<== French Jacket
By Pauline Réage
If you don't have time or inclination to read the kinky Story of O, here's our "ClitNote" version summarizing all the good bits for "handy" reference.
A BOOK WITH A VERY NAUGHTY HISTORY
Story of O is one of the harshest yet most erotic tales of sadomasochism in existence. You doubt? Earlier this year, no less an authority than Playboy hailed Story of O as #4 in its list of “The 25 Sexiest Novels Ever Written,” out-ranking such well-known masturbation-inspirations as Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying, and Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita. The book is an elegant, haunting tale of a woman so consumed by love that she will debase herself in any fashion her lover wishes.
The novel was originally published in Paris in 1954. It came as a surprise to French literary circles, who could not identify the book’s author and were scandalized by its themes. Once the book won a major literary prize, the police got involved, interrogating various literary figures as to the author’s true name. They never got their answer. An unnamed government official ordered the investigation stopped, and the book had no more censorship problems from that moment on, in spite of its hardcore content.
Forty years later, the mystery was solved. In 1994, Dominique Aury ‒ an editor for Gallimard Press in France ‒ confessed that she had written the novel to intrigue her lover at the time. Many were shocked that such a seriously-dressed (“almost nun-like”) intellectual could be the author of this debauchery, but it was the truth. In an interview, Aury confessed: “I wrote it alone, for him, to interest him, to please him, to occupy him. I wasn’t young, nor particularly pretty. I needed something which might interest a man like him.”
It’s been interesting men and women alike ever since.
OUR MAIN CHARACTERS
O: Our exquisite heroine, in love with Rene and submissive to his every desire. Her name is as short and small as possible, and suggests an open orifice.
Rene: Her lover, who introduces her to sexual slavery, but who is destined to turn her over to another man.
Sir Stephen: Rene’s strict older half-brother, who proves to be a much harsher master than Rene.
HIGHLIGHTS AND HOT SPOTS
The Lovers at Roissy
O meets her lover Rene for what she thinks is an ordinary date. He takes her into a waiting black car, orders her to remove most of her clothing, then leaves her in a chateau in the Paris suburb of Roissy. There she is stripped, bathed, measured, and put in a collar and handcuffs. Blindfolded, she is rudely examined and sexually used not just by her lover Rene, but by others in his company.
O learns that she will have domestic duties at the chateau, but her real job is to give up her body on command. She is told of an iron ring she will wear the rest of her life that will signal her sexual submission to any man in the know. Should she ever refuse to obey, she will be returned to Roissy for punishment. At the chateau, Rene shows her off to a friend of his, embracing and kissing her on the mouth as the stranger sucks hard on her clitoris then penetrates her, making her cry out in lust. She feels guilty and debased that “another man” has elicited this lusty reaction in her. Rene tenderly tells her that he loves her, and that later he will have the valets whip her (oh sweet love). They fall asleep together, very much in love.
The men at the club explore her orifices and tell Rene that O’s rear passage must be widened. He pleasantly agrees. For the next week, while her bottom is stretched by butt plugs held in place by delicate chains, she awaits her lover who has left her fate to the strangers of the dungeon. Eventually she is relieved of her collar and cuffs, given a snug iron ring with an insignia of a three-spoked wheel, dressed, and driven away in the black car with Rene.
Sir Stephen
Back at O’s apartment, Rene tells her that even though she is away from Roissy, she is not free, except to stop loving him – in which case she should leave immediately. Of course, she is loving this nasty treatment. So O stays, showing that she will undergo any torment to keep Rene’s love. Rene wants her body constantly accessible, and O is told that she will destroy or modify all of her clothing so that it meets his strict requirements. She wears no undergarments, and the only clothing she is allowed are garments that can be stripped off instantly.
O returns to her job in the fashion department of a photography agency. She becomes fascinated with a haughty blonde model there, Jacqueline. She fantasizes about what “they” would do to her at Roissy. It comes out that O has a bisexual past – she has spent time courting and kissing young women, oo-la-la, always being the dominant one in these girlish relationships. Eventually, Rene is introduced to Jacqueline and is attracted to her. O admits that she is also in love with the model. Soon, O is taken on a date with Rene and Sir Stephen, his half-brother, whom Rene idolizes. The men propose that Sir Stephen be her master. O is so stunned that she cannot speak–but the men demand more than her tacit approval; they want her to say specific things. She tries:
“I’m yours,” she said at length to Rene. “I’ll be whatever you want me to be.”
“No,” he broke in, “ours. Repeat after me: I belong to both of you. I shall be whatever both of you want me to be.”
Sir Stephen’s piercing grey eyes were fixed firmly upon her, as were Rene’s, and in them she was lost, slowly repeating after him the phrases he was dictating to her, but like a lesson of grammar, she was transposing them into the first person.
“To Sir Stephen and me you grant the right…” The right to dispose of her body however they wished...simply for their pleasure...”
This is a major change for O. At Roissy, she felt the men who used her were extensions of Rene’s love for her. Now she can see that Rene worships Stephen above all else. When Rene grants Sir Stephen exclusive use of O’s ass, the slavegirl is devastated. She realizes that Sir Stephen is the master of them both.
At the end of the chapter, O learns that she is to be the bait that lures Jacqueline to Roissy.
Anne-Marie and the Rings
Jacqueline becomes O’s roommate in Paris. At home, O is seductive and affectionate toward Jacqueline, and enjoys “betraying” her by reporting every intimate detail to the men.
Sir Stephen takes O to see a dominatrix named Anne-Marie. O is laced tightly into a corset to reduce her waistline while leaving her genitals and bottom free. She is as objectified as an animal:
“Anne-Marie ran her hand lightly over her buttocks and then, toppling her over an ottoman and ordering her not to move, seized both her nether lips. This is how they lift fish at the market, O was thinking, by the gills, and also how they pry open the mouths of horses.”
O is taken to Anne-Marie’s for two weeks of training. The girls there are whipped regularly in a lottery system. O agrees to wear Sir Stephen’s rings with no knowledge of how or where they will placed on her body. When the day comes, he does nasty things to O's labia with the heavy iron rings. This is when Sir Stephen begins to hand her over to other men. One man, named Eric, falls in love with O and wishes to marry her and save her from her slavery. Sir Stephen exploits this situation by building a soundproof room and punishing her in front of Eric. Later, Eric will ask for her specially at Roissy. But what he has in store for her is not bubble baths and massage. Instead, he proves with his wicked behavior that even the most well-intentioned man cannot resist taking advantage of O's utter submission.
The Owl
It takes Jacqueline days to notice the O's marks of the past days' events; once she does, she blurts out that she has had sex with Rene. O (who once could not bear to think of losing Rene) simply answers, “Let me caress you and tell you about Roissy.” O feels glad to be bringing the high-and-mighty Jacqueline down to her own level.
Sir Stephen invites Jacqueline, her younger sister Natalie, and O to his seaside villa, en route to Roissy. There are hidden screens next to the beds so Stephen can privately watch the girls as they enjoy each other’s bodies. Natalie, a virgin, is not to be touched or kissed at all until she is taken to the chateau.
There is a party. In preparation, Natalie fetches strange elaborate masks, made of feathers and fur, depicting such creatures as a falcon, an owl, a fox, a lion, and a bull. The otherwise nude O selects a tawny owl mask for her face; Sir Stephen opens the ring on her labia and attaches a chain. She is led to a moonlit cloister to observe the decadence.
“O stared at them with eyes opened wide like the nocturnal bird she was imitating, and the illusion was so extraordinary that no one thought of questioning her, which would have been the most natural thing to do, as though she were a real owl, deaf to human language, and dumb.”
At daybreak, they untie her and remove her mask. One after the other, they possess her.
There are two endings, both suppressed and not in publication. In one, O returns to Roissy and is abandoned by Sir Stephen. In the other, O learns that Sir Stephen is about to leave her, and tells him that she would prefer to die. Sir Stephen grants his consent.
It is popularly understood that self-annihilation is the next step of O’s journey, although whether this is by her own hand, or whether she is brutalized to death by others, is left to the imagination.
IMPORTANT THEMES
The seeming paradox of freedom within slavery.
“Nothing had been such a comfort to her as the silence, unless it was the chains. The chains and the silence, which should have bound her deep within herself, which should have smothered her, strangled her, on the contrary freed her from herself.”
A lover can give you away to experience owning you.
“The more he surrendered her, the more he would hold her dear. The fact that he gave her was to him a proof, and ought to be one for her as well, that she belonged to him: one can only give what belongs to you. He gave her only to reclaim her immediately, to reclaim her enriched in his eyes, like some common object which has been used for some divine purpose and has thus been consecrated.”
Sin can symbolically be transferred to a vessel of impurity, and this can purify the degraded.
“Daily, and so to speak, ceremoniously soiled with saliva and sperm, she felt herself literally to be the repository of impurity, the sink mentioned in Scriptures… O was happy that Rene had had her whipped and had prostituted her, because the pain and shame of the lash… seemed to her the very redemption of her sins.”
A harsh master is more valuable than a kind one to someone such as O, who fears abandonment above all else.
“What was Rene compared to Sir Stephen? Ropes of straw, anchors of cork, paper chains: these were the real symbols of the bonds with which he had held her, and which he had been so quick to sever. But what a delight and comfort, this iron ring which pierces the flesh and weighs one down forever, this mark eternal, how peaceful and reassuring the hand of a master who lays you on a bed of rock, the love of a master who knows how to take what he loves ruthlessly, without pity.
