I have long struggled with categorizing O's participation at Roissy: sometimes the men say she is free to leave, and yet she is chained to her room at night removing any idea of personal freedom. Conversely, the reader begins to understand that not all chains are visible: privately, we get the impression that there is no way O would prematurely leave Roissy anyway, even if she were unchained, because hers is a kind of love that makes her endure whatever her lover expects of her. She is so in love with Rene that, regardless of what the men do to liberate or enslave her, her personal code prevents her from leaving Roissy anyway. To say it another way, it doesn't matter how many chains the Roissy men equip: O would not leave. It doesn't matter how many men it takes to force her to kneel and service them: O doesn't require force to obey. (Can you enslave the willing?) She will, accordingly, endure whatever the men do to her, no matter how painful and no matter the length of time. Whatever lines exist between slavery and submission are blurred in this novel, it's true, and speaking as a North American I would say that even the new-world's view of D/s and modern romance are also challenged. Rene demands that for which it is impossible to consent (he says the very words himself), and yet O insists that she consents, that she loves him, that she would do anything for him. She is determined to consent (to submit); and the men are determined to objectify and remove consent (to enslave). The question for me now, in my journey of learning, is whether a woman can submit under those circumstances. Is it logically possible to offer submission to someone who hears (and accepts) something completely different? Or who doesn't hear or accept at all, for that matter.
The element of the novel that challenged my preconceptions the most (last night, at the discussion, thanks entirely to my mentor) is this very idea of submission in the face of slavery. The tension in the novel between consent and the wholesale absence of rights and freedoms* was once to me an interesting plot device, but as of last night it is now an all-engaging thought process that occupies me concerning the very nature of submission. I wrote in this blog two days ago that I had surrendered "even though you are not here." The idea of submission, to me, changes with that statement: I know that it is possible to submit -- that it is possible for me to do my half of the job -- even if I'm the only person in the room. I know that it is possible for me to make that agreement in my mind: "When you speak, I will obey; I will surrender control; I will yield to you; I want to yield; I need to yield; whenever you speak, I will yield and I am so grateful." I know that it is possible for me to make this agreement and to not know the answer from "him", whether or not he will accept and act upon my submission. What if he doesn't accept and act upon it? Does it invalidate my statement that I would yield? No, he's a free-thinking man with his own definitions of safe, sane, and consensual: and I am a free-thinking woman with my own definitions of safe, sane, and consensual. Whether or not he accepts my submission, I have given it. It is a cake in a box beside strewn flowers on the porch of the one who might enjoy it. If he's home, and if he answers the door, and if he is hungry, and if he is pleased, then we are in synch! If he's not home, OR if he refuses to answer the door, OR if he's simply not hungry, then there is no synchronicity to what we have to offer each other (and there are so many variables to determine synchronicity that it's amazing anybody ever gets it right). None of this changes my surrender. If he leaves his house and goes on vacation, never even noticing the cake and strewn flowers upon his porch, it would be a bit of a waste, this gift I offer, to say the least -- physically, anyway. But it doesn't change my offering it. And it's not a waste to me, emotionally. Logically. And I do not take back the offer, petulantly, if he rejects it. It was offered. It is offered. It remains. I am there with it. And, naturally, I have surrendered to every possible future, accordingly.
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*Quoted from the novel: "you are not free but fettered." She is not free: she is enslaved, objectively. Once the men pronounce that, it becomes objective fact. And yet, she consents to be there, subjectively. What if this is not simply a plot device but, rather, O's free-will determining her own submission even in the face of those who would enslave her? What if this is the touchstone to understanding submission on a grand scale?
From Part 1: The Lovers of Roissy. "[...] Your hands are not your own, nor are your breasts, nor, most especially, any of your bodily orifices, which we may explore or penetrate at will. You will remember at all times - or as constantly as possible - that you have lost all right to privacy or concealment, and as a reminder of this fact, in our presence you will never close your lips completely, or cross your legs, or press your knees together (you may recall you were forbidden to do this the minute you arrived). This will serve as a constant reminder, to you as well as to use, that your mouth, your belly, and your backside are open to us. You will never touch your breasts in our presence: the bodice raises them toward us, that they may be ours. During the day you will therefore be dressed, and if anyone should order you to lift your skirt, you will lift it; if anyone desires to use you in any manner whatsoever, he will use you, unmasked, but with this one reservation: the whip. The whip will be used only between dusk and dawn. But besides the whipping you receive from whoever may want to whip you, you will also be flogged in the evening, as punishment for any infractions of the rules committed during the day: for having been slow to oblige, for having raised your eyes and looked at the person addressing you or taking you - you must never look any of us in the face. If the costume we wear in the evening - the one I am now wearing - leaves our sex exposed, it is not for the sake of convenience, for it would be just as convenient the other way, but for the sake of insolence, so that your eyes will be directed there upon it and nowhere else, so that you may learn that there resides your master, for whom, above all else, your lips are intended. During the day, when we are dressed in normal attire and you are clothed as you are now, the same rules will apply, except that when requested you will open your clothes, and then close them again when we have finished with you. Another thing: at night you will have only your lips with which to honor us - and your wide-spread thighs - for your hands will be tied behind your back and you will be naked, as you were a short while ago. You will be blindfolded only to be maltreated and, now that you have seen how you are whipped, to be flogged. And yes, by the way: while it is perfectly all right for you to grow accustomed to being whipped - since you are going to be every day throughout your stay - this is less for our pleasure than for your enlightenment. How true this is may be shown by the fact that on those nights when no one desires you, you will wait until the valet whose job it is comes to your solitary cell and administers what you are due to receive but we are not in the mood to mete out. Actually, both this flogging and the chain - which when attached to the ring of your collar keeps you more or less closely confined to your bed several hours a day - are intended less to make you suffer, scream, or shed tears than to make you feel, through this suffering, that you are not free but fettered, and to teach you that you are totally dedicated to something outside yourself. When you leave here, you will be wearing on your third finger an iron ring, which will identify you. Bu then you will have learned to obey those who wear the same insignia, and when they see it they will know that beneath your skirt you are constantly naked, however comely or commonplace your clothes may be, and that this nakedness is for them. Should anyone find you in the least intractable, he will return you here. Now you will be shown to your cell." [...] The more he surrendered her, the more he would hold her dear. The fact that he gave her was to him a proof, and ought to be one for her as well that she belonged to him: one can only give what belongs to you. He gave her only to reclaim her immediately, to reclaim her enriched in his eyes, like some common object which had been used for some divine purpose and has thus been consecrated. For a long time he had wanted to prostitute her, and he was delighted to feel that the pleasure he was deriving was even greater than he had hoped, and that it bound him to her all the more, as it bound her to him, all the more so because, through it, she would be more humiliated and ravaged. Since she loved him, she could not help loving whatever derived from him. O listened and trembled with happiness, because he loved her, all acquiescent she trembled. He doubtless guessed it, for he went on:
"It's because it's easy for you to consent that I want from you what it will be impossible for you to consent to, even if you agree ahead of time, even if you say yes now and imagine yourself capable of submitting. You won't be able not to revolt. Your submission will be obtained in spite of you, not only for the inimitable pleasure that I and others will derive from it, but also that you will be made aware of what has been done to you." O was on the verge of saying that she was his slave and that she bore her bonds cheerfully. He stopped her. "Yesterday you were told that as long as you are in the château you are not to look a man in the face of speak to him. The same applies to me as well: with me you shall remain silent and obey. I love you. Now get up. From now on the only times that you will open your mouth here in the presence of a man will be to cry out or to caress."
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