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...

Yes! That's irritating!
And Danceny is still an annoying twat.
He conveniently forgot about his liaison with Merteuil when he became sanctimonious at the end.

My version has a couple of deleted letters at the end.
Has this book totally corrupted my imagination or is the second letter talking about masturbation?

It might not have been about individual economic power. Could be more that the common folk lived lives of unrelenting poverty but their labour enabled the aristocracy to swan around living lives of utter decadence.

Yes, huge thanks to @Tarahumara and everyone else who has posted summaries. I really lost the plot after our extended summer break and drifted into letting others do the heavy lifting on the thread, so massive thanks to everyone who picked it up and kept us going. I probably wouldn't lead a read along again, though I hope someone else does, I think they are one of the very best things mumsnet has to offer.

I think the killer for me was the fallow period where the book was a bit boring and engagement fell off. I had a few weeks of feeling like I was talking to myself and got a bit disheartened. This happened with Ruth as well but I was committed to writing the summaries and I stuck with it. I think the existence of Schmoop let me take a back seat this time. I'm so glad the thread survived and that we managed to finish the book.

Do you mean the first deleted letter? Tourvel to Valmont? Yes, I think you might be right though I had just read it as overblown melodrama. That would explain why the publisher had replaced it with a footnote too.

You wouldn't suspect it, had the book not been so very detailed and shocking in its pretty explicit account of sexual activity that we might not expect in literature until perhaps the 1960s.

It makes me question my assessment of the book again - maybe it is a warning to young women to beware the charming snake, but it is surely also the closest many readers would get to erotica? The pious author with his awful warnings is definitely having his cake and eating it here!

Interesting points, Bishy, especially your comments about the poor ordinary folk living a hand to mouth existence when others lived a decadent life. Very early on in the book Valmont made a big gesture to a woman when he gave her a few coins the time when he was trying to impress Tourvel. Crumbs from his table!

I think those two letters are weak. I'm glad they were dropped. Interesting interpretation! I would probably have leant towards melodrama but who knows! I missed the miscarriage reference at the time. It was a veiled reference in the French text.

I think we did well to keep the thread going with small number of readers. We might look into starting up again in the new year.

I agree that one of the most surprising things to me about reading this book is all the naughty things that people got up to for a book written so long ago. Maybe you're right Bishy that this was part of its appeal!

Danceny is still an annoying twat 😂 this is another excellent point!

😅

They don't have economic power over the other characters in the book, (apart from the servants, who they can bribe or blackmail like pawns) because all the protagonists are upper class, but the sexual immorality of the upper classes was a feature in revolutionary pamphlets.

Marie Antoinette in particular was the subject of near-pornographic abuse for her rumoured (almost certainly completely fictitious) sexual shenanigans.

She was allegedly having affairs with male relatives, sleeping with her female friends, and manipulating Louis.

Looking back, it is an amazingly sophisticated book. The way that we unpick the true motivations behind the words on the paper for a whole host of characters, never seeing the inside of their heads, only ever the faces they present to different audiences. And the pedantic way he enables every single letter to come into the hands of Madame de Rosemonde at the end.

Rereading it's just as much fun as it was in the past, but reading with an older and post #MeToo eye makes me more sensitive to how terrible Cecile's treatment is, and how cruel Merteuil is.

And so we have come to the end of Dangerous Liaisons. Thanks to everyone who joined us, and particularly to @Tarahumara and anyone else who took over the Schmoop updates after I went on holiday and literally lost the plot.

I went searching for a suitable image to mark the end of what has been an amazing and thought provoking book, and as always, a wider ranging and well informed discussion. I came across a few items of DL ephemera which I will share here to mark the end of the thread.

If anyone does feel inspired to suggest another readalong in the New Year, it would be great if you could link it to it here so we all get notifications.

Glen Close signed photo £144 on Etsy...

Tiny Book Earrings Etsy 17.75

Mug, Etsy £8.40

Slightly grubby Folio Edition, Ebay, 5.99

Poster, Danish film version. Ebay $120

Poster, Japanese film version, ebay £60.

I'll stop now...

Thank you @BishyBarnyBee
I enjoyed that. I quite like the mug!

Finally caught up and finished, thanks to @BishyBarnyBee for starting the thread and @Tarahumara and others for the summaries, sometimes I really rely on these for knowing what's going on!

I'm up for another readalong (which I will no doubt fall behind on too, seems to be my default setting 🙈)

Yay @InTheCludgie I'm glad you caught up and finished! It was a good one. Thanks to all. I enjoyed it.

I enjoyed the merch links Bishy! Thank you for setting this up, it’s been fun.

Thanks for your responses Bishy and Vicountess, sorry to have been awol this week, think I got the wrong end of the stick with the introduction I’d read.

Wondering whether to watch a tv/film adaptation if there’s anything available, has anyone done so?

Checking in. I’ve not finished, but don’t want to miss any further reading updates.

Where have you got to Agualusa? How are you finding it?

The book was pretty much unknown in the English speaking world before Christopher Hampton adapted it very faithfully into a successful play, which made Alan Rickman into a star as a supernaturally sexy Valmont. The play was then made into the huge and brilliant Malkovich / Close / Pfeiffer / Reeves / Thurman movie, which you can rent from Amazon Prime for 2.50 but doesn't seem to be available for free.

It was simultaneously made into a rival movie called Valmont starring Colin Firth and directed by Milos "Amadeus" Forman which sank without trace and you can't even rent anywhere AFAIK.

Cruel Intentions is an adaptation into a US teen drama, by all accounts a cult classic of its kind, though I've never got round to watching it. Notoriously won Best Kiss at the MTV awards for Sarah Michelle Gellar (Merteuil) vs Selma Blair (Cecile). Available for free on Amazon Prime if you're a subscriber or Tubi (free ad-supported platform).