honnête homme

The concept of honnête homme is the play’s governing ideal of moral integrity. It joins honesty to gratitude, duty, compassion, and responsible fatherhood, and it becomes decisive when wealth, law, love, and family obligation pull in different directions. The ideal is not presented as abstract respectability: it is tested through costly choices, especially Arlequin’s decision to surrender his fortune and Nisida’s willingness to sacrifice her love for what she believes is her father’s happiness.

Moral Integrity Under Pressure

The standard first appears in the conflict between obedience and personal desire. Nisida declares that she will perform her duty and obey even more firmly as her father gives fewer orders, yet she asks him to delay her marriage and send her to a convent. Her request turns filial obedience into an active moral struggle: she does not simply submit to an imposed arrangement, but seeks a way to control the consequences of her passion while protecting her father’s peace.

Her later decision is even more severe. Nisida asks Arlequin to separate her from Cléante, give her time, and allow her to marry the marquis d’Yrville. She describes the action as overcoming and immolating her passion for the happiness of her father’s old age. In this form, the honnête homme ideal is connected to self-restraint: moral worth consists not in obtaining the desired outcome, but in accepting personal loss when love appears to threaten another person’s welfare. Arlequin, however, refuses to make the sacrifice final. He says that Nisida will not marry the marquis d’Yrville and presents himself as a physician who will try to cure her, stopping the remedies if they cause too much harm.

Arlequin and the Ethics of Property

The concept becomes most concrete through Arlequin’s relation to the fortune of the comte de Valcourt. Arlequin admits that he is no better than Cléante and explains that, in Italie, where everyone knew who he was, he would not have hesitated to give Nisida to him. In his present surroundings, however, his love has led him into vanity, making the decision more difficult. His hesitation is therefore not simple greed; it is a conflict between affection, pride, social appearance, and what he understands as his obligation.

The revelation of Cléante’s identity changes that conflict. Cléante explains that a violent and profound passion for Nisida has lasted more than a year and that, unable to gain entry into Arlequin’s household, he presented himself as Arlequin’s secretary. He calls these actions his crimes and asks to be punished. His disguise is ethically compromised, but his account of its purpose also reveals an attempt to win Arlequin’s esteem before declaring his love. He had hoped that living respectfully beside Arlequin would make the older man regard him as worthy of affection; then poverty and misfortune could become grounds for compassion rather than barriers to marriage.

Cléante’s misfortune is intensified by the death of his father in Italie. Just when an old friend of the comte de Valcourt was ready to help Cléante obtain permission to visit him, the news arrived that his father had died and had left his entire fortune to a stranger. Cléante identifies his father as the comte de Valcourt and states that he possesses proof. Arlequin recognizes him as the son of the man who had once been his benefactor, embraced him, and explains that he had loved the comte de Valcourt for fifteen years. The fortune had been left to Arlequin, but Arlequin now judges that the comte de Valcourt could not morally have given it to him while leaving his own son poor.

This judgment places moral ownership against formal possession. Cléante argues that he has nothing to claim because his father’s marriage was never declared and the law does not give him an effective right to the estate. Arlequin answers that the law cannot silence his heart: he sees the fortune as belonging to the son of his benefactor, not to himself. He is prepared to become poor because retaining wealth that he believes should sustain Cléante would make him morally dishonest. The honnête homme therefore acts through a voluntary renunciation that exceeds legal compulsion. Arlequin does not merely acknowledge another person’s claim; he accepts the material consequences of restoring what he regards as the rightful inheritance.

Honesty, Gratitude, and Paternal Duty

Arlequin’s decision is inseparable from gratitude. The comte de Valcourt’s earlier kindness creates a debt that Arlequin treats as permanent, even after the benefactor’s death and even though the law appears to support his possession. His return of the fortune is an act of fidelity to the relationship between benefactor and beneficiary. The moral debt matters more to him than the legal security of his own household.

Yet his honesty is not indifferent to family responsibility. When Nisida arrives, Arlequin tells her that Cléante is the son of the man who had left them their fortune and that all they possess belongs to him. They were rich that morning and will now be poor, but the change is necessary because otherwise they would no longer be honnêtes gens. He immediately asks Cléante to guarantee Nisida the means to live, explaining that he would die of grief if he left his daughter in indigence. His renunciation is thus also an act of fatherhood: he refuses to preserve his wealth for himself, but he cannot treat Nisida’s material future as irrelevant.

The scene exposes the tension within the ideal. Arlequin’s honesty requires him to give away the estate, while his paternal duty requires him to protect his daughter. The play does not resolve the tension by denying either obligation. Instead, Cléante resolves it through his own moral response: he agrees to take back the fortune only in order to place it at Nisida’s feet. He declares that Arlequin, who is willing to strip himself of his possessions rather than see him unhappy, would make him unhappy for life if he refused to give him his daughter. Property is therefore restored through a chain of gratitude and generosity rather than through litigation or calculation.

The Ideal’s Final Form

The conclusion gives the concept its explicit formulation. Arlequin tells Nérine that he can no longer give her Cléante according to his original plans, but offers to double the dowry intended for her and asks her to remain with the family as its good friend. The younger generation will be united, and Arlequin expects them to be happy, but he insists that they remember a higher source of happiness: no pleasure in the world equals fulfilling the duty of an honnête homme and a good father.

This ending defines the ideal through action and consequence. The honnête homme is not simply someone who obeys the law, since Arlequin returns property despite Cléante’s doubts about legal entitlement. Nor is he merely someone who pursues the greatest private happiness, since Nisida initially prepares to sacrifice love and Arlequin prepares to sacrifice wealth. The ideal combines principle with humane feeling: gratitude directs the return of the fortune, compassion protects Cléante from poverty, and fatherly responsibility preserves Nisida’s future.

The play’s final moral vocabulary also transforms poverty. Arlequin’s household moves from riches to poverty in a single day, but the loss is presented as proof rather than failure. Wealth retained at the cost of another’s deprivation would corrupt his identity; poverty accepted in order to repair a moral wrong confirms it. The restored fortune then becomes an instrument of love rather than a source of domination, since Cléante receives it only to secure Nisida’s welfare and marriage.

Narrative and Ethical Significance

The honnête homme ideal gathers together the play’s principal conflicts: hidden identity, unequal wealth, parental authority, romantic passion, inheritance, and the difference between legal right and moral right. Cléante’s disguise shows that love can begin through deception, while his confession makes him vulnerable to judgment. Nisida’s self-sacrifice shows the pressure exerted by filial duty, while Arlequin’s refusal to force her sacrifice shows that good fatherhood must also respond to the child’s suffering.

Most importantly, the concept gives the ending its standard of evaluation. The final union is not treated as sufficient merely because the lovers obtain one another. Happiness becomes legitimate only after the characters confront the obligations created by gratitude, inheritance, and family care. Arlequin’s return of the fortune and Cléante’s decision to devote it to Nisida convert wealth from an instrument of exclusion into a means of repair. In the closing moral, the honnête homme is therefore both a truthful owner and a generous relation: someone who refuses unjust advantage, accepts sacrifice, and understands fatherhood as a duty measured by the welfare of others.