Story of O

“But over and above these whippings […] never must you look any one of us in the face.”

At Roissy, the men explain to O the rules she must live by during her stay. She is forbidden from looking at any of the men in the face, especially when they are using her. One reason for this rule is to emphasize O’s subordinate position to them and her role as the object of the other’s gaze, not the originator of her own look or perspective. At the same time, this rule also serves to anonymize her relationship to the men and distance her from her previous “normal” life where she was in a relationship with René.

“They had sundered her from hands, freed her of them; her body under the fur, her own body itself was inaccessible to her.”

When O is chained up in her room at Roissy, she is unable to touch her own body with her hands. This serves the purpose of preventing O from deriving any pleasure from her own body and ensuring that her body exists solely for the pleasure and use of the men. Relatedly, then, the purpose of tying O up like this is to alienate her from her own body and lead her to understand it belongs to others, not to her.

“No woman there possessed keys either to the doors or to the chains, but each man carried a bunch of skeleton keys.”

O describes how women are deprived of any means to undo their chains or bracelets or to open locked doors. Meanwhile, even the lowest ranking men, the valets, possess keys allowing them to open all doors and chains. This setup reflects gender relations at Roissy. Women are reduced to passive objects of use, unable to leave their rooms or get up without male approval, whereas the men have the power at any moment to lock away the women like toys.

“[L]ooked on the girl clad in it, not so much like an article of clothing, a protective device, but like a provocative one, a mechanism for display.”

O comments on the attire the women at Roissy are made to wear. The purpose of such clothing, with its long flowing skirt and bodice pushing up the breasts, is, as O notes, to invert the usual function of clothes. Rather than protecting the individual wearer and concealing the private parts of their body, as normal clothes do, the Roissy uniform is designed to expose and emphasize the private parts of the body. In this way, the uniform is another means by which the women at Roissy are taught that their bodies exist not for themselves but for the use of others.

“[N]odding to the Turkish toilet in the corner where indeed he did make her squat.”

Into her second week at Roissy, the valet assigned to O, Pierre, makes her squat and urinate in front of him. Such an act is humiliating for O not just because she is performing a private and intimate function in front of someone else, nor because she is having to do it in front of a man. Rather, the act is humiliating because it is ordered by someone that O regards as her social inferior. As such, this scene captures a recurring theme in the novel, of humiliation being associated with, and intensified by, the presence or participation of those O considers to have lower class status than her.

“And now, doing something she’d never done before, she followed Jacqueline out into the large dressing room.”

Back from Roissy, and in her job as a photographer for a fashion agency, O does a photoshoot for a beautiful Russian model, Jacqueline, and surreptitiously follows her to her dressing room afterward to watch her undress. This action indicates O’s bisexual nature and her sexual interest in other women, something developed in the rest of the novel. As this scene highlights, with O seeing Jacqueline via a mirror, O’s interest in women is to a large degree motivated by narcissism. She enjoys looking at other women and, in her past, sleeping with them, primarily because it allows O to imagine how men perceive and experience her.

“But then, at Roissy, she had […] been able to hide behind the feeling that she was undergoing some other existence.”

Meeting Sir Stephen, O is made to submit to a series of rules very similar to those imposed on her at Roissy. However, as O recognizes, the crucial difference is that at Roissy she was protected from that experience because it seemed to exist in a fantasy or dream world neatly distinguished from her ordinary reality. In contrast, her submission to Sir Stephen will blur the lines between reality and fantasy and, affecting all aspects of her daily life, will not be something from which she can easily escape.

“Here it was of her own choice that she remained half-naked.”

O observes another key difference between her submission at Roissy and the submission expected of her by Sir Stephen. Namely, at Roissy, her submission was passive; it was forced on her. For this reason, in one sense, her submission at Roissy could remain, for her, within the realm of fantasy. In contrast, with Sir Stephen, her submission must be fully and consciously her own choice, and hence something that has a fuller and more inescapable reality.

“O […] had shyly but stubbornly refused to caress herself in front of Marion, and had sworn that she’d never caress herself in front of anyone else.”

O explains why she refuses Sir Stephen’s request to masturbate in front of him. The reason goes back to her experience with a friend who had masturbated in front of her and told her how she had been caught by her boss. Thus, O associates masturbation with public exposure and shame. That Sir Stephen wants her to perform this act is, then, a further way that he is trying to test and break down any remaining resistance from O against his will.

“Once upon a time she’d been indifferent and fickle, had amused herself tempting the boys who were wild about her.”

O describes her relationships with men prior to meeting René. Previously, she had played with men, making them fall in love with her, then refusing them. In one sense this story highlights why O became so enraptured with René, as someone who played the role of the aggressive master, taking what he wanted from O rather than idolizing her. At the same time, the anecdote highlights that O had in some sense been dominant and sadistic herself. As such, it illustrates how the roles of dominant and submissive are not static, but continually evolving and transforming into their opposite.

“[H]e remained fully clothed, silent […] refilling Sir Stephen’s glass—but he himself wouldn’t drink.”

O observes René’s behavior when he is with Sir Stephen, in front of her. René, far from the dominant master that she knows, is instead passive and submissive with Sir Stephen there, deferring to his desires. The refilling of his glass while not drinking himself is also a metaphor for the way René now relates sexually to O and Sir Stephen. Namely, he is happy to prepare O for Sir Stephen’s use but will not use her himself.

“She waited a good while, wondering whether he would surprise her in the middle of the night.”

René has copies of the keys to O’s apartment made and gives them to Sir Stephen. This allows Sir Stephen to potentially arrive and use O at any time. On the one hand, this prospect is frightening for O as it takes away her last private space and sanctuary. On the other hand, O finds thrilling the prospect of not knowing when or if Sir Stephen will show up, and thus by waiting for him, he will become ever present in her mind.

“What he was saying seemed incredibly out of keeping with this public and peaceful place.”

Having been with O for several months, Sir Stephen outlines three new things he wants—three more definitive proofs of her submission. He wants O to seduce Jacqueline and bring her to Roissy. He wishes O to masturbate in front of him. Lastly, he wishes O to have permanent marks of his ownership inscribed on her body. That Sir Stephen chooses to tell O this over lunch in a café in a park shows his determination to break down any residual difference for O between “normal” life and her life as a submissive.

“Or could it be that Jacqueline simply found pleasure in being desired by O […] and also because a woman’s desire can be neither dangerous nor have dangerous consequences.”

O tries, at first unsuccessfully, to seduce Jacqueline, although O realizes that Jacqueline likes being desired and prefers being desired by women than by men. O speculates that the reason for her preferring female desire is that it is “safer” than male desire. O’s comment here can be seen in some sense as satirical. On one level, female desire can be seen as “less dangerous” than male desire for a woman because it does not involve the risk of pregnancy. However, on a deeper level, and especially given O’s intentions to lure Jacqueline back to Roissy, Réage is suggesting that female desire can in fact be more dangerous than men’s, perhaps precisely because it seems safer.

“Not that he was aggressive, or full of reproaches. She would have preferred reproaches, for, after all, he’d not given her permission to break in upon him that way.”

Concerned that René is spending less time with her and that he no longer loves her, O travels across Paris to confront René at the office where he works. Superficially, this scene can be understood in terms of O simply seeking reassurance from her lover. However, what O is really doing is trying to provoke René to reproach and punish her and thereby show his desire to dominate her again. That René is sanguine about her lack of respect shows, in O’s eyes, both that he has become weak and that he no longer has any desire to be her master.

“[S]he liked the idea of torture, when she underwent it she would have seen the earth go up in fire and smoke to escape it, when it was over with she was happy to have undergone it, the happier the crueler and more prolonged it had been.”

O describes her experience of being whipped at Anne-Marie’s house, which is more excruciating than the floggings she received at Roissy or from Sir Stephen. This comment gives an insight into why O enjoys being flogged, and into the psychology of her masochism. Namely, she is happy afterward precisely to the extent that it had been unbearable in the moment. This is because endurance of a more painful flogging indicates to her a greater strength of will on her part to submit, as well as greater proof of her submission.

“Yvonne had screamed anew, louder than before, she had been gripped by a terrible pleasure, a pleasure so piercing that she felt herself laughing with joy despite herself.”

At Anne-Marie’s house, the women draw lots to determine who will get whipped and who will perform the whipping. O describes how having thus been once in the position of whipper, she derives a great joy from the suffering of another one of the women, Yvonne. As suggested by O’s response, the purpose of letting submissives experience the pleasure of delivering floggings is to give them a deeper sense of the pleasure of the sadist, and thus to create a stronger link between the two.

“‘This is the last time you’ll see yourself intact’, she said […] ‘You’ll not recognize yourself.’”

Anne-Marie makes O stand in front of a mirror and look at herself before she is branded and Sir Stephen’s permanent irons are attached to her. Anne-Marie then tells O that she will make O look at herself again afterwards. Making O contrast her state before and after she is permanently marked is designed to impress on her the magnitude of what is about to happen to her. At the same time, it is designed to destabilize O’s sense of self and further alienate her from her own body.

“O was made to sit up […] they butted first one and then the other of the female halves of the links, driving home the first and then the second of the male halves.”

The links attaching the disks bearing Sir Stephen’s name to the irons on O’s body do not fit together at first and have to be hammered in. This process, and the fact that the links will be permanent, symbolizes the permanent binding of Sir Stephen and O and the unity of the female submissive with the male dominant. Fitting the nature of their relationship, this process of bonding is something that is only properly achieved through pain and violence.

“[B]rought into the presence of O spread grotesquely open between the two columns, the young man turned white, stammered and vanished.”

Having been shown O in a restaurant, one of Sir Stephen’s friends, Eric, falls in love with O and tells Sir Stephen that he wants to “save” O by marrying her. In response, Sir Stephen ties up O in a position in his house where her genitals and irons are open and exposed. Seeing this, Eric balks and runs away. The incident symbolizes the now irrevocable nature of O’s condition: The irons will not allow her to return to any kind of “normal” erotic life involving “respectable” men and marriage, even if she wanted to.

“‘Teach me, O, please, please teach me,’ she said, ‘I want to be like you. I’ll do everything you tell me to do.’”

On seeing Jacqueline and O sleeping together, Nathalie, Jacqueline’s half-sister, reveals to O that Jacqueline has told her everything about O and Sir Stephen. Rather than being repulsed, like her sister, 15-year-old Nathalie is fascinated and wants to imitate O. This highlights O’s new role as a “procuress,” passively seducing, by the shocking image of her submission, others into following her path.

“How was one to get Jacqueline to understand that, if she kept still, it was to avoid seeing René lose face, go pale and perhaps be so weak as not to punish Jacqueline?”

After driving with Jacqueline to meet a film director friend whom Jacqueline clearly prefers to René, despite René’s love for Jacqueline, O and Jacqueline get into a fight. They then return to the villa to see René. Jacqueline mistakenly believes that O is not telling René about the director because she fears that Jacqueline will tell Sir Stephen about how she had been crossing her legs and will get punished. In fact, O’s true motivation for not telling René is out of pity. A sign of how weak René has become in O’s eyes, O cannot bear to see René unable to punish Jacqueline were she to tell him.

“[H]e made her touch O’s sex, and the hole through which the ring passed; the little girl obeyed in silence, and when the boy said that, later on, he would have the same thing done to her, she listened quietly.”

At the novel’s end, with O naked in a courtyard except for an owl mask, a young couple approaches and examines O. The sight of O’s irons clearly inspires the young man to have a similar mark of his domination inflicted on his partner. On a deeper level, this incident can be read as a metaphor for how O has become a “procuress,” tempting others into the sadomasochistic world that she occupies. The incident can also be read as a metaphor for the effect and aim of the novel itself, similarly “corrupting” the reader and tempting them into pursuing their own version of O’s story.