ss" (Dullin 157). The dramatic contrast of character, on this view, provides both the tension and the exuberance of the play.
Harpagon is a typical Moliere comic hero inasmuch as he is not so much a duplication as an archetype of character. The same is true of the other characters, who, as Guicharnaud says, "put on masks to perform a comedy according to the rules, but the masks are necessarily transparent; hence the spectator, who has been made aware of the reality, is obliged to play the game with them" (Guicharnaud 10). The characters themselves are masklike inasmuch as their character traits rarely change; neither do masks change expression. Accordingly, Harpagon is the archetype of the miser, and whatever other action is resolved, the play ends with Harpagon and his money box paired presumably for eternity. Like Moliere other comic heroes, Harpagon may win or lose the conflict surrounding the pairing off of the young lovers, but he learns nothing from the experience. In the moment he assents to the marriage of his children, his value system stays the same from first to last.
He does not really have to learn anything about true love, however, because to him human love is secondary to the love he bears for his precious casket of gold. As Dullin comments, "Harpagon must almost always have one ear strained toward the garden [where his money is buried], while he lends the other to the person with whom he is conversing" (Dullin 158). It does not ultimately matter to him that Cleante will marry Mariane, with whom he had fancied himself in love. He shares his joy with his "darling money box" (Act V). He is married to his money, and it is this fact that is satirized in the play. No one but a dedicated miser can fully appreciate the consequences of being a skinflint in business, love, parenthood, life. Nor does Harpagon appreciate them; he is faithful to money, possessive far more of it than of the treasure of filial piety or ...