The problem of education is central to Les Liaisons dangereuses and is part of its thematics of power and sexuality. In addition, Laclos's attitude toward education may provide a way to view the question of the morality or immorality of the novel. In the Préface du Rédacteur, Laclos agrees with the mother who told him that she read the manuscript of Les Liaisons dangereuses and found it an ideal pre-nuptial education for a young woman: “Je croirais … rendre un vrai service à ma fille, en lui donnant ce Livre le jour de son mariage.”¹ The Préface, then, already anticipates the question of women's education and the relation between education and sexuality. The novel itself begins under the sign of education. Cécile, still something of a Lockean tabula rasa after her convent education, is unprepared for life and society. Will she be seduced by Valmont or married to Gercourt? It might seem as if the pretext or even the motor of the plot is the education of Gercourt. Madame de Merteuil seeks to expose his hypocritical illusions and his faith in a convent education as a guarantee of a wife's fidelity. However, Laclos is interested not in the education of Gercourt, but rather in the problem of education for women in a society where women are neither free nor equal.

In 1783, the year after the publication of Les Liaisons dangereuses, Laclos began composing three essays on women's education which remained unpublished until 1904.² In the first essay, Laclos discusses the meaning of the word “education.” Although he does not specifically mention its Latin root, he does insist, in his definition, upon the two concepts of development (ducere) and direction (ex): “Ou le mot éducation ne présente aucun sens, ou l’on ne peut l’entendre que du développement des facultés vers l’utilité sociale.”³ Laclos then describes two distortions of education, two ways in which education can be perverted: “si au lieu d’étendre les facultés on les restreint, … ce n’est plus éducation, c’est dépravation; si au lieu de les diriger vers l’utilité sociale on les replie sur l’individu, c’est seulement alors instinct perfectionné” (p. 404). One cannot say that an individual is educated if his faculties are restrained: this is “dépravation” for Laclos, an unusual sense of the word, but I shall adopt it here. If, on the other hand, the individual's faculties are indeed developed but for his benefit only and not for the social good, Laclos calls this “instinct perfectionné.”

The most perverse form of education, which goes unmentioned in this essay and yet plays the greatest role in Les Liaisons dangereuses, is seduction. The words “seduction” and “education” share the same Latin root, but whereas education leads the student forth, seduction (se-ducere) leads the student astray. In Les Liaisons dangereuses, seduction, corruption, and education are virtually inseparable.

The educator and the seducer are one and the same person. Valmont and Madame de Merteuil do not dissociate their interest in education from their devotion to seduction. And pupils like Cécile and Danceny discover sooner or later that they have been not only educated but also seduced. Being a pupil and being the victim of a seduction seem to be equally demeaning conditions. Even Valmont will discover himself in the double situation of pupil and victim of seduction.

Madame de Merteuil understands clearly the interrelationship between education and seduction and uses this knowledge to ensure her own freedom and control over others. She is certainly never seduced, and she is educated by no one but herself. She refuses to yield to the will of another, whether educator or seducer. She will make others be object to her subject: she herself will never be object. There is no Other in her education of herself: no one else will touch her mind or her heart. She is her own “ouvrage”: “Je n’avais à moi que ma pensée, et je m’indignais qu’on pût me la ravir ou me la surprendre contre ma volonté … non contente de ne plus me laisser pénétrer, je m’amusais à me montrer sous des formes différentes” (pp. 176-77). The sexual resonances of words like “ravir” and “pénétrer” reveal the parallels between seduction and education. Yielding the autonomy and integrity of her mind to another would be the intellectual equivalent of seduction or rape; indeed, in this case, the teacher is considered perhaps even more dangerous than the seducer.

For the Marquise, education is a way to gain mastery over herself and control over others. Such education is completely self-contained. This special kind of narcissism seems to be what Laclos called “instinct perfectionné.” The individual's faculties are not directed toward a social good. Rather, “on les replie sur l’individu.” Indeed, the knowledge Madame de Merteuil seeks to gain from her education has no social function whatsoever. Her desire for knowledge is inseparable from her desire to understand pleasure. For her, understanding sexuality all but replaces enjoying its physicality: “Ma tête seule fermentait; je ne désirais pas de jouir, je voulais savoir; le désir de m’instruire m’en suggéra les moyens” (p. 177). The locus of this education is not the classroom but the bed, and her own initiation into sexuality is an initiation of the mind far more than of the body: “Cette première nuit, dont on se fait pour l’ordinaire une idée si cruelle ou si douce, ne me présentait qu’une occasion d’expérience: douleur et plaisir, j’observai tout exactement, et ne voyais dans ces diverses sensations, que des faits à recueillir et à méditer” (p. 178). Since she has banished all others from participation in her education, even in bed she makes no mention of the Other.

Education, inseparable from Eros, is also inseparable, for the Marquise, from theatre: “Cette utile curiosité, en servant à m’instruire, m’apprit encore à dissimuler” (p. 176). She studies the art of the mask: “Ressentais-je quelque chagrin, je m’étudiais à prendre l’air de la sérénité, même celui de la joie” (p. 176). She uses the works of novelists, philosophers, and strict moralists in order to understand how, respectively, one could behave, how one should think, and how one must appear: “J’etudiai nos mœurs dans les romans; nos opinions dans les philosophes; je cherchai même dans les moralistes les plus sévères ce qu’ils exigeaient de nous, et je m’assurai ainsi de ce qu’on pouvait faire, de ce qu’on devait penser, et de ce qu’il fallait paraître” (p. 178-79). Education, sexuality, and role-playing all converge when Madame de Merteuil prepares a seduction. She then turns to books to help her play her sexual role: “je lis un chapitre du Sopha, une lettre d’Héloïse et deux Contes de La Fontaine, pour recorder les différents tons que je voulais prendre” (p. 30).

However, Madame de Merteuil also recognizes that education and sexuality are not always interrelated. In fact, the very process of aging ultimately obliges women to reconsider their education seriously, in a new and different, non-sexual, light. As her sexual attractiveness diminishes, the intelligent older woman will appreciate the importance of the life of the mind:

C’est de quarante à cinquante ans que le désespoir de voir leur figure se flétrir, la rage de se sentir obligées d’abandonner des prétentions et des plaisirs auxquels elles tiennent encore, rendent presque toutes les femmes bégueules et acariâtres. Il leur faut ce long intervalle pour faire en entier ce grand sacrifice: mais dès qu’il est consommé, toutes se partagent en deux classes.

La plus nombreuse, celle des femmes qui n’ont eu pour elles que leur figure et leur jeunesse, tombe dans une imbécile apathie. …

L’autre classe, beaucoup plus rare, mais véritablement précieuse, est celle des femmes qui, ayant eu un caractère et n’ayant pas négligé de nourrir leur raison, savent se créer une existence, quand celle de la nature leur manque; et prennent le parti de mettre à leur esprit, les parures qu’elles employaient avant pour leur figure. (pp. 268-69)

Madame de Merteuil's stance is usually rigorously individualistic. She writes to Valmont: “ne me confondez plus avec les autres femmes” (p. 190). However, in this discourse, she perceives aging primarily as a social problem and realizes that, at least in this regard, her destiny is inevitably similar to that of other women and that there is nothing she can do to control or alter this situation. In her analysis, Madame de Merteuil unexpectedly separates education and sexuality, indeed opposes one to the other. But this is, of course, precisely a function of the nature of the problem of aging for women.⁴

In addition, although the Marquise makes a point of refusing all affective bonds with men, she seems to have genuine affection for certain older women and to enjoy their company: “ayant toujours recherché les vieilles femmes, dont j’ai reconnu de bonne heure l’utilité des suffrages, j’ai rencontré plusieurs d’entre elles auprès de qui l’inclination me ramenait autant que l’intérêt” (p. 269). Madame de Merteuil is thus not without female role models: there are women whose judgment, goodness, intelligence, and understanding she admires. And yet, her own attempt to be the role model of another woman, to educate Cécile, and make of her a free woman, becomes a purely destructive enterprise.

Madame de Merteuil seems interested in having Cécile as her student and disciple: “je m’attache sincèrement à elle. Je lui ai promis de la former et je crois que je lui tiendrai parole” (p. 114). There is nevertheless confusion between the education of Cécile and her seduction. Madame de Merteuil's own sexual ambivalence makes it unclear, even to her, whether she is educator or seducer (or seduced): “elle me prie de l’instruire avec une bonne foi réellement séduisante. En vérité, je suis presque jalouse de celui à qui ce plaisir est réservé” (p. 81). Madame de Merteuil, in this case, makes no clear distinction between education and sexuality. She views sexual knowledge as a prerequisite for all other knowledge. If Cécile is to be her pupil and to have a relationship of mutual trust with her, the Marquise insists that Cécile first be seduced and corrupted: “Je me suis souvent aperçue du besoin d’avoir une femme dans ma confidence, et j’aimerais mieux celle-là qu’une autre; mais je ne puis en rien faire, tant qu’elle ne sera pas … ce qu’il faut qu’elle soit” (p. 114). Madame de Merteuil sees no contradiction in helping Valmont plan his seduction of Cécile and, at the same time, in regarding Cécile as a pupil whom she likes and even trusts: “Si la petite fille en revient telle qu’elle y aura été, je m’en prendrai à vous. Si vous jugez qu’elle ait besoin de quelque encouragement de ma part, mandez-le-moi. Je crois lui avoir donné une assez bonne leçon sur le danger de garder des Lettres, pour oser lui écrire à présent; et je suis toujours dans le dessein d’en faire mon élève” (p. 131).

For Madame de Merteuil, seduction is either an essential part of education or is in itself an education. But if a calculated sexual initiation is indeed a mode of education, Cécile must be made aware, not of her victimization, but of her own freedom. In Letter CV, Madame de Merteuil in effect communicates her own principles to Cécile, once again linking sexuality, education, and role playing. She explains to Cécile the primacy of pleasure and the need for dealing with the hypocrisy of society in order to ensure one's pleasure, telling her how to maintain an appearance of purity with one lover in order to enjoy clandestine pleasure with another. She demonstrates how marriage, correctly understood and exploited, can be liberating: “Une fois plus contente de vous, votre Maman vous mariera enfin; et alors, plus libre dans vos démarches, vous pourrez, à votre choix, quitter Valmont pour prendre Danceny, ou même les garder tous deux” (pp. 248-49). Madame de Merteuil's didactic letter ends with a postscript on the art of letter writing, a lesson in the stylistics of hypocrisy: “quand vous écrivez à quelqu’un, c’est pour lui et non pas pour vous: vous devez donc moins chercher à lui dire ce que vous pensez, que ce qui lui plaît davantage” (p. 249).⁵ Madame de Merteuil models Cécile's education after her own, in as much as Cécile's intellectual initiation consists of instruction in theatre and Eros. The Marquise had even hoped to make a fellow actress of Cécile: “j’avais eu quelque envie d’en faire au moins une intrigante subalterne, et de la prendre pour jouer les seconds sous moi” (p. 251).

But although Madame de Merteuil begins, in Letter CV, to communicate precious knowledge to Cécile, on the very same day she writes to Valmont that she is abandoning Cécile as her pupil: “Je me désintéresse entièrement sur son compte … je vois qu’il n’y a pas d’étoffe” (p. 251). She says that Cécile is nothing more than a “machine à plaisir” and that her “sotte ingénuité” is incurable. The seduction that might have been a form of education or a first step to freedom, now means only corruption. Cécile will ultimately be aware, not of her potential freedom, but only of her victimization and “dépravation.”

Valmont's attitude toward Cécile's “education” is more perfidious than Madame de Merteuil's, for he considers all education a form of corruption: “Je regrette de n’avoir pas le talent des filous. Ne devrait-il pas, en effet, entrer dans l’éducation d’un homme qui se mêle d’intrigues? … Mais nos parents ne songent à rien” (p. 90). Valmont establishes a curriculum of sexual and intellectual corruption, rather than seeing Cécile's education/seduction as a prelude to her independence and freedom: his intentions are exclusively destructive. In order to ensure that Cécile's “dépravation” would be irremediable, he plotted a way to destroy her self-respect: “je lui inspirais … le plus profond mépris pour sa mère. J’ai remarqué depuis longtemps, que si ce moyen n’est pas toujours nécessaire à employer pour séduire une jeune fille, il est in dispensable … quand on veut la dépraver; car celle qui ne respecte pas sa mère, ne se respectera pas elle-même” (p. 263). Valmont seeks a corruption of the mind as well as of the body. He is delighted that “l’écolière est devenue presque aussi savante que le maître” (p. 263), but he is interested in controlling her mind perhaps even more than her body. Like Madame de Merteuil, who ends her lesson for Cécile in sexual amorality with advice on hypocrisy in letter-writing and who begins her seduction of Danceny with opposite advice on sincerity in letter-writing (Letter CXXI), Valmont is also compelled to exercise his power over his pupil's sense of language: “j’occupe mon loisir … à composer une espèce de catéchisme de débauche, à l’usage de mon écolière. Je m’amuse à n’y rien nommer que par le mot technique; et je ris d’avance de l’intéressante conversation que cela doit fournir entre elle et Gercourt la première nuit de leur mariage” (p. 264). Between them, Madame de Merteuil and Valmont make sure that Cécile's language, written and spoken, reflects hypocrisy and corruption. Losing control over one's use of language is perhaps the ultimate symbol of servitude and humiliation, especially in a society where one exists in as much as one writes and receives letters.

There are, then, two models of seduction: it can be an initiation into and a prerequisite of education; or it can be merely corruption and “dépravation.” But not only is seduction, when disguised as education, a form of “dépravation”; Cécile's other education, her convent education, is also “dépravation,” according to the definition Laclos gave in his first essay on women's education. The convent education, forbidding autonomy and preventing a young woman's intellectual and sexual development, as well as the sexual victimization that is seduction, are both forms of “dépravation.” One denies the flesh, the other exploits it: both deprive women of consciousness and freedom.

The power relationship between student and teacher, which to such a great extent characterizes education, is typical, for Laclos, of all social and affective relationships. In his second essay on women's education, he describes society as the battlefield in the war between the sexes. Contrasting the state of nature with his own highly developed society, he finds that “la nature ne crée que des êtres libres; la société ne fait que des tyrans et des esclaves. Parcourez l’univers connu, vous trouverez l’homme fort et tyran, la femme faible et esclave” (p. 433). Laclos does not discuss at length the origin of this universal inequality; he says only that women “ont étè primitivement subjuguées, et que l’homme a sur elles un droit de conquête dont il use rigoureusement” (p. 434). His real interest lies in analyzing the institutions and the behavior that are the product of the war between the sexes. A complex system of values (ideological, social, affective, esthetic) owes its existence to the imbalance of power between men and women. And perhaps the most important of these values is love. For Laclos, love, as we know it in society, is not primarily a natural or authentic emotion; it is a reaction, emanating from resentment (re-sentiment) and not from spontaneous feeling (sentiment). He argues that love is the invention and strategem of women in their struggle to regain lost power:

Elles sentirent enfin que, puisqu’elles étaient plus faibles, leur unique ressource était de séduire; elles connurent que si elles étaient dépendantes de ces hommes par la force, ils pouvaient le devenir á elles par le plaisir … elles pratiquèrent l’art pénible de refuser lors même qu’elles désiraient de consentir; de ce moment elles surent allumer l’imagination des hommes, elles surent à leur gré faire naître et diriger les désirs: ainsi naquirent la beauté et l’amour. (pp. 434-36)

Therefore, in a society in which men and women are unequal, a love relationship cannot reestablish equality. Love is not the solution to the problem of the war between the sexes; to the contrary, it is a product of that war. On this issue, Madame de Merteuil's position seems close to Laclos's. She writes to Valmont: “Jamais vous n’êtes ni l’amant ni l’ami d’une femme; mais toujours son tyran ou son esclave” (p. 337). And, of course, no happy or even satisfactory love relationship is anywhere to be seen in the novel, nor could it be. Power and inequality corrupt love as they corrupt education. Just as love, in a society where women are unequal and inferior, is not love but seduction, education in that same society is also a form of seduction. Neither the real love nor the real education we may assume to be possible in the state of nature can occur in society: “Partout où il y a esclavage, il ne peut y avoir éducation; dans toute société, les femmes sont esclaves; donc la femme sociale n’est pas susceptible d’éducation … c’est le propre de l’éducation de développer les facultés, le propre de l’esclavage c’est de les étouffer” (p. 405).

In Les Liaisons dangereuses tyrants educate slaves. The young woman is totally dependent upon the teacher or authority figure and has no resources of her own: “Madame de Merteuil me prêterait des Livres qui parlaient de tout cela, et qui m’apprendraient bien à me conduire, et aussi à mieux écrire que je ne fais” (p. 64). And the guardian—here Valmont—insists on the passivity of his ward: “Adieu, ma belle pupille: car vous êtes ma pupille. Aimez un peu votre tuteru, et surtout ayez avec lui de la docilité” (p. 189). In Laclos's first essay on women's education, he despairs of the possibility of educating women in a society so profoundly rooted in the inequality of the sexes: “il n’est aucun moyen de perfectionner l’éducation des femmes … l’éducation prétendue, donnée aux femmes jusqu’à ce jour, ne mérite pas en effet le nom d’éducation” (p. 403). However, in his third essay on education, he offers concrete suggestions for educating a young woman who would not be subordinate to an authority figure. In this essay, he speaks not once of a student or of a teacher, but only of the young woman and her “guide.” In describing this guide, Laclos emphasizes equality, understanding, and sharing rather than authority; the guide should be “quelqu’un d’éclairé et d’adroit qui fit dans le même temps les mêmes lectures, avec qui on pût causer chaque jour, et qui sût diriger l’opinion sans la dicter” (p. 457). Stressing the absolute primacy of the young woman's personal judgment, Laclos suggests an alternative way for the student to form her own opinions without a guide: “Il est un moyen peut-être plus utile, mais aussi plus sévère; c’est de faire de chaque ouvrage, à mesure qu’on l’a lu, un extrait dans le genre de ceux qu’on met dans les journaux: contenant un compte rendu de l’ouvrage suffisant pour en donner une idée, et un jugement motivé du même ouvrage” (p. 457). Like Montaigne, Laclos also believes that the young woman's capacity for independent judgment and not her acceptance of authority should be both the means and the end of education.

The consequences of power and inequality in education concern men as well as women. Valmont, as much as Cécile, falls victim in the power struggle that is education. It is symptomatic of Madame de Merteuil's ascendancy in her relationship with Valmont that she begins to treat him as schoolboy: “vous restez court comme un Ecolier” (p. 251). “Je m’étonne, je l’avoue, que ce soit moi que vous ayez entrepris de traiter comme un écolier” (p. 357). Although he is confused by his double role as Madame de Merteuil's rival and her chevalier, Valmont finally submits to her authority and accepts the role of pupil and slave. Madame de Merteuil chides Valmont, as she chided Cécile and Danceny, about his letter-writing: “Relisez votre Lettre: il y règne un ordre qui vous décèle à chaque phrase” (p. 70). But she truly humiliates and destroys him when he agrees, without reflection or understanding, to copy a letter she composed and to send it as his own. He places himself in the same degrading role of écolier that he imposed upon Cécile when he dictated to her a letter (CXVII) for Danceny. Revolted by the reality of his esclavage, Valmont tries, in a last vain effort, to reestablish some semblance of equality with Madame de Merteuil and to reconquer the role of teacher by placing her in the subordinate role of student. He gropes ineffectually, grasping portentously at trivial straws, for proof that she is an inadequate educator:

Puisque vous commencez à faire des éducations, apprenez à vos élèves à ne pas rougir et se déconcerter à la moindre plaisanterie: à ne pas nier si vivement, pour une seule femme, les mêmes choses dont ils se défendent avec tant de mollesse pour toutes les autres. Apprenezleur encore à savoir entendre l’éloge de leur Maîtresse, sans se croire obligés d’en faire les honneurs. … Albors vous pourrez les faire paraître dans vos exercices publics, sans que leur conduite fasse tort à leur sage institutrice; et moi-même, trop heureux de concourir à votre célébrité, je vous promets de faire et de publier les programmes de ce nouveau collège. (p. 357)

Power and authority, however, elude Valmont and finally, unable to mask his weakness, he can only issue a self-destructive ultimatum: “je serai ou votre Amant ou votre ennemi” (p. 361).

At the same time Valmont is becoming the unwitting pupil of Madame de Merteuil, he pretends to be the pupil of Madame de Tourvel, convinced of his ability to exploit the student-teacher power relationship for his own advantage. He first claims to be seduced by Madame de Tourvel's virtue: “séduit … ici par l’exemple des vertus, sans espérer de vous atteindre, j’ai au moins essayé de vous suivre” (p. 52). Valmont then moves from the language of seduction to the language of education. He feigns abdication of his autonomy by promising to be her obedient student, eager for knowledge and enlightenment: “Prêtez-moi votre raison, puisque vous avez ravi la mienne; après m’avoir corrigé, éclairez-moi pour finir votre ouvrage … vous m’apprendrez à … régler [l’amour]: en guidant mes démarches, en dictant mes discours, vous me sauverez au moins du malheur affreux de vous déplaire” (p. 56).

Although Valmont intended to be master by playing the role of slave and student, after he had succeeded in seducing Madame de Tourvel, he was forced to wonder whether indeed there had been a role and power reversal: “Je chéris cette façon de voir, qui me sauve l’humiliation de penser que je puisse dépendre en quelque manière de l’esclave même que je me serais asservie” (p. 297). He understands that the role has become reality. Valmont, seducer, believing that he has been seduced, expresses his sense of bewilderment and powerlessness by returning once again to the language of education. He wonders whether he has truly become a pupil: “Serai-je, à mon âge, mâitrisé comme un écolier?” (p. 296). Valmont, student in spite of himself, may also receive an education in spite of himself, a heretofore refused or repressed understanding of emotion. For the first time, he is overwhelmed by his feelings: “l’ivresse fut complète et réciproque” (p. 304). He seems to glimpse the possibility of a love that is based not on power but on mutual feeling and sharing. We may believe him when he says: “je regrette Madame de Tourvel … je suis au désespoir d’être séparé d’elle … je paierais de la moitié de ma vie, le bonheur de lui consacrer l’autre” (p. 366). The seducer, Valmont, has not been seduced by Madame de Tourvel, for we must not confuse the love she inspired with artifice. It is because Valmont's love for Madame de Tourvel may be authentic and not the result of seduction that education is possible. Any meaningful education must issue from equality and reciprocity and not from servitude or power.

In his relationships with both Madame de Merteuil and Madame de Tourvel, Valmont loses the advantage, and in both cases Laclos expresses his fall through the image of the pupil. In their war with men, women will occasionally seize the advantage and defeat their enemy: “dans l’état de guerre perpétuelle qui subsiste entre elles et les hommes, on les a vues, à l’aide des caresses qu’elles ont su se créer, combattre sans cesse, vaincre quelquefois, et souvent, plus adroites, tirer avantage des forces mêmes dirigées contre elles” (p. 436). Both men and women, forced by centuries of tradition into mistaking seduction and “dépravation” for education and into confusing seduction and love, suffer from the consequences of man's tyranny over woman.

Does this novel about education and seduction educate or seduce its reader? In the Préface du Rédacteur, Laclos presents himself as a moralist who is writing this novel to counteract the corrupting influence of certain people: “Il me semble au moins que c’est rendre un service aux mœurs, que de dévoiler les moyens qu’emploient ceux qui en ont de mauvaises pour corrompre ceux qui en ont de bonnes” (p. 8). The novel may then be thought of as an educational experience for the reader who will be taught to understand and to resist corruption and seduction. Laclos tells us that his novel reveals two truths, both of which protect against the danger of seduction: “l’une, que toute femme qui consent à recevoir dans sa sociéte un homme sans mœurs, finit par en devenir la victime; l’autre, que toute mère est au moins imprudente, qui souffre qu’un autre qu’elle ait la confiance de sa fille” (p. 8). These two “truths” do, in fact, correspond to the structure of the novel: the first refers to Madame de Tourvel's problematic situation, the second to Cécile's. Although one tends to discount statements authors make about their books, especially moral statements made by eighteenth-century novelists, we cannot always dismiss an author's conscious intentions. Nor can we always consider unconscious motivation more important than conscious thought. Thody's judgment that Laclos is sincere in his Préface and that his advice to women is indeed sound seems judicious.⁶

In the Préface, Laclos also raises the problem of censorship and education, implying that, under certain conditions, the novel itself may seduce rather than educate its reader. Laclos agrees with the mother who would not let her daughter read Les Liaisons dangereuses until the day of her wedding. It is not immediately clear why this novel—which, after all, contains not one happily united couple, which undermines and mocks marriage, which exposes a cruel but triumphant double standard—would constitute an ideal nuptial education for a woman, or why the wedding day is the most propitious moment for this education. And it is not clear why Laclos believes that his own novel, although dealing with the problem of women's education, should be the object of censorship.

In his third essay on women's education, concerned specifically with the role of reading in a woman's education, Laclos speaks of the problem of choice and guidance in what one reads. He offers the example of a novel about seduction, Clarissa, and shows how guidance, not censorship, will help the young woman: “On peut donc craindre qu’une jeune personne ne soit rassurée par cet exemple et … cette lecture peut lui être dangereuse. Mais si, au contraire, on fait observer à la jeune personne que Clarisse … a été nécessairement entrainée dans tous les malheurs dont elle finit par être la victime, alors il y aura peu de lectures plus utiles” (p. 455). A novel about seduction, such as Clarissa or Les Liaisons dangereuses, can be a means of education, but the same novel, read without discernment, can be seduction and corruption.

When reading Laclos's Préface du Rédacteur, it is important to realize that he is talking about his novel both as a tool of education (“l’utilité de l’ouvrage”) and as a potential instrument of seduction (“loin de conseiller cette lecture à la jeunesse, il me paraît très important d’éloigner d’elle toutes celles de ce genre” [p. 8]). Whether Les Liaisons dangereuses educates or seduces its reader will depend on his or (particularly) her level of awareness and discernment. Will the reader be seduced by the charismatic and cruel Madame de Merteuil and Valmont? Will the reader identify with these fascinating characters and become, in his or her turn, seducer? If the reader is not seduced and is educated instead, he or she may then become more critical of the hypocrisy of society and more sensitive to the problems encountered by women. Above all, he may come to see the need to educate young women in order to prevent their seduction.⁷ The reader may find Les Liaisons dangereuses a highly moral novel: “Les Liaisons dangereuses is a moral book because it shows very clearly what happens to people when they are immoral in the deepest and most dangerous way possible: by treating others as if they were objects to be manipulated and not as individuals to be respected” (Thody, p. 67). Alternatively, he might wonder about the impact of Laclos's artistic creation on his moral intentions: “Laclos voulait démontrer le ‘danger des liaisons’ et il a écrit le roman séduisant de la séduction. Le moraliste en lui a été vaincu par le romancier.”⁸ Or, finally, the reader might simply be seduced and captivated by cruelty, intelligence, and egoism: “The downfall of Merteuil concerns only a superficial loss of fortune and beauty, leaving her great mind untouched.”⁹ The ambiguous relationship between education and seduction is ultimately not only the problem of a pupil and victim such as Cécile; it is also the problem of each one of the readers of Les Liaisons dangereuses.

The wide spectrum of views held by intelligent critics concerning the morality or immorality of Les Liaisons dangereuses suggests the great amount of freedom Laclos grants his readers. In his second essay on women's education, in which he studies the effects of society and social institutions on women and presents an ahistorical model of the condition of women in a state of nature, Laclos's bias is clear; he describes the woman of the eighteenth century as “défigurée par nos institutions” (p. 406). In spite of this, he nevertheless specifically states that he will attempt to withhold judgment so that his reader can evaluate for himself the material and hypotheses presented in the essay: “Ont-elles gagné ou perdu à ces institutions? Nous prétendons moins décider cette question que mettre nos lecteurs en état de le faire” (p. 406). In both Les Liaisons dangereuses and the second essay on women's education, Laclos poses the problem of the condition of women and places his reader in the problematical situation of deciding what is corruption and what is morality.

However, the moral judgment ultimately made by the reader will be an indication of his freedom from or involvement in a corrupt and unequal society, for Laclos holds strongly that social and intellectual freedom is and must be the guarantee of morality, without which there can be no education: “on ne peut sortir de ce principe général que sans liberté point de moralité et sans moralité point d’éducation” (p. 405). In a society where men and women are free and equal, education goes hand in hand with morality. But in a society founded on principles of inequality between the sexes and in which social and sexual relationships take on the characteristics of a power struggle, education, as we have seen, comes to be confused with seduction and corruption. Laclos's descriptions of sexual and moral corruption are indeed seductive—purposely and necessarily seductive. However, description should not be confused with prescription: Laclos clearly believes in education and morality, freedom and equality. As a response to the reader who is convinced of the immorality of the novel, Laclos might have called to his attention the words of Seneca used as the epigraph in his first essay on women's education: “Le mal est sans remèdes quand les vices se sont changés en mœurs” (p. 403).

Notes

1. Choderlos de Laclos, Les Liaisons dangereuses in Œuvres complètes (Paris: Gallimard, 1951), pp. 8-9. All parenthetical page references are to this edition.

2. For a discussion of the place of Laclos among eighteenth-century theoreticians of women's education, see Laurent Versini, Laclos et la tradition (Paris: Klincksiek, 1968), pp. 521-79).

3. Choderlos de Laclos, De l’éducation des femmes in Oeuvres, p. 404. Parenthetical page references are to this edition.

4. In his chapter “De la vieillesse et de la mort” in the second essay on women's education, Laclos goes to some length to deny sexual satisfaction to the aging woman and man:

   O! quel spectacle hideux présente cette femme effrénée, dont l’âge n’a pu modérer les désirs, et qui recherche encore un plaisir qu’elle ne peut plus faire partager! Que de peines lui sont préparées! A combien d’humiliations elle doit s’attendre! L’homme, dans ce même cas, n’est pas moins ridicule, mais il peut être moins malheureux; s’il possède un reste de puissance, le vil intérêt lui fera trouver une fille complaisante … La femme n’a pas même cette ressource douteuse; en vain, a-t-elle employé les mêmes moyens pour s’attacher un homme; il perd, entre ses bras, la force qu’il avait promise; il reste mort, entre elle et sa fortune (p. 419).

5. Laclos also believes that learning to write well is essential to a woman's education: “il n’est plus permis à une femme qui prétend à quelque éducation personnelle d’écrire sans pureté et même sans élégance” (p. 450).

6. P. M. W. Thody, “Manon Lescaut and Les Liaisons dangereuses: The Problems of Morality in Literature,” Modern Languages, 56 (1975), p. 63.

7. In the next to last letter of the novel, Danceny blames the seduction of Cécile on her convent education: “Quelle jeune personne, sortant de même du couvent, sans experience et presque sans idees, et ne portant dans le monde … qu’une egale ignorance du bien et du mal; quelle jeune personne, dis-je, aurait pu résister davantage à de si coupables artifices” (pp. 396-97).

8. René Pomeau, “D’Ernestine aux Liaisons dangereuses: le dessein de Laclos,” Revue d’Histoire Littéraire de la France, 68 (1968), p. 631.

9. Dianne Alstad, “Les Liaisons dangereuses: Hustlers and Hypocrites,” Yale French Studies, 40 (1968), p. 166.