School for Wives is a famous comedy theatrical play of seventeenth century written in French with the name "L'ecole des femmes" by famous French play writer Jean-Baptiste Poquelin. Jean is known by his stage name Moliere and he is considered amongst one of the biggest comedy play writers of West. Moliere was born in a rich and prosperous family of Paris in January 1622 and after a short struggle, eventually become the official writer of the King's court. He wrote several theatrical comedy plays which were sometimes criticized by the church as according to the critics, the plays contain immorality and controversies. The main topics and subjects of Moliere's plays were the middle class, intelligent females, the miser and such other topics which were considered vulgar, bold and highly modernized (Moliere 2012).
The School for Wives was staged in December 1662 at Palais Royal theatre for the King's family. The play is considered as the master piece of Moliere by the critics. It depicted the situation of a middle aged, clumsy man Arnolphe, who was afraid of female betray and unfaithfulness for other men and thus remained bachelor for a long time, since he was 42 at the time. He was not in the favor of providing enough education to females as in his view; young beautiful wives remain interested in some other man most of the time, completely ignoring the husband. Thus he found a solution to keep his wife devoted, faithful and happy. He adapted an orphan girl, Agnes and put her into the convent, so that she remained unaware of enlightenment of the society and finally emerged as an ignorant and dumb person. Hence she was not able to get rid of the unwanted husband and thus would only remain faithful to the old Arnolphe. But the play took a twist as when Agnes was finally taken to Arnolphe's house; she met Horace, the son of Arnolphe's long-term friend Oronte. They both fall in love with each other. Arnolphe, tried his...
While doing so, he became frustrated and angry but finally an irony caused him to remain alone in the end. Oronte and Enriques arrived at Arnolphe's house who announced that Enrique's daughter would marry Horace, who was unfortunately Agnes. Thus all foolproof schemes and planning of Arnolphe of having a faithful wife remained useless and ineffective and he became a fool himself in the end (Henley 2012).
The School for Wives had undoubtedly some cause and effects by the system and over the system respectively. Moliere was unanimously considered the only play writer of the enlighten period who had enough capacity and moral to laugh at own self and to make laugh the society on collective basis. Although his work was highly criticized most of the time as unacceptable and as a smudge on own face, Moliere continued what he wanted, and eventually acclaimed as a bold and brave artist. He was fully aware of what he was doing and for that purpose he also received critiques with open heart and tried to explain his point-of-views to the general public. While the masses are not usually intended to laugh at their own, Moliere chose such topics which were immensely controversial at that time and presented them by using the mode of comedy.
The most common and all times agreed upon cause of The School for Wives was the female education and enlightenment. It was the early enlightenment era in which men amongst the society were highly privileged if they present themselves as intellects. A person who used to read literature and participate in social activities was considered the star of the society. Dukes, Marquees and noble men wanted to force their daughters upon such intellectual men. But the biggest flaw of that era was that the females were not allowed or encouraged to take part in intellectual activities. It was specific to men…
