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

[BishyBarnyBee]

Following a series of successful Fallen Women readalongs - War and Peace, Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, Ruth - we continue our exploration of desire, hypocrisy, disgrace and redemption with the earlier (and even more scandalous) Dangerous Liaisons.

Widely adapted in text, film, opera and even ballet, Les Liaisons Dangereuses is an epistolatory novel comprising 175 letters.

Author Chodelos de Laclos "resolved to write a book that would be quite outside the ordinary trend, which would make a sensation and echo over the world after I left it." His book was a succès de scandale on its 1782 publication, reviewed as "diabolique" while becoming an instant bestseller. Marie Antoinette commissioned a blank cover copy for her library, and Virginia Woolf later read it with "great delight".

Readalongs are Mumsnet's best kept secret - a quiet corner of the site where we tackle the books we might not manage alone, sharing our thoughts and reactions, and encouraging each other to keep going when life - or the book - are challenging. It's fine to dip in and out as life permits, very few of us manage to keep up consistently.

We've only heard good things about DL, so do join us for a cracking good read. We start 1st May, 1 letter a day:

1 - 31 May Letters 1 - 31
1 - 30 June Letters 32 - 61
1 - 31 July Letters 62 - 92
1 - 31 August Letters 93 - 123
1- 30 September 124 - 153
1 - 22nd October 154 - 175

There are summaries of each letter at shmoop.com. I'll post them when I can, but anyone is welcome to start us off if you are first here on the day.

Looking forward to it!

Les Liaisons dangereuses (Dangerous Liaisons) Summary

Free summary and analysis of the events in Pierre Ambroise François Choderlos de Laclos's Les Liaisons dangereus...

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.

@ViscountessMelbourne very glad you have!

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

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!

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...

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'.

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.

Thanks @FuzzyCaoraDhubh and @cassandre.

Cassandre, I can see why you might hesitate to be too teacherly on the thread but actually I think it's great - like getting a chunk of first year undergraduate study for free!

In the few different readalongs I've done, there have often been one or two members with deeper knowledge and understanding, and it really helps the discussion. The rest of us just have to not be afraid to share shallow thoughts and immediate reactions, all equally valid!

Letter 60

Sorry, I'm on a train and trying to catch up with the summaries, I think the screenshots should be readable but I'm not 100% certain.

According to the initial plan, 1st July should see us on letter 62 so this brings us up to date:

Thanks Bishy! All good.

Letter 63: The Marquise de Merteuil to the Vicomte de Valmont

1. Turns out that the Marquise is the cause of the young couple's trouble.
2. Wanting to give Danceny obstacles so that he'll redouble his efforts to romance Cécile, the Marquise gives Madame de Volanges info on the secret relationship.
3. She convinces Volanges to send Cécile to her for guidance.
4. Of course, as soon as she talks to Cécile, she encourages her crush on Danceny.
5. It's a win-win. For the Marquise, anyway. She admits that she's being a little malicious, but she has to find something to amuse her.
6. She congratulates herself on having gained both the mother and daughter's confidence in her.
7. So here's the plan: to satisfy Madame de Volanges, Cécile is to go stay with Madame de Rosemonde at her country home.
8. Valmont is to tell Danceny about this and offer his help in arranging a meeting with Cécile.
9. Bonus: Valmont will accompany Danceny to the country and get to see Tourvel again.
10. Double Bonus: The Marquise managed to blame the priest/confessor for telling Madame de Volanges about the secret letters.

The level of honesty (about her dishonesty!) is shocking here, isn't it. She's not messing around. Admitting she is enjoying her Godlike power. And she is so very good at this game.

@FuzzyCaoraDhubh and @cassandre were discussing how racy the book would have been in our young days. I've been surprised by the erotic content, particularly after reading Ruth, which caused a furore even though she quickly became a reformed woman who lived a life of exemplary sainthood.

This is far more frivolous, and Laclos is having such a good time just revelling in the sheer sensuality of it all. My penguin edition says here "the sexual innuendo Laclos has made so far about the relationship between Mereuille and Cecile are made more obvious in this passage". Well yes - who wouldn't want to be led, by one distraction or another, to forget her suffering completely? The woman is an evil genius!

I agree and am also surprised by the raciness of it. I suppose male authors would have had considerably more license than female to let their characters sleep around and lead others to.

There is another mention of 'liaison dangereuse' in the French text.

Yes, it makes it into the Penguin version. An enjoyable moment of recognition.

Here:

Thank you @cassandre I enjoyed your comments about the epistolary genre.

And @FuzzyCaoraDhubh I also thought the wood was for hunting or similar

Letter 64: The Chevalier Danceny to Madame de Volanges
(draft enclosed with Letter 66, from the Vicomte to the Marquise)

1. Danceny responds to Madame de Volanges' letter to him.
2. Rather than be apologetic, he suggests that her demand that he stay away from her house will just cause gossip.
3. If he's allowed to visit from time to time, he says he won't take advantage of the occasions to sneak off with Cécile.
4. He won't return the letters because Madame de Volanges learned of their correspondence not from Cécile but from someone else.

Letter 65: The Chevalier Danceny to Cécile de Volanges (sent unsealed to the Marquise de Merteuil with Letter 66 from the Vicomte)

1. Danceny asks Cécile if she knows who betrayed them and if she was too indiscreet.
2. He asks for her approval of the letter he's sending to her mother.
3. He says that Valmont is to be their guardian angel and all their correspondence should go through him. He asks her to put her trust in Valmont, who has been so helpful to him in matters of the heart.

Entitled little whippersnapper isn't he?

Valmont as their guardian angel. What could go wrong? 😬

Merteuille as God-like figure and Valmont as guardian angel. A match made in heaven. Or hell.
And quite right that Merteuille is the senior partner in that relationship.

Letter 66: The Vicomte de Valmont to the Marquise de Merteuil

1. Valmont shares the two previous letters with the Marquise.
2. He advises that, when the time comes, they make some of the letters public.
3. That would make it appear that Cécile was the instigator of the relationship and that her mother negligent in guarding her daughter's virtue.
4. He tells the Marquise that they have to be careful not to ruin the plan for Cécile's marriage to Gercourt. After all, Gercourt finding out that his wife isn't a virgin is the whole point of this scheme.

Letter 67: The Madame de Tourvel to the Vicomte de Valmont

1. Madame de Tourvel writes to Valmont and offers her friendship, which she says is all that she can give.
2. If Valmont keeps talking about his love, she'll lose her confidence in him.
3. After all, what more could an honorable man want than the friendship of an honorable woman?

Making letters public - what can possibly go wrong?

And equally - offering friendship to Valmont. How could that end badly?

I'm seeing Valmont as the snake in Jungle Book. "Trust in meeeeeeee...."

Letter 68: The Vicomte de Valmont to the Madame de Tourvel

1. Refusing only her friendship, Valmont says he must be truthful and he again professes his love.
2. She should be grateful he's doing that, because it shows him to be honest.

Letter 69: Cécile de Volanges to the Chevalier Danceny (note written in pencil and copied by Danceny)

1. Madame de Volanges refuses to speak to her daughter and taken away all her paper and pens so she can't write to Danceny. Like any good teenager, she sneaks some paper from an old letter and writes on that.
2. Cécile's not wild about using Valmont as their go-between, but she'll put up with him for the sake of her love of Danceny.