ng to play along with Tartuffe's advances. Evenwhen Orgon witnesses Tartuffe's treachery firsthand it takes him a while to accept it. Elmire, by thistime, has so little faith in her husband that she begins to think he is going to stay under the table andlet Tartuffe ravish her. The turning point in the play is when Orgon comes out and confronts Tartuffe.Tartuffe, rather than accept that he has been caught, vows that he will have Orgon's property yet. Sincehe now controls Orgon's property, he arranges to have Orgon's family evicted. Only the king's benevolentintervention saves Orgon's family and Tartuffe is arrested. With this tidy conclusion, Moliere not only conforms to the standard for comedies of his day, butalso shows that religious hypocrisy will lose in the end. When Tartuffe was seen for what he really was,he was despised by one and all. Religious leaders saw the scrutiny that this play would cause them to besubjected to and caused it to be banned for that reason. But, as in the play, justice won out in the endand the play was exhibited freely after five years of bondage.The fact that religious leaders could keep "Tartuffe" banned for so long shows that they hadpower in realms not normally delegated to religious officials. When looking at "Tartuffe" from ahistorical standpoint it becomes apparent that Moliere is condemning those who would use religion to gainpower."To understand the violent reaction to "Tartuffe", we must look briefly at the place of churchand faith in the intellectual, cultural, and political life of the times because they had importantfunctions beyond religious and moral guidance." (Walker 60).When Moliere decided to satirize human behavior in "Tartuffe" he struck a nerve with a powerfulentity, the church. No matter how unlikely it seems to us three-hundred years later, these people tookreligion seriously. "Tartuffe" was released at the same time that Cardinal Richelieu was making hisinfamous rise ...
