Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Encore

Valmont writes, of his expected sexual victory with the marquise, "I desire it as if we had never known each other ... to have known you is perhaps a reason for desiring it the more."

Why was the prize of her favors so extremely valuable to him, even though he had already "known" her (the standard then for a man losing most sexual interest in a woman)? For me, this is somehow the most important question in the book.
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7 comments:

Ben said...

That's a very good question. I think it is supposed to signify just how desirable she was. All the others paled in comparison.

And they remained good friends and talked about sex all the time, so he was constantly reminded of what they once had.

4:24 PM, July 17, 2007
Erin said...

Ah, this is a good question. Rather than being in love, as cl suggested, I think Valmont and Merteuil just had an incredible physical chemistry and sexual tension that didn't end after they'd done it. And that may be because Merteuil was sort of Valmont's female counterpart, a woman libertine. Their relationship was necessarily different just based on who Merteuil was.

7:01 PM, July 17, 2007
Ben said...

That's a good point. She was a woman libertine, and that made her different than any other woman Valmont was with.

7:22 PM, July 17, 2007
kc said...

I think he wanted something from women "after the kissing had to stop," but most of them were too dull and fundamentally conservative to be good company. He needed someone in his life who could understand the world on his level and appreciate the quality of his mind, someone who "got" him, rather than judged him. And she was a challenge for him; she had slept with him but had not yielded to him.

There's a line in "pride and Prejudice" about Eliza. Someone says something like "It would be something to be loved by a woman like that" (meaning by her mind and her heart, not just her body). And I think that's how Valmont thinks of the marquise.

8:53 PM, July 17, 2007
kc said...

That sort of goes along with what Erin was saying.

Plus, I'm sure the marquise was a fantastic lover.

8:58 PM, July 17, 2007
Erin said...

Oh, I'm sure she was. Uninhibited and passionate, probably unlike a lot of the society women.

I think you're right on about their relationship. Valmont considered his conquests all the same. He was rather uninterested in each woman beyond breaking her resistance and getting into her petticoats. And when that was over and he grew bored, he left them, they were "ruined," and they went off to hide in the country or become nuns or what have you. Clearly that wasn't going to happen with Merteuil. We don't get the full story, do we, about how they hooked up? I'm sure it didn't take Valmont long to recognize the difference between her and his previous exploits.

9:32 PM, July 17, 2007
kc said...

Oh my God, I love when she's talking about how when she was a kid she could discern by the secretive way that people talked about sex, especially priests, that it must be "exceedingly pleasurable." And she resolved to have that pleasure to her heart's content. She instantly saw that the "sin" talk surrounding sex was utter bullshit and the only thing that stood in the way of her fully enjoying the gifts of her body was a hypocritical, faux-religious, misogynist society. And the way for a woman to get around that society was necessarily through deceit, or else her behavior would be deemed scandalous.

Uninhibited, yes, Erin. She warns Valmont that "prudes" will only give him "half-enjoyment" because that "complete abandonment of self, that delirium of delight wherein pleasure is purified by its excess, those treasures of love are unknown to them." And she says religious prudery in women about sex "condemns them to a perpetual childishness." They have bought the sex-is-sin line lock, stock and barrel, and are unable to ever wholly leave that notion behind; thus the one true, bona fide, material gift from God they have — the capacity to enjoy their bodies — is not only sinfully wasted, but its waste is held up as a "virtue." The marquise sees this for the complete bullshit it is and resolves by any means necessary to not be enslaved to it.

11:03 PM, July 17, 2007

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