Venus in Furs

Venus in Furs (1870) is a novella by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, an Austrian nobleman and writer from whose name the term masochist derives. The book, set in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Italy, is concerned with the theme of the male sexual desire for a woman’s domination and its relation to gender and class in society derived from Sacher-Masoch’s own experiments with bondage and domination in partnership with his mistress, Baroness Fanny Pistor. The book has inspired many cultural references and adaptations and is famous for introducing the concept of sado-masochism into Western culture, though some doubt its literary merit.

The main storyline of the novella is introduced through a framing narrative. It opens with a dream sequence in which an unnamed narrator, presumably an urban, upper-class man in central Europe, carries on a dialogue with Venus, the Roman goddess of love. They discuss desire and the cruel and unfaithful nature of women. The narrator is awakened from his dream by his servant reminding him that he has an appointment for tea with his friend Severin von Kusiemski.

The narrator goes to Severin’s house and notices an oil painting of Venus that reminds him of his dream. Severin’s character is described as sober but sometimes angry, and he lashes out violently at his maid, explaining to his shocked friend that, in his view, if a woman is not subservient to a man, he must be subservient to her. Then he brings out a manuscript of his own writing entitled Confessions of a Suprasensual Man, which takes up all but a few pages of the rest of the novella.



The central character and narrator of the manuscript is a poet, who is also named Severin. He is staying at a health resort in the Carpathian Mountains. He develops an obsession with a fellow guest named Wanda von Dunajew and declares his love for her. She loves him, too, but warns him that she will tire of him and grow despotic. He embraces this idea and proposes that he be her slave, comparing his position to that of the Christian martyrs. He tells her stories of his adolescence, his desires, his fascination with furs, always bringing it back to his love for her. She continues to warn him, expressing alternating disgust and intrigue at his proposal; he continues to insist that he must have her, either as his wife or as his ruler. At last, Wanda agrees, drawing up a contract giving her absolute control over him. His one condition is that she sometimes wear fur and pretend to be the goddess of love for the sake of his pleasure.

Severin seems to resist his subjugation, presumably to provoke the desired cruelty, but initially, this has the effect of making her question the arrangement. Thus, for some time, she wields her power with hesitation, but as she learns to read his resistance as playful invitations, she assumes a dominant role and begins to perform it naturally. She gives him a new name, Gregor, which apparently befits his new role. They set off by train for Italy, stopping in Vienna to do some shopping, and settling in Florence. Their arrival roughly coincides with the crystallizing of their master-slave relationship.

At last, they sign the document giving all Severin’s agency over to Wanda’s whims and formalizing his new moniker, Gregor. She also makes him write out a second agreement stating that he has forfeited his own life, so she may kill him if she desires. Her first act is to forbid him from looking at her for a month. Much of the rest of the book narrates the events of his life as her slave. She treats him with increasingly capricious cruelty, with the occasional reprieve for intimacy and doting, during which she will sometimes return to calling him “Severin.” In an erotic scene, Wanda retains a painter to come to their villa and render her portrait in oil on canvas. She tells Severin that she has fallen in love with the painter, the Greek, who is described as powerfully masculine, contrasted with the less robust men of the northern lands. At this point, Severin is at the point of sincerely despising their agreement. Distraught, he makes moves toward an escape, but Wanda turns him over to the Greek, who binds him and beats him. The humiliation at the hands of a rival cures him of his desire for subjection by a woman. Afterward, Wanda leaves their villa, apparently breaking the contract and freeing Severin from her tyranny.



For a brief few pages, we return to the framing story, with the nameless narrator and the real Severin, conversing over the manuscript in his drawing room. The moral of the story, Severin says, is that in the present state, the woman can only ever be the slave or the despot of the man, never his companion. This can only change when the woman has the same rights as the man “and is his equal in education and work.”