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3.0 AVERAGE
3.0 AVERAGE
I was so shocked that such an abhorrent fantasy was written by a woman. I'm so vanilla and so naive. I wanted Mrs Emma Peel , Michele Yoeh, Germaine Greer (in her super afro Oz days) with Angela Davis and Pam Grier to infiltrate Roissy and kick some serious shit. to take those men and just break them. then rescue the women - free them from their submission and burn it to the ground. as for Sir Stephen you couldn't get "all medieval on his ass" cos he'd probably enjoy it - so a quick beheading samurai style. phew! ! left me repulsed and jaded
From the Guardian 4 May 1998:
Dominique Aury, who has died aged 90, was for half a century a pillar of the French establishment. Yet she will be remembered less for her influence on modern French literature than as the key to one of the most celebrated literary mysteries of hte 20th century.
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Yet in 1994, she admitted that to ... should be added one further title: the Histoire d'O, which caused a sensation when it appeared in 1954. ... The detail is graphic ...
The book was banned and in the furore authorship was attributed to Raymond Queneau, André Malraux, Peyre de Mandariagues, even [Aury's partner Jean] Paulhan himself, who, in his preface, described it as the "most ardent love letter@ he had ever read. Written with considerable style and intelligence, the Histoire d'O was admired by judges as different as Georges Bataille and Graham Greene and was translated into many languages. ... It was only in 1994, in an interview with the New Yorker, that Aury explained why and how she had written one of the century's erotic classics.
Sensing that Paulhan was falling out of love, and being no longer young and attractive, she responded by taking up his artistic challenge by writing the pornographic novel he believed no woman could write. Paulhan was won over by her strange love-letter and their liason continued until his death in 1968.
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David Coward
Dominique Aury, who has died aged 90, was for half a century a pillar of the French establishment. Yet she will be remembered less for her influence on modern French literature than as the key to one of the most celebrated literary mysteries of hte 20th century.
---
Yet in 1994, she admitted that to ... should be added one further title: the Histoire d'O, which caused a sensation when it appeared in 1954. ... The detail is graphic ...
The book was banned and in the furore authorship was attributed to Raymond Queneau, André Malraux, Peyre de Mandariagues, even [Aury's partner Jean] Paulhan himself, who, in his preface, described it as the "most ardent love letter@ he had ever read. Written with considerable style and intelligence, the Histoire d'O was admired by judges as different as Georges Bataille and Graham Greene and was translated into many languages. ... It was only in 1994, in an interview with the New Yorker, that Aury explained why and how she had written one of the century's erotic classics.
Sensing that Paulhan was falling out of love, and being no longer young and attractive, she responded by taking up his artistic challenge by writing the pornographic novel he believed no woman could write. Paulhan was won over by her strange love-letter and their liason continued until his death in 1968.
---
David Coward
One of the first BDSM stories I ever read in my teens (thank goodness). It is such a compelling story of servitude. On the second read through, it spoke just as loudly to me as the first. This is a book I will return to over and over again throughout my life.
The plot of this novel is very thin, it's really a sequence of places and people for O to get taken by and it ends abruptly and unsatisfyingly after feeling like it's building to something. There are bits that are genuinely hot but there is so much whipping and beating and even for a submissive relationship O is so lacking in any agency or self-respect that it is unpleasant at times in a bad way. The whole thing kind of feels like Pauline Réage had a basic idea of things she thought would be sexy and then half-attempted to string them together. The essay at the end is total garbage. When it's good, it's one of the better popular erotic novels that I've read, but there were times where getting to a good part felt like a struggle.
An interesting example of cognitive dissonance in
fiction. As an erotica it was boring and overall what the
hell. However, as a psychological read it makes you
think about the chains people put themselves in just to
be loved, the sadness of giving everything up and then
having nothing else to give, of becoming a shell of
oneself and losing yourself completely.
fiction. As an erotica it was boring and overall what the
hell. However, as a psychological read it makes you
think about the chains people put themselves in just to
be loved, the sadness of giving everything up and then
having nothing else to give, of becoming a shell of
oneself and losing yourself completely.
I picked up Histoire d'O after hearing that it's the "dirtiest book in existence". Say no more, haha.
I am a huge fan of anyone exploring what makes them feel thrilled, and the experience of Pauline Reage's writing - written in the 1950's, might I add, LOVE THAT - reminded me a lot of Anne Rice's pseudonymous work in The Sleeping Beauty Quartet. In something as highly personal and private as sexuality, who can expect to find everything someone says as 'perfectly agreeable'? That's not why I read Histoire d'O. I really just wanted to witness someone being really bold.
Reage doesn't hold anything back - at least I don't think so. It's important to remember that O's participation, per her own admission, is consensual. One could argue, "but doesn't that indicate she's traumatized? Isn't that wrong?" I don't know, and I'm not qualified to speak on that. I support someone doing what feels enjoyable to them (non-harm and consent assumed) and I support someone writing about the same.
The reason I rated Histoire d'O a 2 is because I found the story really boring. Imagine. Also, what happened to the end? I'll need to Google that one, because my version.
I am a huge fan of anyone exploring what makes them feel thrilled, and the experience of Pauline Reage's writing - written in the 1950's, might I add, LOVE THAT - reminded me a lot of Anne Rice's pseudonymous work in The Sleeping Beauty Quartet. In something as highly personal and private as sexuality, who can expect to find everything someone says as 'perfectly agreeable'? That's not why I read Histoire d'O. I really just wanted to witness someone being really bold.
Reage doesn't hold anything back - at least I don't think so. It's important to remember that O's participation, per her own admission, is consensual. One could argue, "but doesn't that indicate she's traumatized? Isn't that wrong?" I don't know, and I'm not qualified to speak on that. I support someone doing what feels enjoyable to them (non-harm and consent assumed) and I support someone writing about the same.
The reason I rated Histoire d'O a 2 is because I found the story really boring. Imagine. Also, what happened to the end? I'll need to Google that one, because my version
Spoiler
ended abruptly, just like this review
During the last chapter I just kept thinking, "the owls are not what they seem."
I did not finish this book and it had nothing to do with the subject matter.
I made it through the end of the second part (there are four) by forcing myself to pick it up and read a little bit of it everyday. There was nothing about the book that grabbed my attention. For a book that's told from O's point of view (though it is written in the third person), I felt like I knew surprisingly little about her as a character. I didn't feel for her and, given the situation she was in, I felt I should have.
Maybe there was something I was missing or maybe I got a bad translation, but with some many other books on my list of books I want to read, I had to make the decision to shelve it.
I made it through the end of the second part (there are four) by forcing myself to pick it up and read a little bit of it everyday. There was nothing about the book that grabbed my attention. For a book that's told from O's point of view (though it is written in the third person), I felt like I knew surprisingly little about her as a character. I didn't feel for her and, given the situation she was in, I felt I should have.
Maybe there was something I was missing or maybe I got a bad translation, but with some many other books on my list of books I want to read, I had to make the decision to shelve it.
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
The ultimate questions this book has left me with: What good is love or the love of a master if they are too weak to fight against handing you over to someone else permanently, despite not wanting to? What good is you placing all your value in others if it ultimately destroys your identity and sense of self?
Story of O is often lauded as a work of de Sade written by a woman. People analyze it from the lens of erotica and domination. Submission and slavery. Sensuality in the most intimate debasement. While that may be true, that isn't what I'm focused on when I think of this story, though I do personally consider O's circumstances to be one of my own personal worst nightmares. It is not the acts of eroticism in this novel that are shocking, but what I have to take away from my experience while reading this that is more cerebrally disturbing.
This is a novel I had to spend much time digesting and weighing my thoughts on once I came to my conclusions, as I thought about it from multiple perspectives and attempted to analyze the subtleties of O's journey.
My conclusion is this: O is a woman who wants nothing more than to be submissive to the man she loves, willing to give herself up entirely, though she has no idea what all this may mean. From the beginning of the story, O is an anonymous character, without name and without much description or personality. As Rene fully becomes her master, he claims his love for her, and O is satisfied with this, as long as Rene continues to profess his love for her.
O is eventually introduced to Sir Stephen, who holds power over Rene enough that he might as well be Rene's master in a social context. This begs the question, what good is love or the love of a master if they are too weak to fight against handing you over to someone else permanently, despite not wanting to? Whether Rene truly loves O or not, he is too weak to stand up against Sir Stephen and O quickly forgets him in time, showing that she has no true sense of what love really is. Both Rene and O are naive individuals.
O, still desiring to commit herself to someone completely, loses herself entirely. What little personality and little preservation she had, no longer exists. She lives to serve only Sir Stephen (in the tradition of de Sade) and she has no mind for anything else. Is this love? Perhaps to O, it is. But certainly to Sir Stephen it isn't love and wouldn't matter to him.
Sir Stephen eventually grows tired of O, and depending upon which version of the ending you choose to accept, she withers away at his abandonment or she desires to kill herself because her life has no purpose, yet she can't allow herself to do so, unless Sir Stephen, who is no longer her master, allows her to do so.
This begs the second question: what good is you placing all your value in others if it ultimately destroys your identity and sense of self? For O, does it even matter, because it was her wish to devote herself entirely? Was this something she was unintentionally groomed into when Rene brought her to her fate at the beginning of the book? Or was it O never having a sense of self to begin with that ultimately lead her to end up this way?
I believe Story of O isn't just a tragedy, but a character study underneath it all.
Story of O is often lauded as a work of de Sade written by a woman. People analyze it from the lens of erotica and domination. Submission and slavery. Sensuality in the most intimate debasement. While that may be true, that isn't what I'm focused on when I think of this story, though I do personally consider O's circumstances to be one of my own personal worst nightmares. It is not the acts of eroticism in this novel that are shocking, but what I have to take away from my experience while reading this that is more cerebrally disturbing.
This is a novel I had to spend much time digesting and weighing my thoughts on once I came to my conclusions, as I thought about it from multiple perspectives and attempted to analyze the subtleties of O's journey.
My conclusion is this: O is a woman who wants nothing more than to be submissive to the man she loves, willing to give herself up entirely, though she has no idea what all this may mean. From the beginning of the story, O is an anonymous character, without name and without much description or personality. As Rene fully becomes her master, he claims his love for her, and O is satisfied with this, as long as Rene continues to profess his love for her.
O is eventually introduced to Sir Stephen, who holds power over Rene enough that he might as well be Rene's master in a social context. This begs the question, what good is love or the love of a master if they are too weak to fight against handing you over to someone else permanently, despite not wanting to? Whether Rene truly loves O or not, he is too weak to stand up against Sir Stephen and O quickly forgets him in time, showing that she has no true sense of what love really is. Both Rene and O are naive individuals.
O, still desiring to commit herself to someone completely, loses herself entirely. What little personality and little preservation she had, no longer exists. She lives to serve only Sir Stephen (in the tradition of de Sade) and she has no mind for anything else. Is this love? Perhaps to O, it is. But certainly to Sir Stephen it isn't love and wouldn't matter to him.
Sir Stephen eventually grows tired of O, and depending upon which version of the ending you choose to accept, she withers away at his abandonment or she desires to kill herself because her life has no purpose, yet she can't allow herself to do so, unless Sir Stephen, who is no longer her master, allows her to do so.
This begs the second question: what good is you placing all your value in others if it ultimately destroys your identity and sense of self? For O, does it even matter, because it was her wish to devote herself entirely? Was this something she was unintentionally groomed into when Rene brought her to her fate at the beginning of the book? Or was it O never having a sense of self to begin with that ultimately lead her to end up this way?
I believe Story of O isn't just a tragedy, but a character study underneath it all.