Mademoiselle de Volanges

Mademoiselle de Volanges moves from sheltered adolescence into a social world in which other people repeatedly claim authority over her future. Her wealth and intended marriage seem to promise security, but neither protects her from manipulation or gives her an easy voice in choosing her own life. Through the conflicting accounts of her mother, the Chevalier Danceny, and the Vicomte de Valmont, her story becomes one of innocence exposed to calculated pressure, and of a final religious vocation that her family can neither fully explain nor confidently interpret.

Identity and Background

Mademoiselle de Volanges is described by the Marquise de Merteuil as fifteen, pretty, awkward, and unpracticed in social manner. Her mother, Madame de Volanges, has educated her in a convent, a circumstance that the Comte de Gercourt values: Merteuil observes that he prefers convent education and is prejudiced in favor of blondes. The match is also shaped by money. Mademoiselle de Volanges has an income of sixty thousand livres, a sum that makes her a desirable prospective bride, while Merteuil sees the marriage as an opportunity to take revenge on Gercourt by making him ridiculous.

The opening editorial frame presents her eventual religious choice as an apparent improbability: the prefatory voice argues that a young woman with sixty thousand livres of income would not become a nun in its own enlightened age. That skepticism makes her trajectory a test of the claims made by the book’s framing voices as well as a personal story. The wealth that seems to assure her a place in society cannot determine what she will choose, or prevent others from shaping the choices available to her.

Courtship, Surveillance, and Exploitation

Mademoiselle de Volanges’s attachment to the Chevalier Danceny develops under the supervision of adults who treat her correspondence and marriage as matters to manage. When the Vicomte de Valmont proposes making a duplicate key to her room, she refuses. In a letter, she explains that the imitation might be noticed by her observant mother, that discovery could ruin her, and that arranging the key would expose her to blame even if Valmont made it. She also admits that, although taking the key would be easy, she has twice lacked the courage. She prefers the risk and delay of continuing as they are, receiving letters through Valmont’s existing help rather than enabling secret meetings.

Valmont later recounts obtaining the key and entering her room at night. His account describes Mademoiselle de Volanges as frightened and trying to resist; he says that he used the key’s presence to suggest that she had authorized his entry and could not safely expose him without implicating herself. He presents her eventual submission as the result of his tactics, not as a freely made choice. His version is self-serving, but its details show how her earlier fear of blame and discovery became leverage in his hands. He converts a device she had refused into a means of access and pressure, exploiting precisely the vulnerability she had anticipated.

Marriage and Maternal Choice

Madame de Volanges’s view of her daughter’s future changes when she recognizes the strength of Mademoiselle de Volanges’s feelings for Danceny. She had initially chosen the Comte de Gercourt and given her word concerning the marriage. Now she worries that forcing the match would make her daughter marry one man while loving another, and that such a choice could damage both her daughter’s virtue and her future happiness. She decides that her authority should not override a preference she failed to prevent from arising.

Her reconsideration also rests on comparison between the suitors. Madame de Volanges acknowledges that Gercourt may be the better match by conventional measures, but argues that Danceny is of equally good family, has personal qualities equal to Gercourt’s, and both loves and is loved by her daughter. Although he is not wealthy, she reasons that Mademoiselle de Volanges has enough for them both. She questions marriages calculated for convenience when tastes and characters do not agree, and chooses to defer the engagement rather than risk her daughter’s lasting despair. Her reasoning makes the daughter’s wealth a possible resource for choice, not merely a reason to arrange her marriage.

Manipulation and Conflicting Accounts

The Marquise de Merteuil’s plans further compromise Mademoiselle de Volanges’s ability to pursue Danceny. While preparing to leave Paris with Belleroche, Merteuil identifies Danceny as a possible successor in her affections. She describes herself as his confidante, disparages Mademoiselle de Volanges, and asks Valmont to prevent Danceny from returning to her during Merteuil’s absence. She presents this interference as a rescue of Danceny, but her own account reveals a competing personal interest and a willingness to control the young couple’s access to one another.

Near the end, Madame de Volanges tries to reconstruct what may have happened. She knows that her daughter received and answered Danceny’s letters, and fears that her supervision may have been evaded. She reinterprets earlier signs of distress—including her daughter’s reaction to news concerning Valmont and her tears over the reports about Merteuil—as possible evidence of jealousy or a troubled attachment. These are suspicions, not confirmed explanations: the mother explicitly lacks certainty and asks for an answer that her friend does not provide.

Danceny’s later judgment is more sympathetic but does not erase the harm. He sends Madame de Rosemonde a packet of Mademoiselle de Volanges’s letters and says that their pages combine ingenuousness and perfidy. He condemns Merteuil for taking pleasure in abusing such innocence, while reflecting that a convent-educated young woman with little experience might have been unable to withstand such manipulation. Danceny states that he no longer loves Mademoiselle de Volanges, yet feels no desire for revenge against her. His response places her compromised conduct within the circumstances and pressures surrounding it, rather than treating it as proof of an unchanging character.

Convent Vocation and Narrative Afterlife

Madame de Volanges is eventually advised not to oppose her daughter’s expressed vocation. Madame de Rosemonde urges her to leave Mademoiselle de Volanges at the convent, encourage the plan, and break off the proposed marriage to Gercourt. The advice is grounded in a religious interpretation of vocation, but the evidence does not disclose the daughter’s full reasons. Madame de Volanges herself continues to wonder whether the choice is enduring or has arisen from disillusionment with men; her questions remain unanswered. She nevertheless allows her daughter to stay, and reports that Mademoiselle de Volanges is to take the habit of a postulant.

The ending thus gives Mademoiselle de Volanges a choice while withholding a complete account of its origins. Her mother fears that silence conceals a greater injury, and Danceny’s letter confirms the manipulation surrounding the young woman without resolving every suspicion. The correspondence also makes that incompleteness part of her narrative: an editorial note explains that, after Mademoiselle de Volanges changed confidantes, her later letters to her convent friend were omitted because they would add nothing to the reader’s understanding. Her story survives through selected letters and other people’s interpretations, leaving the reader to see both the limits placed on her agency and the uncertainty that remains when the correspondence ends.