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.
Part 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 3: “Anne-Marie and the Rings”
Part 3, Pages 168-187 Summary
Following the instructions of Sir Stephen, O starts seducing Jacqueline both by giving her gifts and by providing her with “evidence […] of the desire she aroused” (169). Through these means, O gets Jacqueline to allow O to kiss her. However, Jacqueline remains evasive and coy and at first does not allow things to go beyond kissing. As such, René agrees to help O with Jacqueline’s seduction. A plan is formulated one evening when, after going to a bar, Jacqueline invites O back to her apartment, which O finds to be dirty and messy and shared by Jacqueline with her grandmother, aunt, and mother. After telling René about Jacqueline’s living situation, René suggests that O invite Jacqueline to live with her. Jacqueline agrees to O’s offer when asked, wanting to escape from her relatives, whom she finds infuriating.
O explains how Jaqueline had male lovers before but never lived with them because of fear of the social disapproval this would invite. Yet, reflects O, Jacqueline could live with O as her lover without anyone suspecting, since she was a woman and a work colleague. O is nonetheless conflicted about seducing Jacqueline for the purpose of getting her to Roissy. On the one hand, O feels guilty about manipulating Jacqueline to serve Sir Stephen’s request. On the other hand, O admits the “immense joy she would have in seeing Jacqueline at her side, like her, naked and defenseless” (177) in the same submissive situation.
After five days of living with O, in a separate room, Jacqueline goes to O’s room naked, and they have sex. For, as O explains, “Jacqueline liked pleasure; and found it both agreeable and practical to receive it from a woman” (180). After Jacqueline has started sleeping with O, she takes up intermittent work as an actress, and one morning when Jacqueline leaves early for her new job, O is taken to Sir Stephen’s house by his chauffeur. There O is made to strip naked in front of Sir Stephen’s elderly female servant, Norah, and led to Sir Stephen’s study. O describes how Norah is allowed to enter the study at any time and how when O is there on that occasion, Norah enters while O is crouching on Sir Stephen’s desk, about to be penetrated. The shame of Norah’s gaze causes O to tense up and try to flee. A few days later, O tells Sir Stephen that she is afraid of Norah. Sir Stephen responds to O’s admission by saying that once O is given “my mark and my irons” (186) she will have even more reason to fear Norah. This also leads Sir Stephen to tell O that he is taking her after lunch to see a woman, Anne-Marie, who will be responsible for giving O his mark and irons.
Part 3, Pages 188-226 Summary
O and Sir Stephen go to see Anne-Marie at her apartment, near the Paris Observatory. Anne-Marie is a small thin woman in her fifties and gently orders O to strip before giving her a tight-fitting corset to wear, designed to reduce the size of her waist. Anne-Marie has O bend over a cushion as she inspects her labia, as O says to herself, in the way they “pull open the mouths of horses to show you the teeth” (190). Sir Stephen then agrees to bring O back to see Anne-Marie at a place called Samois in 10 days’ time. Back at her apartment, O reflects on how René has not been alone with her since Jacqueline moved in. Panicked by the thought that René does not love her anymore, O gets a taxi to see René at his office. There René tells O that he still loves her, although she is being disobedient, since she has not told Jacqueline about Roissy. However, René says that he intends to get Jacqueline there by O telling Jacqueline that he loves her or, if that fails, by force.
With René leaving for Scotland to see family, and Jacqueline away until the end of the month on a film, O goes with Sir Stephen to Anne-Marie’s house in Samois, near the Fontainebleau Forest, south of Paris. There O is asked by Anne-Marie “do you consent to wear the rings and insignia Sir Stephen desires” (198), without knowing how they will be put on her. O agrees. Sir Stephen then leaves, and O starts living in Anne-Marie’s house with three other women, who are always naked, and her three servants. O is forced to wear an even tighter corset than the previous one, which hurts badly, designed to restrict her waist even further. She is also whipped between her thighs with her “legs spread and raised” (205) by one of the other girls until she begs for mercy and is then left, tied up, for three hours.
Anne-Marie explains to O that Sir Stephen’s mark will be affixed to her via two metal disks with interconnected rings, with the disks displaying her and Sir Stephen’s names. These will be inserted into a hole in O’s labia, which she then makes with a device and clamp, without anesthetic. A week later Anne-Marie removes the clamp and puts trial rings in O’s labia. Anne-Marie also explains to O that she will be permanently marked as Sir Stephen’s property by being branded with his initials. Several days later, on the day of her departure, Sir Stephen arrives. He then watches as Anne-Marie attaches two disks to O’s labia, both heavier than the ones she had been initially wearing. O is tied to a column in the library and branded, feeling “abominable pain” as the brands are held on her buttocks before she passes out.
O returns to Paris with Sir Stephen, who tells her that he loves her. O has dinner with Sir Stephen and his friends. He leaves her with them to use as they please after he has shown them how O has been marked and fitted with iron disks. One of his friends, Eric, is “completely overwhelmed” by O and her submissive nature. He takes O to a hotel room and uses her all night. The following day, he tells Sir Stephen that he loves O and would like to marry her. Sir Stephen reminds O that she has the freedom to choose to leave, but she reiterates that she belongs to him. Later, at Roissy, Eric has O “consigned” to him for three nights.
Part 3 Analysis
One of the most graphic and intense aspects of Story of O is the process by which Sir Stephen has O’s body inscribed with the marks displaying his permanent ownership. This begins with her inspection by Anne-Marie, who, when assessing O for the rings that will be attached to her genitals, “seized her two labia” (190) in the way that “they open the gills of fish at the market, and pull open the mouths of horses to show you the teeth” (190). Thus, O is dehumanized, treated like an animal and object. She has heavy disks attached to her genitals through her labia, first pierced by Anne-Marie, an “operation” done without anesthetic despite O’s pleas. The result is both uncomfortable and impossible to escape. Meanwhile, the second process by which she receives Sir Stephen’s mark is no more humane. O is told in advance how she will be branded to heighten her fear, then strapped to a platform, “drowning in terror” (216), as she hears the “hiss of a flame” (216) from a gas burner. This is before having two red hot irons driven against her buttocks, causing her to thrash, “screaming against her bonds” (216) while a voice “slowly counted to five” (216). Such torture results in Sir Stephen’s initials being gouged into her half an inch deep, causing her to pass out afterward from the pain.
What is shocking about both these processes is not the extremity of the torment inflicted on O, nor the associated mutilation, marking her for life and making any straightforward return to normal life impossible. Rather, just as much, it is the psychological and symbolic aspect of these rites that makes them discomfiting. Both the irons and the brand imposed on O concretize an idea that had been up to that point only nascent and implicit: O belongs to Sir Stephen. As O says, when back in Paris after Samois, “the irons threaded through the left lip of her sex” represent “the graven attestation that she was Sir Stephen’s property” (217). His name, in two ways inscribed on her body, now symbolizes her belonging to Sir Stephen not just in the way that lovers “belong” to one another, or even in the way that a servant “belongs” to a master. Instead, it represents her belonging in the way that cattle, or a dog, belongs. This idea is emphasized by the fact that the rings on her genitals can be attached to a leash, allowing O to be led like a dog. Likewise, farmers typically brand livestock to distinguish one owner’s property from another. Namely, she has become an object existing entirely for Sir Stephen’s use, no longer fully human or possessing the rights of a human individual.
Further, the nature of this transformation is not solely a matter between Sir Stephen and O either. When Sir Stephen shows O to his friends, for the first time, after Samois, he also “raised her skirt to show […] how O had been marked and ironed” (223). Thus, O is exposed publicly, indicating that her ownership, and enslavement, is also a public fact, observable even to the waiters in the restaurant. This public and irredeemable character of O’s servitude is highlighted when one of O’s friends, Eric, tries to “save” her by proposing marriage. In response, Sir Stephen presents O to him in a boudoir, “spread grotesquely open between the two columns” (225-26). Eric balks after seeing O like this. The incident symbolizes how far O’s subjection to Sir Stephen has gone, and how far, with his marks and irons, she is lost to ordinary standards of sexual morality and propriety.
What stands out on a still deeper level is that O consents to her treatment entirely. When asked by Anne-Marie, “do you consent to wear the rings and insignia Sir Stephen desires to have you wear, without knowing beforehand how they will be put upon you?” (198), she answers in the affirmative. O consents to being marked and, implicitly, to becoming the property of another. Not only that, but O consents without knowing if the way the marks are made is something to which she could consent. In this regard, O enters into one of the paradoxes of masochism: She is really being asked whether she will consent to undergoing something to which she could not possibly consent, branding with irons and surgery without anesthesia. It is precisely because they are so painful, and because she had not anticipated them, that they serve as proof of her servitude. In short, O’s absolute submission to Sir Stephen is demonstrated in her willingness to undertake anything for him, which can be shown only by effacing the most primal and urgent demands of her body and spirit.
