The Story of O is about a young, beautiful Parisian photographer named O who wants nothing more than to be her lover's slave. She goes through strict "training" for two weeks at Roissey, a club where other women like her learn how to "obey" their masters in whatever they order them to do, whether it be for their masters alone or for other members of the club. O goes through harsh punishments, such as being whipped and flogged daily and being chained to her bed every night. What is most disturbing about this first part of the book, is not O's harsh punishments that she endures, but the fact that she endures all this debasement willingly.
Though she may be considered as a masochist at the beginning of the novel, it becomes clear while reading through the rest of the novel that this is not the case. This is not so much a story about masochism, as it is more a story about love, about how much a woman would sacrifice for it, and the length a woman will go to keep her lover, Rene, happy. O derives no pleasure from the physical, emotional, and psychological torture she endures. Rather, her pleasure is derived from the aftermath of those things: the lashes to her skin, the debasement and objectification of her body and the cruelty that she willingly chooses to endure makes O "happy" in the fact that she is doing all this to please her lover.
O is not a prisoner or slave in the normal term of the word, but rather she is a slave to her love for Rene, as he has made it clear to her that she is free to leave anytime she desires. But she is blinded by her love for him and feels that by enduring the punishment he puts her through, she is becoming closer to him. Or rather, she is becoming his, his object, his property. O cannot stand the thought of losing him or of being separated from him and she feels that her submission to him proves to him that she is his and only his and he can do whatever he wants with her so long as he dos not leave her:
"O was happy that Rene had had her whipped and had prostituted her, because her impassioned submission would furnish her lover with the proof that she belonged to him, but also because the pain and shame of the lash, and the outrage inflicted upon her by those who compelled to her pleasure when they took her, and at the same time delighted in their own without paying the slightest heed to hers, seemed to her the very redemption of her sins."
I saw O, at times, when in the presence of her "masters" as very naive, bordering on the edge of foolish, but cannot help but feel that she deliberately acted this way to seem all the more submissive to them. The only time I ever see O, the real person and not as an object, was when she was with her lover Jacqueline. But I found it odd that O took on many of Rene's domineering characteristics while with Jacqueline, wanting to be in control of Jacqueline intimately, wanting to control her body the way Rene controlled O's. It was only when Jacqueline saw O's body, the marks of the flogging and her scars, that Jacqueline began to back away from O and O had "felt insulted at seeing Jacqueline's contempt for her condition as a flogged and branded slave, a condition of which O herself was proud".
This novel is definitely not for everyone. In fact, it's not for a lot of people due to the neverending violence. I have heard many people call this book "erotic" but it was nothing like that for me. The only reason I kept reading was because I was more intrigued by O. I wanted to understand her, but I think at the end, I was only more confused by her and her mindset. I began thinking toward the end of the novel that she was nothing more than a [...], which ironically, is just what O wanted people to think of her. I also began to greatly dislike her, whereas at the beginning of the novel I was indifferent to her. The ending of this book also left me with a feeling of emptiness as I still had more questions that will forever be unanswered.
What probably disturbed me most about this book, though, was surprisingly not the torture that O endured. If she had been unwilling, it would have caused me to sympathize for her but because she was a willing partner in it, I could not seem to find any kind of sympathy for her, except for at the very end which I will not give away here. That, in itself, disturbed me but what also disturbed me was the fact that I saw in O many characteristics that I have seen in a lot of women today: her willingness to please her lover, to go to drastic lengths to make her lover happy, and her blind passion for him.
