Chapter 3 Female Masochism As an Alternative Female Sexuality in Samois and Return to the Chateau in Order to Find a Way out Of

Chapter 3

Female Masochism as an Alternative Female Sexuality

in Samois and Return to the Chateau

In order to find a way out of the patriarchal oppressive model illustrated in chapter 2, in this chapter, I will investigate a generally neglected arena of O’s lesbianism and her s/m practices with other women in Story of O and its sequel.

Following modern lesbian s/m theories, I will elucidate that though in some ways highly influenced by the heterosexual model, O’s lesbianism and her s/m practices with other women transcend and challenge the heterosexual gender dichotomy and manifest an alternative depth of female sexuality. Furthermore, through the interactions between O and other women in the story, O begins to regain her sexual subjectivity and finally restores her autonomy in the end of Return to the Chateau, the sequel.

As the story goes, Story of O depicts s/m between women, and portrays an alternative female masochism, which to some extent meets modern lesbian s/m theories. In part three of Story of O—“Anne-Marie and the Rings”, O is sent to a place called Samois, which is inhabited entirely by women and ruled by a dominatrix called Anne-Marie. Samois, which is later borrowed for the name of the first organized group of lesbian sadomasochists in the 1980s, whose members later become the authors of the canonized lesbian s/m anthology—Coming to Power:

Writings and Graphics on Lesbian S/M. In Pat Califia’s article “A Personal View of the History of the Lesbian S/M Community and Movement in San Francisco” in

Coming to Power, she recalls that the group picked the name “Samois” from Story of

O on their second meeting because of the name’s allusion to the place of Anne-Marie, whom they regard as “a lesbian dominatrix who pierces O and brands her”(Califia Wu 66

253). As a forerunner depicting s/m between women, Story of O speaks out a hidden part of female sexuality and opens up new possibilities of female experiences.

In Samois, the most important settings are Anne-Marie’s bedroom and the music room. Although Anne-Marie’s bedroom, which is a large white room without mirrors, is briefly described, it is the central stage presenting the most sensual and erotic scenes between Anne-Marie and other women. Directly next to Anne-Marie’s bedroom is the music room. The reason why it is called the music room is because it contains “a large console-type combination record player and radio, with shelves of records on both sides”(Story of O 150). More importantly, the music room is specially designed and well constructed for special purposes:

On the threshold of a French door that opened into a small wing which formed an

L with the front of the house…. The light entering through the French door

revealed a room the far end of which formed a kind of raised rotunda; the ceiling,

in the shape of a shallow cupola, was supported by two narrow columns set about

six feet apart. This dais was about four steps high and, in the area between the

columns, projected further into the room in a gentle arc. The floor of the

rotunda, like that of the rest of the room, was covered with a red felt carpet.

The walls are white, the curtains on the windows red, and the sofas set in a

semicircle facing the rotunda were upholstered in the same red felt material as

the carpet on the floor…. Aside from the record player and the sofas, the room

had no furniture. (Story of O 150)

The French door is made a double door, and the walls are lined with cork, which are designed to sap the tortured girls’ screams. The columns and dais are for the suspension of the girls. The sofas are made for the viewers. The music room are made for daily rituals of torture, where Anne-Marie and other women perform alternative sadomasochism other than the heterosexual model at Roissy. It is Wu 67 interesting that here the music room is portrayed as a designed theatre, in which the audience on the sofas can enjoy the show on the dais. Thus, the s/m performed by

Anne-Marie and other three women—Colette, Clair and Yvonne in the music room can be regarded as a scene with theatrical effects.

It is difficult to discuss sadomasochism between women without taking into account the influences of the prevalence and nature of sadomasochism in the dominant heterosexual culture. In the first place, I would like to elucidate that

Anne-Marie of Samois indeed inherits the art of patriarchal disciplines from Roissy, and transforms them with great craft into a higher level. For example, on O’s first meeting with Anne-Marie at her apartment in Paris, O is immediately put on a new corset, which is a whalebone corset, much stiffer than what O wore at Roissy. After

O is sent to Samois, she is laced up even more tightly. As a result, O’s waist undergoes a much more extreme constriction:

Anne-Marie pressed O’s waist to make it even more wasplike. Then she sent

the readhead to fetch another corset and had them put on her. It was also made

of black nylon, but was so stiffly whaleboned and so narrow that it looked for all

the world like an extremely wide belt. It had no garter straps. One of the girls

laced it up as tight as she could, with Anne-Marie lending her encouragement as

she pulled on the laces as hard as she could. (Story of O 148)

The corset works very successfully on O. Later while O receives the branding, she is not wearing the black corset, but the corset has already “molded her into the desired shape that she looked as though she might break, so slim was her waistline now.

And, as a result, her hips and breasts seemed fuller”(Story of O 161). Beside corset,

O is put on bracelets as well. O finds that the girls in Samois are all wearing a leather collar and leather bracelets on their wrists as those girls were at Roissy, and also wearing similar bracelets around their ankles. The bracelets along with the Wu 68 corset prove the influence of Roissy on Samois, and can also be regarded as a common trait shared within s/m culture. Here Anne-Marie makes the most use of them and conducts a much more intensified discipline on O. In the sequel, after O returns to the Roissy, she also undergoes similar procedures under Anne-Marie’s command. Again, Anne-Marie replaces O’s former collar and bracelets with stiffer ones:

She tried a number of collars on O, until she found one that, without choking

her, fit her snugly enough half way up the neck so that it was difficult to turn it

in one direction or the other and yet it was even more difficult to insert a

finger between the metal and the neck itself. The collar and bracelets that O

had worn herself and seen others wear the previous year had been of leather….

These were of stainless steel…. (Return 48)

Anne-Marie also replaces the makeup used on those girls with some kind of dye, which will not come off easily. In addition, those girls are even required wearing uniforms like “those worn in women’s prison, or by servants in convents”(Return 52).

Anne-Marie demonstrates that women are capable of exercising sadomasochism as men are, and furthermore exercising it much more intricately and meticulously.

Wearing bracelets for those girls in Samois is in order to have them suspended and whipped in the music room. To mark O’s arrival, O receives whippings on the inside of her thighs, which O never experienced before at Roissy. This ultimate refinement is solely invented by Anne-Marie because she says: “men don’t know how to”(Story of O 148). At first, Anne-Marie and other three girls fasten and suspend O on the dais:

O’s hands were clutching the edge of the platform—Yvonne having attached

them to a ring set in the platform—and her buttocks were thus suspended in

mid-air. Anne-Marie made her raise her legs toward her chest, then O suddenly Wu 69

felt her legs, still doubled-up above her, being pulled taut in the same direction:

straps had been fastened to her ankle bracelets and thence to the columns on

either side, while she lay thus between them on this raised dais exposed in such a

way that the only part of her which was visible was the double cleft of her womb

and her buttocks violently quartered. (Story of O 151)

After making O feel extreme vulnerable in such a way, Anne-Marie caresses the inside of O’s thighs, and enjoins Colette to be careful not to harm “the most tender spot” of O’s body. Then the whipping proceeds:

Colette was standing over her, astride her at the level of her waist, and in the

bridge formed by her dark legs O could see the tassels of the whip she was

holding in her hand. As the first blows burned into her loins, O moaned.

Colette alternated from left to right, paused, then started again…. (Story of O

151)

This scene is definitely one of the climaxes in Story of O. According to Deleuze, the climactic moments are “the moments of suspense”(Deleuze 33). As Deleuze explains, the reason why the climactic moments are called “the moments of suspense” is “partly because the sadomasochistic rites of torture and suffering imply actual physical suspension..., but also because the woman torturer freezes into postures that identify her with a statue, a painting or a photograph”(Deleuze 33). Here

Anne-Marie makes use of suspense as an ingredient of performing s/m, and as a result stages the s/m scene with theatrical effects. Here O is hung up, suspended and whipped. Colette, the torturer, who whips O’s thighs from left to right, pauses, and starts all over again and again, also freezes into postures. As the whipping goes on,

O struggles with all her might. When O cannot bear the torture another second,

Anne-Marie tells her to put it up with five more minutes. O thought it impossible, but she still “endured it to the bitter end”(Story of O 152). In the process, the other Wu 70 torturer Anne-Marie interrupts the whipping by commanding Colette to whip O

“faster and harder”, and claiming that the whippings will continue for five minutes more: “Just a second longer…. She can screams for five minutes”(Story of O 151).

This theatrical and climactic scene consists of O’s suspense along with that Colette suspend her gestures in the act of bringing down the whip on O, and Anne-Marie’s interruption. Hence, we can see that the suspended gestures and suspended suffering achieve a theatrical and climactic effect of (lesbian) s/m.

Compared with O’s former whipping experiences from other men, here O is led by Anne-Marie to undergo the extremes of torture. Surprisingly, she survives, and is enlightened because she begins to “like the idea of torture,” which she never felt before at Roissy. (152) Compared with those men’s self-claimed “enlightenment” for

O, Anne-Marie’s enlightenment for O can be more genuine and truly liberating because this whipping opens up new possibilities for O’s sexuality. In an interview about understanding s/m tendencies deep within our unconscious, Michel Foucault points out: “I think that S/M is … the real creation of new possibilities of pleasure”(qtd. in Miller, 263). Only after this whipping O begins to like the idea of torture and enjoys the new possibility of pleasure, which never cross O’s mind at

Roissy though she has been whipped countless times.

Through this experience, it also proves that women can be as sadistic as men, and moreover, are better at cultivating the methods of torture to perfection. As a result, O, as well as other girls in Samois, is therefore disciplined into a much submissive and profound enslaved state when they return to their masters. To accomplish this task, Anne-Marie makes O and other girls engaged in a much fuller complicity with their suffering since “O suspected that Anne-Marie was less interested in making a spectacle of her power than she was in establishing between O and herself a sense of complicity”(Story of O 152): Wu 71

[Anne-Marie] was bent on proving to every girl who came into her house, and

who was fated to live in a totally feminine universe, that her condition as a

woman should not be minimized or degraded by the fact that she was in contact

only with other women, but that, on the contrary, it should be heightened and

intensified. (Story of O 152)

To serve this purpose, Anne-Marie asks the girls to be constantly naked, and she also utilizes a “slow” and “meticulous” but much more efficient technique of discipline—suspending O, and other girls as well on the dais with legs raised and spread for three hours, totally by herself. During those hours, what O could think was “the fact that she was opened…. She could think of nothing save her condition”(Story of O 158). Due to O’s every-afternoon suspension on the dais, which Anne-Marie specially demands because O is exempted from being whipped until her departure, O is later “returned to Sir Stephen more open, and more profoundly enslaved, than she had ever before thought was possible”(Story of O 153).

As a token of this enslavement, Ann-Marie pierces O’s virginal lobes first and later hangs iron rings from there, and brands Sir Stephen’s sign into her buttocks under Sir

Stephen’s instruction.

A similar purpose of establishing a sense of complicity between Anne-Marie and these girls emerges when Anne-Marie provides them the opportunity to whip another one. On two occasions Anne-Marie hands O a thronged whip and gives her the chance to assume the sadistic role by beating another young woman, Yvonne:

The first time, for the first minute, she had hesitated, and at Yvonne’s first scream

O had recoiled and cringed, but as soon as she had started in again and Yvonne’s

cries had echoed anew, she had been overwhelmed with a terrible feeling of

pleasure, a feeling so intense that she had caught herself laughing in spite of

herself, and she had found it almost impossible to restrain herself from striking Wu 72

Yvonne as hard as she could. Afterward she had remained next to Yvonne

throughout the entire period of time she was kept tied up, embracing her from

time to time. (Story of O 157)

This ceremony, as Frances Restuccia interprets, implies that “O accepts complicity with Anne-Marie to the degree that O takes intense pleasure in striking Yvonne ‘as hard as she could’, which act could simultaneously be explained as self-laceration, since we are told that ‘O resembled Yvonne.’ ‘At least one was led to suspect as much by the way Anne-Marie felt about them both’ (157). O identifies with

Anne-Marie consistently here as part of her campaign to beat herself” (Restuccia 72).

However, this brand new experience for O, I think, implies other facts than the complicity theory. First, as I noted earlier in the Introduction and chapter 1, the role switching of O from a bottom to a top, as Hohmann sates, “supposedly empowers [the bottom] because it allows [her] to experience a taste of power”(Hohmann 376). It turns out to prove that the masochistic identity is fluid. In Story of O, the only concrete manifestation of such fluidity only appears between girls in Samois.

Compared with the world of patriarchal heterosexuality, those men attempt to “freeze” power, to make themselves always dominant and O the other side always submissive and passive, here between girls the power flows in full circle. The role switching of

O also reflects the polarized gendered world of patriarchy in that whereas O becomes sadistic in relation to another woman, René turns meekly masochistic in relation to the powerful Sir Stephen; later toward the end of the story, Sir Stephen seeks in turn to please another male character, the Commander. However in the story, men are able to be masochistic only in relation with other men. More importantly, it also proves that the concept of sadistic and masochistic roles is a relative one, dependent on time, Wu 73 place and also the person who you are with.1 Therefore, here we confront the fact that women are capable of the sadistic as men of the masochistic, and that the s/m dynamics can exist in some relationships between men and men or between women and women, which is not confined to heterosexual relationships. Thus, there is nothing intrinsically sadistic about the physiological state of being male just as there is nothing intrinsically masochistic about being female.

Second, the lesbian s/m somehow makes a clear contrast with the heterosexual s/m in Story of O. At Roissy, only girls like O received whippings. When O was there she was often blindfolded when she received the whippings or other brutal treatments. After the whipping, she was usually left in darkness weeping by herself.

Here O, unlike those unmerciful male tops at Roissy, shows her tenderness and comfort to her bottom after the whipping: “Afterward she had remained next to

Yvonne throughout the entire period of time she was kept tied up, embracing her from time to time”(Story of O 157). It is true for O, as Hohmann claims, “once a person has served as a bottom, she may be more sensitive to her partner’s cues (and less likely to abuse her authority)”(Hohmann 376).

Third, as Califia illustrates lesbian s/m as a role-playing game, these women also set up a model similar to modern lesbian sadomasochism. Here in Samois, the bottom is chosen through a draw, as is the top. A third draw determines whether the bottom will be whipped, or merely suspended for three hours on the dais:

At three in the afternoon,…Anne-Marie would bring out the token box. Each

1 Lynn Chancer once introduces the individual sadist’s and masochist’s characteristics into terms suited to the complicated world of broader cultural interaction: “dominant sadism, dominant masochism, subordinate sadism and subordinate masochism.” She explains: “The same person who is masochistic in a situation where she or he is powerless may take comfort in the ability to exert power over someone else in a situation that has accorded her or him relatively greater power.… Dominant sadism and dominant masochism, consequently, refer to the primary mode of interaction through which a person has come to relate the world. This is the posture of which one is more of less conscious,… so that the subordinate posture [is] not one intentionally adopted. ” (90).

Wu 74

girl would take a token. Whoever drew the lowest number was then taken to

the music room and arranged on the dais as O had been that first day. She then

had to point to…Anne-Marie’s right or left hand, in each of which she was

holding as white or black ball. If she chose black, she was flogged; white, she

was not. Anne-Marie never resorted to chicanery, even if chance condemned or

spared the same girl several days in row. (Story of O 156)

Through this procedure, the s/m between girls in Samois is more like a well-designed game-playing, and is less hierarchical or role-determined than it between men and women at Roissy. Thus, the lesbian s/m in Samois is transformed into a parody of the heterosexual version at Roissy. It disputes the gender dichotomy that women are by nature passive and masochistic.

Lastly, we may say: unequal power between women and men is inherently oppressive because it is culturally created; in other words, when a man binds and beats a woman, this is simply a manifestation of the cultural power he holds over her, and is self-destructive for the woman. However, s/m within a lesbian context can be seen as a potential liberating practice. Also, it proves that some women may possess the inner desire of s/m like O. At first, she is filled with fear and discomfort, and later there is arousal as well. Then we may say that there is also sadistic component to her psyche. Through this angle, s/m is not seen as a socially created phenomenon, which stems from the male domination and female subordination; instead, it can be seen as an inherent condition that expresses some inborn trait of us. As some lesbian s/m devotees claim, some women do hold a true nature of s/m. They accept it and explore what it is about. Thus, lesbian sadomasochism is regarded as a consciously performed expression of female sexualities.

In addition to O’s s/m practices with other women, O’s lesbianism also transcends and challenges the heterosexual gender dichotomy and manifests an Wu 75 alternative depth of female sexualities. In the following, I will focus on O’s lesbian relationships with Jacqueline and Anne-Marie to prove that O is not restricted to heterosexual love. Her lesbian sexuality along with other female characters in the story speaks out the hidden sides of polymorphous female sexualities. In their lesbian relationships we see the subversive power to the former patriarchal oppressive model discussed in the last chapter.

Paradoxically, during the same period in which O is increasingly succumbing to

Sir Stephen’s mastery, she is falling in love with someone new. Jacqueline, the fashion model and minor film actress whom O photographs and eventually falls in love with, is a major figure in the story’s development. Once in St. Jorre’s interview with the author, Réage/Aury confesses that Jacqueline the character is from someone in her own life:

She says that her first love was a girl of that name who was at her school.

“Jacqueline was a big, blond, and beautiful girl. We were both fifteen, and we

were in love with each other.” Did they have an affair? “Of course, why not?

It was quite common in France, that sort of thing. It never hurt anyone. But

her parents did not like it, and took her away from the lycée.” She said that

Jacqueline had also loved René and had been the first to break her heart. (St.

Jorre 46)

Later in the preface to Return to the Chateau—“A Girl in Love”, Réage also brings up the similar history in St. Jorre’s interview: “She had in fact been responsible for being the first to break my heart…. The fact remains that Jacqueline, this real Jacqueline, figures in the story only by her first name and her fair hair”(Return 12). Jacqueline is so much loved by O in the story as by Aury/Réage in the real life. In the story, O’s passionate love for Jacqueline is well portrayed. When O is asked for the first time by Sir Stephen to bring Jacqueline into her condition of slavery, she rebels: “O set Wu 76 down the coffee she was holding in her hand, shaking so violently that she spilled the viscous dregs of coffee and sugar at the bottom of the cup…. no, it was impossible, not her, not Jacqueline”(Story of O 119). She tells Sir Stephen: “No, it’s out of the question”(Story of O 119). Then she comforts herself with the thought that

Jacqueline will refuse to go to Roissy, the place at which she herself was enslaved.

Later, in Samois, when Yvonne’s green eyes remind O of Jacqueline, O thought in her mind: “I won’t, I don’t want to and I won’t lift a finger to get her there….

Jacqueline’s not the sort to be flogged and marked”(Story of O 157). Indeed,

Jacqueline later proves that she is not O’s type of girl. She is quite different. She is more like the woman O used to be before she fell in love with René. Although

Jacqueline is sleeping with O and René, she is far from giving up her independence.

Though the narrative of Story of O begins with René and O’s arrival at Roissy, it is important to note that, prior to meeting with René, O had an autonomous life as a fashion photographer in Paris, living free of dependence on a male because she had never been deeply in love. She had taken lovers but remained emotionally aloof, even while she enjoyed the power she held over them. In fact, O’s most passionate desires had been directed toward women, and we are told that O enjoyed the pursuit of female lovers. Thus, it would be a mistake to superficially read O as a one-dimensional exemplification of Freudian masochistic femininity. O is not merely a masochist. Before O is sent to Samois, Jacqueline moves in O’s apartment and begins a relationship with O. When O becomes enamoured of Jacqueline, O reviews her past love stories with other girls in retrospect. The accounts of her lesbian relationships and adventures are written with a care that attests to their significance. Once evoked by the vision of the frozen waters of the Seine, O recalls her friend Marion, an older girl, with whom she was in love and who initiated her into the realm of sexuality. Though Marion seduced her, O remembers rather “how Wu 77 lovely Marion looked when she was being caressed”:

When [O] was fifteen her best friend, who was then thirty and with whom she

was in love, wore a hematite ring set in a cluster of tiny diamonds.... She saw

again the wretched room where Marion had taken her, behind the Turbigo

intersection, and remembered how she had untied—she, not Marion—her two

big schoolgirl pigtails when Marion had undressed her and laid her down on the

iron bed. How lovely Marion was when she was being caressed, and it’s true

that eyes can resemble stars; hers looked like quivering blue stars. (Story of O

68)

Such a romantic love relationship makes a clear contrast to O’s present love relationship with René. In fact, this retrospect occurs in O when René accompanies her on the way to Sir Stephen’s house for the first time where René gives O to Sir

Stephen. I think the reason why O brings up this sweet old good memory at the moment when her love with René seems coming to an end is to recall “the vestige of an adolescent love”, and to memorize those good old days. (Return 13)

Aury/Réage also confesses in an interview that the love her feels for another woman is the same as that she feels for a man.2 Likewise, for O the essence of love in her heterosexual and homosexual relationships is proved to be the same. However, she plays different roles in these two kinds of relationships. While O plays the passive and masochistic role with men at Roissy, she always assumes the active role in her adventures with women, and through the attraction that women hold for her, she feels the power she has over them and the pleasure she gives them:

O had a fairly clear idea of what she was looking for in the young women she

pursued. It wasn’t that she wanted to give the impression she was vying with

men, nor that she was trying to compensate by her manifest masculinity of a

2 Deforges, 86. Wu 78

female inferiority which she in no wise felt….her penchant for the sweetness of

sweetly made-up lips yielding beneath her own, for the porcelain or pearly

sparkle of eyes half-closed in the half-light of couches at five in the afternoon,

when the curtains are drawn and the lamp on the fireplace mantel lighted, for the

voices that say: “Again, oh, please, again…,” for the marine odor clinging to her

fingers: this was a real deeply-rotted taste. (Story of O 96)

In the story, before O fell in love with René, she used to be the one who hunts female and male partners, and she also enjoys such pursuits, “probably not for the pursuit itself, however amusing or fascinating it might be, but for the complete sense of freedom she experienced in the act of hunting” (Story of O 96). O used to be free, independent, autonomous, and uncommitted. She is capable of being “manipulative

[and] playful…in her quest for physical pleasure and psychological control” (St. Jorre

45). Yet O is not cruel and ruthless to the women she loves as her male masters are to her. Though she is the initiator, she never tries to take the possession of the other girls like René and Sir Stephen do to her. Here O’s masculine role when she is with women may be qualified for Pat Califia’s term “butch phallus”3 mentioned in her

Public Sex. As Califia explains, “the butch phallus is very different from the male phallus…I use phallus to mean male privilege and sexual power, the presence of that privilege and power even in the absence of a penis”(Califia, 1994 180).4 O’s

“phallus” power over other women may be looked alike male/female gender system, but it leaves behind the ugly aspects of institutionalized inequality, and furthermore offers the potential for changing gender-coded structures of power. Here we

3 Jacques Lacan also formulates his own idea about “phallus”, which is another complicated idea. For Lacan, the phallus is not an organ, not the penis, but represents the absent object of desire. For further understanding of his theory, please refer to Lacan, “The Meaning of the Phallus.” Jacques Lacan and the école freudienne. Trans. Jacqueline Rose. Ed. Juliet Mitchel and Jacqueline Rose. New York: Norton, 1985. 74-85. 4 Califia notes that once Amber Hollibaugh says bluntly that she thought butch/femme was a system of “gay gender” which can be a way to critique “heterosexual gender”(Califia, 1994 179). Wu 79 perceive that power is not inherently male. A woman who assumes a dominant role is only male-like if the culture considers power as a solely male attribute. Here O’s masculine role with women offers alternative cultural meanings, subverts the dominant culture’s gender-polarized images of sexual power, and deconstructs gender-specific conduct and codes. In fact, unlike those men who care only about their own pleasure derived from maltreating her, O pays attention the other girls’ reactions. What she cares about is whether they enjoy the sensual moments with her.

The so-called male role she acts out serves most for the purpose of making other girls’ eyes quiver like stars.

From seeing Jacqueline as a personification of her former self, who is not so easily controlled and conquered, O’s developing relationship with her can also be seen as a projection of her own inner battle against self-renunciation. She is the one O is voluntarily leaving behind, but at another level she is struggling desperately to retain.

For a time O is proud of Jacqueline’s independence of men and wishes to preserve her freedom. Later, partly because more and more O yields to Sir Stephen, and partly because René later turns his eyes solely on Jacqueline and doesn’t desire O any longer, she begins to hate Jacqueline and wishes to accomplish the mission that Sir Stephen assigns to her to lure Jacqueline to Roissy. However, no matter how much O and

René have tried, Jacqueline still preserves her very autonomy. She even flirts with another man in front of O, which stirs O’s anger, and makes O blame Jacqueline for being unfaithful to René. Jacqueline in return is sarcastic about O’s submissiveness.

Later, Jacqueline’s reporting to René O’s disobedience and falsely accusing O of accosting other men enrages O and initiates a physical fight between them. The fight between O and Jacqueline could signify O’s final rejection of her former self, and afterwards, the two goes their separate ways. At the end of Story of O, Jacqueline remains emotionally aloof, and finally fades away with René from the narrative; O, on Wu 80 the other hand, relinquishes her will to Sir Stephen completely. In the end of the novel, she is forced to appear at a party nude except for a owl mask and a chain attached to her labial rings. She has become, as signified by the mask, a sexual animal to be used by the men and women surrounding her.

Another contrast also lies between Jacqueline and her sister, Natalie. When

Jacqueline listens to O talking about the joys of her submission to Sir Stephen, she is repelled and horrified: “Terror-stricken, Jacqueline pushed her away and fled into her own room”(Story of O 174). She shows her contempt for O’s condition as a flogged and branded slave. On the contrary, her teen-aged sister Natalie, who far from being shocked and revolted by what has happened to O, is filled with “envy and desire”(Story of O 177). However, O’s reaction to Natalie’s love is quite different from René and Sir Stephen’s reactions to O’s devotion. They make use of her devotion as a means to control and possess, and finally abandon her. On the contrary, after Natalie’s ardent confession of her love for O, she responds Natalie with tenderness and care:

“…She [Jacqueline] doesn’t love you, O, but I do, I love you!”…“Even if you

don’t want to kiss me, O, keep me with you. Keep me with you always. If

you had a dog, you’d keep him and take care of him. And even if you don’t

want to kiss me but would enjoy beating me, you can beat me. But don’t send

me away.”

“Keep still, Natalie, you don’t know what you’re saying,” O murmured, almost

in a whisper. (Story of O 180).

For fear that Sir Stephen might hear their conversation, O tells Natalie to “run along”(Story of O 180). However, Natalie’s love for O is so strong that nothing would alter her decision and turn her away from O. As Brown and Faery analyze,

Natalie “is apparently full of romantic dreams of love and marriage,” so she asks O to Wu 81 teach her to be like her. (Brown and Faery 202) To this point, Natalie and O share a common trait of wholehearted devotion to love. Thus, Natalie desires to be treated by O as O is by Sir Stephen in order to prove her love for O, and therefore she also longs to go to Roissy. However, O is not Anne-Marie, who holds absolute authority on her girls. On the contrary, O has to ask Sir Stephen for permission. Sir Stephen agrees, but only on the condition that Natalie has to remain sexually untouched beforehand, like “a testimony of the traditional desire of the male for a virgin bride”(Brown and Faery 202).

Though Natalie wishes to be like O, she is in some way very different from O.

Instead of being led to Roissy blindfolded as O, she knows beforehand what it is like at Roissy. If we say that the story itself is the journey that O is struggling along to accept the fate which René and Sir Stephen ordain her, Natalie is the one who chooses her own destiny. Although such choice may come out of her innocent and romantic idea which is highly influenced by the way René and Sir Stephen treat O, isn’t it also the choice which most girls would make while brought up to be taught to sacrifice themselves for their love?

What would have become of Natalie if O were like Anne-Marie, being capable of making her own decision? If Natalie totally belonged to O, how would O have dealt with her? There is no answer to these questions in the story. However, we can take a look at Anne-Marie’s sexual relationships with those girls in Samois. They provide us with another picture of love relationships, which somehow present the way in which women are capable of loving themselves. The love scenes those women conduct significantly differ from those conducted by men.

Anne-Marie is the most unusual woman in the story—strong-minded and self-defining. She is Sir Stephen’s accomplice, his friend and colleague, the only woman who is a man’s equal in the story, and possesses her own girls. She is the Wu 82 character who provocatively implies that women are capable of performing their sexuality with consciousness. She demonstrates that woman is the only one who knows her own secret, her own desire, since she is self-sufficient. This powerful woman performs her cruelty and tenderness as she wishes. On the one hand, the music room at her place is the stage for s/m practices; on the other, her bedroom can be seen as the scene of the most erotic exercise: “In the evening, Anne-Marie would designate one of [the girls] to sleep with her, sometimes the same one several nights in succession. She caressed her chosen partner and was by her caressed, generally toward dawn” (Story of O 156). In her bedroom, Anne-Marie practices erotic domination in order to satisfy her needs. She is definitely the woman holding sexual autonomy. The enduring sensation between O and Anne-Marie even makes the former romantic lovemaking scenes between O and René paled. It happens on the night before O’s leaving Samois:

O, who was sleeping with her legs together, was awakened by Anne-Marie’s

hands probing between her thighs. But all Anne-Marie wanted was to awaken

O, to have O caress her…. O had loved Jacqueline in the same way, had held

her completely abandoned in her arms. She had possessed her, or at least so she

thought. But the similarity of gestures meant nothing. O did not possess

Anne-Marie. No one possessed Anne-Marie. Anne-Marie demanded caresses

without worrying about what the person providing them might feel, and she

surrendered herself with an arrogant liberty. Yet she was all kindness and

gentleness with O, kissed her on the mouth and kissed her breasts, and held her

close against her for an hour before sending her back to her own room. She had

removed her irons. (Story of O 158-9)

By Susan Griffin’s definition, here Anne-Marie and O present a scene of lesbianism:

“a woman who loves, cherishes, touches, soothes, brings pleasure and ecstasy to the Wu 83 body of another woman”(Griffin 192). Apart from O’s making love with Jacqueline, which serves some for Sir Stephen’s voyeurism, for his pleasure, Anne-Marie demonstrates a rather liberated sexuality. She manifests the exploring capacity of the female self. Anne-Marie is the lesbian who dares to act out her desire, which by contrast is O’s deepest guilt, and the cause she receives punishments from Sir Stephen.

In Anne-Marie’s sexual scene with O, she shows O how a woman is capable of holding her own sexual autonomy, and dares to show how to satisfy her own needs.

Moreover, by removing O’s irons, she leads O to approach to the self, to see herself. She tells O: “These are your final hours, you can sleep without the irons”(Story of O 159). Then she leads O to a room with mirrors:

She had opened the mirrors, so that O could see herself…. “This is the last time

you’ll see yourself intact,” she said. “The day before you leave I’ll bring you

back here for another look at yourself. You won’t recognize yourself.” (Story

of O 159-160)

What she means here is that O will be branded next day after Sir Stephen arrives.

However before that, O is for the first time removed from her ring and is able to see herself because of Anne-Marie. Simone de Beauvoir in her book, The Second Sex, explicitly explains such a situation:

It is only when her fingers trace the body of a woman whose fingers in turn trace

her body that the miracle of the mirror is accomplished. Between man and

woman love is an act; each torn from self becomes other: what fills the woman in

love with wonder is that the languorous passivity of her flesh should be reflected

in the male’s impetuosity; the narcissistic woman, however, recognizes her

enticements but dimly in the man’s erected flesh. Between women love is

contemplative; caresses are intended less to gain possession of the other than

gradually to re-create the self through her; separateness is abolished, there is no Wu 84

struggle, no victory, no defeat; in exact reciprocity each is at once subject and

object, sovereign and slave, duality becomes mutuality. (de Beauvoir 416)

This paragraph draws a parallel between O’s relationships with men and women.

For example, a clear contrast lies between Sir Stephen and Anne-Marie. After Sir

Stephen arrived in Samois, the first thing he asked is to put back the ring on O, and to brand O in order to assert his male sovereign and her female slave. If it is the men who make O lose herself, torn apart from self, then it is Anne-Marie, the woman, who provides O with the opportunity to see herself, to regain herself with “no struggle, no victory, no defeat.” In addition, Anne-Marie’s erotic domination over O in her bedroom demonstrates a liberated female sexuality, with whom O contemplates how a women dares to act out her desire without being possessed, and furthermore, with

Anne-Marie’s female body standing along side with O in front the mirror, we see O re-create the integrated self by removed away all the rings.

Interestingly, the ending of Return to the Chateau also mounts to a final scene of

Anne-Marie’s standing by O’s side. Because Sir Stephen is suspected of murder at the end of the sequel, that he is not expected to return apparently puts O’s relation to

Roissy in an entirely new light. “ ‘You're free now, O,’ said Anne-Marie. ‘We can remove your irons, your collar, and bracelets, and even erase the brand. You have the diamonds, you can go home” (100). O is totally unresponsive. She sheds no tears, displays no bitterness, and utters no sound. Perhaps it happens all of a sudden, she is filled with blankness. Seeing O with no reaction, Anne-Marie goes on to provide O with another way out: “But if you prefer, you can stay here” (100).

Though Anne-Marie seems looming large, she provides O with a sense of safety by staying by her side, and she lets O to make her own decision, to think what she really wants. If O’s fear of freedom is precisely her fear of her self, now she seems fearless of what to come. Wu 85

While Story of O depicts O’s voluntary degradation, the sequel follows the process of O’s regain of her subjectivity. The sequel’s ending symbolizes that O is finally restored to her autonomy, and has to decide her own future. In fact, the sequel allows us to take another look at O’s masochism. Consider, too, the owl mask scene in the end of Story of O, which negates O’s humanity itself: “no one thought of questioning her, which would have be completely natural, as if she were a real owl, deaf to human speech and mute”(Story of O 197-8). On the contrary, as the end of the sequel suggests, she seems on her way to reject a masochistic identity. As a matter of fact, from the beginning of Return to the Chateau, O already sets off to reject her masochistic role. At first, she feels “uneasy” about the coming schedule of returning to Roissy on September 15 as Sir Stephen planned. (Return 22) Then she begins to suspect that Sir Stephen, like René, is about to change his heart: “Didn’t the fact that René had given her to Sir Stephen, as well as her own ease at shifting from one to another, make it just as likely that Sir Stephen might also change?”(Return 23)

She even asks Sir Stephen if he loves her, but his reply cannot convince her: “when she asked him in a near whisper whether he loved her he did not say: ‘I love you, O,’ but only: ‘Of course,’ and laughed. But did he really?”(Return 25) Since Sir

Stephen says that he will not go along with O to Roissy, O is on the edge of losing faith in Sir Stephen and their love relationship. Besides, René has gone away with

Jacqueline. O’s love for Sir Stephen can never compete with her love for René because Sir Stephen only wants to obtain submission and pure obedience from O,

“what she thought she would grant only through love”(Return 28). Apparently, Sir

Stephen shows no strong attachment to O, and this makes their sadomasochistic relationship falls apart in the end because for O true love is her only motivation to yield and surrender. Finally, O awakes from the dream, in which she fantasizes the renunciation of herself for her love. Wu 86

It is Sir Stephen who destroys this fantasy, on September 15, the day O is scheduled to go back to Roissy. It’s also about the time for Natalie to go back to her boarding school before the end of the month, but Natalie wishes for staying a few days longer and begs O desperately. Suddenly, Sir Stephen commands O to undress and caress Natalie, which was forbidden for O. After O deflorates Natalie first, Sir

Stephen takes over the scene. At that moment, O wonders if Sir Stephen is in love with Natalie and thus puts an end to their relationship: “It seemed rather that he wanted just as she was about to disappear, to bring something to an end, to destroy a fantasy”(Return 31). Moreover, O, as a spectator, watches Sir Stephen deriving pleasure from Natalie, and sees “the fatal sign” of their relationship: “the sign that his feelings for her had withered to such a state of indifference” (Return 32). O’s dream, a dream she fantasizes the total renunciation of herself for her love is ultimately ruined. It tells that a total escape from oneself for her love can only exist in a dream.

The reality is usually different from or usually contrary to the dream. After O is pushed back to reality, O begins to care about real-life matters she never really thought about before. For example, she begins to wonder what Sir Stephen’s profession is and how he does business with René and this foreshadows Sir Stephen’s destiny in the end of the story.

As the story goes, O returns to the chateau Roissy without Sir Stephen’s accompany. Finally, Sir Stephen fades on the stage, and Anne-Marie stands at the gate of Roissy to welcome O back to the Chateau. The former private castle now becomes a profitable brothel in which O begins to earn money by working like a prostitute. With Sir Stephen’s absence, O interacts with other girls and men under

Anne-Marie’s headship. She meditates more often on her masochistic role and on others as well. Gradually, she regains her subjectivity by rebelling against those male customers and also by focusing more and more on her own feelings and thoughts. Wu 87

Once a customer named Frank calls O “my litter whore”, which enrages O: “O, flushed and burning with shame, losing all notion of what was allowed and what was forbidden at Roissy, tore herself loose from the young man’s grasp, jumping back and screaming, ‘Leave me alone! Leave me alone!’”(Return 59-60). About the end of the sequel, when the man called Carl tries to take O with him by working it out with

Sir Stephen, O also rebels: “ ‘But I don’t want you to,’ O cried, suddenly overwhelmed with a feeling of panic. ‘I don’t want you to. I don’t. I don’t!’”

(Return 97). She even plans to run away if Carl really does. Apparently, O begins to speak out loud what she wants and what she does not want in the sequel. In addition, O even experiences orgasm in a man’s arm by Reich’s definition: “He caressed her, with his lips, so long and tenderly in the hollow of her thighs that her breathing came faster and deeper until she could no longer control it” (Return 61).

The former mechanical moans of O in the former Roissy now are transformed into a real sensual delight in the latter Roissy. Compared with the former heterosexual relationships of O in Story of O, the latter ones in the sequel seem much improved and normal, and underline the fact that O is not masochistic by nature.

Besides, through O’s meditation on her and other girls’ masochistic roles in the sequel, it also proves that O cannot be masochistic by nature. Once Noëlle, another girl at Roissy, asks O not to complain about the pain caused by the whipping since she should have been used to it. O replied: “don’t say I’m used to it. No, I’ll never get used to it” (Return 82). O also asks herself a hundred time: “why, whether or not she derived any pleasure from it, someone, no matter whom, from the fact that he penetrated her, or simply opened her with his hand, beat her or only made her strip naked, had the power to make her submit to his will”(Return 78-9). Compared with

O, Noëlle seems having no inner struggle with following these Roissy rules:

Noëlle complied, leaning over the chair with her hands on the arms, her breasts Wu 88

at the level of the man’s mouth; she did so without the slightest hesitation,

obviously happy to please him…. O looked at her: she was ravishing, with her

neck and head thrown back the better to offer her breasts, and arching her back

the better to offer her buttocks. (Return 68)

In many ways Noëlle is the better resident at Roissy. At least, she asks fewer questions and found a way to code her experience as pleasure:

Did Noëlle feel as subjugated, as submissive as she? Did she feel as mastered,

as servile as O did the minute someone touched her? Noëlle was indignant.

Submissive? Servile? She did what had to be done, and that was the long and

the short of it. And mastered? Why mastered? O was indeed a complicated

young lady. Noëlle found it flattering to see men stiffening in her presence,

because of her; she found it amusing to open her legs or her mouth to them.

(Return 79)

The difference between O and Noëlle signals O’s subjectivity in her “complicated nature.” Noëlle is for sure the better-educated masochist than O. She takes all these for granted from the beginning to the end; on the contrary, O is struggling along the way to yield to the masochistic role. If O were Noëlle, I would not have written this thesis. O’s constant meditation on her capacity for masochistic excess both establishes her sexual subjectivity and allows her to transcend herself.

CONCLUSION

Through examining O’s lesbianism and her s/m practices with other women in

Samois, we see an alternative female masochism and female sexuality with great depth. Though in some ways highly influenced by the heterosexual model at Roissy,

O’s lesbian s/m challenges and transcends heterosexual gender dichotomy. That is,

Anne-Marie in Samois cultivates the methods of torture used at Roissy like bondage, Wu 89 suspense and whippings into perfection, and therefore disciplines O and other girls into a much submissive and profound enslaved state when they return to their masters.

However, O’s s/m practices with other women opens up a new possibility for her sexualities and are more like a pleasurable and liberated play with role-switching and theatrical effects as modern s/m theorists advocate. In addition, through O’s love and erotic relationships with other women, especially Jacqueline and Anne-Marie, we perceive a hidden side of polymorphous female sexualities in which women dare to act out their desires in order to satisfy their needs and are capable of holding their sexual autonomy instead of “following” their masochistic nature. Furthermore, through the interactions between O and other women in the story, O begins to regain her sexual subjectivity and finally restores her autonomy at the end of Return to the

Chateau.