Story of the Eye (French: Histoire de l'œil) is a 1928 novella written by Georges Bataille as Lord Auch (literally, Lord "to the shithouse" — "auch" being short for "aux chiottes", slang for telling somebody off by sending him to the toilet), that details the increasingly bizarre sexual perversions of a pair of teenage lovers, including an early depiction of omorashi fetishism in Western literature.

[1][failed verification] An unnamed boy in late adolescence initiates a strange sexual relationship with his distant cousin Simone when she indulges the narrator's dare to place her bare buttocks in a cat's saucer of milk.

In a postscript, Bataille reveals that the character of Marcelle may have been partially inspired by his own mother, who suffered from bipolar disorder, while the narrator's father is also modeled after his own unhappy paternal relationship.

Barthes' analysis focuses on the centrality of the eye to this series of vignettes, and notices that it is interchangeable with eggs, bulls' testicles and other ovular objects within the narrative.

He also traces a second series of liquid metaphors within the text, which flow through tears, cat's milk, egg yolks, frequent urination scenes, blood and semen.