Dangerous Liaisons

The novel’s Preface is important because it attempts to give the letters a greater sense of reality. Though the work is fiction, it paralleled reality enough that many readers at the time suspected it was a roman à clef —a novel with a key where fictitious characters represent real people, with the key being the similarities between the fictitious and non-fictitious aspects of the novel. Furthermore, the Preface predicts and addresses much of the criticism a novel about depravity would elicit from 18th-century French society, providing a moral defense for publishing such a novel.

The first few letters establish the main characters in the novel and its style. The entire novel is composed of a series of letters between the protagonists and the secondary and tertiary characters. The importance, depth, advantages, etc., inherent in using the epistolary form are discussed in greater detail in the Themes section of the guide. The epistolary form negates the role of a traditional narrator. In this case, the primary narrator is the editor and publisher of the letters, the one who wrote the Preface.

Subsequently, because the characters speak for themselves and write to several different individuals, an ambiguity quickly arises regarding truth. The characters all have their own agendas, and the extent to which they reveal the truth of their emotions, their plans, and their opinions is all colored by the fact that all of them have a reason not to divulge the full truth, or even a need to deceive others in order to protect themselves. This is most evident in the letters between the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont. However, it slowly becomes clear that all of the characters, even the most virtuous, hold back information or mislead their readers to some extent.

The first character the reader is introduced to is Cécile Volanges. She represents the stereotypical young, aristocratic Frenchwoman of the late 18th century. Like many young women from the aristocracy, she was sent at a very young age to a convent. There she was not only educated in religion and proper decorum, but her virginity and virtue were kept safeguarded until the time she would be married. This type of upbringing was crucial for much of the aristocracy because a proper young virginal woman would be much desired as a bride.

Cécile, like many other girls in her situation, has been arranged to marry a man of means and social standing advantageous to her family, worthy of her own social standing within the aristocratic hierarchy. Her expected role as a wife will be to provide him with children (especially a male heir), and to increase in social status. In French, this type of marriage was called mariage de convenance (“marriage of convenience”), and it is a point of contention and criticism in the background of the novel.

As a result of her sheltered upbringing, Cécile is not only innocent in the ways of the world, but also very naïve. It is this innocence and naïveté that gets her into so much trouble, but it is also what imbues her characterization with a degree of sympathy and vulnerability that is missing from most of the other characters. She will be taken advantage of and ruined for the whims of the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont because she has not been raised to understand the world around her and is too trusting of others. Cécile’s initial lack of information about her own marriage and her mention of not being permitted to wear “rouge” (i.e., blush) emphasize how she is, even before her seduction, a pawn in the control of more powerful individuals, who dictate who she will marry and how she presents herself to the world. Cécile’s situation therefore embodies both the disempowerment of many young women of her class and the dangers she faces due to this strictly controlled upbringing.

The initial letters also establish the setting for the novel. There is a certain amount of censorship inherent in the novel, something that was ubiquitous in novels at the time. The specific year in which the novel takes place is not given, simply the day, the month, and the year written as “17**.” However, because the book’s publication date was 1782, it is safe to assume that the events take place around this time. The censorship further reinforces the roman à clef idea: If there is a need to use fictitious characters to distance the novel from real persons, there is a need for the year to be inexact as well, since a precise year would send readers looking for similar events from that time. Locations are also censored. Paris is not censored since Paris was a metropolis at the time and the center of French politics and society. However, the specific chateaus (large estates) alluded to in the story are not named—this would be too specific.

The characters, with the sole exceptions being Cécile Volanges and Sophie Carnay, are never referred to by their names, only by their titles—even Danceny, who is of a much lower social status than the others. He is always Chevalier (Knight) Danceny. For ease of reading, this guide tends to refer to the Marquise de Merteuil as Merteuil, and the Vicomte de Valmont as Valmont. Nevertheless, it should always be kept in mind that this social hierarchy is of extreme importance in 18th-century France because it was a leading cause of the Revolution in 1789, just seven years after the novel’s publication (see: Background). The luxurious and sexually dissolute lives of Merteuil and Valmont represent many of the critical stereotypes circulating about the aristocracy at this time. The behavior of both Merteuil and Valmont will, throughout the novel’s entirety, exemplify the theme Libertinism in Pre-Revolutionary French Society and its related theme, The Need for Morality.

Even though the characters are on extremely familiar and intimate terms with one another, they continue to maintain the distance and respect of titles. The greatest examples of this are Merteuil and Valmont, who not only scheme together but have been lovers, and Valmont and Madame de Rosemonde, who are relatives but do not refer to one another by their first names. When Valmont writes to Merteuil, he keeps the letters in a formal style, even when discussing highly intimate matters with her.

There is only one instance, later in the novel, when Valmont addresses Merteuil with the French second-person familiar form tu, whereas most of the time, Merteuil and Valmont address one another as vous (the more polite and formal form of addressing someone). This important distinction is lost in translation since modern English has done away with these formal/informal forms, but it is a significant aspect of their characterization and the tone of their correspondence: It suggests that the physical intimacy they previously shared and even their current scheming has not resulted in any genuine emotional connection between them. Instead, both characters exist in an amoral emotional and physical landscape, in which relationships are shallow and steeped in cynicism and self-interest above all other things.