The Imaginary Invalid

Béline is Argan’s second wife, and her name is derived from belle, which means beautiful. It is also similar to the French word bélier, which means ram (as in a male sheep) or battering ram. Béline is beautiful and charming on the surface, but her true nature is aggressive like a ram’s. She batters her way through Argan’s life to make it hers. She is a wolf in sheep’s clothing who schemes to eject Argan’s daughters from his house so she can control him completely. Argan is susceptible to her insincere, exaggerated affection, and he is ready to hand over his fortune. Béline pretends to be uninterested in his money—an act that he finds convincing—but she researched the laws about spousal inheritance and concocted an alternate plan to get his money. Argan is comically naive; although Béline is already prepared with a notary, he holds to the belief that ensuring her inheritance is his idea. When, at Toinette’s insistence, Argan tests Béline’s loyalty by pretending to die, Béline makes the mistake of falling for the trick. She is ecstatic when she thinks he is dead, and she shows her callousness by trying to enlist Toinette in a scheme to delay removing his body to somehow entitle Béline to money. Béline’s weakness is that she trusts Toinette, who pretends to support her and her marriage.

The young, innocent Angélique’s name suggests that she is angelic, which is perhaps an apt adjective to describe her character. She is innocent and beautiful, and she met Cléante on a rare outing to the theater when he came to her defense against the rudeness of other men. Although Angélique desperately wants to marry Cléante, she also feels bound to obey her father, regardless of the unfairness of his directives. She isn’t trying to run away with Cléante, and when Cléante kisses her hands and professes his love—as reported by Louison—she tells him that he must leave because she sees her only recourse as trying to persuade her father to give his permission. Otherwise, she will accept her fate and join a convent, because she can’t disobey her father, but she also can’t marry a man she doesn’t love. Argan, with his wife’s encouragement, sees his daughters as disrespectful and uncaring. But when Angélique believes he’s dead, she not only expresses intense grief but also resolves to follow his wishes and join a convent. Her loyalty to her father remains intact after she thinks he’s dead, even if his death would free her to marry the man she loves. Despite her obedience to her father, Angélique is a woman who won’t compromise herself for anyone. She believes that she deserves the right to marry for love and choose her own husband, so if she cannot do that, she will not marry at all.

Argan’s younger daughter appears only once in the play. She is eight years old, and her name seems to be either after the king or after Molière’s own son: Louis means gift of God. Argan calls on her to spy on and report on her older sister after Béline spots the girls in Angélique’s room with Cléante. At first, Louison tries to cover for her sister, but Argan punishes her by hitting her. Even after the beating, Louison is playful and pretends to be dead, prompting Argan to show that he does truly love and care about his daughters. 

Argan’s brother appears unexpectedly at the end of the second act, and he attempts to bring Argan to his senses. He recognizes his brother’s foolishness and the duplicity of the wife Argan trusts. He intervenes for the sake of his brother and his niece, who are on the verge of ruining their lives due to Argan’s obsession with doctors. Béralde’s primary purpose in the text is to offer a reasonable voice to counter Argan’s regarding the doctors. Although Molière was writing to his own contemporary audience, Béralde’s voice is particularly useful for a 21st-century audience that might be more easily aligned with the voice of the character who believes in trusting doctors. Béralde brings legitimate and necessary skepticism to the conversation. He is not an heir, and he seems to care genuinely for his brother and his nieces, so he has no personal agenda to cloud his arguments. Béralde sees doctors as overblown charlatans, and he worries for his brother, as well as for his niece whose life is about to be ruined. Without Béralde present, Argan would have insisted on having his enema, and his relationship with Dr. Purgeon would have endured. Béralde also provides verisimilitude for the interludes of dance and music, because he has ties to performing troupes, and he brings them in to perform for Argan.

Cléante is the romantic lead, the gallant match for Angélique who met her at the theater, where he saw that she needed to be rescued from the verbal attack of a boorish young man at the theater who dared to insult her. Cléante describes how her tears made him melt for their beauty and fury at the man who caused them. By the end of the interaction, Cléante was ready to propose marriage. He is of high enough social status as an homme d’épée, a military swordsman, to make a proper match for a woman of Angélique’s stature. Cléante is quick and clever, the opposite of Thomas who can’t even remember his lines properly. He disguises himself to reach Angélique, and he improvises a mini operetta so that he and his beloved can have a conversation. Cléante demonstrates his devotion to Angélique through his persistence, but the pièce de résistance of his fidelity is his easy agreement to become a doctor for the sake of Argan’s approval. Of course, Argan “becomes a doctor” with almost no work at all, but Cléante will presumably become a legitimate doctor.

Toinette represents the trope of the domestic servant who becomes overly involved in the lives and dramas of her employers, even occasionally risking her job to keep meddling. But she doesn’t intervene for the sake of entertainment. Rather, she is emotionally invested in the family that she feels is her own—apart from their ability to give her orders or fire her. Notably, Toinette’s meddling is selfless. If she meddled purely for her own interests, she would benefit more from helping Béline, who appreciates her enough to protect her job when Argan wants to fire her. When Argan is supposedly dead, Béline is immediately willing to turn Toinette into a conspirator to share in the profits. But Toinette is not self-serving, as she cares deeply about Angélique. She also represents the stock character of the witty servant who manipulates and pulls the strings of the much more oblivious bourgeoisie, making every effort to stop the wealthy and powerful from ruining their own lives. When she dresses as a doctor, she demonstrates that for doctor-worshipping men like Argan, words spoken from the doctor’s coat are sacred, no matter how ridiculous they may be. As a servant, Toinette has the advantage of being constantly underestimated by her employers, yet she is likely cleverer than any of them.

In the original French version of the play, Dr. Lillicrap and his son, Thomas, are named Dr. and Thomas Diafoirus. In Latin, dia means through, and the verb foirer means to have diarrhea. This is a pointed reference, since one of the traits of doctors, as demonstrated in the play, is the tendency to spout Greek and Latin as a way of ostensibly proving superior intelligence. Yet the family’s name suggests that what runs through and out of them is diarrhea. As often happens with translated plays with characters who have allegorical names, the translator also translated some of the names that have obvious significance to preserve the author’s use of satirical names. Lillicrap isn’t quite as evocative as the image of diarrhea running through someone and being mistaken for wisdom, but the name’s hard landing on the word crap preserves this association. Dr. Lillicrap demonstrates the way a father’s love can distort his view of his child. Thomas is an awkward, unintelligent man who cannot interact with Argan and Angélique without memorized lines and prompting from his father. He doesn’t care or seem to understand why he ought to care that Angélique doesn’t love him; he loves her, which is enough for him to marry her. His intense education served only to make him obstinate and too proud to accept new ideas, in the name of scientific discovery. Dr. Lillicrap is so proud that his son is finally becoming a doctor that he twists Thomas’s shortcomings into strengths, ignoring the glaringly obvious fact that Thomas shouldn’t have been set on the path of medicine in the first place. Argan invites these two personifications of diarrhea into his house and family as he is plagued with real diarrhea from the enemas and other treatments, an affliction that empties both the harmful and the necessary elements from the body. As figurative diarrhea, the Lillicraps seek Argan’s daughter, his money, and all that is beneficial in his life.

Dr. Purgeon, or Dr. Purgon in the original French, is the brother of Dr. Lillicrap, the uncle of Thomas, and Argan’s primary doctor. His name is a reference to purging, which is one of the primary tactics of medical care during the era. He subjects Argan to regular purging through frequent enemas. Perhaps more significantly, Dr. Purgeon is purging Argan’s fortune by inundating him with medical bills. Argan believes that the doctors are working for him, and he devised a plan to make them part of his family so they’ll be obligated to work for him for free. The scheme seems like it might be effective when, after introducing Angélique to her intended husband, Argan solicits a medical exam from the Lillicraps before they leave. But when Béralde urges Argan to turn away the enema that Dr. Purgeon sent for Mr. Florid to perform, it becomes apparent that Argan is not in charge at all. He is the one who pays, but the doctors don’t work for him. Refusing or even delaying a treatment is a disruption of Dr. Purgeon’s power that he will not tolerate. He even wishes death on Argan, which is not only a dramatic overreaction but also contradicts the purpose of his profession. When Toinette dresses up as a doctor, she makes a point of undoing Dr. Purgeon’s work by declaring every treatment and choice he made ridiculous and ignorant.

Dr. Purgeon’s assistant, Mr. Florid, is an apothecary. This means that he carries out the doctor’s orders by mixing and manufacturing medications and then administering them to the patient. With all the enemas ordered for Argan, Mr. Florid does the dirty and smelly work while Dr. Purgeon simply gives directives. In the original French version of the text, his name is Monsieur Fleurant, which is derived from the French word fleurer, meaning to emit an odor. Considering that he works for a doctor whose name implies a lot of purging, much of Mr. Florid’s career involves soliciting and dealing with the odiferous products of purgation.