Story of O

O returns to the fashionable Ile Saint-Louis apartment in Paris where she is staying with René. René tells O that she “mustn’t think of herself as free” (76), except to leave him absolutely and immediately. Otherwise, he says, if she loves him, she must accept that she is totally unfree and must prove that love. Part of that “proof” consists in O being totally sexually open to him and others who know about the chateau. As such, and to this end, René demands that O hand over to him all the clothes that do not make her accessible to men, and to go and get a new set of clothes that do.

O works in the fashion branch of a photographic agency. Her coworkers notice how she has changed during her two-week absence at Roissy, specifically in her style of dress and her “faultless immobility when she was still” (84). In fact, one of the models O is photographing, Jacqueline, accidentally notices O’s ring from Roissy and that she is not wearing a garter belt. When O is taking photographs of Jacqueline, O finds that Jacqueline resembles one of the other women at Roissy and that her choker and bracelet resembles the collar and bracelets of Roissy.