SOURCE: “Education and Seduction in Les Liaisons Dangereuses,” Symposium,Vol. 24, No. 2, Summer, 1980, pp. 125-37.

In the essay below, Dunn links Laclos's ideas about morality and equality in Les Liaisons dangereuses to his later writing on the education of women.

The problem of education is central to Les Liaisons dangereuses and is part of its thematics of power and sexuality. In addition, Laclos's attitude toward education may provide a way to view the question of the morality or immorality of the novel. In the Préface du Rédacteur, Laclos agrees with the mother who told him that she read the manuscript of Les Liaisons dangereuses and found it an ideal pre-nuptial education for a young woman: “Je croirais … rendre un vrai service à ma fille, en lui donnant ce Livre le jour de son mariage.”¹ The Préface, then, already anticipates the question of women's education and the relation...