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    Venus in Furs
    Venus in Furs
    Venus in Furs
    Ebook163 pages2 hours

    Venus in Furs

    By Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch

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    The framing story concerns a man who dreams of speaking to Venus about love while she wears furs. The unnamed narrator tells his dreams to a friend, Severin, who tells him how to break him 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, and encourages her to treat him in progressively more degrading ways. 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 to dominate him. The relationship arrives at a crisis when Wanda herself meets a man to whom she would like to submit, a Byronic hero known as Alexis Papadopolis. At the end of the book, Severin, humiliated by Wanda's new lover, loses the desire to submit. He says of Wanda: 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.
    LanguageEnglish
    Publisheranboco
    Release dateMay 4, 2016
    ISBN9783736405202
    Author

    Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch

    Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (1836-1895/1905) was an Austrian writer and editor who is best known for his erotic story Venus in Furs. Educated in law, history, and mathematics, Sacher-Masoch wrote primarily Galician folklore and later served as editor of Auf der Höhe. Internationale Review (At the Pinnacle. International Review) where he focused on exposing anti-semitism and championing the emancipation of women. The prominence of fantasy and fetish in Sacher-Masoch’s work, particularly in Venus in Furs, led to the coining of the term “masochism” by psychiatrist Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing in 1886. Sacher-Masoch spent the last years of his life under psychiatric care and is believed to have died between 1895 and 1905.

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