xactly sexual adventurism. That is articulated by Valmont to Merteuil when he suggests talking about something else, then immediately recants: "Something else? I'm wrong, It's always the same topic, always about women, to be either had or ruined-and often both" (Laclos 144). With sexuality as the principal theme of the text, it seems quite logical to proceed to consideration of aspects of freedom with which the text is concerned.
That Les Liaisons Dangereuses conveys a picture of social freedom is evidenced in part by the fact that aristocrats and bourgeois seem to mingle with some ease. We are not exactly in the rarefied environment of the royal court. That is not to say that social distinctions are not drawn between, say, Merteuil and Valmont on one hand and Mme de Tourvel on the other; they are. But the distinctions are moral rather than social in nature. As Coward comments in this regard, Merteuil never "remotely suggests that [Tourvel] has risen above her station" (Coward xxvii). On the other hand, Turnell cites Baudelaire's comment of the importance of the fact that Tourvel is "appartenant à la bourgeoisie," or representative of "the solid middle class which had always been the moral backbone of France and for this reason she is the focus of the main attack" (Turnell 68). Part of the rationale for targeting Tourvel thus becomes the prospect of enjoying her humiliation. There is thus irony in the fact that Tourvel describes Valmont's presence at the chateau as freeing him from the "whirligig of society" (Laclos 22), where he has indulged himself. At the chateau, under her influence, so she thinks, he will become a reformed character.
The project of seducing Tourvel or of manipulating the rape of Cecile would hardly be worthy of the talents of Merteuil or Valmont were the victims not of a worthy station. To seduce or rape a peasant, servant, or what later generations would come to think of as a "prole" would be insufficiently...