SOURCE: “In Search of a Female Voice: Les Liaisons dangereuses,” in Writing the Female Voice: Essays on Epistolary Literature, edited by Elizabeth C. Goldsmith, Northeastern University Press, 1989, pp. 154-71.

In the essay below, Jackson analyzes the attributes of female voices in the letters that comprise Les Liaisons dangereuses.

Women of sincerity, it is you whom we are questioning. … You will not answer us; but dare to examine your hearts and judge for yourselves.

Choderlos de Laclos, On the Education of Women¹

Countless analyses of Les Liaisons dangereuses originate in the statement or assumption that they are dealing with a “masterpiece.” If the exceptional paucity of Laclos's oeuvres complètes allows his only novel to be read, as if by default, as his chef d’oeuvre, the metaphorical possibilities of this biographical phenomenon have not been lost on literary historians who single out the Liaisons as a masterpiece unrivaled...