Should you read Fifty Shades of Grey?
EL James’ Fifty Shades of Gray is hot and I say that against my better judgment. In fact, my super rich dreamy lover is breathing down my neck right now, threatening to beat me to orgasm with a riding crop and forcing me to write this. It’s a joke. But I’m serious about the fact that I didn’t want to like this book.
I expected it to be too soft or maybe too hard, too cloying or maybe too dark and disturbing, but it was none of that. It was a very sensual and interesting look at a handsome and wealthy man with a penchant for domination and his fascination with a naive 21 year old whom he met by chance.
Why is Fifty Shades such a hit? Is it because married women are bored with the familiarity of their sex lives and single women find theirs erratic and unstable? Do male readers fantasize about tying up their female partners?
Or is it because, deep down, North America continues to have deeply ambivalent feelings about sex? For one, we use sex to sell everything from soaps to magazines, and according to Forbes magazine, pornography is a $2.5-4 billion business. On the other hand, we’re not likely to tell our boss that we’re late for work because we had a quickie with the neighbor next door after breakfast and lost track of time. That’s not just because sex is a private matter, but we feel ashamed or uncomfortable talking about it. We are still imprisoned by our Puritan roots; this is particularly prominent in fundamentalist religions, which are anti-sex. And just as a strict diet causes cravings for sweets or carbohydrates, fear, hatred, or taboo of normal sexual urges can result in avoidance of such activity or in excess. So when we see something conventional that screams SEX, it sells.
Also, I think readers are drawn to both the romance of Fifty Shades – Anastasia Steele falls head over heels for Christian Grey – and the forbidden nature of the arrangement. Due to childhood abuse, abandonment, and other complicating factors, Christian is incapable of love, though we suspect he may evolve during the trilogy. Like vampire Edward Cullen in Twilight, Christian becomes the symbol of every seductive yet unattainable man, and just as some women want to tame bad boys, others want to make the unattainable man their own.
Also, Christian has a BDSM fetish and Anastasia has never tried bondage or submission. When she does, she’s not sure if she likes it. This conflict—I want him, I’m falling for him, but he’ll never love me and he takes pleasure in hurting me—is at the heart of the book and what makes it interesting. If both parties were committed to the dom and submit lifestyle, the book would be boring.
As it is, the sex scenes are hot and the author talks about sex in a frank, cheeky but delicate way. This is not pornography. It’s not even softcore. And as far as I’m concerned, it’s not demeaning to women because the dominant/sub relationship is consensual, and both genders and any orientation (ie straight, gay, bisexual, or transgender) could play any role. It is a very sensual romance, even for those who have no desire to be someone’s sex slave, and it seems to be a fairy tale. I can’t imagine many men going through the 528 pages, but my good friend told me that the couples on The Dr. Oz Show read the book together and the men were very excited.
It’s hard to describe how a book that links climax to pain could arouse anything more than despair in someone who isn’t a sadomasochist. In this sense, the book reminds me of Darkly Dreaming Dexter. Very few people sympathize with serial killers, but our beloved Dexter is portrayed in such a way that you have to love him even when he’s plotting to behead someone who doesn’t meet his moral standards. Therefore, although many readers may not have an interest in S&M, they may still find this story exciting.
Having said that, James indulges in a high degree of repetition and the characters are ridiculously one dimensional and unrealistic. This is not a literary novel. It’s juvenile in many ways and I read a lot of it, especially the sex scenes. I could have cut them in half and used more originality. Despite the fact that the book is a runaway seller, the Amazon community is split on whether it’s worth reading and many reviewers hated it or found it offensive.
But, as I said, against my will and better judgment, I devoured Fifty Shades, and I will no doubt start with the second book in this trilogy, Fifty Shades Darker.