"O"

This character is the novel's protagonist. The first thing to note about her is the fact that she is never referred to by her full name, an aspect to the novel that may have two purposes. One is that she is intended, in her submissiveness and subjection to male desire and control, to represent all women. Another is that her namelessness reinforces the idea that she has no identity outside of her sexuality, and specifically her sexual value for the men in her life. That being said, the novel never makes it unequivocally clear whether her journey into complete submission is purely the result of coercion (i.e., she's bullied into it) or a hard-won actualization of her true personal nature. In other words, is her soul destroyed, or is it fulfilled?

While coercion (physical violence, emotional manipulation, sexual submission) certainly plays a vital role in...