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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
This is a 3 page paper that provides an overview of justice in the novel "Dangerous Liaisons". Evidence is given to suggest that any justice in the novel's resolution lacks a moral dimension. Bibliography lists 1 source.
Page Count:
3 pages (~225 words per page)
File: KW60_KFliais2.doc
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
nihilistic contest with one another. Throughout the course of the text, the former lovers the Vicomte de Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil use sex as a means to emotionally
manipulate a host of innocent and na?ve targets, fulfill their personal ambitions, and ultimately destroy one another. Indeed, at the end of the novel, both parties are "successful" in that
they have succeeded in their respective aims of seducing the parties of their desire (the Madame de Tourvel and Cecile de Volanges for Valmont, and the pianist Chevalier Danceny for
Merteuil) and in gaining the upper hand on one another. However, while the "villains" of the text uncontestably end the narrative defeated and ruined, it cannot rightly be said that
Dangerous Liaisons presents a narrative where justice is served in the moralistic sense typically found in novels, a fact which reflects the rejection of conventional morality by the novels main
characters. This paragraph helps the student present the issue of Valmont and Merteuils fate in the novel. One of the reasons why the "justice" that comes at the conclusion
of the novel is incomplete concerns the ultimate fate of Valmont and Merteuil. Valmont, for his part, is killed in a duel with Danceny which has been orchestrated by his
nemesis Merteuil, and she in turn has her reputation and physical beauty destroyed by the duplicity of Valmont in his dying moments. Because both of these characters, being somewhat "villainous"
in nature, meet miserable fates (death and social exile), one might be tempted to read this as a typical presentation of novelistic justice. However, Choderlos de Laclos is careful to
include the narrative detail that this kind of destruction and defeat is an assumed inevitability in the kind of post-moral lifestyle embraced by Valmont and Merteuil both; as Valmont says
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