# Venus in Furs > Mediated Wiki article. Canonical URL: https://mediated.wiki/source/Venus_in_Furs > Markdown URL: https://mediated.wiki/source/Venus_in_Furs.md > Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_in_Furs > Source revision: 1355402447 > License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) 1870 novel by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch This article is about the book. For other uses, see [Venus in Furs (disambiguation)](/source/Venus_in_Furs_(disambiguation)). You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in German. Click [show] for important translation instructions. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must follow the LLM translation guideline, revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing German Wikipedia article at [[:de:Venus im Pelz]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|de|Venus im Pelz}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation. Venus in Furs Author Leopold von Sacher-Masoch Language German Publication date 1870 Publication place Austria Media type Novella ***Venus in Furs*** (German: *Venus im Pelz*) is a [novella](/source/Novella) by the Austrian author [Leopold von Sacher-Masoch](/source/Leopold_von_Sacher-Masoch), and the best known of his works. The novel was to be part of an epic series that Sacher-Masoch envisioned called *[Legacy of Cain](/source/Legacy_of_Cain)* (*Das Vermächtniß Kains*). *Venus in Furs* was part of *Love* (*Die Liebe*), the first volume of the series. It was published in 1870. ## Novel Fanny Pistor (in furs, with whip) and Sacher-Masoch [Titian](/source/Titian) painting *[Venus with a Mirror](/source/Venus_with_a_Mirror)* from which Severin gets the idea of *Venus in Furs* The novel draws themes, like [female dominance](/source/Female_dominance) and [sadomasochism](/source/Sadomasochism), and character inspiration heavily from Sacher-Masoch's own life. Wanda von Dunajew, the novel's central female character, was modelled after Fanny Pistor, who was an emerging literary writer.[1] The two met when Pistor contacted Sacher-Masoch, under the assumed name and fictitious title of Baroness Bogdanoff, for suggestions on improving her writing to make it suitable for publication.[2] ## Plot summary The [framing story](/source/Frame_story) concerns a man who dreams of speaking to [Venus](/source/Venus_(mythology)) about love while she wears [furs](/source/Fur_clothing). The unnamed narrator tells his dreams to a friend, Severin, who tells him how to break himself of his fascination with cruel women by reading a manuscript, *Memoirs of a Suprasensual Man*. This manuscript tells of a man, Severin von Kusiemski, who is so infatuated with a woman, Wanda von Dunajew, that he asks to be her [slave](/source/Slave_(BDSM)), and encourages her to treat him in progressively more [degrading ways](/source/Erotic_humiliation). At first Wanda does not understand or accede to the request, but after humouring Severin a bit she finds the advantages of the method to be interesting and enthusiastically embraces the idea, although at the same time she disdains Severin for allowing her to do so. Severin describes his feelings during these experiences as *suprasensuality*. Severin and Wanda travel to Florence. Along the way, Severin takes the generic Russian servant's name of "Gregor" and the role of Wanda's servant. In Florence, Wanda treats him brutally as a servant, and recruits a trio of [African women](/source/Race_and_sexuality) to [dominate](/source/Dominatrix) him. The relationship arrives at a crisis when Wanda meets a man to whom she would like to submit, a [Byronic hero](/source/Byronic_hero) known as Alexis Papadopolis. At the end of the book, Severin, humiliated by Wanda's new lover, loses the desire to submit. Once the narrator has finished reading the manuscript, he asks Severin what the moral of the story is. Severin responds: That woman, as nature has created her, and man at present is educating her, is man's enemy. She can only be his slave or his despot, but never his companion. This she can become only when she has the same rights as he and is his equal in education and work. ## Interpretations In 1905, [Sigmund Freud](/source/Sigmund_Freud)'s *[Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality](/source/Three_Essays_on_the_Theory_of_Sexuality)* posited a dialectic between the thinking of [Masoch](/source/Leopold_von_Sacher-Masoch) and that of the [Marquis de Sade](/source/Marquis_de_Sade), creating the term [Sadomasochism](/source/Sadomasochism) and explaining that "a person who feels pleasure in producing pain in someone else in a sexual relationship is also capable of enjoying as pleasure any pain which he may himself derive from sexual relations."[3] Then, in the intellectual ferment of post-World War II, theorists like [Gilles Deleuze](/source/Gilles_Deleuze) broke apart the duality of sadomasochism. In Deleuze's seminal essay *[Masochism: Coldness and Cruelty](/source/Masochism%3A_Coldness_and_Cruelty)*, he lays out eleven differences between [sadism](/source/Sexual_sadism_disorder) and [masochism](/source/Masochism), in particular sadism's anarchist-like desires to inflict pain contrasted to masochism's processes, rules and contracts used to control pain. ## Editions - [Leopold von Sacher-Masoch](/source/Leopold_von_Sacher-Masoch), *Venus im Pelz*. In: *Das Vermächtniß Kains – Erster Theil: Die Liebe*. Stuttgart: Cotta, 1870, pp. 121–368. - Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, *Venus in Furs*. In: *Masochism*. Zone Books, 1999. - [Leopold von Sacher-Masoch](/source/Leopold_von_Sacher-Masoch), [Venus in Furs (Audiobook)](https://www.audible.com/pd/Venus-in-Furs-Audiobook/B09GL8TCT3) released 2021 read by Zachary Johnson and Verla Bond ## References 1. **[^](#cite_ref-1)** Albrecht Koschorke (April 2001). ["Mastery and Slavery: A Masochist Falls Asleep Reading Hegel"](https://kops.uni-konstanz.de/bitstream/handle/123456789/16739/Koschorke_167395.pdf) (PDF). *[Modern Language Notes](/source/Modern_Language_Notes)*. **116** (3). Translated by Joel Golb: 551–563. [JSTOR](/source/JSTOR_(identifier)) [3251736](https://www.jstor.org/stable/3251736). Retrieved 9 December 2022. 1. **[^](#cite_ref-2)** Max Kaiser (2005). ["Sacher-Masoch, Leopold Franz Johann Ferdinand Maria (bis 1838 Sacher Ritter von Kronenthal, Pseudonym Charlotte Arand, Zoë von Rodenbach)"](https://www.deutsche-biographie.de/pnd118604570.html). *[Neue Deutsche Biographie](/source/Neue_Deutsche_Biographie)*. Vol. 22. pp. 325–327. Retrieved 9 December 2022. 1. **[^](#cite_ref-3)** Freud, Sigmund (1905). *Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality*. Verso Books. [ISBN](/source/ISBN_(identifier)) [1784783587](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/1784783587). {{[cite book](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Cite_book)}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility ([help](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:CS1_errors#invalid_isbn_date)) ## External links English [Wikisource](/source/Wikisource) has original text related to this article: **[*Venus in Furs*](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/en:Venus_in_Furs)** - Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. *[Venus in Furs](https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/6852)* at [Project Gutenberg](/source/Project_Gutenberg) - Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. [*Venus im Pelz*](http://www.feedbooks.com/book/3160/venus-im-pelz) (in German) - [*Venus in Furs*](https://librivox.org/search?title=Venus+in+Furs&author=SACHER-MASOCH&reader=&keywords=&genre_id=0&status=all&project_type=either&recorded_language=&sort_order=catalog_date&search_page=1&search_form=advanced) public domain audiobook at [LibriVox](/source/LibriVox) v t e Venus in Furs by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch Films Venus in Furs (1967) Venus in Furs (1969) Seduction: The Cruel Woman (1985) Venus in Furs (1995) Song Venus in Furs (1967) Related Venus in Fur (2010 play) Venus in Fur (2013 film) v t e Leopold von Sacher-Masoch Bibliography Novels and novellas Legacy of Cain (1869–1877) Venus in Furs (1870) Die Gottesmutter (1886) Related Masoch Fund Masochism: Coldness and Cruelty (1967 book) Authority control databases International GND National Japan Other Open Library --- Adapted from the Wikipedia article [Venus in Furs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_in_Furs) by Wikipedia contributors ([contributor history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_in_Furs?action=history)). Available under [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Changes may have been made.