SOURCE: “Split Personalities: Characterizing Writers and Readers” in Intimate, Intrusive, and Triumphant: Readers in the Liaisons Dangereuses, John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1987, pp. 81-96.

In the excerpt below, Conroy analyzes the characters in the novel as both readers and writers of letters.

… [Each] of the novel's characters has a double function, first that of writing letters or of being a narrator, and second, that of receiving another's letters or of being a reader. This dual function in the structure of the novel corresponds to a double personality profile at the psychological level of characterization, since each personage displays a different aspect of his or her personality according to his or her role as either narrator or reader. Consequently, we can analyze each character in terms of this narrator/reader distinction. In such successful and well-rounded figures as we find in the Liaisons dangereuses, this distinction might at first seem...