The School for Wives [5] - Agnes

From The Big Book of Molière Monologues by actor/author Timothy Mooney. A collection of over 160 of Molière's funniest monologues in new rhymed iambic pentameter versions. The School For Wives has long been one of Molière’s most popular works, and a controversy when it was first produced. The School For Wives confronts the question of how a husband might keep a woman from straying (an issue which may well have been concerning Molière, as this was produced the very same year that he married a wife more than twenty years younger than himself). In Arnolphe’s view, the best strategy is to keep a woman ignorant of alternatives that might present themselves. And so, he adopts Agnes as his ward at the age of four, and locks her away in a convent to shield her from all outside influences. And yet, nature proves much more powerful than anything man might do to deceive it. With Arnolphe away for a brief absence, Agnes, observes young Horace walking the lane in front of the house. He, likewise, notices her, and the ultimate irony is that the girl’s ignorance (thanks to Arnolphe’s paranoia) has also kept her ignorant about her guardian’s intent. And so, when she happens to find herself falling in love with Horace, she has no inclination to not respond.see less