New erotic novel Fifty Shades of Grey by E L James has been getting a lot of media coverage with opinions on the book and the issues it raises ranging from the ‘demeaning to women’ line to ‘sexually liberating’ with all kinds of theories as to why the book is really so popular.
Intriguing, right? So what is Fifty Shades of Grey really all about? In the name of research *ahem* I decided to read the first book in this trilogy series for myself and I am hooked.
Christian Grey is a beautiful, successful business man. To quantify how rich he is, he earns a $100,000 an hour but no creepy old rich man syndrome here as he’s only 27.
So far I would say he’s most women’s ideal man; yes I know I’m not supposed to say that – all you ladies who independent yadda yadda. But he has a dark side that only Anastasia the heroine of the novel can seem to fix. Again another thing that women love but we’re not supposed to say we do.
‘Damaged’ Christian falls for innocent Anastasia and wants her to be his submissive girlfriend. In his path of leading her to the dark side he takes her virginity, does lots of spanking and tying her up and generally bosses her around. Anastasia falls in love with him so plays along with the spanking but at the same time tries to lead him into the light by standing up to his possessiveness and introducing him to love, commitment and romance. As us girls do.
What seems to be getting some critics’ backs up about Fifty Shades of Grey is that from a feminist point of view it’s not very PC. One critic said “you want to slap the heroine for her lack of self respect” whilst another called it “a big step backwards”. As a New York Times best seller it would seem most people reading this book couldn’t give a crap about it not being feminist.
After all it is a fantasy; reading about kinky sex is a bit of a turn on – it doesn’t mean we want to come home and call the boyf our master. What’s more, is that it’s not necessarily the sex scenes – frequent as they are – that get your heart beating quicker, it’s also the emotional relationship between Christian and Anastasia.
He cares for her and wants to protect her and give her everything she desires; she loves him and wants to ‘fix’ him, the classical plot of the great romantic fictions which women have loved for decades.
Like many women I wouldn’t feel comfortable going to the erotic fiction section of a bookshop; I wouldn’t even be happy ordering the book off Amazon in fear of what the recommended for you list would come up with next time I went online and who else might see this.
But the anonymity of downloading this kind of book onto your Kindle – no, I don’t want to tweet or share that I have read soft porn, thanks! – has led to a 30% increase in sales of erotic fiction.
The film rights for Fifty Shades of Grey have apparently been sold for £3.1 million with Ryan Gosling rumoured to be playing the part of Christian, it will be interesting to see if as many women flock to the cinema to see it as have downloaded the book. I’m thinking a straight to DVD release may be far more successful.
Comments
Anon
Really want to read this! Is it pure filth?!
Julie-Anne
Interesting point about going straight to DVD release – I’ve spoken to a few people who say they wouldn’t dream of going to the cinema to watch it, yet would happily watch the DVD in the privacy of their own home.
Wonder if it will be a flop at the cinema.