first time he mentioned it in his work. In An Ideal Husband (1895), after Lady Chiltern discovers that her husband was dishonest about his past, she proclaims that he has worn a disguise: “oh! What a mask you have been wearing all these years! A horrible painted mask!”149 Similarly, people in the present day wear masks to obey our own conventional norms in fear that breaching these norms will lead to “cancellation.” Bunbury has become a way that people function in society, offering relief from rigid rules. In Wilde’s play, Lady Bracknell argues that behaving very well and feeling very well “rarely go together.”150 The art of Bunburyism lies in combining the two that makes for the harmony of both proper social behavior and happiness.

High morality’s weight contributes to Jack’s overwhelming distress throughout the play and until the very end. When Algernon and Jack’s lies dissolve, they recognize that they are neither Ernest nor earnest but rather themselves. The two move from the city of London to the natural countryside to become themselves and truly become earnest in a way that is not as

149

150

Wilde, p. 401.

Wilde, p. 435.

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hypocritically conventional as when the play began. At the end of the play, Miss Prism is unmasked; the audience learns that she is the one who left Jack in a handbag when he was a baby. Lady Bracknell must admit that the orphan child she dismissed earlier is actually her sister’s son. She tells Jack he is really named Ernest after his late father, and his Bunburying identity proves to be his real identity after all. Therefore, the entire plot ridicules Victorian respectability, and the two Bunburyists, Jack and Algernon, are victorious in the end.

In conclusion to The Importance of Being Earnest, one may argue that wearing a metaphorical mask is the only way to survive. Oscar Wilde, like all of us in youth, grew up without wearing a mask. Examining his life, he learned that his sexuality was deemed immoral against Victorian society. Thus he adapted to his surroundings and learned Bunbury with a mask. He married Constance to enforce his mask and perform a new role as a heterosexual husband. In An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde, Lord Caversham critiques single men: “Bachelors are not fashionable any more. They are a damaged lot. Too much is known about them.”151 To prevent others from knowing too much about him, Wilde had two sons with Constance, which further solidified his masking capabilities. Wilde used his career as a writer and dramatist to convey the mask, the art of Bunbury. When Oscar Wilde challenged his mask during his trials, he revealed himself and suffered the societal consequences of disobeying convention.

151

Wilde, p. 404.

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Act 4|Scene 1 The Importance of Cancellation: How Wilde’s Scandal Points Towards Indicators of Cancel Culture “We are by nature our own enemies, ‘the lips betraying and the lips betrayed.’ We seek the events that unconsciously befit us, which consciously we fear. Flaunting and fleeing, Wilde could not embrace a single course of action.”

-Richard Ellmann on Oscar Wilde’s Trials 152

By 1892 Wilde publicly wore a green carnation boutonnière, a queer symbol for a man who loves other men.153 Oscar used other methods to hint at his sexuality, such as his short story The Portrait of Mr. W. H that questioned the sex of the person dedicated in Shakespeare’s sonnets. More famously, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde’s novel used against him during the trials, was infused with homoerotic tension. Even though Wilde never publicly declared his homosexuality, the general upper-class knew his whereabouts. He surrounded himself with fashionable young men while Alfred Douglas introduced him to prostitution parties in rented houses and fancy hotels.154 However, Wilde’s well-known homosexuality did not cause a public scandal until his trials because it was not previously publicly denounced.155 Between 1892 to 1894, Lord Alfred “Bosie” Douglas’s father, the Marquess of Queensberry, grew suspicious of Wilde and Bosie’s love affair. He confronted and threatened both Bosie and Wilde. Queensberry ventured as far as arriving at the opening night of The Importance of Being Earnest on February 14, 1895, with a basket of vegetables. Still, he was unable to enter the theater per Wilde’s request to the police. Queensberry wanted to punish Wilde publicly, but his solicitor advised that he could not go to court until he had more concrete 152

Ellmann, p. 440.

See figure 7 in appendix.

154 Ari Adut, A Theory of Scandal: Victorians, Homosexuality, and the Fall of Oscar Wilde (The University of Chicago Press 2005) 227-8.

155 Adut, p. 228.

153

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evidence of Wilde’s “sodomy.” It was not until the marquess left a note to Wilde that he was a “posing sodomite”156 that Wilde wanted to sue the marquess for libel against him. Under the assumption that Wilde was perfectly innocent, Sir Travers Humphreys helped file a warrant for Queensberry’s arrest.157 The Marquess of Queenberry was the perfect candidate for Wilde’s demise and cancellation because he had no reputation to lose.158 He was a devout atheist and had to forfeit his seat in the House of Lords for his irreligious beliefs. As a divorcé on terrible terms with his children, he cared even less for his family name. During Wilde’s first trial against Queensberry, the jury did not wish to convict a protective father looking out for his son. The letters from Wilde indicated some sort of proof that Bosie needed protection.159 Therefore, the same year that Wilde wrote his most successful play, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), he was arrested and thrown in prison to work hard labor for “gross indecency,” known as same-sex love.

During Oscar Wilde’s trials, London newspapers briskly scattered and paraded his scandal for the Victorian public’s engagement.160 Middle-class men were enraged with Wilde’s homosexuality and publicly judged him to control hegemonic masculinity and male sexuality and enforce standards for their children and Britain.161 In Wilde’s words, he had become a Victorian spectacle: “‘suddenly we find that we are no longer the actors, but the spectators of the play. Or rather we are both.’”162 The unmasking had begun. Wilde started to watch the public’s adoration of himself crumble as he was made a public example.

156

Ellmann, p. 438.

Ellmann, p, 439.

158 Adut, p. 230.

159 Ellmann, p. 442.

160 Ed Cohen, Writing Gone Wilde: Homoerotic Desire in the Closet of Representation (PMLA 1987) 801.

161 Cohen, p. 801.

162 Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (Black’s Readers Service Company 1927) 174.

157

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Scandals are a social phenomenon with dramatic intensity, enforcing many social norms that shape society.163 In Wilde’s An Ideal Husband, Mrs. Cheveley describes the nature of scandals: “scandals used to lend charm, or at least interest, to a man--now they crush him.”164 The trials of Oscar Wilde were quite scandalous because Victorian authorities reluctantly and only rarely enforced laws against homosexuality.165 It was also difficult to prove with concrete evidence that men were in love with other men. After Wilde was punished by Britain’s homosexuality laws in 1895, Wilde was considered the well-known victim of Victorian morality and puritanism. At the turn of the 19th century, Britain was the singular country of Western Europe that demonized and criminalized all male homosexual acts. Therefore the public punishment towards Wilde was a great deal considering that Britain rarely enforced these norms.

This is eerily similar to American cancel culture in the 21st century because people are selective about punishments. For example, if one is well-loved, such as Michael Jackson, it takes a certain amount of proof to get the whole public to agree on one’s cancellation.

During the 1840s in Britain, high-status figures were rarely convicts, and the yearly statistics of sodomy cases ranged between 12 to 18 people.166 The police often ignored such allegations in the same way that many people knew of Wilde’s sexuality long before the trials began.

However, there is no evidence that the disdain towards homosexuality lessened throughout Victorianism. The British law punished “sodomites” with life imprisonment until 1861. A public scandal as big as Wilde’s would impose numerous costs on others, so the Victorian morality surrounding homosexuality was underenforced if the law was broken and remained in a private setting.

163

Adut, p. 213.

Wilde, p. 378.

165 Adut, p. 213.

166 Adut, p. 214.

164

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For middle and upper-class Victorians, an open debate around sexuality in public was impermissible and depicted as vile.167 The act of sodomy was often unmentioned due to the Victorian fear that the publicity of homosexuality would tempt, taint, or corrupt the youth.168 Under the director of public prosecutions in 1889, this notion proclaimed that no “unnecessary publicity” must be given to “gross indecency” cases such as homosexuality.169 Wilde was not able to survive Victorian morality under these terms. Therefore, Victorians employed Wilde’s scandal to establish their core values through social control. Taking a beloved celebrity such as Wilde out of the public eye was an important issue of purifying Victorian society and labeling same-sex love as corrupt and immoral.

Scene 2 The Comedy of Manners’ Legacy on Public Scandals, Comedy, and Cancel Culture “We know in our own American culture what it's like to be a great celebrity-- you titer on a knife’s edge, and one day you’re popular and the next day you’re not, and certainly when the scandal of the trials of Wilde began, society turned against him very, very quickly.”

-- Michael Hackett, Professor of Theatre in the School of Theatre, Film, and Television at UCLA170

Before America’s present-day cancel culture, Wilde was a rare exception of a celebrity or well-known marginalized person remembered for his ostracisation and exile from society.171 He was a star famous for being “canceled” in the Victorian era, but he would not be the last publicly

167

Adut, pp. 222-3.

Adut, p. 223.

169 Adut, p. 224.

170 LA Theater Works Production, The Importance of Being Earnest (Audible 2009) 02:47.

171 Shelton Waldrep, The Uses and Misuses of Oscar Wilde (University of Minnesota Press 2000) 50.

168

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excluded person from influencing society. This conclusory chapter will model Oscar Wilde as the pre-existing figure of cancel culture and comment on the issue with today’s cultural phenomenon.

When Wilde arrived in America in 1882 for his lecture tours, he could not have imagined that almost 126 years later, the underlying moral codes against homophobia today would have protected him from his public scandal in 1895. In Oscar Wilde's case, British society painfully enforced norms to encourage unspoken social rules that dictated one's behavior. However, social conventions shift, and society eradicates certain norms based on social change or the dismantling of unlawful society regulations. Underenforced norms occur when the transgressors of high status may surpass punishment because they escape monitoring or because their clout protects them.172 Scandals are now synonymous with cancel culture as a collective and communicative act, such as public denunciation of a transgression, posted on a social media feed or digitized newspapers. The American public becomes aware of implicit codes through the public scrutiny of others. Referring to the 2019 college admissions scandal, the public is taught that hard work should merit college acceptance rather than conniving bribery.173 Celebrities or public figures are canceled more than the average person because they are considered role models who exert enormous power and influence, heightened by the rise of technology and social media.

Currently, part of a public figure’s job is to dutifully and admirably represent hegemonic institutional ideology and values.174 If a public figure fails to adhere to a certain social code of conduct and it so happens to become publicized, their transgression is far more punishable and 172

Adut, p. 215.

However, we still have a bit of Victorian contradiction in Ivy League colleges that highly consider legacy students and wealthy elites as eligible college candidates.

174 This may point towards Louis Althusser’s term “Ideological State Apparatus,” in which institutions such as religion, family, education, media, and law breed a set of values that create a dominant ideology.

173

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severe than one done in private. In Molière’s Tartuffe, Tartuffe desires the affection of Orgon’s wife, Elmire, and he chooses to break his pious behavior if he can do it in secrecy: No one shall know our joys, save us alone, And there is no evil till the act is known It’s scandal, Madam, which makes it an offense And it’s no sin to sin in confidence.175 In this excerpt, Tartuffe is only partially hypocritical because public scandals cannot exist in an environment where the transgression is done in secrecy. Others can normalize and even imitate misconduct only when wrongful actions are pardoned in the public space. Therefore, cancel culture has turned into extreme lengths in which everything and anything that is surveilled is susceptible to cancellation.

Human folly tends to be hypocritical, as discussed in the works of both Molière and Oscar Wilde. If one is well-liked, the media hardly objects to cancellation. That is to say, the public benefits from picking and choosing who is canceled and who is not. Moreover, people use cancel culture as a tool to spark controversy. The verge of cancellation can be advantageous for certain celebrities who wish to stay in the limelight. Lord Henry Wotton says in The Picture of Dorian Gray, “...there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”176 Wilde understood that controversy sparks publicity, and this is a phenomenon that is still applicable in American culture.

Within the past few years, in the advancement of cancel culture, many have taken extreme limits, such as internet users claiming to cancel Mr. Potato Head for its gendered potatoes. Certainly, there should be a non-binary potato, but the brand’s cancellation creates 175 176

Molière, p. 289.

Wilde, p. 108.

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news headlines such as “Cancel Culture Is Out of Control!” Within the past few years, our society has watched the movements such as #MeToo and “Times Up” lift the veil of secrecy behind horrific acts and behaviors, which were most often happening to many famous actors and actresses. Exposing the toxic work imbalances created in Hollywood, these movements were productive in uplifting survivors’ voices. However, Cancel culture substituted these movements, forcing them to work in its shadow. People canceling certain brands could be a clandestine tool that removes the conversation around socially important subjects. Society must listen to and believe survivors, but so often, people are discredited through cancellation exploitation. Cancel culture has transformed the importance of accountability into a space where social media users can publicly shame others for minor offenses. Moreover, these minor offenses leave little room for a public figure to share their growth and development. In Hollywood, the public ridicules Mr. Potato Head, but across America, police brutality, hate crimes, and homophonic slurs must precedence over certain smaller issues. What are the strict guidelines by which the public can “cancel” a person, and how will this benefit society?

The problem derives from the implication that American culture cannot definitively agree on any social behavior rules. Certain actions are deemed moral or immoral in societies that firmly declare the codes of conduct, and clear consequences follow depending on choices.

However, in American cancel culture, the act of cancellation is a way of discussing our social codes and deciding which ones we must obey. Cancel culture is an expression of social discomfort due to our differences in opinions and our need to understand what is socially acceptable as these unwritten codes alter daily.

America can apply the ideology behind Molière and Oscar Wilde’s works with the aftermath of cancel culture. The comedy of manners has a literary tradition of exposing

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contradictions in an other’s opportunity to pass judgment. The discovery of one’s past transgression has now surpassed the ability of others to forgive. The reasoning may be due to a person feeling personally offended or spiteful with selfish intentions. Oscar Wilde’s play An Ideal Husband conveys that cancel culture is not a new concept; rather, the implication of destroying one’s career was just as relevant in the Victorian era. The character Sir Robert faces the same dilemma we encounter today: Arthur, do you think that what I did nearly eighteen years ago should be brought up against me now? Do you think it fair that a man’s whole career should be ruined for a fault done in one’s boyhood almost...Is it fair that the folly, the sin of one’s youth, if men choose to call it a sin, should wreck a life like mine, should place me in the pillory, should shatter all that I have worked for, all that I have built up?177 The answer to Sir Robert’s question remains subjective and dependent on each person’s perspective. While accountability for wrongdoings is crucial to growth, cancel culture may damage one’s mental health. Unless the public approves of others’ reimmersion into society, it breeds little room for improvement. Wilde mirrored Sir Robert’s experience because he faced the destruction of his life’s work and career through disobeying the Victorian morals that condemned homosexuality. This indicates that the effects of cancel culture have always existed in many societies, especially those insecure about their underlying moral codes.

Molière and Wilde’s comedy of manners teaches that many of us live in a grey area, a middle ground, or gap between what is socially acceptable and what is not. Humans are imperfect and are bound to make mistakes throughout their life. To survive living under our own societal codes, one Bunburies or wears multiple masks to perform these implicit codes socially.

For doing so, people are labeled as hypocrites, imposters, misanthropes, or deceivers. In An 177

Wilde, p. 386 55

Ideal Husband, Mrs. Cheveley remarks, “even you are not rich enough, Sir Robert, to buy back your past. No man is.”178 In this regard, no one is safe. People may use one’s past or misdoings against others in a culture where social codes inevitably change. The only option is to collectively agree on a solution to rectify our transgressions in a productive way rather than destructive.

The comedy of manners exists as a way to laugh about the pressure of societal expectations and identify with characters who live in an in-between space of moral obligations and personal self-interests. At some point, we all may identify with the comedy of manners characters such as Alceste the misanthrope or Philinte the conformist. Everyone chooses when to Bunbury or when to praise high-moral ground and the ideal, such as Lady Chiltern in An Ideal Husband, who loves her husband for his perception of perfection. We engage in cancel culture as both the accusers and the accused. In An Ideal Husband, Sir Robert is distressed with his past secret because he claims that all humans have worse secrets in their own lives. Lord Goring’s response is telling not only Victorian society but to cancel culture: “that is the reason they [men] are so pleased to find out other people’s secrets. It distracts public attention from their own.”179 We all wish for distraction in our lives, so perhaps comedy is the best way to remedy it.

178 179

Wilde, p. 379.

Wilde, p. 385.

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Appendix Act 1| Scene 1

Figure 1. Popular internet terminology for cancel culture such as “canceled” and “deleted.”

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Figure 2. A meme about Aunt Becky (Lori Loughlin) going to jail after the college admissions scandal.

Internet users made countless internet-worthy jokes about this scandal.

Figure 3. Olivia Jade flipping off the camera after the college admissions scandal.

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Act 1|Scene 2

Figure 4. Chris Vervain’s mask of a slave, a classic stock character in New Comedy plays. Notice the eyes looking in different directions. Athenians believed that different angels of the person wearing the mask could show conflicting personalities, expressions, and different character traits.

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Act 2|Scene 2

Figure 5. The Hall of Mirrors in the Chateau de Versailles.

Figure 6. Las Meninas (1656) by Diego Velázquez.

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Act 3|Scene 4

Figure 7. Wilde wore a green carnation boutonnière in 1892.

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