Laclos' "Les Liaisons Dangereuses"

This research examines the themes of social, sexual, religious, and political freedom in Laclos's Les Liaisons Dangereuses. The research will set forth the cultural context in which the novel first appeared and link that context to the shape of the pattern of ideas about freedom and the means by which they are articulated in the text.

The fact that Les Liaisons Dangereuses was published in 1782, seven years before the French Revolution and in the waning years of the American Revolution, and in the midst of the philosophical flowering of the Enlightenment, seems significant for themes of freedom that come out in the text. Relativism, indeterminism, and skepticism mark the philosophy of the Enlightenment, and it is important to recognize that they occur so dramatically because they represented a challenge to the cultural residue of absolutist monarchy and moral authoritarianism backed up by the rigidity of Church doctrine. To be sure, France was to represent a last bastion of absolute monarchy; however, the momentum was on the side of increasing personal agency and enlarging the scope of human behavior. What Wilson refers to as the "new sociology and the new social science--if they can be dignified at this early period with such positive names . . . depended upon a view of man and society that of course differed from the traditional and authoritarian one" (Wilson 202). The subtext of the statement that opens Rousseau's On the Social Contract--"Man is born free, and everywhere

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auses her to misinterpret sexual signals and sexual discourse. She understands that she is being discussed when she overhears one man say to another, "We'll have to let it ripen up a bit and see what happens this winter" (Laclos 13). What she does not understand, as Roulston points out, is that "it" is mistress, not wife, material. Cecile considers that the man is "the one who's going to marry me," then tells Sophie that she'd "love to know what's actually going on" (Laclos 13). Roulston analyzes Cecile as a failed moral agent in a social system whose "code of marriage" puts women into social "circulation" in a way that makes prostitutes of them all, including wives (151). Cecile's innocence aggravates the dynamic of her "sexual availability" because she is not equipped to act in her own interest (Roulston 153). Valmont and Merteuil are far from innocence and indeed were lovers at one time (Laclos 14). They are, in any case, completely at ease in discussing their own sexuality and that of others. But they seem less interested in the experience of sexuality than in manipulating sexual behavior. To be sure, Valmont does want to physically seduce Tourvel--for which sentiment Merteuil taunts him, warning him against the trap of emoti

Category: Literature - L