O expresses her consent to be his sex slave. There, he molds her into his sexual servant, training her to be sexually available to all the desires of the men at his elite society. At the beginning of the novel, René takes O to his country house in Roissy, France. She pierces her labia and even allows a man to permanently scar her buttocks with an iron brand. She is constantly on-call for vaginal, oral, and anal sex, and engages in sadomasochistic play involving instruments such as chains, butt plugs, and whips. There, she engages in frequent sexual activity with members of a secret society to which her lover, René belongs. O is a modelesque fashion photographer who lives and works in Paris. Réage uses the titular O as her character alias. The novel articulates Réage’s views and desires about power dynamics in sexual relationships, kinks, and romantic love.

Réage and Paulhan both admired the eighteenth-nineteenth-century French revolutionary and progressive advocate for sexuality, Marquis de Sade his ideas are often reflected in the work. A highly explicit novel, even in contemporary terms, it concerns Réage’s sexual exploits, expressed in the form of love letters to her lover, Jean Paulhan. Its true author was not known until 1994. Written and published at a time when both female sexual repression and biases against female careerism were openly espoused in Europe, the novel was published by Réage’s friend, Jean-Jacques Pauvert. Story of O is a 1954 work of French erotic literature by Anne Desclos, officially attributed to her pseudonym, Pauline Réage.

Story of O by Pauline Réage