43 pages • 1 hour read
Pauline RéageStory of O
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1954A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
O
Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses graphic sexual content.
O says, before being sent to see Anne-Marie by Sir Stephen, that “she opened herself in every part of her body which could possibly open” (186) and “that there lay her raison d’etre” (186). In many ways, this comment captures O’s character in the novel. O’s story can be grasped both in terms of her attempts to open herself ever more deeply to the physical and spiritual desires of the other and to become a better vessel or opening for that desire. This is first evident during her time at Roissy. O gives herself to all the men—including the valets—at the mansion and submits to all their designs on her body. She allows herself to be dressed for their pleasure and whipped, and she internalizes the rules designed to make her more pliant. However, she does this not for the specific benefit of the men there. Rather, she does so because René “for a long time […] had desired to prostitute her” (48). She submits to being used at Roissy because in doing so she finds new depths to which she can be “open” to René and can accommodate herself to his wishes.
Likewise, the same dynamic is at play when René introduces her to Sir Stephen. O notices how happy he was for her to be “handing herself over to Sir Stephen, to his orders and wishes” (104). In a new level of openness to René, she surrenders herself to another man just because he wills it. She accepts this even when doing so appears to go against her sense of fidelity, and love, for him. At the same time—and this was perhaps René’s intention—Sir Stephen demands of O a deeper level of surrender. In making O consent to being branded and having her labia pierced, thus affixing his permanent mark on her, Sir Stephen creates the ultimate object of openness to the other’s desire. This process is then completed at the novel’s end when O becomes a “a procuress” for Sir Stephen. She becomes the ideal opening and vessel for Sir Stephen’s wishes insofar as she is now molded to attract Nathalie and others to Roissy. Further, on a symbolic level, O can also be seen to have this seducing role for the reader. Precisely because O is so empty, and pliable, the reader can project their life onto hers, making her the perfect enticement for readers to pursue their own project of “openness.”
René
When submitting to the men at Roissy, O describes how they were “so many images” (47) of René and “thus he would possess her as a god possessed his creatures […] as some invisible spirit or as ecstasy itself” (47). In this way, O initially sees René as quasi-divine. His power is so great that he can dominate O even when she is sleeping with other men. This perception originates in the story of how she first encountered him. Although sparse, O describes how René had “leapt at her throat like a corsair springing upon a captive” (127) and how “in the space of a week she became acquainted with fear […] with anguish […] but also with happiness” (127). As such, O is initially enraptured by René because he plays the role of the aggressive master. He seizes and subdues what he wants, standing in contrast to O’s previous relationships with women, in which she was the pursuer and the one in control.
This sense of René as an imperious master starts to fray when O meets Sir Stephen. Although at first René and Sir Stephen seem to be equals, “sharing” O, something René is permitting for the sake of his own pleasure, it soon becomes clear that this is not the case. As O starts to realize, seeing René, “refilling Sir Stephen’s glass” while “he himself wouldn’t drink” and how René “more closely watched Sir Stephen’s face than hers” during sex (141), René defers to someone he considers more powerful. René’s subsequent actions do not remedy that notion. When O arrives unannounced at René’s office to ask if he still loves her, and even though “he’d not given her permission to break in upon him that way” (193), René is neither angry nor reproachful. Instead, René mentions Sir Stephen’s plans to take O to Samois and thus confirms his weakness in her eyes. This weakness reaches a nadir when O travels to Cannes. There she not only sees René fall in love with her friend Jacqueline but sees Jacqueline so unafraid of René that she openly pursues other men on the holiday. As O says, René, because of his weakness and his infatuation, was “walking as though in hobbles” (240). The once powerful master and “god” has, by the novel’s end, himself become enslaved.
Sir Stephen
Sir Stephen tells O, when René has left her with him for the first time, and after she has refused to masturbate in front of him, that “you’re going to obey me without loving me and without my loving you” (120). This idea and promise is manifest in the way they first have sex. For while sex with someone one loves is about reciprocity and concern for their wishes and pleasure, Sir Stephen’s relation to O is the exact opposite. As O says, he “jammed his thighs behind hers […] he drove himself into her anus, tearing her” (120). Not only is Sir Stephen not concerned for O’s pleasure, but he takes an active delight in her suffering. As O observes, “it pleased him to force her to scream” (120).
Yet, this “submission without love” does not end with sex. While Sir Stephen goes on to use O’s mouth in a similarly brutal, unloving way and whips her until she is “weeping under the lash” (146), he also imposes it through more overtly psychological means. René makes him keys for O’s apartment so that he can come and go there as he pleases. As O reflects, due to this, “she no longer had any place […] to retreat in order to endure” (150). Sir Stephen shows no concern for O’s comfort or privacy or her psychological need for a place of sanctuary after being used. Her training in submission, for Sir Stephen, trumps all such sympathetic or “loving” considerations. This process reaches its apotheosis with the imposition of Sir Stephen’s marks and irons on O, via surgery and branding, the epitome of putting a lesson in submission over someone’s well-being. Yet after being marked, O talks of being in love with Sir Stephen and becoming “an ecstatic slave” (240) to him. Conversely, at the same time, Sir Stephen hints at being in love with her. Paradoxically for O and Sir Stephen, then, submission without love becomes the pathway to the highest love.
