Venus in Furs extract

It's a shame perhaps that when we think of masochism sordid News of the World headlines and Oswald Mosley tend to come to mind, it wasn't always this way and such seedy proceedings were only given a title thanks to one man.

Leopold von Sacher-Masoch based the relationships in Venus in Furs on his own with a woman called Fanny Pistor. Fanny had approached Masoch requesting help with her writing and the two became involved in a relationship whereby she went by the name of Baroness Bogdanoff. The fantasy the couple created of Mistress and Servant translated well to the page and Masoch made it part of a much greater work he was writing entitled Legacy of Cain.

In this opening passage, Masoch describes the conversation between a man and Venus where she asserts her superiority. Notice also the narrator's fetishism of her fur coat as Masoch ties this together with sexual adoration some thirty years before the first psychologists began to explore the subject.

My company was charming.

Opposite me by the massive Renaissance fireplace sat Venus: she was not a casual woman of the half-world, who under this pseudonym wages war against the enemy sex, like Mademoiselle Cleopatra, but the real, true goddess of love. She sat in an armchair and had kindled a crackling fire, whose reflection ran in red flames over her pale face with its white eyes, and from time to time over her feet when she sought to warm them.

Her head was wonderful in spite of the dead stony eyes; it was all I could see of her. She had wrapped her marble-like body in a huge fur, and rolled herself up trembling like a cat.

‘I don’t understand it,’ I exclaimed. ‘It isn’t really cold any longer. For two weeks past we have had perfect spring weather. You must be nervous.’

‘Much obliged for your spring,’ she replied with a low stony voice, and immediately afterwards sneezed divinely, twice in succession. ‘I really can’t stand it here much longer, and I am beginning to understand –’

‘What, dear lady?’

‘I am beginning to believe the unbelievable and to understand the ununderstandable. All of a sudden I understand the Germanic virtue of woman, and German philosophy, and I am no longer surprised that you of the north do not know how to love, haven’t even an idea of what love is.’

‘But, madame,’ I replied flaring up, ‘I surely haven’t
given you any reason.’

‘Oh, you –’ The divinity sneezed for the third time, and shrugged her shoulders with inimitable grace. ‘That’s why I have always been nice to you, and even come to see you now and then, although I catch a cold every time, in spite of all my furs. Do you remember the first time we met?’

‘How could I forget it,’ I said. ‘You wore your abundant hair in brown curls, and you had brown eyes and a red mouth, but I recognised you immediately by the outline of your face and its marble-like pallor – you always wore a violet-blue velvet jacket edged with squirrel-skin.’

‘You were really in love with the costume, and awfully docile.’

‘You have taught me what love is. Your serene form of worship let me forget two thousand years.’

‘And my faithfulness to you was without equal!’

‘Well, as far as faithfulness goes –’

‘Ungrateful!’

‘I will not reproach you with anything. You are a divine woman, but nevertheless a woman, and like every woman cruel in love.’

‘What you call cruel,’ the goddess of love replied eagerly, ‘is simply the element of passion and of natural love, which is woman’s nature and makes her give herself where she loves, and makes her love everything that pleases her.’

‘Can there be any greater cruelty for a lover than the unfaithfulness of the woman he loves?’

‘Indeed!’ she replied. ‘We are faithful as long as we love, but you demand faithfulness of a woman without love, and the giving of herself without enjoyment. Who is cruel there – woman or man? You of the north in general take love too soberly and seriously. You talk of duties where there should be only a question of pleasure.’

‘That is why our emotions are honourable and virtuous, and our relations permanent.’

‘And yet you have a restless, always unsatisfied craving for the nudity of paganism,’ she interrupted, ‘but that love, which is the highest joy, which is divine simplicity itself, is not for you moderns, you children of reflection. It works only evil in you. As soon as you wish to be natural, you become common. To you nature seems something hostile; you have made devils out of the smiling gods of Greece, and out of me a demon. You can only exorcise and curse me, or slay yourselves in bacchantic madness before my altar. And if ever one of you has had the courage to kiss my red mouth, he makes a barefoot pilgrimage to Rome in penitential robes and expects flowers to grow from his withered staff, while under my feet roses, violets, and myrtles spring up every hour, but their fragrance does not agree with you. Stay among your northern fogs and Christian incense; let us pagans remain under the debris, beneath the lava; do not disinter us. Pompeii was not built for you, nor our villas, our baths, our temples. You do not require gods. We are chilled in your world.’

The beautiful marble woman coughed, and drew the dark sables still closer about her shoulders.

‘Much obliged for the classical lesson,’ I replied, ‘but you cannot deny that man and woman are mortal enemies, in your serene sunlit world as well as in our foggy one. In love there is union into a single being for a short time only, capable of only one thought, one sensation, one will, in order to be then further disunited. And you know this better than I; whichever of the two fails to subjugate will soon feel the feet of the other on his neck –’

‘And as a rule the man that of the woman,’ cried Madame Venus with proud mockery, ‘which you know better than I.’

‘Of course, and that is why I don’t have any illusions.’

‘You mean you are now my slave without illusions, and for that reason you shall feel the weight of my foot without mercy.’

‘Madame!’

‘Don’t you know me yet? Yes, I am cruel – since you take so much delight in that word – and am I not entitled to be so? Man is the one who desires, woman the one who is desired. This is woman’s entire but decisive advantage. Through his passion nature has given man into woman’s hands, and the woman who does not know how to make him her subject, her slave, her toy, and how to betray him with a smile in the end is not wise.’

‘Exactly your principles,’ I interrupted angrily.

‘They are based on the experience of thousands of years,’ she replied ironically, while her white fingers played over the dark fur. ‘The more devoted a woman shows herself, the sooner the man sobers down and becomes domineering. The more cruelly she treats him and the more faithless she is, the worse she uses him, the more want only she plays with him, the less pity she shows him, by so much the more will she increase his desire, be loved, worshipped by him. So it has always been, since the time of Helen and Delilah, down to Catherine the Great and Lola Montez.’

Justine extract

Poor Justine... forever trying to be virtuous, forever failing. De Sade's tale of moral reversal is an intriguing, philopsophical and often exciting read as Justine strives to do right, but finds that there's no such thing as fair play. In this extract the young woman is sent to the wicked Monsieur Dubourg who resolves to have his way with her...

Next day I arrived at the mansion quite excited. Dubourg was alone, and in a more indecent state than on the previous evening. Brutality, libertinism, all the marks of debauchery shone forth from his sullen features.

‘You have la Desroches to thank for my welcome,’ he grumbled in a harsh tone; ‘for it is only on her account that I condescend to grant you my kindness for a space. You should certainly feel undeserving of it after your conduct yesterday! Undress immediately! And if you offer anything like the slightest resistance to my desires, two men who are waiting in my ante-room will take you to a place which you will never leave again while there is life in your body . . .’

‘Oh, sir!’ I wept, throwing myself at the knees of this despicable man, ‘relent, allow yourself some mercy, I beseech you! I would rather die a thousand deaths than betray the principles I received during my childhood. Do you not realise that you will no sooner have accomplished your crime than the spectacle of my despair will overwhelm you with remorse . . .’

But the infamies to which Dubourg had abandoned himself whilst I spoke hindered me from proceeding further.

I realised the folly of pretending to myself that I could affect a man who found my grief merely a vehicle for the increase of his horrible passions. He became more and more inflamed at my bitter accents, at my weeping and shuddering, relishing them with an inhumanity which frightened me, and further preparing himself for his criminal attempts. He rose to his feet, revealing himself to me in a state in which reason rarely triumphs, and during which the resistance of the object which causes such loss of reason is but an added stimulus to the delirium of the senses. He grasped me brutally; impetuously he tore away those veils which still concealed what he was burning to enjoy; then, in turn, he abused me, flattered me, caressed me, and treated me with contempt . . . Oh! what a picture! Almighty God, what a strange medley of hardness and mad unbridled lust! It seemed as if the Supreme Being, during the first of such circumstances in my life, wished to imprint eternally on my soul an image of all the horror

I ought to feel for the kind of crime, or sin, which so often has its genesis in an abundance of evils similar to those with which I was threatened . . . But was there necessity for complaint at this hour? Certainly not – for I owed my very safety to his excesses . . . A little less debauchery and he would have had his will of me; but the fires of Dubourg’s ardour were extinguished by the effervescence of his attempts. Heaven avenged, on my behalf, all the assaults to which the monster tried to abandon himself – for the loss of his force before the sacrifice preserved me from becoming his victim.

Nevertheless, Dubourg only became the more insulting.

He accused me of being the cause of his weakness, and wished to recompense himself by fresh outrages and abuses of an even more terrifying nature. There was nothing disgusting he did not say to me, nothing he did not attempt, nothing his vile imagination, the hardness of his nature, and his depraved morals did not cause him to undertake. But my awkwardness tired his patience, especially as I made not the slightest attempt to play up to him. You may well imagine that it required considerable fortitude on my part to lend myself in such a manner; nor has the passage of time been able to obliterate my remorse . . .

Nothing, however, succeeded; his final attempts failed miserably; and my submission lost its power to inflame him. In vain he successively passed from tenderness to severity, from severity to tyranny, from glances of loving sympathy to the excesses of filth and lust. At length we were equally tired – a condition which fortunately persisted and prevented his being able to recover the ability necessary for truly dangerous attacks. He gave over, but made me promise to return the following day; and in order to be absolutely sure of this he paid me only the sum I owed la Desroches. And so I returned to the woman’s house exceedingly humbled by my adventure, and firmly decided, whatever might happen to me in the future, never to expose myself to this man a third time. I expressed these ideas to my landlady when paying her, and decried with maledictions the old rogue who had been capable of so cruelly taking advantage of my misery. Nevertheless, my curses, far from bringing on him the wrath of God, seemed only to bring him good fortune. Eight days later I learned that this notorious libertine had just received from the government a grant which increased his annual revenue to more than 400,000 livres. I was lost in reflections on this and similar inconsistencies of destiny, when a ray of hope seemed suddenly to lighten my heart. La Desroches came to tell me that at last she had discovered a house where I would gladly be received, providing I conducted myself well therein.

‘Oh! Merciful heaven,’ I cried delightedly, flinging myself into her arms, ‘– that is the very condition I should myself lay down; do not doubt my decision for an instant – I accept the offer with pleasure . . .’

And so I left the home of Desroches for what I hoped would be a changed and better period of life.

Fanny Hill extract

Fanny Hill remains one of the all-time greats of erotic fiction. Our heroine stuggles bravely through poverty, prostitution and loss of her lover in order to survive. It spawned many clones and its effect is arguably seen in the popular genre of call-girl fiction alive and well today.

In this extract Fanny receives a visit from Will, the young servant of Mr H-...

I lay stretching out, glowingly alive all over, and tossing with burning impatience for the renewal of joys that had sinned but in a sweet excess; nor did I loose my longing, for about ten in the morning, according to expectation, Will, my new humble sweetheart, came with a message from his master, Mr H—, to know how I did. I had taken care to send my maid on an errand into the city, that I was sure would take up time enough; and, from the people of the house, I had nothing to fear, as they were plain good sort of folks, and wise enough to mind no more other people’s business than they could well help.
All dispositions then made, not forgetting that of lying in bed to receive him, when he was entered the door of my bedchamber, a latch, that I governed by a wire, descended and secur’d it.

I could not but observe that my young minion was as much spruced out as could be expected from one in his condition: a desire of pleasing that could not be indifferent to me, since it prov’d that I pleased him; which, I assure you, was now a point I was not above having in view.

His hair trimly dressed, clean linen, and, above all, a hale, ruddy, wholesome country look, made him out as pretty a piece of woman’s meat as you could see, and I should have thought anyone much out of taste that could not have made a hearty meal of such a morsel as nature seemed to have design’d for the highest diet of pleasure.

And why should I here suppress the delight I received from this amiable creature, in remarking each artless look, each motion of pure undissembled nature betrayed by his wanton eyes, or showing, transparently, the glow and suffusion of blood through his fresh, clear skin, while even his sturdy rustic pressures wanted not their peculiar charm? Oh! but, say you, this was a young fellow of too low a rank of life to deserve so great a display. Maybe so: but was my condition, strictly consider’d, one jot more exalted? or, had I really been much above him, did not his capacity of giving such exquisite pleasure sufficiently raise and ennoble him, to me, at least? Let who would, for me, cherish, respect, and reward the painter’s, the statuary’s, the musician’s arts, in proportion to the delight taken in them: but at my age, and with my taste for pleasure, a taste strongly constitutional to me, the talent of pleasing, with which nature has endowed a handsome person, form’d to me the greatest of all merits; compared to which, the vulgar prejudices in favour of titles, dignities, honours, and the like, held a very low rank indeed. Nor perhaps would the beauties of the body be so much affected to be held cheap, were they, in their nature, to be bought and delivered. But for me, whose natural philosophy all resided in the favourite centre of sense, and who was rul’d by its powerful instinct in taking pleasure by its right handle, I could scarce have made a choice more to my purpose.

Mr H—’s loftier qualifications of birth, fortune and sense laid me under a sort of subjection and constraint that were far from making harmony in the concert of love; nor had he, perhaps, thought me worth softening that superiority to; but, with this lad, I was more on that level which love delights in. We may say what we please, but those we can be the easiest and freest with are ever those we like, not to say love, the best.

With this stripling, all whose art of love was the action of it, I could, without check of awe or restraint, give a loose to joy, and execute every scheme of dalliance my fond fancy might put me on, in which he was, in every sense, a most exquisite companion. And now my great pleasure lay in humouring all the petulances, all the wanton frolic of a raw novice just fleshed, and keen on the burning scent of his game, but unbroken to the sport: and, to carry on the figure, who could better thread the wood than he, or stand fairer for the heart of the hunt?

He advanc’d then to my bedside, and whilst he faltered out his message, I could observe his colour rise, and his eyes lighten with joy, in seeing me in a situation as favourable to his loosest wishes, as if he had bespoke the play.

I smiled, and put out my hand towards him, which he kneeled down to (a politeness taught him by love alone, that great master of it) and greedily kiss’d. After exchanging a few confused questions and answers, I ask’d him if he could come to bed to me, for the little time I could venture to detain him. This was like asking a person, dying with hunger, to feast upon the dish on earth the most to his palate. Accordingly, without further reflection, his clothes were off in an instant; when, blushing still more at this new liberty, he got under the bedclothes I held up to receive him, and was now in bed with a woman for the first time in his life.

Here began the usual tender preliminaries, as delicious, perhaps, as the crowning act of enjoyment itself; which they often beget an impatience of that makes pleasure destructive of itself, by hurrying on the final period, and closing that scene of bliss in which the actors are generally too well pleas’d with their parts not to wish them an eternity of duration.

When he had sufficiently graduated his advances towards the main point, by toying, kissing, clipping, feeling my breasts, now round and plump, and feeling that part of me I might call a furnace-mouth, from the prodigious intense heat his fiery touches had rekindled there, my young sportsman, embolden’d by every freedom he could wish, wantonly takes my hand and carries it to that enormous machine of his, that stood with a stiffness! A hardness! an upward bent of erection! and which, together, with its bottom dependance, the inestimable bulge of lady’s jewels, formed a grand show out of goods indeed! Then its dimensions, mocking either grasp or span, almost renew’d my terrors.

I could not conceive how, or by what means I could take, or put such a bulk out of sight. I stroked it gently, on which the mutinous rogue seemed to swell, and gather a new degree of fierceness and insolence; so that finding it grew not to be trifled with any longer, I prepar’d for rubbers in good earnest.

Slipping then a pillow under me, that I might give him the fairest play, I guided officiously with my hand this furious battering ram, whose ruby head, presenting nearest the resemblance of a heart, I applied to its proper mark, which lay as finely elevated as we could wish, my hips being borne up, and my thighs at their utmost extension; the gleamy warmth that shot from it made him feel that he was at the mouth of the indraught, and driving foreright, the powerfully divided lips of that pleasure-thirsty channel receiv’d him. He hesitated a little; then, settled well in the passage, he made his way up the straits of it, with a difficulty nothing more than pleasing, widening as he went, so as to distend and smooth each soft furrow: our pleasure increasing deliciously, in proportion as our points of mutual touch increas’d in that so vital part of me in which I had now taken him, all indriven, and completely sheathed; and which, crammed as it was, stretched, splitting ripe, gave it so gratefully straight an accommodation! so strict a fold! a suction so fierce! that gave and took unutterable delight. We had now reach’d the closest point of union; but when he backened to come on the fiercer, as if I had been actuated by a fear of losing him, in the height of my fury, I twisted my legs round his naked loins, the flesh of which, so firm, so springy to the touch, quiver’d again under the pressure; and now I had him every way encircled and begirt; and having drawn him home to me, I kept him fast there, as if I had sought to unite bodies with him at that point. This bred a pause of action, a pleasure stop, whilst that delicate glutton, my nethermouth, as full as it could hold, kept palating, with exquisite relish, the morsel that so deliciously engorged it. But nature could not long endure a pleasure that so highly provoked without satisfying it; pursuing then its darling end, the battery recommenc’d with redoubled exertion; nor lay I inactive on my side, but encountering him with all the impetuosity of motion I was mistress of, the downy clothing of our meeting mounts was now of real use to break the violence of the tilt; and soon, too soon indeed! the highwrought agitation, the sweet urgency of this to-and-fro friction, raised the titillation on me to its height; so that finding myself on the point of going, and loath to leave the tender partner of my joys behind me, I employed all the forwarding motions and arts my experience suggested to me to promote his keeping me company to our journey’s end.

I not only then tighten’d the pleasure-girth round my restless inmate, by a secret spring of friction and compression that obeys the will in those parts, but stole my hand softly to that store bag of nature’s prime sweets, which is so pleasingly attach’d to its conduit pipe, from which we receive them: there feeling and, most gently indeed, squeezing those tender globular reservoirs, the magic touch took instant effect, quicken’d, and brought on upon the spur the symptoms of that sweet agony, the melting moment of dissolution, when pleasure dies by pleasure, and the mysterious engine of it overcomes the titillation it has rais’d in those parts, by plying them with the stream of a warm liquid, that is itself the highest of all titillation, and which they thirstily express and draw in like the hotnatured leech, which to cool itself, tenaciously attracts all the moisture within its sphere of exsuction. Chiming then to me, with exquisite consent, as I melted away, his oily balsamic injection, mixing deliciously with the sluices in flow from me, sheath’d and blunted all the stings of pleasure and flung us into an ecstasy that extended us fainting, breathless, entranced.

Thus we lay, whilst a voluptuous languor possess’d, and still maintain’d us motionless and fast locked in one another’s arms. Alas! that these delights should be no longer-lived! for now the point of pleasure, unedged by enjoyment, and all the brisk sensations flatten’d upon us, resigned us up to the cool cares of insipid life. Disengaging myself then from his embrace, I made him sensible of the reasons there were for his present leaving me; on which, though reluctantly, he put on his clothes, with as little expedition, however, as he could help, wantonly interrupting himself, between whiles, with kisses, touches and embraces I could not refuse myself to. Yet he happily return’d to his master before he was missed; but, at taking leave, I forc’d him (for he had sentiments enough to refuse it) to receive money enough to buy a silver watch, that great article of subaltern finery, which he at length accepted, as a remembrance he was carefully to preserve of my affections.

Introducing the Forbidden Classics

In January 2009 Harper Perennial will publish the Forbidden Classics. These are ten triumphs of erotic literature guaranteed to entertain, educate and, most importantly, arouse.

Over the next few months we're going to be previewing all the erotic classics. Providing background information on who wrote them, how popular they were and why they've stood the test of time. We're going to have articles and competitions and hopefully have fun with some of the sexiest books ever written.

Over the past few years seedy books have become decidedly less seedy. The internet has caused widespread of proliferation of erotica to read, most of it bad, some of it good, lots of fantasy and some supposedly planted in reality. The Forbidden Classics range allows us to explore the origins of these stories. For every Belle du Jour there is Fanny Hill. For every one of Nexus books innumerable S&M titles there is Venus in Furs and Sadopaideia. For every new shocking novel there is the Marquis de Sade. The titles are listed below and come back regularly for updates, excerts and articles.

FANNY HILL - John Cleland

Cleland's masterpiece of erotica details the life of the working woman in the mid-eighteenth century and is no less racy for it. Marvel at how the naieve Fanny is lured into prostitution only to find true love and lose it again. It was most recently adapted by Andrew Davies for BBC 4.

JUSTINE - Marquis de Sade

In which the virtuous are made to suffer... de Sade could often be accused of subjecting his characters to continuous sexual depravity, but in Justine he does so with a clear purpose in mind. In a brilliant rationalist argument, de Sade shows how a life lived in virtue does not always result in kindness and love and conversely that those involved in vice do well.

VENUS IN FURS - Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

So good they named a way of life after him. A novel of dark, willing obsession Venus in Furs showed the erotic possibilities of adoration and being adored. That partners might not be equal and that a man would take on the willing role of slave to a woman was a revolutionary idea and the novel explores these themes of barbed love.

THE PEARL - Anonymous

Published between 1879 and 1880 The Pearl was a collection of short stories and erotic ephemera. It appeared in magazine form and in this book we have collected two of the best works - Lady Pokingham and La Rose d'Amour. Delicious, depraved and deeply exciting.

MY SECRET LIFE - 'Walter'

A tour de force of a sexual autobiography, My Secret Life is an epic exploration of the Victorian underworld, told through the eyes of a supposed gentleman. Walter's need is seemingly insatiable, even from a young age and this book collects the first volume of an extraordinary eleven volume series.

THE WAY OF A MAN WITH A MAID - Anonymous

Jack has some funny ideas about home furnishings. He's converted one of his rooms in to an erotic torture chamber and sets about bending a young woman named Alice to his will. Another wonderful example of the Victorian obsession with S&M, this an eye-opening, surprsing and yet often funny work of sexual literature.

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A FLEA - Stanislas de Rhodes

A sexy book narrated by a flea? Well once you're used to the concept this is a fascinating account of sexual adventure at the very beginnings of the twentieth century. It also a powerful piece of anti-church propaganda, often detailing a corrupt and decadent priesthood.

SADOPAIDEIA - Anonymous

Cecil is an undergrad at Oxford, but is about to get an education he didn't quite expect. This great book from 1907 details how Cecil begins being schooled in the ways of masochism only to learn the ways of sexual sadism too. The first 'switch' in literary history?

VENUS IN INDIA - 'Captain Charles Devereaux'

The tale of 'Captain Devereaux' supposedly sent to Afghanistan to fight, he ends up enjoying many sexual encouters with officers' wives and daughters. However, 'Devereaux' may soon be about to get his comeuppance... Another classic exploring the hypocrisy of Victorian moral values.

EMMANUELLE - Emmanuelle Arsan

The book that launched a thousand sequels, Emmanuelle is an incredible journey of sexual discovery. The 'bored housewife' of a French Diplomat, Emmanuelle, finds great pleasure in a succession of lovers in a great novel that was banned under De Gaulle's government.