Sexually rapacious young men are a feature of the
eighteenth-century and Regency social landscape. They are even to
be found in Jane Austen's novels; obviously, they are there to set
off the various perfections of the heroes, but also because they
represent a real threat to the triumph of the good-hearted and the
institution of marriage. Wickham, in Pride and Prejudice,
nearly succeeds in seducing Georgiana Darcy for her money, and
flirts with many other girls before he runs off with silly Lydia
Bennet. Willoughby, in Sense and Sensibility, admits he
was a "libertine" in getting an under-age girl pregnant and
abandoning her. Henry Crawford, in Mansfield Park, decides
that he is going to make the virginal heroine Fanny Price in love
with him: chillingly, he says to his sister, "I cannot be satisfied
without Fanny Price, without making a small hole in Fanny Price's
heart."
This graphic metaphor evokes the heartless lust of the libertine
whose modus vivendi is seduction and rape - all the more piquant if
the victim is a virgin. But, just like Choderlos de Laclos' Vicomte
de Valmont, Austen's amoral Henry Crawford unexpectedly falls in
love. The quiet, pious, and modest Fanny is unlike any woman who
has previously piqued his interest. She is Austen's version of Mme
de Tourvel; Henry Crawford, the anti-hero of Austen's most profound
novel, models himself, whether consciously or unconsciously, on
Laclos' Valmont. His sister Mary, who watches, advises on and
enjoys all his adventures, is the equivalent of Laclos' Marquise de
Merteuil. The relationship is close and unhealthy; the siblings
live only for pleasure and in particular for the pleasure of
treating their less scheming or less clever acquaintance as pawns
in their power-games. Henry does not get his way with Austen's
staunchly Christian heroine Fanny; but he does seduce - and abandon
- the foolish Maria Bertram, who lacks any moral compass. His
methods of seduction are on display in the early chapters of the
novel; they bear a strong resemblance to the self-congratulatory
progress of Valmont as he goes about seducing the virginal and not
very bright Cécile Volanges.
It is tempting to think that Austen must have read Les Liaisons
dangereuses, published in France in 1782 and in an English
translation, Dangerous Connections, in 1784. But as Austen
biographer Claire Tomalin points out, "Its cynicism was one thing;
its outspoken sexual element quite another" (Jane Austen: A
Life, 1997, p. 82). The publication of the translation led the
Monthly Reviewto exclaim against the corrupting potential
of its "scenes of seduction and intrigue" while admiring the "great
art and skill" of the execution. In fact Laclos was simply adding
French salaciousness to an English model, Samuel Richardson's
Clarissa, or The History of a Young Lady(1748). In this
immensely long novel-in-letters the virtuous heroine Clarissa is
pursued and eventually imprisoned and raped by the villain
Lovelace, who subsequently dies in a duel. Clarissa expires, like
Mme de Tourvel, of despair and shame. Laclos knew and admired this
extraordinary novel, as did many readers in Europe. It is even
known to the characters of Les Liaisons dangereuses:
Valmont mentions it familiarly to Merteuil; Mme de Tourvel, tempted
by the unknown realm of passionate desire, takes up Volume 1 of
Clarissa rather than the devotional books that are her normal
fare.
Richardson's novel is the most striking example in English of the
cultural fascination with the Don Juan figure. From the court of
Charles II, to the many examples of charismatic but heartless rakes
in Restoration and eighteenth-century drama (Lothario in Rowe's
1703 tragedy The Fair Penitentis another iconic example),
Protestant middle-class England mined a rich vein of fantasy. The
libertine represented the fascinating but dangerous rule-breaker,
the member of society who refused to live in accordance with what
he would describe as its hypocritical standards. As the ideals of
the Enlightenment, and particularly its rejection of
"superstitious" religion in favour of Reason - which often seemed
to coincide with the uninhibited pursuit of pleasure - became
dominant in Europe, many a gentleman thought himself free of
the obligations of social responsibility towards the weak and
helpless which the Church (either Catholic or Protestant) had
upheld, however imperfectly. In fact many gentlemen (and some
ladies, like the Marquise) enjoyed libertinism not so much for
sexual gratification as for the licence to exercise their power
over another's mind, heart, and conscience. As Henry Crawford in
Mansfield Parkputs it, speaking of the amusement his
attack on Fanny's heart will afford,
"I only want her to look kindly on me, to give me smiles as well as
blushes, to keep a chair for me by herself wherever we are, and be
all animation when I take it and talk to her; to think as I think,
be interested in all my possessions and pleasures, try to keep me
longer at Mansfield, and feel when I go away that she shall be
never happy again. I want nothing more." (Mansfield Park,
ch.24)
This is strikingly similar to what Valmont tells the Marquise he
wants as he sets out to seduce Mme de Tourvel (Letter 6). The
difference is that Austen is writing from within the certainties of
the English Protestant world, whose internalised ethical and moral
structures will protect the pious Fanny. In Laclos' novel, a
corrupt French Catholic church, embodied in the priestly confessor,
is powerless to give spiritual support to someone like Mme de
Tourvel. She will despair and die, as will her seducer
Valmont.
Mozart's opera Don Giovanni, premiered in 1787, a mere
five years after the publication of Laclos' novel, bears the
subtitle, "The libertine punished". Jane Austen did not see it in
London (where it premiered in 1817), but she did see at Covent
Garden, in 1813, an earlier version of the powerful myth in Don
Juan, a popular ballet-cum-melodrama with music by Gluck. It
was just after she had finished writing Mansfield Park.
Her comment on the charismatic protagonist is unexpectedly
forthright: "I must say that I have seen nobody on the stage who
has been a more interesting Character than that compound of Cruelty
& Lust" (Letters, 15-16 September 1813). No wonder that her
"villains", such as Henry Crawford, continue to fascinate readers,
just as Valmont does.
But the changes that Austen wrought when writing not only her rake
characters but also her profoundly decent heroes were part of a
general shift in the idea of masculinity towards the end of
the eighteenth century, and particularly in ideas about the
relation between sexual desire and romantic love. What happens if
the hitherto free-thinking libertine finds himself experiencing the
sort of love for a woman that combines attraction with respect and
care for her well-being? Nineteenth-century literature is full of
young gentlemen in a constant state of anxiety (often
comical, sometimes tragic) about the conflict between their sex
drive and their awed recognition of the respect that is due to
genteel young women.
Fast forward to the mid-twentieth century, and Christopher
Hampton's take on Merteuil and Valmont is that they are "two
professionals in a world of amateurs. It's a world where no-one has
to work at all because they're all so rich, but these two people
have chosen a profession and got very good at it." (Interview,
January 2012.) Arguably they can be seen as living in a historic
precursor of the 1980s world of excess, in which the Seventies
ideology of free love has become commodified into sex without love
- a form of power. In particular this is a world just before AIDS
revealed itself as excess's nemesis: perhaps (to extend the
analogy) AIDS is the late twentieth century's "silhouette of the
guillotine".
As Hampton explains, "one of the professionals stops behaving like
a professional and falls in love, and this one decent instinct
undermines the whole thing." The libertine in love is such a
contradiction that he cannot survive in that role. Hampton
persistently humanises Valmont in the latter part of his play, with
stage directions about his silent expressions of shame and regret
in his scenes with Tourvel. Most strikingly, Hampton has the dying
Valmont request that Danceny tell Mme de Tourvel: "I can't explain
why I broke with her as I did, but since then, my life has been
worth nothing… Tell her her love was the only real happiness I've
ever known." Jane Austen's Willoughby leaves a similarly emotional
message with Elinor, the sister of the girl who almost died for his
love. The post-Romantic libertine becomes, at the end of his
adventures, a real person with the potential for tragedy.
Valmont's recognition that he can only symbolically atone for his
earlier behaviour by allowing himself to be killed by the
conventional Danceny is something that Hampton's play can show us.
The final moral state of Laclos's libertine remains
ambiguous.
Penny Gay
University of Sydney
Les Liaisons Dangereuses, 31 March - 9 June, 2012.
Essay: The libertine
Date posted: 12 Mar 2012Author: STC