101
The letters that form Laclos’
text are also objects in the plot,
used to manipulate. Merteuil
and Valmont, the orchestrating
villains, are adept at writing
letters in ways that exploit
how others will read
meaning into them.See also: Robinson Crusoe 94–95 ■ Clarissa 104 ■ The Sorrows of Young
Werther 105 ■ Dracula 195 ■ The Moonstone 198–99RENAISSANCE TO ENLIGHTENMENT
lady. Former lovers, they try to
outdo each other in their cruelty
and manipulative degradation of
others through sexual exploitation.
Their own and others’ letters show
how they plot the pursuit of their
entertainment like a military
campaign, the narrative tracing
a calculated process of ruination
involving rape, sexual corruption,
and humiliation.Moral ambiguity
Unlike his contemporaries, who
often addressed the reader directly
in their epistolary novels, Laclos
removed his authorial presence
from the narrative, leaving his
characters to speak for themselves.
Because of his absent narrational
voice and the lack of any authorial
condemnation of his characters’actions, contemporary reviewers
wondered if Laclos too was as
wicked as Merteuil and Valmont.
The cleverness of Les Liaisons
dangeureses lies in its moral
ambiguity and the extent to which
Laclos implicates the reader in
society’s treatment of women as
pawns in games of ownership and
sexual domination. In her own
words to Valmont, Merteuil views
her actions as part of a wider battle
of the sexes in which she is “born
to avenge my sex and subjugate
yours”—although in doing this, she
brings destruction as much to other
women as to men. In the letters
through which he presents this
battle, Laclos seduces his reader
via the “pleasure” to be found in
a voyeuristic literary exploration
of artful temptation. ■Pierre Choderlos de
LaclosPierre Choderlos de Laclos
was born in 1741 in Amiens, to
a family that had only recently
become part of the French
nobility. The family’s relative
unimportance in the social
hierarchy meant that as a
young man Laclos looked to
the military for a viable career.
While captain of an artillery
regiment at Besançon in 1778,
he began writing his only
novel, influenced by the work
of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Although Les Liaisons
dangereuses was scandalous
because of its libertine
characters and themes of
sexual vice, Laclos himself
was not a faithless seducer.
He married his lover, Marie-
Soulange Duperré, when she
became pregnant; they went
on to have two children and a
happy life. He escaped the
guillotine in 1794 and devoted
himself to his family until his
death in 1803 from fever.Other key works1777 Ernestine
1783 Des Femmes et de
leur éducation
1790 –91 Journal des amis
de la ConstitutionChevalier
DancenyCécile de
VolangesMarquise de
MerteuilMadame de
VolangesMadame de
RosemondeVicomte de
ValmontPrésidente de
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