“A woman who wears furs,” cried Wanda, “is nothing but a big cat…” (35). Wanda then, in Sacher-Masoch's "Venus in Furs", does remarkably well at becoming a house cat. Readers are confronted with a sadomasochistic relationship. However, this is not a relationship in which the narrator is dominated and mistreated by a powerful widow. By highlighting the male voice in the story, the reader realizes that it is not Séverin who is the victim, but Wanda herself. She is subjugated and oppressed by a highly patriarchal world, she is controlled by three men; her deceased husband, her lover and above all her slave. Like the Venus of Severin's dreams, Wanda is slowly sculpted and molded into a statuette. Its primary use is similar to that of a domestic cat, namely to please its owner. This is strikingly represented by Sacher-Masoch's association between women, light and greenery. The statue of Venus' natural environment is described as a "wilderness", a "meadow" where "deer graze peacefully", and Wanda herself resides in a private sphere of "green climbing plants" "overgrown with vegetation” (11). Using adjectives that suggest calm implies a feeling of freedom, abundance, and growth. Yet Séverin sees Venus come alive at night, in “moonlight” (15); a type of light that distorts people's perceptions, a surreal atmosphere of deception and disguise, an oppressive light that forces Wanda to hide her true identity in order to become the dominatrix Severin desires. Likewise, Wanda's “light morning dress” (16), (a garment which suggests the fluidity of movement) is replaced, at Séverin's suggestion, by furs. The furs become a metaphor for Severin's expectations of women and they become a repressive force in Wanda's life which...... middle of paper ...... presents a pure, confessional tone , similar to that of the woman at the beginning of the story. “I loved you deeply,” she says, a love “smothered…by your fantastic devotion and your mad passion” (120). Her language is powerful as she expresses her enslavement, and her choice of adjectives to describe Severin's love expresses her imprisonment in a fantasy in conflict with her inner self. So, through Sacher-Masoch's presentation and style, it is easy for readers to overlook Wanda's struggle. faced with the ideal imposed on her by her "slave", it is easy to ignore the fact that to express her love for Severin, she must become the goddess he idealizes. Indeed, it's easy for his lines, "are you finished with your ideal now?" Are you satisfied with me? (112) dissipate under the masculine and prejudiced voice of the interested narrator.