The voice of a woman: feminism and dangerous liaisons

Abstract

Dangerous liaisons: a feminist novel avant la lettre? It is this question that guides us in this article, in which we rely on the Gérard Genette’s theoretical reflections and authors specialized in the epistolary novel and in the Choderlos de Laclos’ work. In this study, we privilege the category from the point of view and the study of the epistolary novel and the character of the Marquise de Merteuil, a type of Medea of the Age of Enlightenment who, although widowed and without children to assassinate, does not hesitate to go to the final consequences to live / survive in a society dominated by men. In giving voice to this character, the French writer, who was also a staunch defender of women’s freedom, traces a panorama of the feminine situation in a certain class of the 18th-century in France. An even more oppressive prospect for being a young woman, rich and widowed, but stuck in her freedom. With the perversity nuanced by the display of its motives, Merteuil manages to escape from the role of villain and to consecrate herself as a complex character and of feminist characteristics, although avant la lettre. However, adapted numerous times to the cinema and TV, Laclos’ novel is transformed and what is shown to us is a villainous Merteuil, with the loss of all his questions about the situation of the woman. Thus, a rereading of this novel may evidence the anachronistic moral rules to which the woman is still subjected.