Almost from the moment of its first appearance, Les Liaisons Dangereuses has been decried as an immoral or at least amoral book. One argument often made (for instance, by P. W. K. Stone, senior lecturer in literature at the University of Kent, in the introduction to his classic 1961 translation of Liaisons) is that the two libertine protagonists, Valmont and Merteuil, dominate the book and cast their spell on the reader, and that despite their punishment at the end (Valmont’s death in a duel, Merteuil’s social disgrace and disfigurement by smallpox), their charm and appeal remain. What’s more, the “punitive” denouement is often dismissed as brief and rushed－and vastly overshadowed by the rest of the story in which we are lured into rooting for the villains to succeed, applauding their triumphs, and laughing at their cynical wit. The wages of sin, in other words, are far less glamorous and memorable than the sin itself.

Lastly, while the wicked are punished, virtue does not triumph: Madame de Tourvel, the good woman seduced by Valmont, dies after he abandons her at Merteuil’s instigation; the libertines’ other two victims, Cécile and her true love the Chevalier Danceny, end up self-exiled from the world, she in a convent and he in the order of the Knights of Malta. The other two major characters, Cécile’s mother Mme de Volanges and Valmont’s aunt Mme de Rosemonde (both of whom have their faults but are not sociopaths), are left cruelly bereft: both lose their dear friend Mme de Tourvel, Volanges more or less loses her daughter, and Rosemonde is left not only to mourn her beloved nephew but to face the fact that he was a pretty terrible person.

It is very true that virtue does not fare well in Liaisons. It is equally true that the punishment of vice is dubious. Merteuil’s fate, I will argue in a future post, is more open-ended than is generally assumed. Valmont arguably dies just as he starts making baby steps toward being a decent (or semi-decent) human being. What’s more, the vacancy left by Valmont is quickly occupied by Prévan, whose triumph literally accompanies Merteuil’s downfall: the disclosure of her letters exonerates him from her accusation of attempted rape which resulted in his ostracism, and the crowd that hisses and boos her at the theater demonstratively cheers and applauds him. This is especially significant since, in my view, Prévan is the book’s most distilled representation of libertine evil; his triumphant comeback alone negates the idea that the ending represents a defeat and punishment of vice. (If, as is often believed, Valmont’s death is basically suicide by Danceny, one could argue that he is undone by his humanity; Prévan may well be without that fatal flaw.)

At the same time, to see Liaisons as positive or even neutral about libertinism would be a major mistake. Ultimately, it is the novel’s libertine antiheroes who ruthlessly expose libertinism－the systematic pursuit of sex without love－as profoundly damaging and incompatible with human welfare.

It has been said (by André Malraux, among others) that Valmont and Merteuil are not merely players but ideologues of libertinism. To some extent, that is certainly true. Both speak of their “principles”; Merteuil, in particular (Letter 81) tells her life story as a self-made woman with a self-made philosophy. The essence of that philosophy is that love is just a fig leaf for sex. In Letter 81, Merteuil says that the sexual experimentation in which she engaged on the sly as the teenage wife of an ailing older man taught her that “love, which is often vaunted as the cause of our pleasures, is only the pretext for them”; she also expresses blistering scorn for sentimental women who “endlessly confuse love and the lover” and “in their foolish delusions, believe that the man with whom they have sought pleasure can be its one and only source.” Likewise, Valmont, bothered by the strange feelings he’s having for Mme de Tourvel－feelings that mysteriously refuse to go away after he has finally bedded her－is aghast at the “humiliation” of being in love. If his happiness depends on Tourvel, then he would have to accept that he is not fully self-sufficient and that “the ability to make me enjoy [happiness] in all its intensity may be reserved to this or that woman to the exclusion of others.” (Letter 125) In other words, women (or, for Merteuil, men) are interchangeable.

There’s only one problem: both of these libertine ideologues repeatedly admit that the fruits of their “principles” are deeply unsatisfying. Valmont says it early on, in Letter 6, when he first tries to justify to the marquise his attraction to Tourvel:

Let’s be honest: in our affairs, as cold as they are casual, what we call happiness is hardly even a pleasure. Shall I tell you something? I believed that my heart was quite withered, and, finding nothing left but sensuality, I complained of a premature old age. Mme de Tourvel has restored to me the charming illusions of youth. Next to her, I do not need to take pleasure to be happy.

Letter 6

(Incidentally, the two most recent translations of the novel－the 1995 one by Douglas Parmée and the 2007 one by Helen Constantine－translate “in our affairs” [dans nos arrangements] as “in our mutual accommodations” and “in our relationship,” so that Valmont appears to refer to his relationship with Merteuil. Absolutely not: first of all, they are not in a relationship anymore, and secondly, that would have been incredibly insulting. Valmont does, on several occasions, make implicitly insulting comments to Merteuil which seem to equate her with “easy women”; but he’s never that overtly rude.)

Merteuil promptly accuses him of being in love and repeatedly taunts him about abandoning his “principles.” But much later, she delivers a justly famous little lecture on sex and love which shows that her own commitment to libertine principles is also in question:

Have you never yet noticed that pleasure, which is, in effect, the sole driver of the union between man and woman, is nonetheless not enough to form a relationship between them? and that, while it may be preceded by desire which attracts, it is no less surely followed by a disgust that repels? This is a law of nature which only love can change; and does love happen at will? Yet it is always required, and this would be quite awkward if people hadn’t realized that fortunately love needs to exist only on one side. This reduces the problem by half, and without much of a loss: in effect, one person enjoys the happiness of loving, the other of pleasing, which is admittedly somewhat less intense, but to which is added the pleasure of deception; that restores the balance, and everything falls into place.

Letter 131

Even more remarkably, as the Valmont/Merteuil partnership unravels later, the marquise, who has goaded Valmont into cruelly discarding Mme de Tourvel for the sake of libertine principles－and who then takes up with Danceny while denying Valmont his “reward” of a renewed relationship with her－delivers a savage, angry indictment of those very same libertine principles:

But what does it matter to you? You will always get revenge against your rival. He’ll have done no worse to your mistress than you have done to his; and after all, isn’t one woman as good as the next? those are your principles. Even one who is tender-hearted and loving, who exists only for you and who finally dies of love and grief will be just as readily sacrificed to a random whim, to the fear of being teased a little; and then you expect to be humored! Ah, that’s not fair.

Letter 152

The italicized parts are Merteuil’s sarcastic quotes of Valmont’s earlier references to Tourvel. There is, of course, a massive irony here: having cajoled, taunted and manipulated Valmont into dropping Tourvel with the implied promise that it’s the price of getting Merteuil back, Merteuil then throws his treatment of Tourvel back in his face as a reason to reject him. This isn’t, I think, sheer perversity on her part, let alone belated solidarity with Tourvel. (In the 2011 book The Libertine’s Nemesis: The Prude in Clarissa and the roman libertin, University of Kent professor James Fowler offers the theory that toward the end of the novel Merteuil adopts the “prude” persona herself and becomes in a sense Tourvel’s avenger; but while Fowler has some interesting observations, I don’t find the theory convincing.) It’s more that insofar as she wants Valmont to love her (more on that later), getting him to drop Tourvel turns out to be self-defeating: it convinces her that he’s incapable of loving anyone.

I think one key to understanding Laclos’ libertines is that, while they espouse “principles” that reduce other humans (of the opposite sex) to living sex toys－interchangeable except inasmuch as some are prettier and more glamorous than others － they certainly don’t want to be interchangeable living sex toys for anyone else. Merteuil is furious when she feels that Valmont wants her to be part of his harem. Meanwhile, Valmont, in a letter to Merteuil trying to rationalize his continued attachment to Tourvel, describes her as a “rare” woman precisely because, unlike most women of his social milieu, she actually loves the person of her lover, not the pleasure or prestige he can offer:

First of all, for many women, pleasure is always pleasure, and is never anything more than that; and with those women, whatever titles they bestow on us, we are never anything more than functionaries, mere agents whose merit is only in their labor and among whom the one who does the most is always the best.

Letter 133

An even larger class of women, Valmont goes on to say, are interested primarily in status: a lover’s “celebrity” and/or the satisfaction of stealing him from another woman. Tourvel, on the other hand, is a woman for whom love is all about her lover.

Merteuil’s response to this letter, by the way, is snippy and annoyed－probably at least in part because of this passage, even though she doesn’t mention it. But it would have to sting: She prides herself on being superior to other women because she doesn’t confuse “love” with the lover; and here Valmont just casually placed her in a large group of women for whom “pleasure is always pleasure” and the lover is merely instrumental.

It is also notable that Valmont’s penultimate letter, written two days before his death－to Danceny, in order to get him to break his rendezvous with Merteuil and spend the night with his true love, Cécile－contains within it an explicit repudiation of libertinism. Obviously, we don’t know how sincere it is, since it’s a performance for Danceny’s benefit (the usual difficulty in assessing Valmont’s motives). But it is, nonetheless, a remarkable piece of writing. To goad Danceny, Valmont pretends that Danceny is the man with (newly acquired) libertine principles, interpreting his affair with Merteuil as evidence that he has traded the role of romantic lover for that of gallant adventurer. (The French phrase, homme à bonnes fortunes－literally “man of good fortunes” － had a very specific meaning at the time: not a mere womanizer, but a man who “gets lucky” with nice women who won’t give it up for just anyone.) He refers with a straight face to “your new principles, which I readily admit are to some extent also mine,” and then counsels Danceny that even those principles would favor accepting Cécile’s invitation: if nothing else, it’s one more woman to add to the score. The obvious goal is not only to have some fun at Danceny’s expense, but to make him see his affair with Merteuil as debauchery rather than romance.

At the end of this letter, Valmont (who has evidently told Danceny earlier that Mme de Tourvel has broken off their liaison because of his infidelity) writes:

To this, I will also add that I regret Mme de Tourvel; I am in despair at being separated from her; I would gladly sacrifice half my life for the happiness of devoting the other half to her. Ah, believe me, only love can make one happy!

Letter 155

The ambiguity is obvious: we can’t be sure whether Valmont’s words are a ploy to nudge Danceny toward choosing Cécile or a genuine cri de coeur (or both). Yet, interestingly, in the taunting letter to Merteuil that turns out to be his last, Valmont notes that the “reflections” he added to guide Danceny’s choice “were pointless,” since an invitation from Cécile was enough. Could Danceny be only a pretext for Valmont to verbalize his belated rejection of the libertine’s creed?

(In his 1972 article, “Laclos and the Denouement of Les Liaisons Dangereuses,” University of Leeds scholar David Coward scoffs at this line－which he regards as “obviously sincere”－as Laclos’ contrived throwback to the “Rousseauistic idealism” which Valmont has denied throughout the novel. “That he should be surprised by love is at once psychologically plausible and an ironic comment on his attitudes,” writes Coward, “but that he should whimper after ‘le bonheur’ [happiness] is both out of character and a surprising surrender to that sentimentality which he has made a point of mocking.” But in fact, Valmont speaks quite frequently of le bonheur－or of être heureux, being happy－all along, and alternately mocks and yields to sentimentality.)

It is also worth noting that, while Laclos’ libertines are charismatic, witty and smart, the novel also subtly or not-so-subtly undercuts them. This is particularly true of Valmont: For all the glamor of the dashing rake and the elements of the tragic antihero, his character also offers a ruthless deconstruction of the male libertine－partly by Merteuil, who is always needling and goading him. When recounting her adventure with Prévan, Merteuil sarcastically suggests that libertines like Prévan and Valmont are a predictable type acting from a well-rehearsed and well-worn script:

How convenient it is to deal with your kind, the men of principle! A novice in love may sometimes disconcert you with his shyness, or catch you off-guard with a passionate outburst; it’s a fever that, like any other, has its chills and its heat and varies in its symptoms. But your well-ordered forward march is so easily predicted! The arrival, the manner, the tone, the speeches－I had known it all the evening before.

Letter 85

(Earlier, Merteuil has explicitly put Valmont in the same category: recounting Prévan’s moves to court her, she adds as a wry aside, “I ask you, what could you have done better?”)

It’s not that Valmont doesn’t charm the reader. He’s smart, perceptive and funny, and his often nasty wit at the expense of lesser mortals becomes a guilty pleasure. And yet there are also moments when the hilarity is at his expense. He is incredibly vain (but insists he’s not). He likes to drop hints about his sexual prowess (e.g., in Letter 71 while recounting a tryst with a former lover: “Since I am not at all vain, I will not dwell on the details of the night; but you know me, and I was pleased with myself”). The obsession with sexual athleticism takes an especially pathetic turn when Valmont mentions to Merteuil that his nightly sessions with Cécile are wearing him out because he wants her to remember him as “superior to all other men” over the course of her future career as a woman of easy virtue. Leaving aside the predatory aspects of the Valmont/Cécile relationship (by then, at least, she is an enthusiastic participant), just ponder the fact that our proto-Nietzschean Übermensch of sex is literally driving himself to exhaustion night after night trying to impress a ditzy teenager.

There’s also the simple fact that, in the Valmont/Merteuil duo, she is clearly dominant. Valmont, who postures a great about being the master of his fate, is in fact easily manipulated by Merteuil, who knows exactly which buttons to push, and usually oblivious to her manipulations. This becomes obvious early on: in Letter 10, Merteuil, piqued by Valmont’s refusal to follow her orders (she wants him to return to Paris to seduce Cécile; he wants to stay at his aunt’s to pursue Tourvel), offers a detailed account of her evening with the Chevalier de Belleroche at her petite maison, or suburban villa－not sexually explicit (almost nothing in Liaisons is), but innuendo-laden and tantalizing. In Letter 15, Valmont replies that reading her letter strongly tempted him to return to Paris at least for a day and beg her for an infidelity to the chevalier: “Do you know that you made me jealous of him?” (Silly boy, of course she knows; that was the idea.)

Toward the end of the novel, Valmont’s supposed supreme act of libertine self-assertion－his brutal rejection of Tourvel－is literally scripted for him by Merteuil. The (in)famous “Ce n’est pas ma faute” letter in Letter 141, which begins with the words “One gets bored with everything, my angel; it is a law of nature,” is written by Merteuil and sent to Valmont as part of an “I’ve got this friend…” story about a man entangled with an embarrassing mistress and a wise female friend who comes to his aid by sending him a “lettre de rupture” (obviously intended for the mistress). Valmont takes the very obvious hint, copies the letter and sends it to Tourvel.

That letter is in fact a kind of libertine credo, stated in the tritest terms possible: a man who pursues a virtuous woman will lose interest once she’s surrendered her virtue; male constancy lasts only as long as female resistance; the best advice to an abandoned woman is to take another lover; one takes a woman with pleasure and leaves her without regret; “thus goes the world.” By sending it, Valmont ostensibly reclaims his status as the triumphant libertine: in Letter 144, he tells Merteuil that this “abrupt and brilliant rupture” will signal his return to the social scene “in a new blaze of glory.” But, of course, he was in fact only channeling Merteuil to meet her challenge and get back into her good graces－and in her reply, Merteuil reveals that the victory is actually hers, and it’s over him.

Merteuil is a somewhat more complicated case. Unlike Valmont, she’s not a “type.” (Not that Valmont is merely a type, but the male libertine for whom seducing women is both a “science” and a calling is a familiar 18th Century figure both in real life and in literature; Clarissa Harlowe‘s Lovelace is his most notorious predecessor.) On the contrary, she is Laclos’ brilliant original creation: the libertine woman in conscious rebellion against the male-dominated social order. She is, in many ways, more dazzling and fascinating than Valmont. (She’s smarter, certainly.) And yet on many occasions, Laclos subtly undercuts her even before her “punishment” at the end.

There’s a particularly striking example in Letter 74, in which Merteuil responds to Valmont’s account (in Letter 71) of his tryst with a former mistress, the Vicomtesse de M., while they are both guests at another woman’s château. The Vicomtesse has a room between her husband and her current lover; Valmont persuades her to pick a fight with her lover and spend the night with him instead. Then, she locks herself out of her room and he cleverly rescues her. Valmont tells Merteuil she can share the story and let “the public,” i.e. Parisian high society, enjoy it as well－but suggests that the identity of “its heroine” should be protected for now. In response, Merteuil insists that the Vicomtesse must be (sorry about the anachronistic metaphor) thrown under the bus: Firstly, “this woman doesn’t deserve such decent treatment”; secondly, she’d like a pretext to drop the Vicomtesse from her social circle for various reasons, including the fact that current boy toy the Chevalier de Belleroche finds her too attractive, and a scandal is as good a reason as any. In that moment, Merteuil with her pretensions to godlike superiority over most humans is suddenly revealed as pettily vicious and catty－whether her jealousy is really over Belleroche, or over Valmont, or both. This incident also starkly exposes the hypocrisy of Merteuil’s denunciations of the double standard in Letter 81: in this instance, she is quite consciously using that very double standard to bring down a potential female rival.

What’s more, Laclos makes it evident that despite her steely and superior intelligence, Merteuil, much like Valmont, is pursuing an ultimately self-defeating strategy that repeatedly paints her into a corner. She maintains a virtuous image and makes each of her lovers believe that he’s the only lover she has ever had; yet she is also incensed when the Chevalier de Belleroche’s takes her seriously:

I have noticed, above all, the insulting confidence he has in me and the complacency with which he assumes I am his forever. I find this truly humiliating. How little he must think of me if he thinks he has enough worth to keep me securely attached! Did he not tell me recently that I could have never loved anyone but him? Oh! At that point, it took all my prudence not to disabuse him on the spot by telling him how things stood. There’s an amusing gentleman to claim exclusive rights!

Letter 113

She scorns love but also admits that without it－at least on one side－pleasure soon turns to disgust. She almost certainly wants Valmont’s love but pushes him to live up to the libertine code in a way that persuades her he’s incapable of the love she wants from him. Even without her unmasking and ruin, Merteuil would still be a loser at the end of the book －if only because, without Valmont, she has no audience, no one to appreciate her brilliance and applaud her glory. For Merteuil as well as for Valmont, libertinism is, in the end, a losing proposition.