Quote Originally Posted by Sir Lanceloth

there exists a second ending to Story of O, according to which O, seeing that Sir Stephen was about to leave her, said she would prefer to die. Sir Stephen gave her his consent.[/I]

Both endings are sad, and neither works for me. Perhaps thats why it enthralls me so, perhaps i simply cant let O be treated that way. In other words I want to rescue O from that terrible fate, and therefore teh story lingers within me.
O's story is indeed a sad one. She submits with a purity of purpose out of love for Rene and is given away to Sir Stephen. She submits to him with an even greater intensity and passion and is in the end abandoned by him. Was it simply O's chosen fate, a failure of her Masters ( and by extension Reage's belief in the shortcoming of males ), or perhaps its just an attempt by Pauline Reage to bring a moral ending to a tale of what would be considered debauchery in the 50s. The lack of an ending is the books flaw and also what makes it so intriguing to me. I dismiss the sequel as a fraud. It is too different in tone and composition to have been written by the same writer IMHO.