Libertine in French Literature

¶ … history libertinism, 18th century France. In concluding paragraphs, relate research formation, conflicts characters Dangerous Liaisons (Les Liaisons dangereuses), epistolary Choderlos de Laclos.

The notion of the libertine:

The radical and reactionary implications of libertinism in Les Liaisons Dangereuses

The novel Dangerous Liaisons (Les Liaisons Dangereuses) has a daring storyline, even by contemporary standards. Over the course of a series of letters between the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont, a plot is orchestrated to bring shame and scandal upon the conventional and pure Madame de Tourvel and Cecile Volanges. Valmont in particular embodies the notion of the 19th century libertine, or a man who lives without regard to conventional morality: in effect, he is 'liberated' from the conventions of society and religious dogma.

The notion of a 'libertine' was first articulated in the writings of the 17th century theologian John Calvin, who defined libertines as all that good Christians should not be: later, the term was assumed as a point of pride by those who labeled themselves as such. "Libertinism is interpreted as moral licentiousness, religious disobedience, and political disorder…. those who abandon themselves to sexual licentiousness, thus threatening the social order" (Cavaille 16). However, with the influx of the Enlightenment and the rise of new ideas challenging the dominant religious order, the notion of the libertine became associated with questioning religion and morality in a more deep and philosophical manner. This is the notion of "epicurean libertinism, which shares the same putative immorality, but which is reproached not only with turning away from religion, but with producing philosophical criticism of it" (Cavaille 17).

It is this concept of epicurean libertinism, which also contains the notion of the libertine drinking more deeply of life than that of his more conventional compatriots that is deeply rooted within the ideology of Les Liaisons Dangereuses. In the novel, Valmont is specifically drawn to Madame de Tourvel because he wishes to corrupt her piousness. He is simultaneously fascinated by her religiosity and wishes to destroy it. "Madame de Tourvel represents the convention-bound religious 'prude,' destroyed by empty religiosity, blind adherence to social convention, and unacknowledged female sexuality" (Hollinger 293). The libertine Valmont knows her desires better than she knows herself.

Libertinism, as suggested in the novel, is associated with aristocrats (as they have the time and the financial means to pursue rampant sexual activities, versus the lower classes) and with French Enlightenment intellectuals such as Voltaire. Voltaire, while not specifically referenced in the novel, embodied a spirit of religious questioning and a celebration of hedonism. For Voltaire, the celebration of libertinism was vital to challenging the dominant political orders and the authority of the Catholic Church. "Voltaire became a leading force in the wider Enlightenment articulation of a morality grounded in the positive valuation of personal, and especially bodily, pleasure…He also advanced this cause by sustaining an unending attack upon the repressive and, to his mind, anti-human demands of traditional Christian asceticism, especially priestly celibacy, and the moral codes of sexual restraint and bodily self-abnegation that were still central to the traditional moral teachings of the day" (Shank 2.2). For Voltaire, unfettered sexuality was a kind of political statement and significantly the use of Cecile, fresh out of convent, as a pawn between the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont, highlights the weakness of someone who takes church dogma as gospel truth.

It has been alleged by some writers that a libertine can only be a male. "However hard she may try, the libertine woman cannot pass herself off as an enlightened subject -- a philosopher, say, or a politician, a (wo) man of letters, a cosmopolitan, a fashionable figure, a charlatan, or even a libertine. This is because the moment she becomes a public woman, her identity is collapsed into her conspicuous sexuality" (O'Connell & Cryle 11). On one hand, the Marquise de Merteuil seems to deny this assertion. The fact that the novel is very literally an epistolary work indicates that she is, in fact, a woman of letters. The Marquise de Merteuil is equally clever at manipulating people as Valmont, and equally adept at leading them to their destruction through her use of sexuality. Libertinism as such can be seen as a feminist, Enlightenment act and a harbinger of the notion of 'citizen' equality, as later embodied by the French Revolution. However, the Marquise is always a woman of 'letters' purely -- she does not take on a public voice of libertinism.

While the Enlightenment celebrated both the libertine and the questioning of the dominant political order, Les Liaisons Dangereuses also has a fundamentally conservative strain in the sense that it is predominantly preoccupied with the obsessions of the aristocracy, not the 'common' man and woman. Although it was associated with radical political questioning of church and state, libertinism was an ethos very much of the ancien regime. "When we speak of libertine culture in this period, we usually mean the sexually free behaviour and norms of upper-class men, and in particular, of the French aristocracy during the decline of the ancien regime, as well as the writing which celebrates it" (O'Connell & Cryle 2). Libertinism was simultaneously politically radical yet also conservative in its preoccupations and limited in its social outlook.