Did She Fall Or Was She Pushed? Dangerous Liaisons Readalong 2024

Thanks Bishy! All good.

Oh dear! I thought he was talking about shooting pheasants!! Now look who's naive!

I would have enjoyed 'Liaisons' as an undergrad and the discussions on it. It would have been quite an eye-opener for me coming from an Irish catholic background. I'd say students find it very long to read. Our longest text was Stendhal's 'Le Rouge et le Noir'. Translating a letter from Cécile to Sophie would have really appealed to me as well.

I have read on a little bit as I'm going away next week and didn't want to fall behind. This is a brilliant series of letters.

Laclos: corrupting the young from generation to generation. I'm pretty sure that when I read it myself at uni, it was the raciest book I'd ever read (I was pretty sheltered). That said, he manages to make his characters do all these outrageous things without ever using explicit sexual language. As for example in Letter 59, when Valmont says he is thinking of visiting a countess, whose husband owns a special woods which he keeps for the entertainment of his friends 🙄

My first thought was that the woods were a metaphor for female genitalia, but it turns out it's a reference to cuckold's horns, which are also called wood/'bois'.

Aw thanks CornishLizard!

I love it when there is a letter enclosed within another letter. So intriguing!
Me too, Fuzzy. It's an example of how good Laclos is at playing with the epistolary genre. In earlier, more traditional epistolary novels, it's usually a fairly straightforward scenario of two people writing to each other. But in Laclos it's much more complicated, with people passing letters on to one another (especially Valmont and Merteuil) and people reading letters that they weren't originally meant to read. So the pattern is weblike, instead of a two-way exchange.

Take for example letter 48, which is from Valmont to Merteuil, but both his mistress Emilie and Merteuil get to read it as well, so it effectively has three different addressees who read and interpret it in different ways.

Full disclosure: I teach Liaisons to first years studying French at uni. And we spend a lot of time talking about epistolary form. So I'm slightly afraid of sounding school-teacherish on this thread. Needless to say, just because I teach it doesn't mean my opinions about it are correct! I'm also not an 18th c. specialist, so I don't have in-depth knowledge of the period. And somewhat embarrassingly, I haven't actually read the whole novel cover-to-cover for some years. For teaching, I tend to rely on notes and favourite scenes. So this read-along is a great chance for me to refresh my memory and hear new perspectives on the text.

I still have vivid memories of studying the text myself as an undergrad, like Viv Groskop! My own students really seem to enjoy the text; the main problem is that they find it LONG. I also get a lot of essays full of moralistic wrath against the libertins, which is absolutely fair enough, but I always try to push the discussion further than just dividing the characters up into victims and villains!

In the exam, the students also have to translate a passage from one of their set texts, and this year it was a passage from Laclos: one of the letters from Cecile to Sophie, so the language wasn't too hard. I have yet to discover their exam marks...

Great to see you cassandre and vicomtesse. Finding the thread more entertaining than the book with VdV and MdT banging on for pages about how they really mustn’t!

I love it when there is a letter enclosed within another letter. So intriguing!

No I haven't done the previous fallen woman read-along threads.

They seemed great but my "to read" pile is always too long to spare the time to dive into a huge 19th century novel. I just really like Les Liaisons, and it's a far easier and quicker read so which I haven't reread for ages so I thought I'd join you.

That's brilliant, I love it 😂

I'm also chronically late. I'm actually starting to think I might have ADD, even though I know that's a huge cliche...

I'd been reading up on my namesake shortly before this thread started, so I thought I'd name change in honour of her notorious resemblance to the Marquise de Merteuil.

I personally identify more with her daughter Emily Cowper (known to Georgette Heyer fans as a Patroness of Almacks) who apparently was so chronically late to everything that "she'd never heard of soup".

@ViscountessMelbourne , well spotted on those details showing that Tourvel isn't oblivious to Valmont's charms!

We never hear her real thoughts, and it's not clear whether or at what point she even acknowledges her feelings to herself. That's so true. I think that while some members of society conform to the traditional norms of virtue mostly for convention's sake (eg Mme de Volanges), Tourvel has internalised them, and really wants to be virtuous because she believes it's the ethical thing to do. Which is why she tries so hard to repress her feelings for Valmont.

I didn't think twice about referring to Tourvel by her surname, but maybe I should have done! I've read some lit crit on Laclos, and I think critics usually refer to her more formally as Mme de Tourvel.

Btw, I googled your username, and the Viscountess Melbourne sounds like a fascinating character! And an 18th c. heroine as well.

Thanks @BishyBarnyBee for all the summaries you've posted so far. Interesting question about whether Laclos is suggesting that all men are essentially predatory. Now that you mention it, are there any really decent men in this novel? Hmm. Something to bear in mind...

I would say though that everyone in this novel (not just the men) is somehow entangled in society's web of complicity and corruption: the network of dangerous relationships. It would be difficult (impossible?) for any particular person to lay claim to the moral high ground. Which is partly why it's so clever that Laclos makes us feel complicit as well. Reading the novel, we are drawn into the perspective of the libertines (to at least some extent); it's hard not to admire their wit and daring.

@AgualusasLover , I think you said that Viv Groskop makes that point in Au Revoir Tristesse, and I agree entirely. I've read that book too by the way and agree that the Laclos chapter was particularly good!

I feel so brutal referring to Tourvel by her surname, but I guess we only ever learn the first names of Cecile, Sophie and the servants.

Very true. It's reading between the lines really :)

I'm positive that Tourvel fancies the breeches off Valmont from the start. There's a bit earlier where she says that it's unsurprising that so many other, weaker women fall for his charms because he's so dishy. Then a bit when she says he's only courting her because there's no one else in the countryside because she's not attractive enough for him. The biggest giveaway is when she's depressed after he leaves and says to Mme de Volanges that she's very sad on behalf of Valmont's poor elderly aunt who is missing his "agreeable society".

"I was really hurt by the grief of my respectable friend; it touched me so much that I would gladly have mingled my tears with hers." Life obviously seems greyer without him - we've all been there.

We never hear her real thoughts, and it's not clear whether or at what point she even acknowledges her feelings to herself.

😅 oh and Merteuil is as hard as nails!

Yeah, fake it till you make it! 😁

I had forgotten about the tear-stained letter! She does put up a convincing front!
And maybe if she says (or writes!) it often enough, it might be true ;)