Story of O

Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses graphic sexual content, including depictions of bondage and sadomasochism and nonconsensual sexual encounters. The guide also refers to suicidal ideation.

After her first night in her room at Roissy, chained up, O remarks on how “no woman there possessed keys either to the doors or to the chains, but each man carried a bunch of skeleton keys” (41), allowing them to open all doors, collars, and bracelets. Thus, in this way, the keys encapsulate gender relations in the sadomasochistic milieu in which O and other characters inhabit. For in that world, men—even valets—hold all the power, and women are reduced to passive aesthetic objects for their pleasure. Men are literally and metaphorically masters over the women, able to lock them away like toys. In contrast, the women require a man’s grace and “key” just to get out of bed or to leave their rooms. This point is again stressed at the novel’s end. There an O reduced to absolute passivity, and with her labia pierced, is examined by a young man whose girlfriend “obeyed in silence” (262) while he explains that “he would have the same thing done to her” (261).