The Story of O

I just finished reading The Story of O. I guess maybe it seems odd that I'd never read it before, but, I hadn't. I also have Madame Bovary sitting on my nightstand, waiting to be opened, if I can ever put down that stupid DS. LOL

Anyway, I found it wonderful. Not the best writing (speaking strictly from a technical point of view) I've ever come across; but of course, you have to take into account that it was translated from its original French. But it draws you in, makes you want to read more, puts you into the main character's mind. Yes, it is erotic, in its own way, but it comes across more as an emotional kind of story. A girl truly finding herself and learning what makes her the happiest and what truly opens her soul. Maybe it's easier to see past the chains and sex when you are already of a submissive mind-set, and more understanding of O's frame of mind, I don't know.

After I read it, I was looking the story up online. I found some interesting things. Like that the symbol on my collar is very like the true "ring of O" that she receives at Roissy (where she is educated in slavery, so to speak), and that the simple band with the ring on it is the simplified version used for the movie. I knew that my collar was ordered from a bdsm type site and that the symbol is used by many in that way, but I didn't know the O reference. Interestingly, that triskelion symbol has quite a depth of meaning back through the ages, and I love that I've suddenly learned so much about it! It makes it that much more meaningful to me!

I know there are many who wouldn't understand this: "It is only when you make me suffer that I feel safe and secure," says O to her master, Sir Stephen. And I understand that being a submissive, slave, whatever one chooses to call oneself, isn't something that appeals to all. But I did find this tidbit quite interesting:

The book tells the profound, and disturbing, story of a woman who wishes to exist without existing: "She lost herself in a delirious absence from herself." Through utter humiliation, O rises. Susan Sontag called the book a story of "an ascent through degradation." Such a woman today would, of course, be pathologized and, ironically, "healed" by more socially acceptable methods of control: institutionalization and medication. link

How true is that?! How is society's control of someone, in ways that they deem "acceptable", in order to make that person fit a mold that they deem "appropriate" any better than self-sought slavery or submission? We are all slaves: to society, to our family, to any number of things, and it seems to me far better to be able to choose what makes you happiest and most fulfilled than to submit only to certain bonds of slavery just because you are told the majority of people wish you to. It certainly makes you think anyway...