Story of Someone Who is Not Kai

Well... it's been longer than a week since I last posted, so apologies for that. I'm writing now from DW's place, which is now my place as well. I wouldn't say that I've completely moved in--I still have some stuff in boxes, plus a number of boxes that haven't gotten here yet--but I'm settled enough to start writing again... provided I continue to find things to say.

So, I've been saying for a while that I wanted to do an entry on Story of O, and maybe it's time I finally got around to doing that. Every time I think about this entry I get a little bit intimidated, because O deserves genuine critique on both a literary and psychological level and I don't feel this is something I can effectively provide. Or rather, if I treated this as a research paper or serious analysis I could, but what I'd like to do now is just give some of my opinions and impressions about it. Keep in mind that I haven't read any criticism/analysis of O beyond what is included in the Sabine d'Estree translation (preface by Jean Paulhan, "A Note on Story of O" by Andre Pieyre de Mandiargues), so if anything I'm saying has already been said... well, I am unaware of it.

I first read Story of O when I was last staying with DW, probably around this past February. I had heard of it, but not read it; in fact, my only impression of it revolved around one of my friends saying that they had once thought of it as a sort of warm, fuzzy beginners' guide to BDSM, and my other friends reacting in shock and disbelief. So, I figured that the book was centered around some pretty hardcore themes... and that my friend might have had a strange induction into the BDSM world.

Within the first few pages, I knew I was right--at least about the book content. But the degree of right that I was was... shocking? Upsetting? Throughout the book's prefaces, notes, and introductions, it is referred to as "a dangerous book." At least one of the writers who calls it so seems to approach it from the angle of: it is dangerous because it says something true. And perhaps it does say true things. When I told DW how wrong I felt the book was, he said that though the actions taken in the story might be bad, it does provide a certain window into the mind of a submissive. And this I think could be true. O is a submissive. She is one all the way through to her core and out again. She draws power and confidence from the abuse of her body, in a way that seems to make her transcend the world as we see and understand it; the world that she walks through grows farther and farther away from what most people would consider "reality." Even when she is in her apartment or at work, there is a certain element of "underground" that stays with her and separates her from her physical environment. And, in the "alternate ending" of the story, she chooses to die rather than live without her dominant... to which he grants his permission. In the final chapter leading up to that ending, wherein she is the Owl, there seems little of the "real" left in her at all. That, I think, is what I mean when I say that her submission allows her to transcend the world. At any rate, it is an aspect of herself that she carries and owns and so thoroughly embraces that it consumes her. In debasing herself, she becomes stronger.

But... what is done to her is terrible. She is taken to a place where her dominant and lover abandons her to be repeatedly raped and beaten, is reclaimed only to be given away and eventually forgotten about by the man who did the giving, is marked for life with the insignia of her new master who--in aforementioned "alternate ending"--ultimately decides that he no longer wants her. This is a vast paring down of the events of the book, obviously, but her interaction with the events that take place read less like erotica and more like a fascinating study on Stockholm Syndrome. She embraces a life which is forced on her--embraces it thoroughly--but that does not, in my mind, negate the abuse and dehumanization which brought her there. While I saw flashes in her of things that made sense to me on a personal level, I felt little more than revulsion in regards to the world she was brought into and the actions perpetrated on her.

I suppose that one could say that she had a choice. That she could have refused Roissy from the beginning. That she could have simply broken the thrall with the simple action of leaving. One could also say that her natural tendencies were taken advantage of and manipulated to produce desired results. One could say that she wanted it, say she was brainwashed, say she was psychologically abused. Say she was a True Submissive. Say she was insane. But when I was reading, all I could really think was that what was being done to her was monstrous.

So... what aspect is it that makes this book "dangerous"? Is it because it is BDSM erotica? Rape-fantasy erotica? Is it because it encourages an acceptance of taking joy in submission? Because it perpetrates the idea that being a dominant means dehumanizing and exercising complete control over your submissive? Paulhan thinks he knows... but Paulhan makes a mistake in saying that O proves something about women in general, not about submissives:

"At last a woman who admits it! Who admits what? Something that women have always refused till now to admit (and today more than ever before). Something that men have always reproached them with: that they never cease obeying their nature, the call of their blood, that everything in them, even their minds, is sex. That they have constantly to be nourished, constantly washed and made up, constantly beaten. That all they need is a good master, one who is not too lax or kind: for the moment we make any show of tenderness they draw upon it, turning all the zest, joy, and character at their command to make others love them. In short, that we must, when we go to see them, take a whip along."

Actually, I would not even say that this statement is something that O proves about submissives... I would not say that O proves anything about any category of people. The character of O isn't Women, isn't Submissives, isn't Victims. O is O, and even at her most dehumanized there is something that makes her herself.

I don't know how convoluted I have gotten in this entry, or how my thoughts may have contradicted each other, or even if I have said everything I wanted to say. There is one other thing, though, that I think is worth noting... if only for the fact that it does not appear in any of the notes preceding the story: the perfectness of O's name in expressing what she is. Maybe it never needed stating, which is why it wasn't noted, but see... it is open. It is inclusive. It is empty and waiting. And it can never close.