The Story of O (novel)

A 1954 erotic novel by Anne Desclos, written under the pseudonym "Pauline Réage". By far the most famous and generally considered the best-written piece of BDSM pornography. She wrote it to win back her lover, Jean Paulhan. The novel has become a major source of tropes for later BDSM, although most of what Desclos describes existed in previous pornography. (The plot itself is closest to Marquis de Sade's Philosophy In The Bedroom.) Predictably, it was a major target of criticism by the French government, who tried to ban it, and later by (some) feminists, many of whom argued that the book was obviously written by a man. Desclos remained anonymous for four decades, during which time several movie adaptations were made, and someone else even published a sequel under the "Pauline Réage" pseudonym. She finally came clean in an interview with the New Yorker.

The story is as follows: A photographer known only as O is taken by her lover to a chateau in Roissy, outside Paris. Here she is forced to become one of many sex slaves for a secret society of men, and is routinely beaten. All the same, she finds that she enjoys this role. Released from Roissy back into a version of her everyday life, she is enjoined by her lover to obey a series of rules. As time passes, O's lover asks her to help him in seducing her friend Jacqueline and bringing her to Roissy as well. At the same time, he "gives her" to his stepbrother, Sir Stephen. Stephen, in turn, turns O over to Samois, an all-female environment similar to Roissy, in which she is beaten and eventually pierced and branded. Finally, she agrees to seduce Jacqueline and Jacqueline's younger sister, as well.


 * Ambiguous Situation: Is the main relationship in The Story of O simply Casual Kink and Property of Love, or is it Destructive Romance presented as Abusively Sexy? See also below under Destructive Romance.
 * Bi the Way: O is bisexual. And the scenes at Samois are all-lesbian, all-the-time.
 * Casual Kink
 * Chain Pain
 * Costume Porn: A lot of descriptions of clothing, and putting it on.
 * Destructive Romance: The novel exists in two versions. These versions have very different endings, casting the rest of the story in very different light. In the most popular version, which most adaptations are built on, the relationship is simply Casual Kink and Property of Love. The other version is a Destructive Romance presented as Abusively Sexy during most of the book but then abruptly changes tone at the end.
 * My Girl Is a Slut: O's lover would rather see her available to other men than have her himself.
 * Of Corsets Sexy
 * One-Letter Name
 * Parabombing: Goes with the long-winded descriptions.
 * Property of Love
 * Purple Prose: Veers into this regularly
 * A Taste of the Lash
 * The Untwist: Possibly a case of an Unbuilt Trope. Anyone remotely familiar with modern BDSM fiction, especially on the internet, would have thought the fact that Sir Stephan planned to brand O was painfully obvious when they said she was going to be marked in a "more permanent way."
 * Whip It Good
 * You Keep Using That Word: Belly.