Erotica vs Porn: Histoire d'O

The story of O illustrates the choices that were taken by O at every point.

• The choice to subjugate her will to another.
• The choice to perform actions and suffer indignities that to many would be unthinkably brutal and in some instances inhuman but which were less than her overwhelming, natural desire to be submissive.
• The pleasure principal O became conditioned to over time was used to motivate her further and further ... beyond boundaries and limits many would consider reasonable.

Author:

Pauline Réage (1907 - 1998) Her lover and employer, Jean Paulhan, had made the chauvinistic remark to her that no female was capable of writing an erotic novel. To prove him wrong she wrote a graphic, sadomasochistic novel that was published under the pseudonym "Pauline Réage" in June of 1954.


Titled the Histoire d'O (The Story of O), it proved Paulhan wrong and was an enormous, though controversial, commercial success. The book caused much speculation as to the identity of the author. No one suspected that it was a woman let alone the demure, intellectual, and almost prudish, Dominique Aury. [Jan 2007]


In 1975 an interview she did with author and publisher Régine Deforges about erotic books was published and still her authorship of them remained unknown. Finally, forty years after the book was published, in an interview with The New Yorker magazine, Dominique Aury admitted for the first time publicly that she was the author of The Story of O.