Magritte's The Submissive Reader is sometimes also called The Subjugated Reader, both words being acceptable, if not slightly different, translations of the French word "soumise."

This work seemed to barely exist before the inauguration of the Louvre Abu Dhabi on November 8th, 2017. Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel's film, Un Chien Andalou, was in development when Magritte released this work and features a shot of Simone Mareuil staring into a book in an uncanny echo of Magritte's composition. The painting itself appeared almost exclusively in tiny cameos in art catalogues, and is not representative of Magritte's signature style, according to several critics. When people have an itch to see a Magritte, they simply don't think of this image of a woman staring at a book with a face like Macaulay Culkin in the Home Alone poster. This very same "anonymity" and lack of information on the painting is exactly what Magritte wanted for all his works, giving credence to the popular hyperbole, quoted by Magritte authority Sarah Whitfield, that "to be Belgian is to be without an identity."

Magritte, due partly to his reluctance to take part in the manifesto-publishing, theoretical doctrine-pushing ways of his surrealist brothers and sisters, may be the most famous and globally appealing of all the surrealists. The Louvre Abu Dhabi had the means to dig deep within the hermetic network of private collectors, where this work resided, and bring it out into the public eye for its permanent collection. According to Alan Riding of the New York Times, the United Arab Emirates paid $1.3 billion to the French government for the right to use the Louvre name, as well as borrow their art, exhibitions and management consulting. "It's a fair fee," said the Louvre's president. "This tutelary role deserves reward. It’s normal.” The Louvre's art is priceless, but its name is merely expensive, Riding joked. 

As of 2017, this work hangs next to the first acquisition of the Louvre Abu Dhabi, Piet Mondrian's Composition with Blue, Red, Yellow and Black. It's possible that the Louvre Abu Dhabi learned of Submissive Reader from its inclusion in René Magritte: Der Schlüssel der Träume (The Key of Dreams), a Vienna exhibition co-organized by the Fondation Beyeler and the Belgian Fondation René Magritte in 2005. 

The image has been used effectively by critics to discuss the relationship between reading and the body. But what does the painting express, in the deepest recesses of its gut? This is exactly the question that Magritte rejected, thoroughly and consistently, in his writings and interviews. "In my opinion," Magritte said, "painters don't really express anything, or, if they do express something, it's irrelevant. I don't see the reason to express feelings, if it's possible to do it at all." His militant stance against the feeling-sharing basis of psychology could be an indication that Magritte himself was unable to share the details of his own childhood trauma, which he did on only one occasion, according to Whitfield.