Story of O begins with René, her lover, taking her to a secret club in a château in Roissy to have her trained on sexual submission. She would be stripped, chained, whipped and “gangbanged”:
They turned her around, and the heat of the fire was against her back. A hand seized one of her breasts, a mouth fastened on the tip of the other. But suddenly she lost her balance and fell backward (supported by whose arms?), while they opened her legs and gently spread her lips. Hair grazed the insides of her thighs. She heard them saying that they would have to make her kneel down. This they did. She was extremely uncomfortable in this position, especially because they forbade her to bring her knees together and because her arms pinioned behind her forced her to lean forward. Then they let her rock back a bit, as nuns are wont to do.
“You’ve never tied her up?”
“No, never.”
“And never whipped her?”
“No, never whipped her either. But as a matter of fact…”
It was her lover speaking.
“As a matter of fact,” the other voice went on, “if you do tie her up from time to time, or whip her just a little, and she begins to like it, that’s no good either. You have to get past the pleasure stage, until you reach the stage of tears.”Then they made O get up and were on the verge of untying her, probably in order to attach her to some pole or wall, when someone protested that he wanted to take her first, right there on the spot. So they made her kneel down again, this time with her bust on an ottoman, her hands still tied behind her, with her hips higher than her torso. Then one of the men, holding her with both his hands on her hips, plunged into her belly. He yielded to a second. The third wanted to force his way into the narrower passage and, driving hard, made her scream. When he let her go, sobbing and befouled by tears beneath her blindfold, she slipped to the floor, only to feel someone’s knees against her face, and she realized that her mouth was not to be spared. Finally they let her go, a captive clothed in tawdry finery, lying on her back in front of the fire. She could hear glasses being filled and the sound of the men drinking, and the scraping of chair. They put some more wood on the fire. All of a sudden they removed her blindfold. The large room, the walls of which were lined with bookcases, was dimly lit by a single wall lamp and by the light of the fire, which was beginning to burn more brightly. Two of the men were standing and smoking. Another was seated, a riding crop on his knees, and the one leaning over her fondling her breast was her lover. All four of them had taken her, and she had not been able to distinguish him from the others.
They explained to her that this was how it would always be, as long as she was in the château, that she would see the faces of those who violated or tormented her, but never at night, and she would never know which ones had been responsible for the worst. The same would be true when she was whipped, except that they wanted her to see herself being whipped, and so this once she would not be blindfolded. They, on the other hand, would don their masks, and she would no longer be able to tell them apart.1Pauline Réage, Story of O, trans. Sabine d’Estrée (New York: Ballantine Books, 1973), 9-11.
They said that, with the exception of her hands, which would be held just above her head, she would thus be able to move and see the blows coming: that in principle she would be whipped only on the thighs and buttocks, in other words between her waist and knees […] there would be ample time for her to scream, to struggle, and to cry. They would grant her some respite, but as soon as she had caught her breath they would start in again, judging the results not from her screams or tears but from the size and color of the welts they had raised.2Ibid, 12.
They also presented her with a list of rules to follow during her stay:
You are here to serve your masters. During the day, you will perform whatever domestic duties are assigned to you, such as sweeping, putting back the books, arranging flowers, or waiting on table. Nothing more difficult than that. But at the first word or sign from anyone you will drop whatever you are doing and ready yourself for what is really your one and only duty: to lend yourself. Your hands are not your own, nor are your breasts, nor, most especially, any of your bodily orifices, which we may explore or penetrate at will. You will remember at all times – or as constantly as possible – that you have lost all right to privacy or concealment, and as a reminder of this fact, in our presence you will never close your lips completely, or cross your legs, or press your knees together (you may recall you were forbidden to do this the minute you arrived). This will serve as a constant reminder, to you as well as to us, that your mouth, your belly, and your backside are open to us… [B]esides the whipping you receive from whoever may want to whip you, you will also be flogged in the evening, as punishment for any infractions of the rules committed during the day: for having been slow to oblige, for having raised your eyes and looked at the person addressing you or taking you – you must never look any of us in the face. If the costume we wear in the evening – the one I am now wearing – leaves our sex exposed, it is not for the sake of convenience, for it would be just as convenient the other way, but for the sake of insolence, so that your eyes will be directed there upon it and nowhere else, so that you may learn that there resides your master, for whom, above all else, your lips are intended… [B]oth this flogging and the chain – which when attached to the ring of your collar keeps you more or less closely confined to your bed several hours a day – are intended less to make you suffer, scream, or shed tears than to make you feel, through this suffering, that you are not free but fettered, and to teach you that you are totally dedicated to something outside yourself. When you leave here, you will be wearing on your third finger an iron ring, which will identify you. By then you will have learned to obey those who wear the same insignia, and when they see it they will know that beneath your skirt you are constantly naked, however comely or commonplace your clothes may be, and that this nakedness is for them. Should anyone find you in the least intractable, he will return you here. Now you will be shown to your cell.3Ibid, 15.
On another day, in the presence of three men and her lover René:
O knelt down on the rug, her green dress in a corolla around her. Her bodice squeezed her; her breasts whose nipples were visible, were at the level of her lover’s knees. “A little more light,” said one of the men. As they were adjusting the lamp so that the beam of light would fall directly on his sex and on his mistress’s face, which was almost touching it, and on her hands which were caressing him from below, René suddenly ordered: “Say it again: ‘I love you.'” O repeated “I love you,” with such delight that her lips hardly dared brush the tip of his sex, which was still protected by its sheath of soft flesh. The three men, who were smoking, commented on her gestures, on the movement of her mouth closed and locked on the sex she had seized, as it worked its way up and down, on the way tears streamed down her ravaged face each time the swollen member struck the back of her throat and made her gag, depressing her tongue and causing her to feel nauseous.4Ibid, 18.
The château was attended by valets, male servants, who had sexual access to all the women and who were responsible for administering whippings when the masters were not available.
There were times where she was left alone in silence and darkness.
The lips between her legs, her burning lips were forbidden her, and perhaps they were burning because she knew they were open to the first comer: to the valet Pierre, if he cared to enter. She was surprised that the whipping she had received had left her so untroubled, so calm, whereas the thought that she would probably never know which of the four men had twice taken her from behind, and whether it was the same man both times, and whether it had been her lover, quite distressed her. She turned over slightly on her stomach, recalling that her lover loved the furrow between her buttocks which, except for this evening (if it had been he), he had never penetrated. She hoped it had been he; would she ask him? Ah, never!5Ibid, 23.
Pierre flogged her with all his might. He did not wait for her screams to subside, but struck her again four times, being careful each time to lash her above or below the preceding spot, so that the traces would be all the clearer. Even after he had stopped she went on screaming, and the tears streamed down into her open mouth.6Ibid, 25.
Her lover came back with another man:
She lost her footing and found herself again lying on the bed, with René’s mouth on her mouth; his two hands were pinning her shoulders to the bed, while two other hands beneath her knees were raising and opening her legs. Her own hands, which were beneath her back (for when René had propelled her toward the unknown man he had bound her wrists together by clipping the wristbands together), were grazed by the sex of the man who was caressing himself in the furrow of her buttocks before rising to strike hard into the depths of her belly. At the first stroke she cried out, as though it had been the lash of a whip, then again at each new stroke, and her lover bit her mouth. The man tore himself abruptly away from her and fell back on the floor, as though struck by lightning, and he too gave a cry.
René freed O’s hands, lifted her up, and lay her down beneath the blanket on the bed. The man got up, René escorted him to the door. In a flash, O saw herself released, reduced to nothing, accursed. She had moaned beneath the lips of the stranger as never her lover had made her moan, cried out under the impact of a stranger’s member as never her lover had made her cry out. She felt debased and guilty. She could not blame him if he were to leave her. But no, the door was closing again, he was staying with her, he was coming back, lying down beside her beneath the cover, he was slipping into her moist, hot belly and, still holding her in this embrace, he said to her: “I love you. When I’ll also have given you to the valets, I’ll come in one night and have you flogged till you bleed.”7Ibid, 29.
René had to gently remind her of the rules:
O was on the verge of saying that she was his slave and that she bore her bonds cheerfully. He stopped her. “Yesterday you were told that as long as you are in the château you are not to look a man in the face or speak to him. The same applies to me as well: with me you shall remain silent and obey. I love you. Now get up. From now on the only times that you will open your mouth here in the presence of a man will be to cry out or to caress [perform fellatio].”8Ibid, 32.
One day while Jeanne, another resident, was helping dress O, René came in. After a while he ordered O to watch while he had sex with Jeanne.
He left Jeanne and took [O] in his arms, calling her his love and his life, saying over and over again that he loved her. The hand he was caressing her neck with was moist with the odor of Jeanne. And so? The despair that had overwhelmed herslowly ebbed: he loved her, ah he loved her. He was free to enjoy himself with Jeanne, or with others, he loved her. “I love you,” he had whispered to her ear, “I love you,” so softly it was scarcely audible.9Ibid, 34.
O watched as a young master came in one night to “use” two residents, Monique and Jeanne.
He told them to bring the ottoman (it was the same ottoman on which O had been spread-eagled the night before). Monique did not wait for further instructions, she kneeled down, bent over, her breasts crushed against the first and holding both corners of the ottoman in her hands. When the young man had Jeanne lift the red skirt, she did not stir. Jeanne was then obliged to undo his clothing – and he gave her the order in the most churlish manner – and take between her hands that sword of flesh which had so cruelly pierced O at least once. It swelled and stiffened beneath the closed palm, and O saw these same hands, Jeanne’s tiny hands, spreading Monique’s thighs, into the hollow of which, slowly and in short spasms which made her moan, the lad plunged.10Ibid, 40.
After a complaint by a Roissy visitor that O was too tight as he was having anal sex with her, comes the first episode of body modification in the book. She’s made to wear a large butt plug to widen her anus.
For the next eight days, between dusk when her stint in the library came to an end and that hour of the night – which was generally eight or ten o’clock – when she was returned to her cell, in chains and naked beneath her red cape, O wore an ebonite shaft simulating an erect male member which was inserted behind and held in place by three small chains connected to a leather belt around her hips, in such a way that the internal movements of her muscles could not expel it.11Ibid, 41.
At the evening meal, which the girls took together in the same refectory, after their bath, naked and powdered O still wore it, and everyone could see that she was wearing it, because of the little chains and the belt. It was only removed, by the valet, when he came to chain her to the wall for the night if no one had asked for her, or, if someone had, when he locked her hands behind her if he had to take her to the library. Rare were the nights when someone did not appear to make use of this passage thus rapidly rendered as easy as, though still narrower than, the other. After eight days there was no longer any need for an instrument, and O’s lover told her that he was happy she was now doubly open and that he would make certain she remained so.12Ibid, 42.
Daily and, so to speak, ceremoniously soiled with saliva and sperm, she felt herself literally to be the repository of impurity, the sink mentioned in the Scriptures. And yet those parts of her body most constantly offended, having become less sensitive, at the same time seemed to her to have become more beautiful and, as it were, ennobled: her mouth closed upon anonymous members, the tips of her breasts constantly fondled by hands, and between her quartered thighs the twin, contiguous paths wantonly ploughed. That she should have been ennobled and gained in dignity through being prostituted was a source of surprise, and yet dignity was indeed the right term.
…
When René had informed her that he was leaving, night had already fallen. […] He kissed her, lay her down on the bed, lay down beside her and, tenderly and slowly and gently, took her, alternating between the two tracks open to him, before finally spilling himself into her mouth, which he then kissed again.
“Before I leave,” he said, “I would like to have you whipped, and this time I’ll ask your permission. Do you agree?” She agreed to it.
“I love you,” he repeated. “Ring for Pierre.”13Ibid, 43.
One day she woke up chained feeling like she lost all sense of time…
There was no longer any day or night, the light never went out. Pierre, or some other valet – it hardly mattered which – replaced the water, fruit, and bread on the tray whenever it was gone, and took her to bathe in a nearby dungeon. She never saw the men who came in, for each time a valet preceded them to blindfold her eyes, and removed it only after they had left. She also lost track of them, of who they were and how many there were, and neither her soft hands nor her lips blindly caressing were ever able to identify who they were touching. At times there were several, more often only one, but each time, before they came near her, she was made to kneel down facing the wall, the ring of her collar fastened to the same eye-bolt to which the chain was attached, and whipped.
…
[She had been there] for three months, three days, or ten days, or ten years.14Ibid, 47.
It was time for O to leave the château. René took her to the house of his step-brother, Sir Stephen, for whom she developed feelings. He was a much tougher master than René.
O hated herself for her own desire, and loathed Sir Stephen for the self-control he was displaying. She wanted him to love her, there, the truth was out: she wanted him to be chafing under the urge to touch her lips and penetrate her body, to devastate her if need be, but not to remain so calm and self-possessed. At Roissy, she had not cared in the slightest whether those who had used her had any feeling whatsoever: they were the instruments by which her lover derived pleasure from her, by which she became what he wanted her to be, polished and smooth and gentle as a stone. Their hands were his hands, their order his order. But not here. René had turned her over to Sir Stephen, but it was clear that he wanted to share her with him, not to obtain anything further from her, nor for the pleasure of surrendering her, but in order to share with Sir Stephen what today he loved most, as no doubt in days gone by, when they were young, they had shared a trip, a boat, a horse.15Ibid, 80.
She did not dare look Sir Stephen in the face, but she saw his hands undoing his belt. When he had straddled O, who was still kneeling, and had seized her by the nape of her neck, he drove into her mouth. It was not the caress of her lips the length of him he was looking for, but the back of her throat. For a long time he probed, and O felt the suffocating gag of flesh swell and harden, its slow repeated hammering finally bringing her to tears. In order to invade her better, Sir Stephen ended by kneeling on the sofa, one knee on each side of her face, and there were moments when his buttocks rested on O’s breast, and in her heart she felt her womb, useless and scorned, burning her. Although he delighted and reveled in her for a long time, Sir Stephen did not bring his pleasure to a climax, but withdrew from her in silence and rose again to his feet, without closing his dressing gown.
“You are easy, O,” he said to her. “You love René, but you’re easy. Does René realize that you covet and long for all the men who desire you, that by sending you to Roissy or surrendering you to others he is providing you with a string of alibis to cover your easy virtue?”
“I love René,” O replied.
“You love René, but you desire me, among others,” Sir Stephen went on.16Ibid, 83.
Sir Stephen abruptly ordered her to caress herself, without closing her legs. Startled, O meekly stretched her right hand toward her loins, where her fingers encountered the ridge of flesh – already emerging from the protective fleece beneath, already burning – where her belly’s fragile lips merged. But her hand recoiled and she mumbled:
“I can’t.”
And in fact she could not. The only times she had ever caressed herself furtively had been in the warmth and obscurity of her bed, when she slept alone, but she had never tried to carry it to a climax. But later she would sometimes come upon it in her sleep and would wake up disappointed that it had been so intense and yet so fleeting.
Sir Stephen’s gaze was persistent. She could not bear it, and repeating “I can’t,” she closed her eyes.
What she was seeing in her mind’s eye, what she had never been able to forget, what still filled her with the same sensation of nausea and disgust that she had felt when she had first witnessed it when she was fifteen, was the image of Marion [a former and much older girlfriend of O in her adolescence] slumped in the leather armchair in a hotel room, Marion with one leg sprawled over one arm of the chair and her head half hanging over the other, caressing herself in her, O’s, presence, and moaning. Marion had related to her how she had one day caressed herself this way in her office when she had thought she was alone, and her boss had happened to walk in and caught her in the act.17Ibid, 84.
Her younger experiences had left her uncomfortable with masturbation. So she refused to perform for Sir Stephen.
“Is this your obedience?” he said.
Then he caught both her wrists with his left hand, and with his right he slapped her on both sides of the face. She staggered, and would have fallen had he not held her up.
“Kneel down and listen to me,” he said. “I’m afraid René’s training leave a great deal to be desired.”
“I always obey René,” she mumbled.
“You’re confusing love and obedience. You’ll obey me without loving me, and without my loving you.”
With that, she felt a strange inexplicable storm of revolt rising within her, silently denying in the depths of her being the words she was hearing, denying her promises of submission and slavery, denying her own agreement, her own desire, her nakedness, her sweat, her trembling limbs, the circles under her eyes. She struggled and clenched her teeth with rage when, having made her bend over, with her elbows on the floor and her head between her arms, her buttocks raised, he forced her from behind, to rend her as René had said he would.
The first time she did not cry out. He went at it again, harder now, and she screamed. She screamed as much out of revolt as of pain, and he was fully aware of it. She also knew – which meant that in any event she was vanquished – that he was pleased to make her cry out. When he had finished with her, and after he had helped her to her feet, he was on the point of dismissing her when he remarked to her that what he had spilled in her was going to seep slowly out, tinted with the blood of the wound he had inflicted on her, that this wound would burn her as long as her buttocks were not used to him and he was obliged to keep forcing his way. […] He reminded her that she had agreed to be René’s slave, and his too, but that it appeared unlikely that she was aware – consciously aware – of what she had consented to. By the time she had learned, it would be too late for her to escape.18Ibid, 86.
Nonetheless she remained obedient to Sir Stephen. Days later, he asked her…
“I’m going to put a gag in your mouth, O, because I’d like to whip you till I draw blood. Do I have your permission?”
“I’m yours,” O said.19Ibid, 104.
Despite O’s feelings for Sir Stephen, she still thought about her first lover, René. She still saw him as her master who knew exactly what she needs or deserves.
O was happy that René 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 her to 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. There had been embraces she had found foul, hands that had been an intolerable insult on her breasts, mouths which had sucked on her lips and tongues like so many soft, vile leeches, and tongues and sexes, viscous beasts which, caressing themselves at her closed mouth, at the double furrow before and behind, which she had squeezed tight with all her might, had stiffened her with disgust and kept her stiffened so long that it was all the whip could do to unbend her, but she had finally yielded to the blows and opened, with disgust and abominable servility. And what if, in spite of that, Sir Stephen was right? What if she actually enjoyed her debasement? In that case, the baser she was, the more merciful was René to consent to make O the instrument of his pleasure.20Ibid, 93.
Sir Stephen was interested in Jacqueline, a client of O and a femme fatale fashion model. He asked O to seduce her. He wanted to “recruit” her into their BDSM secret society of Roissy.
Stunned, O raised her head and looked at Sir Stephen. Why? Why Jacqueline? And if Jacqueline interested Sir Stephen, why was it in relation to O?
“There are two reasons,” Sir Stephen said. “The first, and least important, is that I would like to see you kiss and caress a woman [meaning cunnilingus].”
…
“[T]he second reason why I want you to seduce her is that you’re to be the bait that lures her to Roissy.”21Ibid, 119.
O was hesitant at first but she knew she could pursue her like she did other girls in the past. After all, she finds her very attractive.
Some of them yielded to her, and she would take them to some discreet hotel with its narrow hallways and paper-thin walls, while others, horrified, spurned her. But what she took – or mistook – to be desire was actually nothing more than the thirst for conquest.22Ibid, 90.
[H]er penchant for the sweetness of sweetly made-up lips yielding beneath her own, for the porcelain or pearly sparkle of eyes half-closed in the half-light of couches at five in the afternoon, when the curtains are drawn and the lamp on the fireplace mantel lighted, for the voices that say: “Again, oh, please, again…,” for the marine odor clinging to her fingers: this was a real, deeply-rooted taste. And she also enjoyed the pursuit just as much. Probably not for the pursuit itself, however amusing or fascinating it might be, but for the complete sense of freedom she experienced in the act of hunting.23Ibid, 96.
Jacqueline eventually surrenders herself to O’s pursuit.
She allowed herself to be kissed and caressed, her eyes closed, not responding by a single caress; at first she moaned faintly, hardly more than a whimper, then louder, still louder, until finally she cried out. She fell asleep sprawled across the bed, her knees apart but her legs flat again on the bed, the upper part of her body slightly turned on one side, her hands open, her body bathed in the bright light of the pink lamp. Between her breasts a trace of sweat glistened.
O covered her and turned out the light. When, two hours later, she took her again, in the dark, Jacqueline did not resist but murmured:
“Don’t wear me out completely, I have to get up early tomorrow.”24Ibid, 132.
Meanwhile Sir Stephen continued to violently “use” O. In his office…
[B]ent over the desk with her rear exposed, her head and arms against the leather top, [she waited] for Sir Stephen to impale her.
…
She who was constantly striving to cooperate and do her best was now, quite involuntarily, tense and contracted, and Sir Stephen was obliged to force his way. Even when he had done so, she felt that the ring of her buttocks was tightening around him, and he had trouble forcing himself all the way into her. He withdrew only when he was certain he could come and go with ease.25Ibid, 136.
Then he told her that he’s got plans for her, without specific details, and that he’ll send her to a friend of his, Anne-Marie. A few days later, she’s sent to a mansion in Samois where she was received by Anne-Marie and her assistants Colette and Yvonne. To O’s shock, she finds out that she’s about to have her labia pierced and buttocks branded:
“But aren’t you by now fully aware of what Sir Stephen wants? Anyone at Roissy or anywhere else, Sir Stephen or anyone else, even you in front of the mirror, anyone who lifts your skirts will immediately see his rings on your loins and, if you turn around, his monogram on your buttocks. You may possibly file the rings off one day, but the brand on your backside will never come off.”
“I thought it was possible to have tattoos removed,” Colette said.
…
“O will not be tattooed,” replied Anne-Marie.
O looked at Anne-Marie. Colette and Yvonne were stunned, and said nothing. Anne-Marie was fumbling for her words.
“Go ahead and say it,” O said.
“My poor dear girl, I just couldn’t work up the courage to tell you: you’re to be branded. Sir Stephen sent me the branding irons two days ago.”
“Branded?” Yvonne cried, “with a red-hot branding iron?”26Ibid, 155.
It was all to be done while she’s conscious and in absence of any sedatives.
After the piercing was complete. It was time for O to get branded:
On the stage was a big, round single-burner stove. Anne-Marie took the straps from the closet and had them tie O tightly around the waist and knees, her belly hard against one of the columns. They also bound her hands and feet. Consumed by fear and terror, O felt one of Anne-Marie’s hands on her buttocks, indicating the exact spot for the irons, she heard the hiss of a flame and, in total silence, heard the windows being closed. She could not have turned her head and looked, but she did not have the strength to. One single, frightful stab of pain coursed through her, made her go rigid in the bonds and wrenched a scream from her lips, and she never knew who it was who had, with both branding irons at once, seared the flesh of her buttocks, nor whose voice had counted slowly up to five, nor whose hand had given the signal to withdraw the irons.
When they unfastened her, she collapsed into Anne-Marie’s arms and had time, before everything turned black around her and she completely lost consciousness, to catch a glimpse, between two waves of darkness, of Sir Stephen’s ghastly pale face.27Ibid, 162.
A pendant was attached to the ring on her labia which carried information identifying her “owner”: Sir Stephen. Also, her buttocks now display his initials, S and H. She wore it all with pride.
Sir Stephen started showing her off to his friends. He encouraged them to use her too. He gave that welcome to two guests, one of whom O had seen before.
The man she had met at Roissy wasted no time with her: without leaving his armchair, without even touching her with his fingertips, he ordered her to kneel down in front him, take him and caress his sex until he discharged in her mouth. After which, he made her straighten out his clothing, and then he left.
But the red-haired lad, who had been completely overwhelmed by O’s submissiveness and meek surrender, by her irons and the welts which he had glimpsed on her body, took her by the hand instead of throwing himself upon her as she had expected, and descended the stairs, paying not the slightest heed to the sly smiles of the waiters and, after hailing a taxi, took her back to his hotel room. He did not let her go till nightfall, after having frantically plowed her fore and aft, both of which he bruised and belabored unmercifully, he being of an uncommon size and rigidity and, what is more being totally intoxicated by the sudden freedom granted him to penetrate a woman doubly and be embraced by her in the way he had seen ordered to a short while before (something he had never before dared ask of anyone).28Ibid, 166.
Jacqueline had been developing a romantic relationship with René. She was aware of O’s status as a willing sex slave for him. O asked her if she slept with René, which she denied.
“You’re lying, darling. Don’t be an ass. You have every right in the world to sleep with him. And I might add that that’s no reason to reject me. Come, let me caress you and I’ll tell you all about Roissy.”
…
“Tell me about it,” she later said to O.
“All right,” O said. “But first kiss the tips of my breasts. It’s time you got used to it, if you’re ever to be of any use to René.”29Ibid, 174.
Not only was O betraying Jacqueline through her hidden agenda on behalf of Sir Stephen, she even let him watch as they had sex:
To make sure that Sir Stephen could see Jacqueline in detail – and O thought to herself that if she were Jacqueline she would have guessed, or noticed, his invisible presence – O took pains to pull back her legs and keep them spread in the light of the bedside lamp which she had turned on. The shutters were closed, the room almost dark, despite the thin rays of light that spilled in where the wood was not snug. For more than an hour Jacqueline moaned to O’s caressed, and finally, her breasts aroused, her arms thrown back behind her head while her hands circled the wooden bars of the headboard of O’s Italian-style bed, she began to cry out when O, parting the lobes hemmed with pale hair, slowly began to bite the crest of flesh at the point between her thighs where the dainty, supple lips joined. O felt her rigid and burning beneath her tongue, and wrested cry after cry from her lips, with no respite, until she suddenly relaxed, the springs broken, and she lay there moist with pleasure. Then O sent her back to her room, where she fell asleep.30Ibid, 178.
In their evenings together, O had shown Jacqueline the ring between her legs and the marks on her buttocks. Jacqueline was horrified. However, she was still curious about the “freak show” of Roissy. Later on, a distance grew between Jacqueline and O. She fell in love with a film director and didn’t even bother to see or tell René.
Jacqueline shared the graphic stories of O and Roissy with her younger step-sister Natalie. Unlike her older sister, Natalie was actually interested in this lifestyle. She begged O to be initiated at Roissy after she revealed that she had been eavesdropping on the two women having sex:
“I heard her, O, I heard you both, I was listening behind the door. You kiss her, you caress her. Why don’t you caress me, why don’t you kiss me? Is it because I’m dark, because I’m not pretty? She doesn’t love you, O, but I do, I love you!” And she broke down and began to sob.
“All right, fine,” O said to herself.
She eased the child into an armchair, took a large handkerchief from her bureau (it was one of Sir Stephen’s), and when Natalie’s sobs had subsided a little, wiped away her tears away. Natalie begged her forgiveness, kissing O’s hands.
“Even if you don’t want to kiss me, O, keep me with you. Keep me with you always. If you had a dog, you’d keep him and take care of him. And even if you don’t want to kiss me, but would enjoy beating me, you can beat me. But don’t send me away.”
“Keep still, Natalie, you don’t know what you’re saying,” O murmured, almost in a whisper.31Ibid, 179.
After Jacqueline’s departure from O’s life, her sister Natalie confronted her and asked whether she still thought about her:
It was true, but not completely. What O missed was not, properly speaking, Jacqueline, but the use of a girl’s body, with no restrictions attached. If Natalie had not been declared off-limits to her, she would have taken Natalie, and the only reason she had not violated the restriction was her certainty that Natalie would be given to her at Roissy in a few weeks’ time, and that, some time previously, Natalie would be handed over in her presence by her, and thanks to her. […] She said so to Natalie, who only shook her head and refused to believe her.
“If Jacqueline were her, and were willing,” she said, “you’d caress her.”
“Of course I would,” O said with a laugh.
“There, you see,” the child broke in.
How could she make her understand – and was it even worth the effort? – that it wasn’t so much that she was in love with Jacqueline, nor for that matter with Natalie or any other girl in particular, but that she was only in love with girls as such, girls in general – the way one can be in love with one’s own image – but in her case she always thought the other girls were more lovely and desirable than she found herself to be. The pleasure she derived from seeing a girl pant beneath her caresses, seeing her eyes close and the tips of her breasts stiffen beneath her lips and teeth, the pleasure she got from exploring her fore and aft with her hand – and from feeling her tighten around her fingers, then sigh and moan – was more than she could bear; and if this pleasure was so intense, it was only because it made her constantly aware of the pleasure which she in turn gave when she tightened around whoever was holding her, whenever she sighed or moaned, with this difference, that she could not conceive of being given thus to a girl, the way this girl was given to her, but only to a man.
…
It was at this point, just as she was thinking again with beating heart of Jacqueline’s lips, so pink and dainty beneath her downy fir, of the even more delicate and pinker ring between her buttocks, which she had only dared force on three occasions, that she heard Sir Stephen moving about in his room.32Ibid, 190-192.
Sir Stephen walked in her room and asked Natalie to bring a box of items to prepare O for an evening which would make the final scene of the story. She was stripped naked but her face was covered with an owl-like mask. Sir Stephen asked Natalie to walk around the room holding onto a leash attached to O’s vaginal rings. She was paraded like a dog before the guests. The party crowd gawked at her as if she were an object.
From midnight to dawn, which began to lighten the eastern sky at about five, as the moon waned and descended toward the west, people came up to her several times and some even touched her, they formed a circle around her several times and several times they parted her knees and lifted the chain […] to see how she was attached.
…
There was another girl, very young, a girl with bare shoulders and a choker of pearls around her neck, wearing one of those white dresses young girls wear to their first ball, two tea-scented roses at her waist and a pair of golden slippers on her feet, and a boy made her sit down next to O, on her right. Then he took her hand and made her caress O’s breasts, which quivered to the touch of the cool, light fingers, and touch her belly, and the chain, and the hole through which it passed, the young girl silently, did as she was bid, and when the boy said he planned to do the same thing to her, she did not seem shocked. But even though they thus made use of O, and even though they used her in this way as a model, or the subject of a demonstration, not once did anyone ever speak to her directly.
…
It was only after daybreak, after all the dancers had left, that Sir Stephen and the Commander [a friend of Sir Stephen], awakening Natalie who was asleep at O’s feet, helped O to her feet, led her to the middle of the courtyard, unfastened her chain and removed her mask and, laying her back upon a table, possessed her one after the other.33Ibid, 198.
At the end of the book, the reader is told in italics that eventually Sir Stephen abandons O and returns her to Roissy. But the text also mentions an alternative ending:
There exists a second ending to the story of O, according to which O, seeing that Sir Stephen was about to leave her, said she would prefer to die. Sir Stephen gave her his consent.34Ibid, 199.
Note: All the above controversial passages are available in the original language (French) on this page.
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Endnotes
