Les Liaisons Dangereuses

[Patrick_Bateman]

Is this really a criticism of the aristocrats of the Ancien Regime and a work that helped inspire the Revolution or has hindsight shrouded a decadent and amoral story with this veneer?


P.S. I do enjoy the book but I am just interested in others opinions on its impact on the nation it was written under and its literary significance.

[joelavine]

The sexual mores of certain members of the aristocracy, de Laclos's subject, which in any case, as in any novel, may not have been seen as representative of a class, were probably less interesting to the revolutionaries and the masses than issues of hunger and other economic and political inequities. I don't think the French masses would have been likely to have read Les Liaisons Dangereuses. I would think the concerns of the revolutionary leaders and philosophers, themselves often sexual libertines, who may have read it, would not have been affected by the cruelty and debauchery of Valmont and Merteuil. The revolution was an economic one, not a struggle against moral decadence. Moreover, the victims of sexual egotism in Les Liaisons Dangereuse are members of the privileged classes, and are often genuinely admirable. They are emotionally opressed, but not economically. They are well off, not members of the proletariat.