Dangerous Liaisons

I taught the novel Dangerous Liaisons for many years with great success, and I watched the movie version with my undergrads in class. 

In their final essays, they told me, in ingenious ways, why the book’s topic, cruelty, had to be well written with care, and how setting the novel in a different time period worked best. 

We had group discussions, rough-draft meetings during office hours, and final-draft grading. 

And all the while, the subject of cruelty was so relatable to them. 

Not one of my students thought the story was humorous.  The subject was taken very seriously. 

For my students, cruelty was the line someone had crossed with no way back to normalcy.  Cruelty placed that person outside the norm in society. Cruelty was the big secret they had to keep. Like the characters in this novel, cruel people have very few friends they can hang out with or be truthful with. Cruel families are cruel together because they have been taught to be cruel, and cannot find anyone else to be cruel with and get away with it. Cruel people marry other cruel people so they can be cruel to others. Friends of cruel people stick with them because they don’t see it as a big deal, a subset of cruelty, the enabler.

Every one of my students had a traumatizing experience with at least one terrifyingly cruel person in their life. 

Family members are vulnerable to cruelty.  Family mobbing is a particularly slippery subject because even abused children love their families, even when they are cruel. Most of what a cruel family member does to another would put them in jail if they tried it on their neighbor. 

When a family member asks another cruel family member to stop being cruel, and they refuse, that’s what makes them a cruel freak. Someone outside the norm. And cruel people know and enjoy it. Cruel people fake normalcy, but not very well. They do it to fit in and avoid jail.

Many companies and nonprofits don’t care: cruelty helps them avoid lawsuits because they can’t legally fire people otherwise. Try to report cruelty to Human Resources:  “Did anyone else see this happen?” will be the first question. Cruel organizations would rather work with someone who tolerates cruelty.

We have an astonishingly cruel president who tells his followers that cruelty is a good idea.  

Cruel people like Jeffrey Epstein will never admit they have been cruel because they know they are evil freaks, and mostly because they are afraid of being treated with cruelty.

No wonder my students liked this novel so much. I loved teaching it.