Reviews for The Learned Ladies

The average rating for The Learned Ladies based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-05-31 00:00:00 Thomas Nolan A Choice in Marriage 2 June 2013 I must say that I find these French plays to be a little difficult to follow at times namely because of the way the scenes are set up. It seems that each of the scenes have only specific characters in them and when one of the characters leaves (or a new one arrives) then suddenly the scene ends and a new one begins. They are not like Shakespeare where the scenes are location specific, and the way that Shakespeare constructs his scenes and his plays I find much easier to follow. However, when my internet is working better (I seem to be having problems with it on my laptop though I suspect that it may be the operating system as opposed to the internet connection itself) I will try to watch some of the Moliere plays on Youtube (they are available on Youtube). The other thing I was thinking of was getting a dongle, but that is not necessary at the moment (and I pay for the internet anyway). This play seems to be quite similar to Tartuffe, and apparently it was not as popular as the previous play. In fact, from the introduction, I get the impression that the play actually flopped (if it was possible for a play to flop, but I guess it is when it has a very limited shelf life, though some plays have limited shelf lives because the actors have other projects that they want to go onto, though some plays, like the ones that have run for 20+ years in the West End probably cycle through actors). The difference here is that we have a philosopher in the house as opposed to a religious zealot (for want of a better word) though we have the standard woman who wants to marry her crush, but that marriage isn't allowed to happen because she is supposed to marry somebody else, however it turns out that the somebody else was a fraud so she ends up marrying the guy she wanted to marry in the first place. Plays like these (and there are a number in the Moliere collection) makes me wonder if there was such a thing as romantic love during the 17th century. I was always under the impression that arranged marriages were generally the way things went, though it seems that in Moliere most of the characters tend to be members of the middle class (who were the bulk of the theatre goers namely because the aristocracy was small, and the lower classes were uneducated). When I speak about romantic love I am speaking about choice in getting married. These days there seems, at least in our culture, a fair amount of choice in who we get to marry. I find it a little daunting though, especially since I was the guy that either chased the wrong women, or was too gutless to actually ask any of them out. That is changing a bit though, and I guess I am learning to let people go at times. However, I thought that this was a recent phenomena, especially with the development of the car which enabled people to travel greater distances (up until then they were generally stuck where they were born). However, I suspect that one of the reasons for this belief was because prior to the development of the car (or even the railway) you were generally trapped in your own small town, and the person that you ended up marrying you had known for quite a while (namely most of your life). This play, however, is set in the city, among the middle classes, where you would meet people at university and other functions. If you were a member of the nobility then I suspect that you had little choice in who you were going to marry, though I do notice that most of Shakespeare's plays involve nobility, and there is a lot of romantic love there as well. However, the key with most of Moliere's plays is the idea that one can chose who they are going to marry, but that choice is being taken away from them so they must come up with a plan to get out of it. In the Would-Be Gentleman, the antagonist is made to believe that he is being given a knighthood in Turkey, while here they make it appear that the family has become bankrupt. As such, romantic love triumphs. However, for the play to appeal, there must have been at least some choice in marriage. Look, even today there is still some restrictions, and there are still cultures were arranged marriages are the norm. However, we all hear, and still see on television, shows were a marriage cannot go ahead unless the parents approve of it, and if the parents don't approve of it, then the marriage is going to be difficult at best. Of course, these movies run on the principle that the father is the one objecting to the marriage, and in the end comes across as a buffoon. Still, as in Moliere's day, and as it is today in our performances, romantic love always triumphs.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-10-25 00:00:00 Chris Reed C'est la seule, l'unique pièce que nous avons vue à la Comédie Française à Paris, en 1968, quelques mois après les manifestations qui ont envahi les rues, et le nouveau parlement a été élu. On the banks of the Seine I had bought three volumes of the Hachette Moliere, luckily including the play running at the classic theater. So having read about half the play before we went, I understood a line here and there. Our lunch every day was Croque Messieur and white wine at a bar around the corner from our hotel near the Abattoirs, which we passed on our walk to the Louvre and Place de la Concorde. We had a VW bug, with no charge for parking by the hotel back then. When I returned to the University of Minnesota, I recovered from my Ph.D. orals by reading five plays of Moliere, and translating a few pages of this and his touching last play, where he may have tried to convince himelf that he had an imaginary disease. For Femmes Savantes, I typed out Chrysale's sexist criticism of learned women, a passage that is arguably more applicable to US society now than it was in 1970 when I typed it up: Chrysale: It's to you I'm speaking sister. The least solecism in speech irritates you, but you conduct yourself eccentrically. Your interminable books do not soothe me, and your putting my cravat over a fat Plutarch. You ought to burn all this useless junk and leave science to the professors in the city. Clean out, if you'd do something worthwhile, from the attic to here, this far-flung sty that stinks out the help, and a hundred other trifles whose sight offends. Don't go looking for what they do on the Moon; Get involved in what they DON'T at home, where everything's run upside-down. It's just not seemly, and for many reasons, that a woman study to know so much of abstract things. To raise children with good behavior, to run the household, supervise the help, and rule expenditures thriftily ought to be her study and philosophy. Our fathers were sensible on this subjet; they said that a woman knows enough when she has elevated her native capacity to know a sportcoat from a pair of pants. Theirs didn't read, but they lived, well. Their household, all their learned conversation; their books, a thimble, thread and needle with which they'd work on the trousseaus of their girls. Women nowadays are far from those ways; they want to write, become celebrities. No knowledge is too deep for them, and here in France more than other paces. They let themselves in on the secrets of sociology, and I'd say they know everything they don't need to. They know how the Moon moves, and the pole staar, Venus, Saturn and Mars, that I have nothing to do with. And, in this vain knowledge, they go looking so far, they don't know how how my soup's cooking, which I do need. The help aspire to science to please you, and all do only what they have to do. Reasoning is the occupation of all my house, this reasoning that has banished all reason. One burns the roast while reading a best-seller, The other dreams up a verse when I ask for a drink. Finally, I see your example followed by them; one poor servant would be left, at least, who was not infected with this bad air, and damned if you haven't chased her off because she speaks nonstandard English. I tell you, Sister, this whole rout offends me (because, as I've said, to you I address myself). I don't like this gang of Latin-lovers, especially this Professor Trissotin. It's him whose verse you've trumpeted-- all his lines are like billiard balls-- you look for what he's said after he's said it. And in my opinion, his tone's crackly.