NORAH: 50 SHADES of SLAVERY

Norah

… he told Norah to wait, and said that she could help O get dressed when he had finished with her. And yet, before he dismissed her, he kissed O tenderly on the mouth. It was that kiss which, several days later, gave her the courage to tell him that Norah frightened her… (Histoire d’O)

Before ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ there was ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’…

I am teasing of course, but did you know Uncle Tom was the Best Seller of the 19th century, second only to the Bible?

Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly, is the still widely read anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. As Peter Tupper points out in Our Lives, Our History (pub 2016), Stowe mapped sexuality onto geography, “Like the Orient in earlier literature, Stowe’s South was both repellent and fascinating to readers.” Among the book’s many black stereotypes there are to be found the characters of Eliza, Cassy, and Emmeline, portrayed as light-skinned “tragic mulatto” and “sex objects”.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin appeared in 1852, one hundred years prior to the writing of Story of O, time enough for sure, for slavery to recede from living memory in the collective minds of England and Europe. “It lost moral urgency,” writes Tupper, but became a fertile source of sexual fantasy, “Slavery in the American South… became a space for white people’s suppressed imaginings of deviant sexuality.”

Of all the players in Histoire d’O that circulate about ‘O’, perhaps the most interesting, when we take into consideration the connection to chattel slavery and its persistent prevalence in the minds of people in our society, is the mulatto servant of Sir Stephen, Norah.

A silent and dark-skinned extension of her masters’ desires, Norah, Sir Stephen’s servant and his proxy, is an emblematic addition to the tableau of domination, one that can be seen to be marked by race, age, coldness and the unobtrusive presence of her labour.

Laure Moutoussamy as Norah, the maid, in Story of O (1975)

Norah serves Sir Stephen and deals extensively with O. She has the keys to O’s rooms. She prepares O for Sir Stephen. And in addition to dressing and undressing O, she also whips her. In the Just Jeackin film version of the book, we see Norah flushed and sweating from such labours when she admits the visitor Eric. He has become besotted with O but now recoils in horror from the sight of a freshly whipped O, tethered and severely marked by the black servant.

Laure Moutoussamy as Norah, the maid, in Story of O (1975)

We have already observed that the fact Sir Stephen is British can be read as a play on colloquial descriptions of S&M as the “English vice”. Amber Jamilla Musser observes that Norah’s blackness “is tied to the Caribbean, specifically Barbados.” This is not just because Barbados was a British colony at the time that Aury wrote Story of O but because the link is articulated in Jean Paulhan’s preface to the novel, entitled “Happiness In Slavery”. Such notions inspire Musser to place her discussion of submission in the historical context, against “the echoes of French complicity during World War II and the turbulent aftermath of rebuilding.” In addition to the “precarious moment” in which France found itself in the mid-twentieth century and its due process of decolonization, Musser sees Paulhan’s assumption that love lies behind submission “a rationalization for colonialism”, and normative French identity becoming solidified “as white, Catholic, and bourgeois.”

Iléa Ferraz as Norah, whips O in front of Sir Stephen and Natalie in the Brazil made-for-TV “Story of O the Series”(1992)

Associate Professor of English Biman Basu is in no doubt that “contemporary sadomasochistic practice is a rigorously historical practice.” He too sees it as a space for the creative deformations of the ideological categories “race, gender, and sexuality.” As such, Basu continues, “it cannot be extricated from the histories of slavery and colonialism…”

Basu makes comparisons between Venus In Furs and Story of O drawing attention to the thematic consideration of race in the person of Norah. “Like Masoch” writes Basu, the author of Story of O “draws on racial discourses in her descriptions of Norah which deploy not only signs of blackness but also, in the mid-twentieth century, signs of colonialism in India.” Norah appears in a “Madras kerchief,” a “hybrid embodiment of the stereotypical bandanna clad African American female slave”, a hybrid embodiment Basu explains, “of Aunt Jemima and the colonized native.”

Norah (Iléa Ferraz) oversees ‘O’ disrobing in “Story of O the Series” (1992)

Norah witnesses O’s “preparations” and then leads her naked on “high-heeled mules” to Sir Stephen. To O, Norah seems “dangerous,” her “swarthy hand” seems “as hard as wood”, her “black, beady eyes” in an “impressive face so bothered O” that she confesses to Sir Stephen that “Norah frightened her.”

Whilst O finds Norah “dangerous” she also aligns herself with Norah as being in service. She not only desires Norah to “witness” but to validate her servitude. She experiences “a kind of pride that this servant of Sir Stephen… was a witness to the fact that she too… was worthy of being used by Sir Stephen…” The words, “she too” signaling, Basu points out, “her inclusion among the “servants”.

Basu wonders if we should dismiss these representations of race as stereotypes but finds of course that sadomasochistic performance is full of stereotypes. Blackness is deployed “as a referent to the discourses on slavery.” maintains Bisu, “Sadomasochistic narrative does not offer a replica of the slave narratives; sadomasochistic practice does not reproduce historical slavery. But sadomasochism does have historical referents, and the contemporary practice of dominant-submissive sexuality is a historical performance.”

Indeed, Niklaus Largier points out in his In Praise of the Whip, “When the whip is raised… we stand before a stage…” Erotic flagellation as a ritual, Largier confirms, “is a question of arousal in which past and present, memory and perception, senses and soul, coincide.”

O’s history is, of course, replete with history. Aury’s choices are naturally stereotypical and deliver what Thomas Moore described of de Sade’s dark theatre as providing, “a mythic background to the violence of the heart.”

LOST MOVIE SCENE

Norah whips O: Pictures below and above

This scene must have been omitted from the final cut of Just Jaeckin’s 1975 film Histoire d’O. It does not appear in the film, neither does it appear in the original novel.

It seems apparent that the white skirt, seen here in publicity shots, was worn purely for the on-set modesty of the actress. It should have remained out of shot. The skirt can be seen in another magazine publicity photo where O is trying on the Owl Mask accompanied by Nora. This perhaps suggests the scenes shared the same portion of the intended film sequence.

IMAGES from Just Jeackin’s film Histoire d’O (1975) with Laure Moutoussamy as Norah, and Corrine Clery as ‘O’.

PICTURE HEADLINING THIS PAGE
AT THE VERY TOP: Selika Lazevski, a black horsewoman in Belle Époque Paris. In 1891, she was the subject of a series of six portraits at the studio of Paul Nadar in Paris.

text©Stefan Prince
at http://www.storyofo.info

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