SOURCE: “Ethics, Debts, and Identity in Dom Juan,” in Romance Quarterly, Vol. 34, No. 2, May, 1987, pp. 141-46.

In the following excerpt, Riggs explores the role of the individual in society as presented in Molière's Dom Juan.

In Molière's comedy, the desire to eliminate or avoid the risks in social and sexual relationships is a fundamental theme. The issue of debt, or obligation, is explicitly central in some of the plays, and it serves as a metaphor for the cohesiveness of society itself.¹ Dom Juan is a play in which this theme is particularly important, and whose progress explores the social implications of debt, risk, ethics, and identity. Like Le Tartuffe, whose interdiction forced Molière to write Dom Juan in order to have a new play to produce, Dom Juan studies the relationship between gestures and meaning as that relationship either supports and renews, or exploits and...