Dangerous Liaisons and manipulation

1/ In some blog post about Don Quixote, I have noted that Shakespeare and Cervantes are both fascinated by disguise, pretence, and manipulation: if Shakespeare’s plays are full of actors (like Viola, Rosalind, Imogen) and playwrights/ theatre directors (like Iago or the Duke in Measure for Measure), Cervantes’s world is populated with storytellers (almost everyone in Don Quixote), who can be self-creators (like Don Quixote) or pranksters. 

What about the manipulators in Dangerous Liaisons—Merteuil and Valmont? I would say they are actors (in general, but especially in Merteuil’s handling of Prévan and Valmont’s acting towards Tourvel) and theatre directors (the way Merteuil and Valmont engineer the plot of Cécile and Danceny, especially when Merteuil adds conflict and drama) and self-creators (Merteuil writes in letter 81 “I am what I have created”). The two of them constantly compare their little games to theatre; Merteuil says she’s an actress and a writer. 

Here’s Valmont: 

“What more does one have in a larger theatre? Spectators? Ha! Just wait, I shall have plenty of them. Though they may not see me at work, I shall show them the finished product. All that will remain for them to do is admire and applaud.” (Letter 99) 

(translated by Helen Constantine)

Nobody would want to encounter a Valmont or a Merteuil in real life, but in literature, isn’t it fascinating to watch them?  

I especially like that Laclos adds the little Prévan plot. Up to that point, there have been 2 plots going on at the same time—the Cécile and Danceny plot, and the Valmont seducing Tourvel plot—which have started to drag on for a bit—then Laclos gives us the Prévan plot. Now that is fascinating! Before that point, Valmont has dominated the book, utterly thrilling as he switches between different voices for Merteuil, Cécile, and Tourvel. Now is Merteuil’s time to shine. And shine she does. 

2/ I would say that over the past few years, the most striking and compelling female characters I’ve come across in novels are Sử Tương Vân (Shi Xiangyun) and Vương Hy Phượng (Wang Xifeng) in Cao Xueqin’s Hong lou meng (Hồng lâu mộng by Tào Tuyết Cần), Becky Sharp in Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, and now Merteuil in Choderlos de Laclos’s Dangerous Liaisons. Sử Tương Vân (Shi Xiangyun) is the odd one out, delightful and lovable like Shakespeare’s Rosalind and Jane Austen’s Elizabeth Bennet and Tolstoy’s Natasha. 

The other three are manipulative, chameleon-like, immoral, deceitful, and yet utterly bewitching. 

Interestingly enough, I note that they’re all written by male writers. When I think of attempts by George Eliot (Middlemarch, maybe Daniel Deronda) and Edith Wharton (The Custom of the Country), I think they don’t quite succeed—those characters seem real enough, but they don’t bewitch. Jane Austen’s Mary Crawford is much better in comparison—so charming that many impressionable readers out there miss the entire point of the book—but she is not on quite the same level as Becky Sharp or Merteuil, is she? Lady Susan is more manipulative, but that’s quite a thin novel—I have always wished Austen had done something more with that character. 

To go back to Dangerous Liaisons, Laclos’s other female characters are also very good. One reads War and Peace and wonders how Tolstoy enters the mind of a 16-year-old girl in love (Natasha). One reads Dangerous Liaisons and asks the same question about Laclos and 15-year-old Cécile. He depicts well the pure innocence and naïve enthusiasm of a young girl raised in a convent and without experience, without making her sound sappy. 

Tourvel is even better. We don’t even need Valmont’s discovery of her copy of his letter to know—as we read between the lines—that for some time she has fallen for him. 

3/ Dangerous Liaisons has a good structure. Two significant things happen around the mid-point of the novel.

One is—shall I be nice and not reveal the spoiler?—what Valmont does to Cécile. He is the devil. 

His letters to Merteuil afterwards fill me with disgust, especially when he says he has been telling Cécile false stories about her mother: 

“For the girl who does not respect her mother will not respect herself.” (Letter 110)

The other thing is Tourvel’s departure, and the start of her downfall. 

Look at Valmont’s immediate reaction upon finding out she has run away: 

“What strange power draws me to this woman? Are there not a hundred others clamouring for my attention? […] Why chase after the one who flees from us and neglect those who offer themselves? Ah why? I do not know, but I feel it most grievously.” (Letter 100)

In the first half of Dangerous Liaisons, Merteuil and Valmont pull all the strings; in the second half, they slowly and gradually realise they’re not quite the puppeteers they think they are.

In other words, as Valmont turns more demonic in the second half, he also becomes more human.