The play's main character, Alceste is greatly disturbed by what he sees as the phoniness of polite society - the polished manners, and dubious virtues of many persons of power and influence. Alceste's love for Celimene is oddly reminiscent of the absolute monarch's love for his people. Like Alceste, a king will brook no rivals for his "affection," nor will he accept anything less than utter submission. For Alceste, as no doubt for the Sun King, love equals absolute devotion:.

             C'est qu'un coeur bien atteint veut qu'on soit tout a lui, Et je ne viens ici qu'a dessein de lui dire Tout ce que la-dessus ma passion m'inspire.

             (1.1.240-42).

             [You know that when a man's in love, he'll much prefer To keep his mistress to himself. Right now, I plan To tell her what I think, persuade her, if I can.] .

             Love, like jealousy, in this formulation, originates in a need to dominate others. Alceste's love expresses itself as a desire-his heart "veut"-for Celimene's total devotion. She must attend to him alone. In this, he remains as consistent as he is exacting. .

             Alceste demands total loyalty from Celimene. Celimene will not, in reality, give herself to anyone else, yet she adheres to the conventions of the day by making herself available, through flirtations, to other men. This is the game of love. .

             Mme. de Sevigne's letters, too, record the moral conflicts of court life. Unlike Moliere, who merely wrote for, and performed at, the royal court, Mme. De Sevigne was an actual part of that court. Mme. De Sevigne was a victim of exactly the sort of double standard that Moliere described in The Misanthrope. Sevigne's husband was killed in a duel over his mistress. Over the years, de Sevigne wrote voluminously to her daughter in Provence. Her letters concern the intimate facts of her and her daughter's daily life. She wished her letters to be a kind of model of correspondence, rejecting the rhetorical conventions of the day, introducing a sense of spontaneity that - like Alceste's attacks on the artificiality of the standards of behavior of the time - stood out as a polite rebellion against the strictures of courtly society:.