O

O is a fellow student in the narrator’s college dormitory whose importance emerges through a sharp contrast between reputation and action. The narrator initially regards her as a tiresome, indiscreet acquaintance, not a close friend; when the narrator faces an unwanted pregnancy, however, O becomes the person she chooses to tell and, in the crisis that follows, the only person who remains at her side. Her practical, sustained help matters more than any shared outlook or prior intimacy.

Identity and First Impressions

O and the narrator met during the narrator’s first year at college. Their rooms were on the same floor, and they often went out together, but the narrator says she scarcely thought of O as a friend. In the social world of the dormitory, girls could gossip and complain about one another without ending a relationship. O’s reputation was that of a nagging little bore, an opinion the narrator shared. She also believed O collected secrets and passed them on to other students, temporarily making herself interesting through what she knew.

The narrator saw O’s background as another reason not to confide in her. O came from a bourgeois Catholic family and observed the Pope’s teachings on contraception. From the narrator’s perspective, those beliefs made O an improbable person to approach about seeking an abortion. This judgment establishes the distance between them before the pregnancy disclosure: the narrator anticipates possible disapproval, while O’s eventual response will not fit the narrow role assigned to her by her background or dormitory reputation.

A Practical Connection

Before O becomes the narrator’s confidante, she offers her a concrete opportunity. When O needs someone to fill in for her teaching French at the Institution Saint-Dominique, she suggests the narrator take the position. It would provide money in addition to the narrator’s scholarship. The narrator accepts the prospect far enough to meet the Mother Superior and leave with a copy of the Lagarde et Michard, but then becomes frightened by the thought of teaching and calls the next day to withdraw. O’s offer shows an ordinary, useful dimension of their connection: she can open a door for the narrator, even though the narrator ultimately cannot walk through it.

That episode also provides a contrast to what follows. The teaching arrangement is temporary and easily abandoned; the support O gives during the later crisis is not. Her role changes from a fellow student making a practical suggestion to the person beside whom the narrator must confront an urgent and uncertain situation.

Confidante Against Expectation

By December, the narrator has told two other women she considered friends that she is pregnant and seeking an abortion. Both react with alarm, and neither can help. The narrator says that their fear is the last thing she needs. O, despite not being a close friend and despite the beliefs the narrator associates with her, is the person she chooses to tell, and she remains the narrator’s confidante through the end of that month.

In retrospect, the narrator understands the act of disclosure as necessary in itself. She needed to make other people face the reality of her situation, regardless of their beliefs or whether telling them produced practical help. That reasoning helps explain why she turns to O despite expecting a possible conflict of values. Confiding in her is not evidence that the narrator has mistaken O for an intimate ally; it marks the urgency of being heard when the narrator feels powerless. The choice exposes the limits of social labels: O’s Catholic upbringing and reputation do not determine what she will do when the crisis becomes immediate.

The Night in the Dormitory

O accompanies the narrator to a Faluche film-club screening of Battleship Potemkin. As the narrator’s pain intensifies, she loses track of the film and leaves for the dormitory. O returns after the screening has ended. Finding the narrator in distress, she sits beside her and suggests that she breathe as pregnant women are taught to do, like a puppy. She does not know what will happen either. Before going to bed, she tells the narrator to call if she needs her, leaving the offer of help open even though neither can foresee what the night will bring.

When the narrator calls out softly to say that the fetus has arrived, O comes into the room. Back there, the two women do not know what to do. At the narrator’s request, O fetches scissors; uncertain where to cut the cord, she nevertheless cuts it. They look at the tiny body together and cry silently. The narration presents the moment as one in which life and death occupy the same scene, not as a resolution O could have planned or controlled. Her response is immediate and practical, but it does not make the experience less bewildering for either of them.

O helps with what must be done next. She fetches an empty melba-toast wrapper, which the narrator uses to carry the fetus to the bathroom and dispose of it. Later, when the narrator realizes she is losing blood and fears she may die, O hands her towels. When the narrator says she needs a doctor, O goes downstairs to wake the janitor; receiving no answer, she returns to the immediate emergency, and the narrator then hears voices. O’s actions do not remove the danger, but she stays present through successive moments when the narrator cannot manage alone.

Change in the Narrator’s Understanding

The narrator stresses that O’s bourgeois ideals and beliefs had not prepared her to cut the cord of a three-month-old fetus. She imagines that O might later regard the episode as a temporary aberration or might hold anti-abortion views; these are possibilities the narrator raises, not facts established about O’s later life. What the narrator can affirm is what O did that night: in room 17 of the girls’ dormitory, she stood beside her, crying and acting as an improvised midwife.

O’s significance rests on this gap between presumed belief and actual presence. The narrator’s former assessment of her as a gossip and bore does not disappear as background, but it becomes inadequate to describe the person who responds to her need. O is neither recast as a lifelong intimate nor given knowledge or certainty she did not possess. Instead, the episode makes her help legible in its particularity: she stays, fetches scissors and a wrapper, offers towels, and tries to summon assistance. For the narrator, that conduct is the decisive measure of their connection on the night when she could not face events by herself.