Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses graphic sexual content, including depictions of bondage and sadomasochism, adolescent sexuality, and nonconsensual sexual encounters. The guide also refers to suicidal ideation.

In an unspecified year and time in Paris, the novel’s protagonist, referred to only as “O,” meets with her lover, René, in a park that she has never been to before. René tells her to get into a taxi waiting nearby with him. Once inside, O is driven off and another man beside her in the car tells her that “you’ve too much clothing on” (10). The man tells O to remove her garter belt and underwear, which he then puts inside the handbag he has taken from her. The man also orders O not to sit on her skirt or put anything between her flesh and the leather seat of the car. O is driven to a mansion where she is told by the man in the car to ring the doorbell, then to do anything that is asked of her by the people inside “right away and willingly of your own accord” (12).

The author, Réage, then provides “another version of the same beginning” (12) that is simpler and slightly different, although still very similar to the first.