This is a scandalous drama about the sexual machinations of two jaded French aristocrats who use sex and desire as weapons of destruction and as means to hunt for revenge and acquire power. As they climb the social ladder they ruin the lives of the innocent people who surround them.

The Marquise de Merteuil lives in a world of drawing rooms and boudoirs, where she preys upon the innocent and naive, shattering their idealism with a triumphant laugh. Her partner and confidant is the Vicomte de Valmont, who was once her lover and is now her weapon against young women presumptuous enough to love. Seduction is nothing more than a game to them and in their private score keeping, nothing count

The story begins with the Marquise de Merteuil corresponding with Vicomte de Valmont regarding a luscious new act of 'revenge', as she describes it, against her former lover, the Comte de Gercourt. The young Cecile de Volanges has just come home from the convent and her marriage to Gercourt has been arranged. However, before he can wed the innocent child, Merteuil proposes Valmont 'educate' her, thus spoiling Gercourt's fancy for untarnished convent girls. Valmont is uninterested in such an easy seduction and is far more aroused by the thought of lulling Madame de Tourvel, the very epitome of virtue, into submission. And so the tale unfolds.

Les Liaisons Dangereuses by no means encompasses the 'whole picture' of the times, however, it does depict quite explicitly the lives of a handful of aristocrats in an all too likely posture. It is well known that this Second Estate of France was exorbitantly wealthy, pampered and idle. Consequently, in order to give meaning to their boring lives, they conjured acts of increasingly questionable content, lacking in morals and conscious.

The protagonists, The Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont, consider it their life's ambition to sadistically control and dominate those around them through sexual intrigue. These two villains are indeed locked in psychological combat to see who can actually 'out-do' the other in stalking, capturing and destroying the souls of others. Taking absolute pleasure in ripping any virtue from the hearts of their pre

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Approximate Word count = 1013
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)