Sade’s “Juliette” was one of his most ardent attempts to explore the depths of how far the limits of morality could be stretched. Her journey throughout the novel is begun as an investigation of the human body.

Every inch of the flesh is defiled over and over again. In one particular disconcerting moment, the house of a Duc is visited where Juliette is flogged and molested to an inch of her life in a room where bodies are recklessly thrown around. Over blood pouring from Juliette's flayed buttocks, the Duc screams,

"By the guts of Almighty God, I have no great fondness for women; if God made them, why can't I exterminate them?… I see blood and I am happy… (Juliette, 197)."

Now contrast this to the works of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. In “Venus in Furs”, he wrote of a man who loved women so much, that he wanted to be the slave of a woman. He felt inadequate to be superior or even the equal of a woman because he esteemed women to be so beautiful and so mysterious, almost Goddess-like.

“Overcome by desire I fell at her feet and threw my arms about her.

“Yes, you have brought my dearest dream to life!" I cried. "It has slept long enough."

“And that dream is -- ?” She laid her hand on my neck. The pressure of her warm hand, and the tender searching gaze she bent on me through half-closed eyes, filled me with a delicious vertigo.

"To be the slave of a woman, a beautiful woman whom I love, whom I worship!”

Sacher-Masoch lived at a time when men ruled women but he was not comfortable in that role. He wanted women to rule him. He wanted to be abused by a woman because he felt guilty about the sins of the patriarchy. He was in need of loving female authority.

It is a great injustice to link Sacher-Masoch to Marquis de Sade. The submissive male may desire a female sadist but his motivation and psychological need for abuse at the hand of a woman is rooted in man’s longing for loving female authority. Sacher-Masoch saw women in the spiritual and saw their divinity, thus his fascination with the Goddess Venus. Sade saw mankind as animalistic and he wrote of man’s lowest qualities, as the strong prey on the weak. Sacher-Masoch elevated women by degrading himself. Marquis de Sade degraded women as he sought to degrade both society and religion.

The term Sadomasochism (S&M) forever links the desires of a sadistic man with the desires of a masochistic man. Yet, the masochistic man wanted to be whipped and humiliated by a beautiful woman, whom he felt inferior although he lived during a time when men believed they were superior. The desires of Sacher-Masoch were spiritual in origin.

The desires of Sade were animalistic. Thus these two men were worlds apart in their sexuality.