In short, the book is about O, a French woman who is brought to Roissy, a chateau-like brothel, by her lover René. Aury didn’t intend to publish the book but wanted to write her version of a love letter in which she played on the fantasies of Paulhan and the unfounded beliefs that women didn’t share those fantasies. Aury set out to prove him wrong and the result was the Story of O. She wrote the book when Jean Paulhan, her married lover who was a fan of the Marquis de Sade, claimed women couldn’t write erotica. That Aury, a refined, professional woman, could write such a novel only fueled the controversy.ĭiscrediting most theories about the book, Aury claimed the novel was simply a response to a challenge. And then, in 1994 a British journalist revealed the author’s identity, a French woman named Dominique Aury. For decades readers and critics speculated on the author’s identity and debated the meaning of the novel. It is a sexually graphic, sadomasochistic novel that was published under a pseudonym in the 1950s. It’s easy to see why the Story of O was controversial and scandalous.
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