Would-Be Gentleman

Le Bourgeois gentilhomme satirizes attempts at social climbing and the bourgeois personality, poking fun both at the vulgar, pretentious middle-class and the vain, snobbish aristocracy. The title is meant as an oxymoron: in Molière's France, a "gentleman" was by definition nobly born, and thus there could be no such thing as a bourgeois gentleman.

• marriage proposal
• france
• diamond
• music teacher
• bourgeoisie
• ignorance
• count
• based on play or musical
• maid
• love affair
• parasite
• nobility
• dance teacher
• 17th century
• ottoman empire