This is an infamous bdsm book which since its publication in the mid-fifties has caused much controversy and is one of the canonical “banned books”. I found it to be pretty tame, though, in this current era that is both post-sexual-revolution and during-limitless-internet-porn.

The book’s main character is O, a young Parisian woman, whose name may stand for Object or a cry of pain/pleasure, or a female orifice of your choosing. Her boyfriend takes her to a Château in Roissy, outside of Paris, where she is to be cultivated into a sex slave: the Château is run by an organization of libertines (male and female) who train up young girls as unquestioning sex puppets to fulfill all their bdsm needs. O completes her training and upon her release back into her old life she becomes a permanent member of an exclusive underground club: any Roissy libertine will recognize a ring she must wear at all times and may do with her as they please. Many of her subsequent experiences only serve to further dehumanize her, but O is an exemplary sex slave and tries her best to be eager to obey, for that is what her owners expect, and she is no longer her own person. She settles into this life with nary a wrinkle.

In the second part of the novel, which may or may not have been written by the original author, more attention is given to world-building and the logistics of the libertine Château at Roissy.

This book was weird, and hard for me to get a grip on, and I think that is largely because of two reasons. One is that the book is merely a series of highly unrealistic sexual fantasies. From the first page O is entirely without a will of her own: she mechanically goes along with everything and becomes a keen, even proud sex vessel for her owners to utilize in whatever way they see fit. This is only heightened by the burning desire of some of her female friends to be subjected to the same treatment: some profess to be jealous of O and to want to be (more) like her. The narrative does not spend nearly enough time on O’s psychology to maintain much of a pretense at not being a dom’s fantasy as viewed through a sub. There’s no real plot, either, merely a series of sexcapades that highlight different aspects of what it means to be someone’s property. In other words: the book is not aimed at a mainstream audience, who might expect more in the way of psychological realism, and explaining its fetishes to outsiders is not one of the things it sets out to do.

Secondly, the erotica/porn in question doesn’t fit at all under vanilla conceptions of “sex”: it’s mainly about displays of dominance (or lack thereof) and unquestioned obedience; about libertines’ free use of their slaves, and the slaves’ fervent collaboration in recruiting aditional attractive females for their masters’ cults. Most of the sex is centred around beatings with paddles and suchlike, sometimes to the exclusion of all else; frequently it’s all about observing how one’s sex slave pleasures others. If that is not your thing, or if that doesn’t really qualify as “sex”, then an understanding of this particular set of fetishes remains intellectual, at a distance.

Instead, this book’s central driving force is an almost programmatic desire to depict a corruption of Innocence, an erasure of independent will, and to see a vanilla mind-set brought low. Qua novel it isn’t very good, because of the lack of psychological credibility and no sustained plot to speak of. In terms of shock value… Well, of course it’s about female objectification, and it glorifies complete and enthusiastic subjugation of women by domineering men. But there is so much of that in our society, a lot of it much more insidious than this. Also, the book is actually pretty obviously a collection of sexual fantasies, which I tend to be pretty forgiving of, rather than real-life circumstances, so yeah.

And finally, I found this book to be curiously dated. Its transgressions seem to target a society where ubiquitous internet porn is not a thing, which of course is only natural for a book written in the 1950s, but it went beyond that: often I felt as though Histoire d’O might have been set in the era of Marquis de Sade (a major influence on this book, or so I’m told); I was honestly surprised to see people driving cars.

In all, this book is not a good novel, as such, and its stream of improbable fetish scenes becomes fairly humdrum after a while. Reading this book felt more like an intellectual exercise in anthropology than something to enjoy, even vicariously. ( )

Honnêtement, ça m'a gonflé. J'ai pas accroché à l'histoire, ni au personnage. La narration est lente, et les états d'âme du personnage sonnent de manière peu crédible. Bof bof bof. ( )

8481300543

8481300543