With La Marchesa di O... Crepax chooses the best-known tale by Kleist to explore the feminine and eros in a story that is continually touched by the tragic. The overwhelming passions narrated in the story reduce the characters to sick skeletons, which are extinguished as oppressed by their own remorse. The Marquise of O ... represents the archetype of the Kleistian character, a character who suddenly realizes the contrast between the external world, regulated by the intellect, and the internal world, at the mercy of feelings.