Nothing had prepared me. Some years back I had read The Story of O [sic], intrigued by the beginning, horrified after a few pages, repulsed long before the end. Sadomasochists in real life were black-leather freaks, amusing and silly in their ridiculous getups. If a friend, a peer, had told me she had herself tied to a table leg at home after a full day’s work at the office– well, it has never come up. God knows I would not have believed it. [Pg.54]
Nine and a Half Weeks by Ingeborg Day under the pseudonym Elizabeth McNeill, published 1978, is the semi-autobiographical account of her brief, obsessive, masochistic affair with an unnamed man. It was eventually adapted into the notorious Nine and a Half Weeks film in 1986, starring Kim Basinger and Mickey Rourke.
I had viewed and read about the film quite a bit before I read the short novel. It differs in several significant points. (For convenience, I will refer to the POV character as Elizabeth and her lover as John, though he is not named in the book.)
The Elizabeth of the film is a divorced bohemian who works in an art gallery, contrasting with John’s Wall Street lifestyle. Book Elizabeth has an unspecified white collar job, and is from the same social stratum. This puts Elizabeth on a more equal footing with her lover than her cinematic counterpart; she’s not impressed by his greater wealth, and her detailed descriptions of John’s consumer goods are the recognition of a person of similar class.
The narration describes Elizabeth’s Jekyll-and-Hyde-like dual existence, and how seductive it is.
Throughout the entire period, the daytime rules of my life continued as before: I was independent, I supported myself […], came to my own decisions, made my choices. The nighttime rules decreed that I was helpless, dependent, totally taken care of. No decisions were expected of me, I had no responsibilities. I had no choice.
I loved it. I loved it, I loved it, I loved it, I loved it. [Pg.82]
In the film, John never hits Elizabeth, except for the scene with the riding crop in the tack store, when he lightly taps her on the leg, through her skirt. He comes close to hitting her with his belt in the infamous crawling-for-money scene. Book John slaps her on the face all the time, along with other forms of beating, not to mention knife play.
[John:] “What I don’t get is why you can’t keep the idea of being hit in your mind, why it always actually has to be done to you. Before you say to me, no, I don’t want to do that– why you don’t picture me taking off my belt, in your head. Why you don’t remember from one night to the net what it feels like when it comes down on you. We have to fucking negotiate each and every time and in the end you do what I tell you, anyway.”
The lover coaxes Elizabeth into theft twice; first, petty shoplifting, and second, robbing a man in an elevator of his wallet, at knifepoint, and while in her male drag. Interestingly, in both cases, the lover anonymously returns the stolen goods to their owners. This fits the overall consumerist ethos of the book, with its extensive descriptions of clothing and other goods: threatening a person’s life for kicks is a lesser sin than taking their property.
Weeks was published in 1978, and since then there has been a lot of developments about consent and negotiation in BDSM and intimate partner violence. There certainly isn’t the kind of explicit consent and negotiation expected in modern BDSM. I wish I could pinpoint the moment in the book when Elizabeth goes over “the line”, but her masochistic explorations follow their own logic. Presumably, a lot of people did (and probably still do) have sadomasochistic relationships that don’t have the guardrails and safety signs modern kinksters expect. Hopefully, the people involved are lucky enough that nobody gets hurt, but probably a lot aren’t.
The turning point in both the book and the film is the Chelsea hotel scene. John sends her to the notorious establishment, joins her, then summons another woman.
Movie Elizabeth reacts with jealousy when she sees John with another woman. Jealousy is a problem for book Elizabeth too, as when the sex worker fellates John.
There are only sucking noises first, later he inhales sharply, then there’s a moan. It is a sound I know well. It is a sound I have imagined belongs to me– based on what, I think, based on what– could be be made audible only by my mouth, was worth a prizewinning lottery ticket, a promotion, all my talent and skill […] [Pg.110]
But the real difference is book Elizabeth’s subjective experience. Apart from her work life, she has been living in the isolated bubble of just her and John months now. None of this “I meet your friends, you meet mine, etc” business. When they are together, nothing and nobody else matters. But getting made-over by “the hooker” destabilizes her self-image, when she sees herself in the mirror.
It is a sight from which one averts one’s eyes if in the company of a man, which one looks up and down quickly and surreptitiously if unobserved and by oneself: an Eighth Avenue prostitute; not a charming Lady of the Night in a Parisian cafe out of Irma la Douce, but a gawky, atrociously painted New York street whore of the seventies, in her cheap wig and come-on sixties gear, as ready to service a john as rob him of his wallet; the woman who shields her face with a large plastic handbag on footage of yet another vice squad roundup on the six o’clock evening news. [Pg.108-9]
When she dressed in male drag, it didn’t bother her this way. The blatant “cheapness” of the makeover is a shock to the system after the many descriptions of the lush lifestyle full of brand name goods John and Elizabeth enjoy.
“Lean forward, honey,” says the smoker’s voice in a conspiratorial, girl-talk tone. “Let’s make the best of things here.” [Pg.107]
[…] three people looking eat each other in a forlorn little room: twin hookers and a clean-shaven man at ease in a dark blue pin-stripped suit, a crisp pale pink shirt, a dark blue tie with small white dots. “You look terrific, honey,” says one hooker to another. [Pg.109]
Across a narrow space she and I watch each other while she comes. [Pg.112]
Suddenly, she has to acknowledge another person’s subjectivity. It’s like a two-dimensional creature forced to think in three dimensions.
This is what breaks the spell. Elizabeth realizes she is not special to John, not the most important thing in his life. There are other submissive women out there, controlled in different ways, and she is just one of many.
The ending is the biggest difference between book and film. Film Elizabeth just walks away from John; this is a phase in her life she can move on from. That is feminist story that Zalman King and Patricia Knop saw hidden within this story. Even film John is remade into an emotionally damaged man who can’t relate to women in any other way, rather than just a guy who gets off on sadism.
Book Elizabeth, instead, has a nervous breakdown.
Next day, after breakfast and while brushing my teeth, I began to cry. […]
[…]
I didn’t know what was going on. All I knew was I couldn’t stop crying . When I was still crying at six o’clock he took me to a hospital; I was given sedation and after a while the crying stopped. The next day I began a period of treatment that lasted some months.
I never saw him again.
When my skin had gone back to its even tone I slept with another man and discovered, my hands lying awkwardly on the sheet at either side of me, that I had forgotten what to do with them. I’m responsible and an adult again, full time. What remains is that my sensation thermostat has been thrown out of whack; it’s been years and sometimes I wonder whether my body will ever again register above lukewarm. [Pg.116-7]
This reflects two of the more persistent false beliefs about BDSM, particularly at the time: first, that BDSM will render a person incapable of vanilla sex, and second, that it will inevitably progress to greater risks, i.e. escalation theory. Transgression, especially of sexual rules, must be punished, and Weeks serves as a cautionary tale.
What Weeks does, in my opinion, and does better in the book than in the movie, is explore the nature and the power of female masochism. Elizabeth’s affair with John is a revelation after a life of sexual disappointment.
Years of intermittent faking behind me. The power to fake ecstasy, the stingy, pathetic control it provides, pantpantpant, ah, darling. “Dynamite in bed,” whispers a man to his best friend as I’m about to enter the living room, only a few years ago. I never once came with that man, not in ten months of tireless gyrations, yet he was happy with my responses. Watching him above me as I panted white he came, his eyes squinted shut, red face far above me, I’m in control. No more. This one has taken me on, taken me in, taken me over, he can have it all, how welcome he is to me. [Pg.114-5]
Pleasure requires being out of control, at least for women, an idea that Zalman King picked up for his film and made the foundation of his later works of female sexual initiation. The book says that once Elizabeth’s “thermostat” has been turned up to the maximum, it can no longer regulate as it should, and she is condemned to a life of “coolness”.
While there’s a lot to criticize about the film, both as a text and in the off-camera mistreatment of Kim Basinger by the producers, director and star, it does end with the idea that a woman does not have to be destroyed for/by her sexual transgressions. She can move on, older but wiser.
