Roll On Robespierre

Books read this week: Les Liasons Dangereuses 7/10 (Choderlos de Laclos)

There are some societies that are so dysfunctional and damaging to their members, so fundamentally broken, that any accurate depiction of that society must necessarily condemn it; the stifling stupidity of the Russian provincial aristocracy in Gogol's Dead Souls is one such, and the portrait of the twisted world occupied by aristocrats of the French ancien regime given by Laclos' Les Liasons Dangereuses is another.

We have here in the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont some of the most interesting, entertaining and downright evil villains in all of fiction; master manipulators, playing  games with the lives and livelihoods of others not for profit, but just because they're bored, and society denies them any other outlet for their talents. The epistolary framing of the novel makes discerning the characters underlying motivations difficult; every letter is written is elicit a response, and all of the characters are lying, if only to themselves. It is an interesting question how far Merteuil has herself become caught up in her own web; Valmont's entanglement is much clearer. The first time I read the book, I thought that her destruction of Valmont was motivated by love; she loves Valmont, and she can't bear to see him in love with anyone else, but she's also too damaged to let him in. This time, I'm less sure of that interpretation; I felt that she destroyed Valmont just for kicks.

We should not forget that they are both, Valmont and Merteuil, very damaged people; the perfect example of what happens when intelligent, motivated people are denied any outlet for their talents. I have always felt Valmont to be somewhat more sympathetic than Merteuil; he does, at least, have a moment of redemption at the end. But perhaps that is a reaction less to their relative merits, and more to social conditioning (or, as my feminist friends would say, the patriarchy); we are conditioned to expect women to be care givers; this makes the truly selfish, amoral manipulator a more disturbing figure if they are female. So when, in an early letter, Merteuil says to Valmont "why don't you just rape her", it is both disturbing and evil; the same sentiment from a male author I would find just evil. In much the same way, in Vanity Fair Becky Sharp's total indifference to her children appears monstrous; we would be far more forgiving of a neglectful father.

It is also interesting that the ordinary people of France make only one appearance in these pages; when Valmont decides that he must appear virtuous before the Presidente de Tourvel, he seeks out a local family about to be evicted for lack of a trifling sum and pays their debts; it is the only time we see any of the characters pay even a little attention to the world outside their little games.

Even though this book is the best argument for storming the Bastille ever written, one can't help but feel a little sorry for the characters; it is not, fundmentally, their fault that they are in the positions they have been placed in; afterall, the Marquis de Sade became a good revolutionary. That said, compared with Valmont and Meteuil, Sade was a saint; a very, very disturbing saint, but a saint nevertheless.

My edition is an old Penguin classics translation from the early 60s by PWK Stone; as I've said before, I do really rate the Penguin translations.