Moreover, once we accustom ourselves to the novel's stylistic beauties, we become aware that the other literary pleasures we receive from it are not only emotionally coarse and morally perverse, but also devoid of suspense, as we watch those who are invincible in wickedness debauch the defenseless and the good.Ī third of the way through, however, we learn more about our depraved aristocrats, and our interest in the novel grows. The letters of the wicked are elegant, the letters of the good are instructive, but the letters of the naive and innocent are by necessity simple and ingenuous, and their lack of awareness both taxes the patience and dissipates the interest of the reader, all the more so because they aggravate his sympathies and frustrate his moral impulses at the same time. Many of the difficulties of the book are perhaps inevitable in any work that chronicles seduction in epistolary form.
I was tempted to abandon it, but I persisted and am glad, for-although this epistolary novel of the last days of the ancien regime initially appears to be stylish but superficial-it soon grows in both subtlety and power. Dangerous Liaisons improves as it progresses.
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