O for objectification: When a woman allows men to literally use her

What were the intentions of the author of Story of O? We might never fully understand them but if she had meant it to be a great fiction which is also erotic, she failed terribly on both fronts. It’s neither a great work of literature nor entirely erotic, unless you’re sick! Even though objectification of women in art and literature was not unusual for that period or any that preceded it, that author took it to a disgusting level rarely seen in print.

Could any normal man, or woman, be aroused by an erotic book full of moments that depict whippings till tears and blood flow, sexual submission to the point of public humiliation and anal rape? As the story progressed, Sir Stephen, O’s sex master who had anally raped her, decided to have her vagina pierced to dangle a pendant carrying his name declaring her his property, then he had her branded on her buttocks with hot iron in another scene.

As you approach the end of the story thinking its depravity could not get worse, you encounter a final paragraph in the form of an alternative ending that is as horrific as the entire book. We’re told that O’s sex master abandons her prompting her to request his permission to kill herself. And he consented! She preferred death to having her sexual slavery come to an end.

Readers of the 21st century who lived through movements calling for an end to sexual abuse and harassment could easily pinpoint the missing component in O’s sexual activities: a clear and explicit consent. Also those who lead lifestyles of BDSM (bondage, discipline, dominance and submission) could detect many of problems with O’s relationships.

The questionable behavior could be summed up as follows:

1. Not only was O told that her consent is not needed, but that it was outright rejected. For example, her lover René, who prostituted her, tells her “your submission will be obtained in spite of you”¹Pauline Réage, Story of O, trans. Sabine d’Estrée (Pairs: Jean-Jacques Pauvert, 1954; reprint, New York: Ballantine Books, 1973), 32. and when she was about to tell him that she was happy to be his slave, he stopped her.

2. She is either psychologically or mentally unsound, which is is evident from her desire for suicide once her sexual slavery came to an end. Her weaknesses were exploited in brutal ways by the men she encountered. Although she willingly goes to the secret club of Roissy whereby she gave an implicit approval, it was clear that her male masters manipulated her to the point of no control on her part.

3. We never see time off the “game” where the sex masters stop to ask her if she had enjoyed as they did, or whether they crossed the line. We never see the men as equal partners with their female sex slave. There is no conversation for setting boundaries or mutual agreements, not to mention a safe word. She was literally a tool for them.

4. The reader is never explicitly told that she found her sexual experiences as enjoyable as it was for others. Even when the reader is given insight into her mind, her sexual punishment and prostitution is described in bizarre religious language as if bringing her the serenity of a hermit²Ibid, 43. and “the very redemption of her sins.”³Ibid, 93. That is yet another sign of her mental issues.

5. All the whimsical ideas of what could be done on her or with her were not initiated by O. We never see her make a sexual request. It was all imposed on O. In one scene, she’s forced to masturbate against her own will.⁴Ibid, 86. In another scene, she’s coerced to wear a plug to widen her anus for several days.⁵Ibid, 41.

Is it a great irony that the writer of this book was a woman? Perhaps. But Pauline Réage, whose real name is Anne Desclos, was writing for a male audience. It was they who read this kind of pornographic literature in the 1950s. She should get credit for her attempt to write erotica, or any kind of fiction for that matter, at a time when the majority of writers and artists were men. That explains her keeping her identity secret for decades. But nothing could explain to me as a man why a female writer who was ahead of her time chose to submit to the old heterosexual fantasy and reduce her character to a sex toy in the hands of sex-hungry savages until death.

You might also like: