Back before people were brawling in the cinema over Fifty Shades of Grey, or discussing whether Secretary was a story of female-enpowerment, there was Story of O. Originally published under the name Pauline Réage in 1954, it was later revealed to be the work of French journalist Anne Desclos.
Story of O is the tale of a woman who gives herself up to a life of domination, submission and sexual slavery. It is also the name of a hair dresser in Hyde Park. It is unclear why.
On it’s original publication it received a major French literacy prize in the form of Prix des Deux Magots. However, that didn’t stop obscenity charges being brought against the publisher.
Does it represent objectification of women? Quite possibly. However it suffers from the same conundrum that all such stories suffer from – when the woman commits to it consensually, can her own free choice be a form of abuse?
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Tags: bdsm, domination, fiction, french literature, novel, submission
This entry was posted on Thursday, April 2nd, 2015 at 10:49 am and is filed under Books. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.