In The Marriage of Figaro, Beaumarchais brings to the stage issues of obligation and passion in the form of a theatrical bedroom farce. He calls to light both the reason and passion which is responsible for tying man to physical things through obligation and the complications that arise from these actions. These are obligations which man finds himself incapable to attend to due to the unreliable, fluctuating worth of the objects that drive the fleeting passions of man. The cast of characters and their pursuits illustrate how passion without reason drives these farcical events.
The farcical aspects serve to provide exaggerated, theatrical representations of the real world enslavement to passion that possesses man. The objects of passion over which the characters in Beaumarchais’ play pursue is women, and the ownership exhibited over them. Beaumarchais also looks to illuminate the ways which these women perceive the power that is given, and simultaneously revoked, with desirability. Beaumarchais writes of the roles involved with passion and possession, the subject and the object, when all roles are individually ruled by their own passions, passions which can never align with the obligations unique to that individual.
He divides the subjects and objects of passion by gender and the shackles of obligation are ruled by social class. Men act while women, wishing they could act, are acted upon, and servants must obey their lord and all must obey the contracts governed by law. Passions and obligation are in constant conflict throughout this play. Whether it is the passions of two men that have their desire set on the same object, obligation plays its role at inflaming the situation. In situations of class such as the case between Figaro and the Count, Figaro is in a state of obligation to be subordinate to the passions of the count despite where
Figaro’s own passions may lie. Figaro laments that this obligation does not require reciprocation between he and the Count, saying “while I’m galloping in one direction you’ll be progressing nicely in another- with my little wife! I shall be fighting my way through rain and mud for the greater glory of your family while you are condescending to cooperate in the increase of mine. A pretty sort of reciprocity” (Beaumarchais, 110). This lopsided sense of obligation reveals that in this case class is the only driving force of obligation. Those who are higher in class and exhibit superiority over those beneath them feel no sense of obligation to the passions or will of others. Although, the Count forgets the one contract to which he does have obligation to. His marriage. This obligation is inflamed by the fact that he undermines it now by seeking to enjoy the pleasures of a right which he abolished in the past to preserve the possession to his own passions at the time, that right being jus primae noctis, the lord’s right to a bride’s virginity before her intended husband.
The “Lord the Count, tired of cultivating rustic beauties, has a mind to return to the castle but not to his wife” (Beaumarchais, 108). Both the Count’s undermining of his obligation to his wife and Figaro and Suzanne’s objection to their obligation by social class to the Count’s right reveal that when passion and obligation conflict, it leads men to lose all sense to obligation. Passion wins over as the more dominant force, and manipulates the situation in attempt to find loopholes in obligation.
Passions have difficulty receiving no for an answer. The female characters face a double-edged sword for their ability and inability to stir passions. The men allow themselves to be driven by passion while the women are merely objects for someone else to obtain possession of. It is unsuitable for women act within their own passions and outside of the will of another. Women still remain internally enslaved by their passions, wishing for to obtain their desires despite being owned by external wills, the female “sex is ardent but timid.
However much we are attracted to pleasure, the most venturesome women hears a voice within her say, ‘be fair if you can, wise if you will, but be circumspect if you must. ” (Beaumarchais, 113). This controlled voice found within the most venturesome of women reveals that, although women wish just as much as men to pursue what stirs their passions, they must remain more cautious than their male counterparts. There is an expectation place upon them that isn’t place among men.
Yet their desires are an obstacle in their way of meeting these expectations. In this environment, these women are only have the capability of being possessed by a man, it is considered unsuitable for them to attempt to possess anything themselves. The need for women to exhibit a cautious air in their behavior is necessary because “even 3 in the more exalted walks of life you accord us women no more than a derisory consideration.
In a state of servitude behind alluring pretenses of respect, treated as children where our possessions are concerned we are punished as responsible adults when our faults are in question” (Beaumarchais, 176). This frustrated lament reveals that no woman is exempt from this state of servitude. No matter the social class of the woman, she is owned by a force that is external from herself. Their possessors feign their respect for these women. Although these men desire these women fiercely as a commodity, there is no respect held for them as a human.
This patronizing attitude caries over into their desires and wills as people, but should their actions falter and should their personal passions conflict with that of a man’s she will be chastised for it as though she has had full ownership of herself all along. From this double standard comes the necessity for women shield their true passions, and when they are caught in the act of this they are equally condemned. The Count himself is perplexed by “How women must study the art of controlling their demeanour to succeed in such a degree,” to which the Countess rebukes, “You men drive us to it” (Beaumarchais, 147).
The Count criticizes his wife for merely having a seemingly false demeanour while he himself does not know that she is aware that he is pursuing another woman, revealing the high expectation, double standard, and condemnation that is brought by his possession over her and how he exploits them. The men remain unaware of the suffocating effect of their ownership, because they will never themselves know what it is to be ruled by passions that conflict with their own. They only deal with obligations that conflict with their passions, which they readily neglect.
The women of this play are not permitted to be shaped by the pursuit of their own passions, but by the passions of those around them. As they are the object of passion and desire for the male characters. Their desirability bears upon how they see themselves. It is the trait with which they equate their worthiness. We can see their concepts of themselves alter completely as they come in and out of desirability, especially the Countess who feels she is “no longer the Rosine whom you once wooed so 4 assiduously. I’m the Countess Almaviva, the sad and neglected wife whom you no longer love” (Beaumarchais, 145).
This shift in identity reveals that the Countess literally feels as though she has turned into a completely different woman. Rosine and the Countess Almaviva are two different women, and Rosine carries more worth in this world despite the fact that the Countess Almaviva holds higher class and importance. The currency of women relies on the simply fact that they are desired by men. Being merely owned means nothing, marriage is just obligation and, as was stated earlier, obligations made out of unsustainable passions result in the rare nature of the two things coexisting toward the same desire for extended periods of time.
For woman, her fleeting power is bestowed with controlling desire rather than obligation, as man often finds himself “lost to all sense of obligation” (Beaumarchais, 175). This disrespect and discarded responsibility is the result of passions ruling over reason. Man worries himself with the acquisition of his desires rather than the maintenance of his current possessions, causing them “to be delivered over to perpetual neglect and jealousy – such as only you dare justify -” (146). This jealously that remains during the possessor’s loss of interest reveals the lopsided contract of obligation and ownership.
The Countess states her own husbands jealousy stems “from pride – nothing more. Ah, I have loved him too dearly! I have wearied him with my solicitude and tired him with my love. That is the only offense I have been guilty of” (Beaumarchais, 130). Her faithful solicitude as an offense toward her husband reveals that to man a desire safely acquired and maintained decreases in value when compared to a desire out of reach. Men are blinded from what they own with what they do not own. Passions are a driving force within everyone, but the privilege of pursuing the objects of that desire are reserved for the men in this play.
Obligation and passion are incapable of performing a balancing act because personal passion will always hold more weight than obligation. Furthermore, obligations arising from passion will always be unsustainable because things which obtain their worth through desirability have no way to ensure that their ability to stir passion will last. The very thing that 5 excited their owner can become wearisome and only make the desire of a new pursuit burn brighter. Women as objects of desire are condemned by their own ability to be stirred by passion while kept from pursuit. They must be ruled by ownership and obligation.
