Dangerous Acquaintances

There is no soul in this novel that the unseen narrator behind this accretion of letters ever intends to stop the evil he sees unfolding, or even that he would want to if he could.

Letter 78 is one of those moments in the novel when the true nature of Valmont's end and implac dexterity are do most clear. One of the fascinating aspects of Valmont as a character is precisely this implacability. He is certainly not the most evil of characters to appear in the fiction of his time, and he manages nevertheless to accomplish a great channel of harm.

His ability to do so much damage when (at to the lowest degree against the women in the novel) he uses little if any physical obsession is based on his absolute steadfastness in his goals to split up relationships and sully honor. He has almost the force and sense of a natural phenomenon; he is as little likely to be turned aside as a hurricane.

Madame de Tourvel describes this tormenting implacability in the undermentioned passage:

Having compelled me thus to immobility and silence, you were

no less unrelenting in your pursuit; I was unable to raise my eyes without meeting yours. I had forever and a day to turn away from you, with the quite incredible consequence that you made me the cynosure of all eyes at a moment when I could have wished to be deprived of my own (Laclos, 1961, p. 169).

This is an ingrained set off of Valmont's character, his inability to make friendships. One might even ruminate (for Laclos does not spell this out for us) that the reason that Valmont flourishes in the leechlike relationships that he crafts is simply that he is incapable of forming no former(a) kind of human bond. Having been denied - for reasons that we are not given - the ability to form meaningful relationships, he settles inside for pleasure alone, with the ineluctable terrible consequences.

Madame de Tourvel in this letter also underscores another essential aspect of Valmont's nature - and of the evil that he is capable of perform in the world.

This implacability, this ability of Valmont's seemingly to be unaffected by the opinions of others, is one of his most eff
Order your essay at Orderessay and get a 100% original and high-quality custom paper within the required time frame.