SOURCE: “Dialogues of the Deaf: The Failure of Consolation in Les Liaisons dangereuses,” MLN, Vol. 111, No. 4, September, 1996, pp. 671-87.

In the essay below, Mortimer contends that Laclos's characters are denied consolation through misunderstandings that result from their communication by letter.

Auditory Voyeurs

Jacques the fatalist, lying with wounded knee on a poor peasant's bed, overhears his host and hostess in amorous embrace, then in testy disagreement over the charity she has shown him in spite of their poverty. All the more reason, protests the wife, not to produce a new child—and she is sure to become pregnant because “cela n’a jamais manque quand l’oreille me démange après, et j’y sens une démangeaison comme jamais …” (Jacques le fataliste, 26). “Ton oreille ne sait ce qu’elle dit,” says he—but in spite of his objection the metaphor lending speech to the ear eroticizes...