Submission/Freedom

This is the novel's central theme, as O undergoes a journey of physical, emotional, and spiritual submission that, it could be argued, results in her freedom. This is not to say that throughout the novel she doesn't struggle to maintain what she believes to be freedom; on the contrary, up until the novel's final moments (the sequence in which she attends a party wearing only a mask), she struggles to maintain control, to hold on to her sense of identity. In particular, O fights to love whom she wants to love (Rene, Jacqueline, Natalie). As her submission deepens, however, and as each facet of her desire recedes in importance, O learns that loving (and in fact existing) on those terms, i.e., doing what she wants to do, is in fact a kind of self-submission, that submitting to the physical and emotional will of another is, in...