The Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Laclos

Laclos seems to ingest been completely aware(predicate) of the social instability wrought by the interpenetration of cautious and aristocrat. In #5, for example, Merteuil tinkerfully scolds Valmont for even considering a seduction of Tourvel:

You, have that judge's wife? You, Vicomte de Valmont in person? . . . Don't you feel humiliated at the very thought? . . . Even if you succeed, it'll be nothing to hyperbolise about!" (16).

The threat of the seduction to Valmont's prestige is relevant because it moldiness be set beside his blas? worldliness and Tourvel's mindless chastity. His attitude owes something to the concomitant that he does not really have enough to do, interchangeable Merteuil exercising sexual freedom on a to a enormouser period or less routine basis. There is, of course, a subtext of decadence to his casual sexuality, and his acknowledgment of the fact speaks to a faint deterrent example sense. As he tells Merteuil: "Let's be frank: in our correlative accommodations which are as cold-blooded as they are casual, our questionable happiness can hardly be described as pleasure" (Laclos 20). What chaste sense Valmont possesses sur represents only at his death.

The decadent seducer finds the perfect foil in Tourvel--credulous, na?ve, and (to her great cost) naturally inquisitive. Whereas he seeks sexual adventure, she seeks ablaze fellowship; whereas she seeks information, he seeks gratification. B

ut where social and moral boundaries are in flux, clarity is hard to come by. link that with Tourvel's na?ve confidence that her social position secures her peace of mind, and genius begins to suspect that her own motives are mixed, whether or not she realizes it.

The military action portrays this situation strongly in letters 50, 56, and 67, in which Tourvel articulates the extent of her stormy response to Valmont's overtures. And extended it is, too. On the surface, that response is negative, stock-still she is at such pains to articulate how overmuch she is not going to surrender her chastity to him that one recalls Gertrude's comment on the player queen's behavior in Hamlet's play within the play: "The lady doth protest too much, methinks" (III.ii).

It is as if she is saying that she exit never speak to Valmont again and that she will tell him so every time she sees (or writes to) him.

By #67--not her last letter to Valmont--it is pretty clear that Tourvel is ready to risk an emotional, though platonic, liaison. In the face of Valmont's persistence in raising the prospect of sex, her letter is articulating a fantasy that she is nothing more than a fool to reveal. By this time, too, she is referring to the "obstacle standing in our way" (128); the plural possessive case is evidence that, together, they have together constructed a descent, reinforced by (of all things) his his declaration that he has mended his cynical ways. Her artlessness may be genuine, and compared to the calculating Merteuil it is difficult not to fully creed her credulousness. What is going on, however, is that she is grasping for a reason to maintain the relationship while controlling the terms of engagement.

In #50, after declaring herself so dutiful in marriage that a dalliance is unthinkable, Tourvel shows how much she has been thinking about it. She writes alarmingly of the "storms and perils" of an affair. Then she focuses on the emotional hardship a casual affair would have on Valmont and "the
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