Fifty Shades of Romance: An Analysis of a Best Selling the Erotic Romance, Fifty Shades
Trilogy by E.L. James
Rebecca M. Caissie
English Literature Honors Thesis
UNB Saint John
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A reading of E.L. James’ Fifty Shades Trilogy reveals some disturbing as well as
comforting findings. The question this essay seeks to raise and answer is “what is it about this
book that has made it the bestselling novels of all time?” This may seem a simplistic question,
perhaps not worthy of the time and resources of literary critics, especially feminist literary
critics. Yet, my research of these Fifty Shades as a contemporary romance raises additional
intrigues that pertain to this trilogy and the contemporary romance genre as a whole. For
example, the romance genre has divided the female reading population into two camps, for and
against the genre (E.S., 170). The anti-romance camp accuses female readers of using the fantasy
of romance as a form of escapism that avoids the duty of affecting real change because
“inequalities remain unchallenged” (E.S., 181). The pro-romance readers, authors and publishers
accuse the anti-romance camp of enforcing a form of censorship that attempts to subjugate
women, who read this genre, and that it is as bad as or worse than the patriarchal rules that
feminism promised libration fromi. In fact, it has been posited by some engaged in the discourse
over the romance genre, that if women were not criticized for their fantasy entertainment, treated
equal to men who are not prohibited or censored for indulging in male fantasy films and
literature, then perhaps that would do more towards promoting equality and liberation for women
than the perpetuation of stereotypes that infantilize womenii.
To expand briefly on this thought, patriarchy has always cast women as too innocent,
naive, unsophisticated, uneducated, lustful, naturally sinful, childish, weak minded, irrational,
illogical, and emotional to make appropriate choices about consumption for themselves. As
evidenced in this debate, women continue to be perceived as needing someone to select and
assign their roles in society and to prescribe what is appropriate for their consumption, literature
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included, based on those given roles. In this way, women, as a group, continue to suffer from
infantilization that limits the trust and confidence society has in them as fully realized, rational,
and critical adults, able to enjoy fantastical stories without evoking anxiety about them being
“led astray” by unsuitable and corrupting ideological influences. In contrast, men have their
sports and action/adventure fantasies, yet, society expresses full confidence that they will be
more than capable of consuming such texts while still remaining fully realized adults without
society’s ‘parental’ consent, evident in the retentive double standard of social/economic
preferential treatment of the ‘standard’: patriarchy, especially white male privilege.
Research of the Contemporary Romance Genre
This essay will first look at research on the genre of contemporary romance to understand
the formula, which a quick search of popular publishing company’s guidelines reveals (DP, 1),
intent and reader responses to the romance genre. By understanding the context of the
contemporary romance novel, the reader can better analyze and critique Fifty Shades. In the
contemporary romance genre, there is a “distinction between the ‘soft’ romance and the ‘strong’
romance”: “the soft romance is the archetypal popular romance, short, simple” whereas the
“strong romance describes a book that foregrounds a strong, self-confident, resourceful woman”
(MO, 537). The “soft romance” is the “most stereotypical picture of the patriarchal, heterosexual
relationships” (MO, 537). “[T]he plot” goes as follows:
[y]oung girl meets older dominant male. She is attracted yet frightened. They become
entangled in a relationship in which she feels he dislikes her but in the end after varying
degrees of plot complication she finds he loves her. Though there have been some moves
to a more ‘feisty’ heroine and a newish man, one more aware of the claims of the
women’s movement, that is still it. (MO, 537-538)
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Christian Grey is only a few years older than Anastasia, thereby removing one of the biggest
criticisms of the romance novel, especially this novel in relation to its fan fiction roots in the
Twilight trilogy, yet he still has traits typical of an older lover: he is worldly, powerful, rich, and
accomplished. In contrast, Anastasia is cast as the archetypal female in fairytales, the typical
Cinderella: she is in an ‘orphan’ state; on her own in the world without present familial support.
Though she is educated, she is remains modestly ambitious in her career goals. She is naive,
innocent, pure and empathetic. The formula employs some very interesting ideological devices in
the construction of the heroine and hero that fit the patriarchal model so perfectly yet offers a
sense of change and progress.
The first book of the Fifty Shades trilogy is a Utopian vision, which is to say a glimpse at
an idealistic world full of possibilities that in the end actually become broken promises. Fifty
Shades promises a strong romance, but by the final chapter, the trilogy delivers a soft romance
that reinforces archetypal female and male characters and a resolution that domesticates female
sexuality and agency. At the end of book one, Anastasia asks Christian to show her what he
really likes – the first sign of her sexual capitulation. She wants only to please him to the point
that she will put aside her own desires to accept being physically hurt in an attempt to
accommodate his desires to her own detriment, though she does enjoy the role of submissive and
is somewhat sexually masochistic in sex play. When she experiences his unrestrained sexual
desire, though still not to its fullest extent, she is offended, angry and leaves him. In the second
book, Anastasia returns to Christian, and, from this point forward, the struggle for power and
dominance in the relationship begins in earnest. At this point “double plottingiii” emerges in the
narrative, a film technique that uses sex, love and action to help bridge gaps of logic when there
is no logical pathway to the outcome or resolution. Double plotting uses a manifest message, a
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message that is easily accessible to the reader, the obvious message: e.g. love conquers all (DB,
2). The manifest message of love, which works as a reconciliatory device to re-establish and
mask the latent message of the status quo: the male as the dominant partner and the female as the
submissive. As the narrative moves along, Anastasia accepts gifts and engages in sexual
intercourse with Christian, who is open to “mak[ing] love” (FSG, 110) as well as “fuck[ing]”
(FSG, 117), and so it appears on the surface as if they are working towards a compromise.
Within the sexual narrative of Fifty Shades, they transiently reach a compromise at one point and
in fact exchange roles: Anastasia becomes the sexual aggressor pursuing BDSM sexual
interaction, and Christian decides he enjoys traditional romantic sexual intercourse that he calls
vanilla sex: “I’ve never had vanilla sex before. There’s a lot to be said for it. But then, maybe it’s
because it’s with you” (FSG, 132). Yet, by the final book, Anastasia has fulfilled and the
contemporary romance formula domesticates female sexuality through marriage, having
capitulated to his desires, and naturalized it in the pastoral.
Ideology in the Romance Genre
Taking a step away from the novel and the genre, and turning to Max Horkheimer and
Theodor W. Adorno’s “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception,” in the section
From Dialectic of Enlightenment, explains the culture industry and provides a better
understanding of the ideological construction of contemporary romance as a product made
strictly for profit. In this text, Horkheimer and Adorno speak about the culture industry products
of “[f]ilms, radio and magazines,” (DE, 1110) to which I would add popular literary fiction as
well. “[C]ulture” according to Horkheimer and Adorno, “now impresses the same stamp on
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everything” (DE, 1110). They assert that “[f]ilms, radio and magazines,” to which once again I
add popular novels, “make up a system which is uniform as a whole and in every part” (DE,
1110). They assert that
[t]he striking unity of microcosm and macrocosm presents men with a model of their
culture: the false identity of the general and the particular. Under monopoly all mass
culture is identical.... The people at the top are no longer interested in concealing
monopoly: as its violence becomes more open, so its power grows. Movies and radio no
longer pretend to be art. The truth that they are just business is made into an ideology in
order to justify the rubbish they deliberately produce. They call themselves industries;
and when their directors’ incomes are published, any doubt about the social utility of the
finished product is removed. (DE, 1111).
This understanding of the culture industry applies to the genre of the contemporary romance
novel as a product of the culture industry. “The books on the surface seem to have nothing to
offer for a feminist reader. Yet, ...millions, literally, of women read them, spend great
proportions of their time doing so and quite an amount of money” (MO, 538). Further, this
“seems to be the case across all the divides of class, race, nationality, age, and education level”
who are consumers of the contemporary romance genre (MO, 538). In fact, “[r]omances are a
billion-dollar industry, a major money-maker for a publishing industry increasingly consolidated
into a few multinational conglomerates with an undisguised interest in profit” (WP, 83). This ties
together Horkhiemer and Adorno’s conversation surrounding the culture industry to the
contemporary romance genre. The industry “re-position[s] ...commodified pornography to align
with current notions of post-feminist women’s ‘personal empowerment’ and of sexual pleasure
as a form of capitalist consumer ‘entitlement’,” and thus leads to discovering “the ways in which
a capitalist mass market press invokes discourses around female sexuality, feminism and the
pleasures of reading sex in order to imbricate both ‘power’ and ‘knowledge’ in a specific
formation of contemporary (hetero)sexuality rest, above all, upon a conception of the postfeminist female reader as self-empowered consumer” (ES, 171).
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A further complication, as with all culture industry products, is Horkhiemer and
Adorno’s claim
that standards were based in the first place on consumers’ needs, and for that reason were
accepted with so little resistance. The result is a circle of manipulation and retroactive
need in which the unity of the system grows ever stronger. No mention is made of the
fact that the basis on which technology acquires power over society is the power of those
whose economic hold over society is the greatest (DE, 1111).
Sarah Frantz speaks about this specifically when she states that
[a]lthough the romance novel is written for an almost exclusively female audience by
writers who are also almost exclusively female and claim to be feminist, most nonromance-reading feminist critics continue to view the romance novel as deservedly
entrenched in the category of scorned literature because they assume that the female
empowerment readers claim is a form of false consciousness, a conservative social force.
...[T]his debate can be reconciled by examining the elements in the romance by which the
readers feel they are being empowered and by which female critics think the readers are
being subjugated. (18)
Women’s erotic romances, “[e]merging in the late 1970’s, ...gave expression to what can only be
termed a female sexuality riddled with paradoxes. Produced for profit, the genre presents a
unique and distinct erotic style ...even as it reflects prescriptive formulas meant to enhance its
marketability,” emphasis mine (WP, 80). Horkhiemer and Adorno’s argument concerning the
culture industry’s products is especially useful when analyzing any literature that claims to
empower women:
If one branch of art follows the same formula as one with a very different medium and
content...then the claim that this is done to satisfy the spontaneous wishes of the public is
no more than hot air. ...In addition there is the agreement – or at least the determination –
of all executive authorities not to produce or sanction anything that in any way differs
from their own rules, their own ideas about consumers, or above all themselves.
(DE, 1112)
Following this line of inquiry, we can reason that all sectors of the culture industry are in
agreement on their ideas of women as consumers: that the post-feminist female reader is a self-
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empowered consumer in an industry creates in women the desire for the products of the industry,
and thereby guarantees they will buy the products that are manufactured based on their ‘wishes’.
Evidence suggests that women also feel pressure to be self-empowered consumers from
the feminist organizations that have begun producing feminist films, magazines, radio shows and
novels, thus securing a place within the culture industry. At the same time, the women who write
romances “claim to be feminists” (S.F., 18) as well and perceive censorship of the romance genre
by other feminists as elitist and self-interested, rather than genuine and critically unbiased. This
raises the question of the intention of the feminist criticism considering the complaint of women
that the yoke of feminism has become as dominating and restrictive as the previous patriarchal
one. It also challenges the definition of feminism and what it includes or excludes. According to
Horkhiemer and Adorno, the “[c]ulture monopolies are weak and dependent” and “cannot afford
to neglect their appeasement of the real holders of power,” the “steel, petroleum, electricity, and
chemical” industries (DE, 1112). This must be so, if the “sphere” of the real power holders’
“activity in mass society ...is not to undergo a series of purges” (DE, 1112). In this way, we are
led to the conclusion that “[e]verybody must behave (as if spontaneously) in accordance with his
previously determined and indexed level, and choose the category of mass product turned out for
his type,” (DE, 1112) to which I would include women as consumers of ‘feminist’ literature
whether romances, as asserted by the publishers, authors and readers, or not. We must be
skeptical then of the claims made on both sides of the argument when we understand the
alliance of word, image, and music in all the more perfect ...because the sensuous
elements which all approvingly reflect the surface of social reality are in principle
embodied in the same technical process, the unity of which becomes its distinctive
content. This process integrates all the elements of the production, from the novel
(shaped with an eye to film) to the latest sound effect. It is the triumph of invested
capital, whose title as absolute master is etched deep into the hearts of the dispossessed in
the employment line; it is the meaningful content of every film, whatever the plot the
production team may have selected (DE, 1113).
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Because the culture industry perpetuates the message of unity of medium and content in
adherence to capitalist investors, I assert that certain feminists organizations must have been
absorbed into the culture industry, have undergone commodification of ideals, and as such must
not produce anything that differs from the capitalist investors “own rules, their own ideas about
consumers, or above all themselves” (DE, 1112). In fact, there are feminist organizations in the
industry that have adopted and foster those very same rules and ideas about consumers and about
the power holders. With promises of equality and a sense of change, the culture industry as a
whole creates products for consumption that are becoming more “democratic,” so that “it turns
all participants,” women included, “into listeners and authoritatively subjects them to broadcast
programs which are all exactly the same” (DE, 1111).
Application of Ideology to Romance Genre
The romance genre, the erotic romance genre in particular when analyzed for the claims
of providing changes requested by women, reveals in fact that the majority of contemporary
romance novels render, in the end, the reinforcement of the status quo. These novels, as is true of
all products from the culture industry, are reconciliatory devices meant not to effect social
change but rather to prevent it and protect the interest of the real power holder to whom the
culture industry is beholden for capital investment. Based on this understanding of the intent of
the culture industry for its products, no one should be at all surprised at the results of an analysis
of the romance genre and principally for this essay, the erotic romance trilogy Fifty Shades.
With the plot outlined and the philosophical groundwork laid for discourse on the genre
of romance novels, critical analysis of the standard romance novel, through a deconstruction of
the formula, reveals how it functions as a reconciliatory device. Contemporary romances “are
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fairy tales that take the circumstances of everyday life for women and demonstrate how a
successful outcome can be achieved by the hero(ine) amid the dangers of a world that, as in
fairytales, is threatening and testing[;]...part of a long tradition” (MO, 538). What this means is
that most women are raised to become consumers of romance novels because the literature of
their youth trains them to read gender ‘appropriate’ literature starting with infant fairy tales, to
tween romances, to teen and young adult romances, to finally adult romance and erotic romance
novels. The ideals of the feminist movement have been absorbed into language and character
creation and have thus been disempowered through trivialization and commodification. This
absorption of feminist ideals into the texts offers women a broken promise of change that
actually deconstructs the “new woman” and re-establishes her into her place within the status
quo. Optionally, it treats her so democratically that the idea of ‘woman’ ceases to exist, and the
consumer is created to consume all cultural products regardless of gender, race, class or other
markers of real difference. The former is an example of seducing females with a promise of
equality and an open invitation by the powers that be to the feminists to ‘join’ the industry that
actually serves the interest of the power holders, who offer no liberation option as it is a simple
conflict of interests. The latter is an argument that equality has come in the form of a new second
rate working class now normalized into the demographic of producer/consumer with products
created for their own class based on gender, products that offer the same ideological content as
those produced for other classes. This homogenization is reflected in the products created for the
‘new man,’ where feminine interests are incorporated into traditionally male fantasy products,
mirrored by the adoption of masculine interests into female fantasy products. This seemingly
open and progressive approach from the culture industry is simply a smoke and mirrors game
that allows women to feel they are invited into the male fantasy space, and vice versa, where the
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final chapters of all products will return women ‘willingly’ to their traditionally assigned gender
roles.
Unpacking the Contemporary Romance Formula
The world of Christian Grey is replete with penthouse apartments, exotic and fantastical
to the average reader. He lives in an ivory toweriv: a castle where he is king of his world, away
from and above the rest of society. His apartment is white, the color of purity and privilege, with
harsh, cold, modern designs that are infused with warmth by a collection of fine art and his
musical taste and talent. Christian has personal shoppers, a housemaid/cook, and a chauffeur who
doubles as personal security staff. His every need is catered to: whatever Christian desires, no
matter the whim, it is always readily available. He flies a helicopter to and from work, and,
should he choose to drive, personal attendants see to the safe return of his toys. He owns a
collection of top of the line race cars that come with every accessory. He has personal trainers
both for fitness and for martial arts. He own houses and vacation properties all over the world in
only the choicest spots, from the French Riviera to Aspen. “[E]rotic romance novels present a
lush fantasy world where sex is a passionate part of complicated and dramatic relationships
whose development forms the core of each narrative” (WP, 80-81). For Christian, it is only the
best; the first fruits of the luxurious industrialized elite grace his life. This is the lush fantasy
world into which Anastasia is invited, where their sexual life will be consummated and where
sex will become a part of a complicated and dramatic relationship that becomes the core of the
first person narrative, the overarching theme that will hold the episodic story together.
Given that Fifty Shades was written in England, Seattle Washington is cast as an exotic
locale, which following the movie Sleepless in Seattle, gained the reputation of having the
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highest number of rich eligible bachelors who enjoy a rich and luxurious lifestyle in the U.S.
“The world constructed in romance novels is exciting and dangerous, replete with exotic locales
and adventures interesting in their own right” (WP, 81). From Seattle, Christian and Anastasia
travel to the sultry southern state of Georgia, to Colorado, and to the Cote de Azure in France.
There are business trips to Asia, New York, and the surrounding Washington area such as
Portland by helicopter or private jet. Every meal is an adventure, an experience of Epicurean
proportions: the most exciting new restaurants, the finest wines to accompany the finest meals.
There is a constant sense of danger and suspense that reverberates throughout the story from
constantly shifting sources: deranged ex-lovers and subs who threaten the relationship and the
very lives of Christian and Anastasia, a crazed stalker ‘terrorist’ from Christian’s past, sabotage,
threats of financial ruin, abductions, car chases, gun fights, fist fights, and black mail etc. Even
nude sunbathing on the French Riviera poses a danger as the media might publish pictures of
Anastasia and ruin Christian’s image. There is a constant sense of intrigue and obstacle that
Anastasia has to face and overcome.
Though Anastasia does not meet royalty in the literal sense, she meets with the postmodern, meritocratic equivalent of a powerful elite society where money is power and influence
is all. This follows the standard romance formula where “[h]eroines travel to far distances, meet
kings and queens and become involved in regal politics, solve mysteries and often help save
someone or something from great jeopardy” (WP, 81). As Christian’s partner, Anastasia
becomes involved in the politics of the upper class, where image is a commodity and privacy is
guarded viciously. There is a constant fight to remain on top, to make connections, and secure
contracts that ensure social economic security. Anastasia solves several mysteries and “helps”
save her sister-in-law from an abductor.
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The narrative of Fifty Shades suggests that Christian is introduced to “vanilla sex” (FSG,
132) by Anastasia, and momentarily allowed the role of tutor, but in the end they both prefer the
BDSM ‘flavor’ of sex, regardless of what Christian says, proves that indeed it is his taste for sex
that takes precedence over hers as the experienced lover. Though Anastasia possesses a healthy
appetite for sex, she comes to the relationship virginal and remains faithful to Christian, and
manages her desire under his sexual tutelage and control throughout the trilogy. In popular
romance, “[b]oth sex and the relationships ...remain well within the bounds of the patriarchal
order” (WP, 81). Anastasia’s sexuality is first domesticated through a contractual agreement of
exclusivity, next through heterosexual common-law arrangement, and finally through matrimony
that ends with Christian’s preference: an Anastasia “barefoot and pregnant and in [his] kitchen”
(FSF, 541). There can be nothing more suited to the patriarchal fantasy than the ending of Fifty
Shades.
Although BDSM seems the focus of sexuality in Fifty Shades, it is actually a trope used
to intensify the sense of danger in the relationship. The trilogy remains a traditional romance that
otherwise follows the formula as all other taboos are avoided: the sex in Fifty Shades is
completely hegemonic and heterosexual. In the romance genre, “[m]ost sexual contact is
heterosexual and exceedingly traditional, with sexual experimentation rare; in all cases, sex is
domesticated by love and marriage” and to avoid rejection the taboos of “a bitchy or mean
spirited heroine, promiscuity or infidelity by one of the protagonists, excessive violence by the
hero, especially against the heroine and multiple lovers” are all absent from the text (WP, 81).
Sex, as shown, is safely domesticated first through contractual agreement, then love and finally
through marriage, justifying Anastasia as the obvious choice as she fits the traditional romance
heroine to the letter. Rejected from the book are the bitchy, mean-spirited, promiscuous and
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sexually unfaithful women: Christian’s ex-dom Mrs. Robinson and his ex-subs. The
representatives of the ‘new woman’ are rejected and sacrificed, but also rejected from the text is
any representation of the ‘new man’, principally Jose, who is sensitive and caring but less
financially viable. Christian, as the traditional dangerous lover, is not excessively violent with
Anastasia, though the implication boils beneath the surface. He does not have multiple lovers
simultaneously, though he has had multiple lovers in succession. He is a character that flaunts
the white male privilege in such a way that it seduces women back into the haze of the courtly
love model. Anastasia is the chaste beloved and Christian is the ardent aggressive male lover
familiar from fairy tales of childhood: it is Beauty and the Beast all grown up.
According to the romance formula, the initiation of the heroine into sexual agency is as a
life-defining event. This is problematic given metaphors and power distribution reflected within
the sex scenes in Fifty Shades, which applies equally to most, if not all contemporary romances.
In the “semantics of metaphors and descriptors of sexual desire and sexual activity,” there is a
link between “sex and violence” (WP, 82), especially in the first sex scene. The heroine’s loss of
virginity “functions as her initiation into sexual agency” (WP, 84) and signals a transition from
childhood into adulthood. “The rhetoric of the writing thus inscribes the transition from virginity
and the initiation into sexual agency as a momentous, life-defining event for romance heroines”
(WP, 85); a violent one. Further, there is a “connection[] between language use and unequal
relations of power and in patterns of female desire, power figure prominently” (WP, 82): the
“specific key tropes, such as virginity, female sexual agency, rape, male and female occupational
power/agency” (WP, 83)v.
Over the course of the trilogy, Anastasia, an educated, independent woman, loses agency
as her romance with Christian interferes with her choices. To be in a relationship with Christian,
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Anastasia, through a contract (FSG, 165- 175), loses her right to talk about her relationship with
anyone and he demands her full compliance to his wishes at the expense of her own. In effect,
the contract Christian demands she sign silences her, making it ‘illegal’ for her to talk; she loses
her voice in the deal. ‘Love’ demands silence from Anastasia for the relationship to be
consummated. This is not a contract of equality. Christian is permitted to talk freely with his exDom about all aspects of his relationship with Anastasia. It is only after she signs that Christian
initiates her into the world of sex by violently taking her virginity. This is done so that she will
not sign the second contract as a virgin, somehow proposing that after being “deflowered,” she is
now suitable to be a submissive where previously she was not due to her lack of experience and
understanding (FSG, 110 - 122). It is a very troubling presentation of ‘innocence and
experience,’ so that there is a re-emergence of the trope of virtue providing a form of protection
or status to a female which is useless in a rape-like scene: “I am going to fuck you now, hard”
(FSG, 117).
Once her virginity has been ripped away, Christian is able to treat her as another
acquisition and she loses much of her bargaining power in the negotiation of her contract. She
becomes his property: “I want you sore, baby, …Every time you move tomorrow, I want you to
be reminded that I’ve been here. Only me. You are mine” (FSG, 121). As the relationship
matures, she is treated more and more like property. This modernized the objectification of a
woman, where the woman participates in and enjoys her own objectification. This theme appears
in many of the contemporary popular novels, such as Twilight, in which Bella, like Anastasia,
follows the traditional model of females in romance, exchanges freedom, power and control for
love: as love grows, female independence wanes and the double-plot of love is offered as the
‘reason’ the female characters use to justify this exchange. Anastasia chooses to sign the contract
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of silence because she is sexually attracted to Christian and in the very first steps of a passionate
relationship. After she has sex with him, he begins exerting control over every area of her life.
Relationships as Contractarian vs. Patriarchal
A trope of particular interest in Fifty Shades is the idea of relationship literally beginning
as a contractvi (FSG, 165-175) and the ongoing negotiation of the relationship as if negotiating a
contract. This raises questions about the authorial devices used in the contract negotiation: gift
giving, sexual economy, physical and emotional control through punishment, and the recognition
of a post-patriarchal/post-feminist contractual relationship model. This leads naturally to the final
judgment of the series on the relationship, and a social commentary or critique on domestication
of female sexuality. Over the course of the texts, as the contract comes to its final stage of
negotiation, the domestication and loss of agency of the female is echoed by the loss of art,
music, travel and socialization in Anastasia’s life. From the very beginning, Anastasia had no
agency or power to negotiate the contract as she has nothing unique to offer other than her
virginity, but is otherwise replaceable. All of Christian’s submissives, including Anastasia, look
like his mother, which is part of his dark past. He enjoys torturing them out of a deeply
embedded hatred for his mother who haunts his dreams in nightmares. They all have dark hair
and similar facial features. Only his ex-dom is unique and thus irreplaceable.
Christian has a room of pain, which is womb like: red, dark, and silent. This is a
Freudian, psychoanalytical trope where he is in complete control of the environment as a
response to his Oedipal tendencies that extend beyond the sex-room. He demands not only
submission in sex-play, but also complete control over every area of Anastasia’s life including
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the cars she drives, where she works, what she wears, what she eats, her physical fitness training,
and her associations. To be Christian’s submissive is to sign a contractual agreement with him
that is insured with blackmail (FSD, 503). This contract metaphorically represents the
contractarian social structure of society that has remained since the 1800’s, though often
mislabeled as ‘patriarchal”, because a woman’s sexual economy remains her value and
bargaining power that upon initiation into sexuality requires her capitulation of freedom, where
shame becomes the guarantee of her compliance. Anastasia and Christian negotiate a contract of
what he requires from her as “submissive,” as well as his responsibilities to her as the
“dominant.” This agreement covers all he requires from his submissives, Anastasia included, and
further details limits for their sexual intercourse.
Gift Giving as an Expression of Dominance
Research suggests that the ritual of gift giving can be an expression of dominance, often
aggressive. In Fifty Shades, gift giving is the exchange of gifts as an aggressive act of
domination: “there is no gift without bond or obligation”, as defined in the book The Science of
Christmas (SC, 114). Throughout the trilogy, Christian uses gift giving as an expression of his
dominance. His vast wealth gives him immense power, whereby he creates a bond through a
sense of obligation between him and Anastasia with gifts that otherwise could create a healthy
loving bond. Early on in the story, Anastasia is at least sub-consciously aware of the nature of
gift giving between her and Christian, as she refuses the gifts and help he offers because she feels
it will hamper her independence and take away her freedom. As the story moves along and she
begins accepting gifts, usually due to her love and compassion for Christian, she also begins to
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compromise her power and control. Even in the first book, before they have sex, Anastasia goes
out with her friends (FSG, 56-64), but the outcome of that night is a common romance trope that
serves to reconfirm the notion that the female without the control of the male is dangerous.
Through-out the text, when Anastasia goes out without his protection, and usually without his
permission and behind his back, she winds up in danger and he comes to her rescue. The main
point is that as Anastasia softens and accepts his gifts, the more her resolve to remain
independent and free to live life on her own terms is compromised. By the end of the trilogy, she
lives in the house he chooses, she wears the clothes he deems fit, she works for a company he
owns, she drives the car he chooses, follows a fitness program he prescribes, and she cannot go
anywhere without his body guards who report her every move to him. She is in constant
connection with Christian who monitors her via a GPS locator and he is critical of everything
about her, though he says he loves her. Deeply embedded in the manifest message of the love
story and is disappeared the latent message: she must comply with his wishes completely to be
worthy.
Further, in Christian’s case, gifts can “ease tensions between the strong and the weak and
there-by reinforce the status quo.” Christian speaks about this form of gift giving directly in the
epilogue concerning the interview with Katherine Vaughn that is a favor (a form of gifting) to
her father, which he intends to cash-in this favor in the future (FSF, 558). This is an example of a
gift to gain influence and create obligation “in some societies the sense of obligation attached to
the reciprocal gift can be so strong that the gifts are used to be used as a weapon” (RH, 115).
There is an underlying tension of gift giving as obligation apparent in the way Anastasia rejects
his gifts as she considers accepting gift from Christian takes away her independence: her refusal
of the rare copy of Tess D’Urbervilles, the clothes, and the lavish gifts and favors he offers, as
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well as the luxurious the cars. When she refuses these gifts, she retains her independence and
power to negotiate, but, as she begins to accept these gifts, there is a corresponding decline in her
position of power. Anastasia’s gradual acceptance of gifts, her willingness to experiment with
more dangerous and painful sex play, can be interpreted as a willingness to allow Christian more
control of her life, especially since her private thoughts remain repudiative.
In the room of pain/pleasure, which gets restocked with “gifts” to suit Anastasia’s hard
and soft limits, is something of note: the cross upon which she as the submissive is bound and
disciplined during sex, as were all the submissives (FSG, 322; FDG 298). This cross, also
described as a wooden X, acts as a metaphor that evokes Christ and humanity’s sins being
crucified on the cross. Female sexuality, when openly expressed and active, is still equated to the
fall of man and sexual sin, that here is literally punished upon the cross. This sexual scenario
conflates female sexuality with the crucifixion of Christ, so that as he was scourged and
sacrificed on the cross, beaten and broken, paying for the sins of the world, Anastasia’s
masochism evokes eroticism from Christ’s suffering, and conflates with Anastasia as the Eve
archetype who is bond to and disciplined upon the cross. Here is a very complicated moment in
the text when Anastasia can be interpreted as the savior of Christian, as she has been his
confessor, absolver and redeemer up to this point and will continue to be so throughout the
trilogy, which offers her a powerful position in the text. This is common in the romance genre, as
the woman becomes the only person in the man’s life to whom he can expose his vulnerable side
and thus she redeems him and becomes the obvious place where he would place his affections.
Even though this can read as a powerful moment, it is only through the weakness and defenseless
position woman holds in relation to the man that she is sacrificed and trusted. Anastasia’s
crucifixion can be read as a powerful Christ-like moment, yet, even given the similarity of
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choosing her fate, she remains an object that Christian uses rather than an active participant so
that Anastasia is merely means of self-salvation rather than the sole and only source of his
deliverance. There have been a stream of others who have offered themselves as his confessor,
but it is only when Christian decides he wishes to change and accept forgiveness that any
sacrifice will suffice. It is simply a matter of random luck that Anastasia arrives at a time when
Christian is ready for a change, as the text offers no evidence to the contrary, though she requests
it of Christian on many occasions.
Female Curiosity and Reason
Female curiosity and confinement are two ever present themes in Fifty Shades. In
literature, curiosity normally signifies inquiry and ‘reason’. Traditionally this type of curiosity is
associated with males, the mind and scientific inquiry. Juxtaposed to this is female curiosity,
which is equated to the body and taps into the lineage of Eve whose curiosity led to the fall of
“man.” In this way, female curiosity is posited as dangerous to man and the origin of sin. Due to
Eve’s “natural” curiosity, humanity was punished by God and evicted from the Garden of Eden.
This course of reason follows that if a woman exercises her curiosity, especially sexual curiosity,
then she must be punished and excommunicated. Thus the trope of sexual crucifixion acts as the
metaphor that justifies the de-sexualization and punishment of the sexually desirous and curious
woman, replete with the requisite of death, either spiritual or physical. This can be achieved by
literal means: through submission to the will of a male counterpart, excommunication from the
text, or literal death, as is the fate of Kate, Christian’s mother, His sister, Anastasia’s mother,
Mrs. Jones, Mrs. Robinson, and all the subs. This trope effectively historicizes, naturalizes and
eternalizesvii society’s opinion of women and the justification of male dominance.
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In Anastasia’s first person narrative, there is a re-envisioning of the scenario of the angel
and devil that traditionally sit upon the shoulder of ‘man’, creating a trinity of the ‘self’.
Anastasia is accompanied by an inner “harpy,” (FSG, 309) her conscience or the angel, and an
“inner goddess,” (FSG, 309) her sexually desirous self or the devil. When Anastasia makes a
decision in her life, she is either celebrated by an immature figure, “the goddess,” who has no
real power or agency but acts as a mere mirror of Anastasia’s sexual satisfaction or frustration, or
her equally impotent conscience reflects condescending looks of her insecurity and selfcontempt. The interesting part of this is that unlike the male version of this trope, which uses
both reason and manipulation, the harpy and the goddess are both passive when it comes to
motivating Anastasia. Unlike the traditional scenario that often leads to these characters arguing
and physically fighting, with the winner being the one to influence the man, the harpy and
goddess never interact verbally or physically with each other, and only occasionally interact
verbally with Anastasia. They do not debate or try to convince her how to proceed in important
matters, and when they do speak it is in favor of forgiving and excusing Christian, reinforcing
the “love conquers and forgives all” message in the text; they only offer marginal shows of
influence on Anastasia’s choices outside of Christian’s interest. This attempt to create a
psychological exploration of Anastasia with a binary tension that also functions as a
philosophical examination fails to have real effect in helping maintain her independence or gain
leverage in her negotiations. In this depiction of inner conflict, the sexual nature of woman, the
inner goddess, is infantilized due to overly playful nature, her poutiness and her immature
reactions. The female conscience, the inner harpy, is passive, prudish and condemning. Female
sexuality and conscience are both problematized and disempowered. There is no positive
construction of the female psyche in these texts. Further, these two characters never offer good
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advice to help Anastasia grow and become a more mature person, able to make rational decisions
in her own interest. On important matters, these two would be advisors are painfully silent. This
holds true when she is isolated from her friends and family, when she leaves Christian following
the spanking at the end of book 1, when she has to face his ex-dom and his ex-subs, when she
decides to stay at work late with her boss, Jack, who makes her uneasy due to his inappropriate
behavior (FSD, 17) which results in a sexual harassment scene (FSD, 372), and when she later
faces him in combat while pregnant (FSF, 447-460). Her inner goddess and harpy do not profit
Anastasia in any way other than acting as simple mirrors that are sadly comic relief in the form
of a parody of female sexuality and conscience.
Reconciliation through Double Plotting
In the Fifty Shades trilogy is an examination of the concerns and anxieties of the
contemporary woman in dealing with men in a sexual relationship and the contractual
negotiation of woman for place in society. The narrative works as a reconciliatory device to
seduce women out of the public and into the domestic in submission to the male, reinforcing the
status quo while giving a sense of change and catharsis of triumph. Anastasia attempts to deal
with contemporary female anxieties over relationships while trying to answer what it means to be
a contemporary woman. The narrative is first person makes the story bias because it privileges
Anastasia’s perspective, yet it contains the voices of her conscience, her inner harpy, juxtaposed
to her sexual desire, her inner goddess, as voices separate from her own. This device attempts to
create a dialog with the ‘self’ as persons separate from Anastasia offering alternative thoughts.
This performs a modern exercise of the struggle to examine life and question motives, the
philosophical ‘examined life’.
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The double plotting of the trilogy, as in film, is a romantic plot that plays against any
secondary plot in the trilogy, which normally sets romance up to interfere with the protagonist’s
goals. In Fifty Shades, the romance plot interferes with not only Anastasia’s work but also her
agency as an independent and liberated woman. The romantic relationship between Anastasia
Steele and Christian is the romance plot, the manifest message of the novel that will work as a
device to bridge logical gaps in the narrative. According to Bordwell, when an event in the plot
occurs and logic fails, the manifest message, the love plot, will appeal to romantic emotions of
fantasy that romance readers are trained to accept since childhood: that love conquers all and that
love makes sense of events that lack a logical trajectory. Love conquers all: the dangerous lover
can change to become the ideal lover and the woman can gain the respect of their lover through
her actions. This message works to mask the latent or hidden message in the story: the
dangerous lover, who offers gifts to create a bond of obligation with the female, demands
complete obedience and submission. Though he offers lip service about change, the reality is that
he will continue to do as he wishes, when he wishes, and the female lover must capitulate to his
wishes or suffer financial, emotional and/or physical punishment, up to and including
abandonment and death. The seduction of the female disenfranchises her, so that through sex and
affection the female lover submits to the will of the man and is rewarded for her capitulation.
When Anastasia does something to displease Christian, even if an honest mistake, she is
punished. This is best seen as the narrative reaches its final conflict and moves toward resolution;
Anastasia’s discovers birth control shot failed when she goes to the doctor to get her next shot
and finds out she is pregnant. We see in part Anastasia is overcome by guilt because she forgets
to keep her regimen, which results in Christian ordering her to go on the shots since she is too
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irresponsible to take the pill in the first place. Her original mistake resurfaces again her when the
shot fails as evidence indicating her culpability in the crisis and ensuing conflict.
The texts find her lacking people and time management skills because even with an
assistant to help organize her life, she is too negligent to check her schedule regularly and does
not pay attention to which appointments she asks her assistant to change or cancel for her. This
results in the late visit to her doctor. In this way, the mature woman is again infantilized: she
needs the constant care, guidance and protection of the male. Anastasia does not handle the news
of her pregnancy in a way that is reasonable, but rather frets and worries about telling Christian
she is pregnant since they both agreed not to have children yet. Rather than discuss options with
her doctor and calmly go home to Christian and discuss the issue, she is afraid to tell him like a
child who has done something wrong and fears getting punished by a parent; a clear indication of
his authority. When she tells Christian, he berates her and gets angry, storms out of the house and
goes to see his ex-Dom. Consequently, we see that no matter what the manifest message is (they
are equals in the relationship and he respects and loves her), the latent message is that they are
not equals and when she displeases him he will punish her. The narration attempts to justify this
transgression by Christian’s testimony that he chose not to have sex with his ex-Dom when the
opportunity arose, but it cannot be ignored that he withholds affection and punishes Anastasia
with his silence and absence: an aggressive show of power. This exposes her vulnerable position
in the relationship: he can live without her but she cannot live without him, a complete reversal
from the first book when Anastasia left Christian because he intentionally hurt her. She is the
ever-forgiving lover who excuses his behavior because of his early childhood trauma with his
birth mother. This again is double-plotting that reinforces the traditional role of woman’s in
complete submission, supported by evidence that the female without supervision poses a danger,
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and justification achieved through the manifest love plotline; i.e. because she loves him. Love is
the unifying device in the text.
At the beginning of the relationship Anastasia resists Christian’s exertion of dominance,
but as he shares more of his painful secrets and pulls on her emotional heart strings, and by
proxy those of the reader through identification with her responses, she begins to capitulate to his
wishes and whims based on compassion and love. When his requests seem unreasonable and
irrational, the fact that she loves him or desires him stands in to bridge the gap in logic and tries
to make sense of the choices she makes. An example of this comes at the transition from book 1
to book 2. At the end of book 1, Fifty Shades of Grey, Anastasia tells Christian she wants to
experience the full release sadism. When this is finished, she gets up angry and storms out, goes
to her room and packs to leave. Christian comes in to find her and he tries to comfort her. When
she calms down, she tells him that she thinks she is unable to give him what he “needs,” and
leaves the relationship. In this way, Anastasia makes herself the “bad guy” in the scenario, rather
than stand her ground against what accounts as abuse due to the fact that it was an angry outlash. With the opening of the second book, Fifty Shades Darker, she mourns the relationship, but
as soon as she comes in contact with him again, she forgives him because she loves and misses
him. Further, she feels compassion for him, which appeals to our acquired tastes for this form of
resolution: forgive and forget. This is another example of the double plot at work in the Fifty
Shades trilogy. Through this form of reasoning, by the end of the final book, Fifty Shades Freed,
Anastasia is firmly and willingly ensconced in the domestic role far away from her desires and
dreams for herself from the beginning of the trilogy in Fifty Shades of Grey. Christian tells her,
“I prefer you barefoot and pregnant” (FSF, 541). The end of the trilogy tries to make sense of
this statement, but it fails even though Anastasia tries to qualify it with how she feels about
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Christian. By the final chapter, Anastasia’s will is Christian’s will, her desire and happiness
revolves around his, and her character re-affirms the status quo of complete female in submission
to the male. Even the company she works for, or later ‘owns’, is either his or a gift from him: a
gift which is an expression of his aggressive dominance.
Double Loaded Warning: The Feminist and Anti-Feminist Messages
The danger of Fifty Shades is that it carries a double loaded warning to either men or
women, depending on how the texts are interpreted. For women, these texts can be interpreted as
a warning to choose men who are better partners based on the kindness and respect they show
toward the female, like Jose who remains a loyal friend always, or Paul who has been patient yet
persistent in his courtship of Anastasia. At one point Anastasia considers her options for partners,
Paul Clayton and Jose Rodriguez, two nice men instead of Christian (FSG, 51). Yet, the answer
to this question seems obvious when considering her thoughts: Christian is rich, powerful,
desired by many other women, dark and dangerous, and sexually seductive. Anastasia’s
attraction to Christian is part Darwinian, the right of the strong to mate, and part social construct.
Society posits that the ideal male is financially positioned, powerfully influential, and sexually
attractive. There is a definite formulated construction to romance, which young girls are fed from
the cradle via fairytales that posits prince charming lives in an ivory tower (or castle), is master
of his universe, rich, powerful, dominant and physically attractive. As these fairytales mature
through teen romances into adult romances the “prince” becomes the dangerous lover, who
retains many of those earlier traits, but picks up a dark, mysterious, and dangerous side. He may
be conflicted, a rogue, or an outlaw, but the male lover of the adult female romance poses a
danger to his female lover, usually compounded with complete domination of her world through
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sexual and financial aggression. The female is either seduced, forced into union, or raped, and
then isolated until she succumbs and submits to his will, which usually is ‘won over’ through gift
giving and rewards for her obedience in the form of attention and praise. If the female reader has
the proper tools for analysis, these texts can be read as a warning to women to be wary when
choosing a lover, and if they decide to choose the dangerous lover, there are consequences that
go with that choice. Though Anastasia, the heroine, is praised by the story for her sexuality and
assertiveness in demanding sexual satisfaction, she is also allowed to experience realistic
consequences for her choice in partners and for capitulating in the negotiation of the
relationship/marital contract. The end of the trilogy shows a ‘happy ending’ where she seems to
have everything a woman could want according to the contemporary ideal, yet, there is a
looming ‘but’ that casts an eerie shadow of warning. Anastasia’s happiness and security depends
on the continual placation and capitulation to Christian’s desires. If she pleases him, he will
ensure her continued happiness and if she displeases him, he has the power to take her happiness
away, and thus he remains the dangerous, dark and ruthless lover: “fifty shades of fucked up”
(FSG, 269).
For men, these books can be interpreted as anti-feminist texts showing the dangers of a
woman who tries to exert control over her life and consequently poses a danger to herself, the
man, society and to her unborn child. In this interpretation, the man is re-established as the
rightfully dominant gender in the relationship, as the female’s security and welfare depends on
his taking control of her life. Anastasia represents the idealization of woman from the feminist
perspective, and with each expression of independence and choice, she puts herself in dangerous
positions where Christian, as the ideal man according to the romance genre formula, has to come
to her rescue. When Anastasia goes out with her friends against his will, winds up drinking too
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much and gets kissed by her male best-friend. She drunk texts Christian, who realizes she is
drunk, and lucky for her, he has a tracking device on her and comes to her rescue. He saves her
from Jose’s sexual aggression. This demonstrates to both women and men that the other man
cannot be trusted, even if he is her best friend; i.e. platonic relationships between two single
people (male and female) are rendered problematic and marginalized. In this way, the ‘other’
male poses a threat to the single female; though Anastasia has had sexual relations with Christian
they are by no means a couple in the contemporary sense of the word. This moment is used as
justification for her further isolation by Christian who takes control as she is obviously too
immature and irresponsible to go out for a night on the town without placing herself in danger.
This begins the slow methodical degradation of the female independent through a series of
events that works to create a sense that, though Anastasia is likeable and even lovable, she is also
incapable, and at times, irrational and “stupid” ( FSD, 372; FSF, 469).
Through the act of protecting, providing and gift giving, Christian methodically takes
over complete control of Anastasia’s life under the pretense of “keeping her safe” (FSG, 168).
Though Anastasia tells Christian she needs to be free to make her own mistakes and learn from
them (FSD, 274), as the story unfolds, she does not learn from her mistakes but rather makes
worse choices. This continues until the point that she places herself and the baby she is carrying
in danger for an unnecessarily heroic act. Knowing she is pregnant, Anastasia straps on a gun
and goes to face Jack who sexually molested her, has been using terrorist tactics in an attempt to
kill Christian, and tried to abduct, torture and kill her, and now abducted her sister-in-law, rather
than turn to and rely on the expertise of the highly trained security staff at her disposal.
Following this scenario, no matter how much thanks and praise is given to Anastasia for her act
of bravery, the words of Christian backed by the evidence of her actions taints the praise: “What
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you did… was incredibly brave and incredibly stupid” (FSF, 469) In this depiction of a heroine,
is the stigmata that has continued for generations in literature: a woman without the control and
protection of the patriarchy poses a danger to herself, her family, and society at large.
Dual Interpretations of Romantic Texts as Manuals
This story also works as two manuals in one: 1) how to meet and marry the romantically
ideal man; and 2) how to bring a “new woman” under the rule of a man. The narrative teaches
women that they will be rewarded and given the ideal relationship, the man of their dreams, if
they are willing to trade in all their other dreams, hopes and desires of independence and equality
in a relationship. This is the age old tale of the patriarchy. There is a lot of lip service to the
equality of the sexes. The first book even offers a seductive entrance into the world of Fifty
Shades as one where the sexes are equal and liberated, but, by the end of the texts Anastasia, as
well as all the women, have been brought to heel due to Christian’s need to exert control over
everything and everyone in his world.
The ‘Happy Ending’
Are they happy? Anastasia is ‘happy’ as long as she toes the line and does not rebel or act
in anyway contrary to the will of Christian. The episode when Anastasia draws a comparison
between Christian and their son highlights this: “My mercurial boy, just like his dad. Well, at
least he has an excuse – he’s only two” (FSF, 542). Though the text gives us a sense of change,
at the end of the trilogy is not the liberation of Anastasia, but rather the fulfillment of the contract
in Christian’s favor. Anastasia works for his company, which she said she never would do as she
wanted an independent career of her own making. She lives in the house he chooses, dresses in
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the clothes he chooses, and appeases his every whim: “Shit… I don’t want to anger him” (FSF,
541). The preference Christian shows towards his son is something worthy of note as well, as it
demonstrates he is capable of being reasonable and controlling his temper: “His patience with
Teddy is extraordinary – much more so than with me. I snort. But then, that’s how it should be.
And my beautiful little boy, the apple of his mother and father’s eye, knows no fear. Christian,
on the other hand, is still too over-protective of us both. My sweet, mercurial, controlling Fifty”
(FSF, 538). This line of thinking attempts to justify Christian’s behavior because he is a good
father, combined with the fact that he is a good lover.
That Christian can be so patient with his son raises the question of why Anastasia does
not demand fair and respectful treatment from him, rather than excuse his inappropriate
behavior. The use of romantic double plot works to bridge these gaps. As suggested by Max
Horkhiemer and Theodor Adorno in Dialectic of Enlightenment, (DE, 1113) the pace of the
novel and the repetition creates movement in the texts so that, much like in films, the readers are
not given a chance to analyze the information being hurled at them, achieved through the
episodic style of its online origins. The readers are plunged through the texts and presented with
questions that are quickly answered with spoon fed reasoning that works to reinforce the status
quo of patriarchal values in a contractarian society. By the end of the story, readers are
suspicious of Anastasia as the narrator, who proves unreliable due to the way she lies and
manipulates to garner Christian’s approval. In this way, even the validity and strength of
Anastasia’s testimony is damaged by her actions in the texts.
The Fifty Shades trilogy shows the various devices employed in the plot, narrative and
character creation of the story that work to create a story much in line with other contemporary
romances written by female authors. The focus of the story is on the relationship between a man
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and a woman, but beyond a simple story of love are contemporary female anxieties concerning
power, control and agency in relationships and society. As per the formula of contemporary
romances, exposed in the guidelines of the conglomerate Torstar, the female begins as liberated,
independent, free, away from parental control, and curious. The heroine either decides to follow
her desire or has her innocence taken away from her by seduction or force. While a man’s honor
is his word combined with the promise of violence if transgressed, a woman’s virtue is still her
virginity, chastity, and fidelity to her partner. In other words, her honor and power is the cooption of the male’s honor and power through sexual economics. An example of this appears in
the few times Anastasia commands those around her. She is respected only because of her
association with Christian.
The New Woman in Fifty Shades
The trilogy examines the anxieties of a version of the ‘new woman’ as she navigates the
contract of the social, the public, as well as the private relationship. Within the texts, we meet
various ‘new woman’ archetypes attempting to maintain autonomy, freedom and control of their
lives while entering into a relationship with the patriarchal romantic male archetype. There is a
warning to society and men that the “new woman’s” desire for freedom from the control of the
patriarchy creates a dangerous situation for both the female and those around her. The texts also
offer women a cathartic experience through exploration of choices made by a female trying to
exercise her agency and realistic consequences for those choices: a release of frustrations
through a fantasy of triumph, even if a highly compromised one, it is preferable to expulsion or
death. The world of Anastasia Steele is realistic in that society does preference and placate men
who are rich, powerful and self-interested, especially if they are physically attractive. While
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Anastasia is replaceable by any number of subs Christian has had in the past, he is seen as
irreplaceable by her. Every action she takes turns out wrong and she is not allowed to fix the
mistakes but is taken care of like a child, which reconciles women to a mythical and infantilized
state in western civilization’s ideology through a promise of security and love.
The Broken Promise
The warning for women is that believing in the idealized romance leads to the
unreasonable petitions to emotion and compassion. This pleading leads to irrational and
emotional decisions rather than sensible decisions based on evidence and logic, which reinforces
the perception of the Freudian ‘hysterical’ female. Whereas Christian uses wordplay that makes
him sound emotional, immature and eventually compromising, he is actually manipulative,
ruthless and a megalomaniac who only rewards strict obedience to his will and rarely capitulates.
The words and actions do not match up, so the evidence rather than the words decide truth in the
texts. Contrastingly, Anastasia uses wordplay that makes her sound reasonable, mature and
compassionate, yet she is insecure and easily manipulated, capitulating to Christian’s whims
whenever he behaves aggressively and irrationally, excusing his aggression due to the four years
he spent with his birth mother. Despite the fact that he has been adopted by a loving family, been
given every advantage and the best psychological care available, Christian maintains his selfpitying, self-indulging, controlling ways. He uses the words Anastasia wants to hear to
manipulate her. As her fight for independence wanes, the voices of her inner goddess and harpy
become more and more silent, replaced briefly by her “inner bitch” (FSF, 343) when she argues
with Christian for betraying her with his ex-dom, but in the end, she capitulates to his will.
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There is only a minor discussion about Christian’s betrayal of Anastasia but there is no
genuine apology, reparation or resolution other than Christian’s word that his relationship with
his ex-dom, Mrs. Robinson, is finished. But the reader has heard this promise before, several
times; it does not ring true. In this way, Fifty Shades offers a place where the concerns of women
over the negotiation of power and sexuality in relationships with men and society can be
examined. These texts work to raise questions about the viability of the ‘new woman’ through
the interrogation of a world based on realism populated by idealized archetypes, both male and
female. In the manifest message of the narrative, there is a sense of change to the hegemonic
hierarchy of society. Yet, the latent message, masked by the romantic manifest message, shows
that the end game delivers women to the same position as the traditional model of romances, in
submission to the man.
Though the texts begin with the promise of change, even at times a sense of change, by
the final book – the final book being the final word, if you will, on the messages of the trilogy –
Anastasia is in complete submission to Christian, firmly ensconced in the maternal, in service to
her family, and selfless devotion to her husband’s will. This ending informs the texts when read
backwards, in that the female is reconciled, through a series of exercises, to the position of the
submissive. If women have been created as self-empowered consumers of products of the culture
industry, in service to the social machine as reconciliatory devices to offer a sense of change and
as a purgative device for anxiety (the manifest message), while using broken promises to
reconcile the consumer back to their ascribed role as a cog in the machine (the latent message),
then critiques must approach all popular fiction with skepticism from a philosophical position.
Fifty Shades, with its wide appeal, demands that academic attention be paid to the draw and the
effect of texts, based on the response from the popular readers.
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Though the trilogy is intentionally written with a mind to the popular reader, created with
an episodic narrative that reflects its birthplace as online fan fiction, it should not be dismissed
easily, as it has created a response in readers at an international level. The texts are not aimed at
high literary consumers, though research reveals that there are readers in that category who read
contemporary romances. This is not a slight against readers of this genre but rather to say these
novels are meant to be read by those who love the romance genre, written in this case by E.L.
James as a fan of the genre. Fifty Shades may seem poorly written to those of the high literary
circle, but this is misleading as there are very important issues that female readers are responding
to in the texts. Fifty Shades contains female anxieties that have never been resolved by feminism
or the patriarchy: the female struggle to negotiate a contract with a male who is in a more
powerful position while maintaining her autonomy and self-agency in a relationship. When the
female accepts gifts, she becomes more submissive due to the nature of gift giving as an
aggressive expression of domination and her resulting dependence on the male. Further, female
sexuality and curiosity are punished and confined, yet done so in a way that the women becomes
an accomplice in her own objectification and submission through hyper-sexualization and hyperromanticization. In the end, the powerful, intelligent, independent, curious female is silenced,
subjugated and finally, in the contemporary romance, now takes her place as a ‘choice’ as the
willing servant to the male and society. Yet, though she willingly takes on the role of the
domestic, the silent and traditional role of woman, the readers are given a fantasy that offers
catharsis and a seeming victory over the male through true love rather than domination.
The Fifty Shades trilogy reveals the messages within contemporary literature that both
disturbs and comforts both the readers and the critics. The study of contemporary romances, like
Fifty Shades, reveals strong ideological devices that treat women as self-empowered consumers
C a i s s i e | 35
with products for their consumption in the same way the mass media treats male consumers.
There is equality in that, though the quality of it is in question. This provides a space for readers
and authors to discuss anxieties over contemporary issues and make social criticism and
commentary. As a device of the culture industry, contemporary romances aid women in feeling a
sense of change, offer a space to reconcile anxieties to the disappointments of “real life”, and as
with male fantasy fiction, offer women a momentary escape from the reality of the proscribed
roles based on gender, social and economic categories into a fantasy of the ideal. Anastasia is a
socially constructed female protagonist who fits the ideal of what society says a woman ought to
be, but equally constructed is Christian, her male counterpart in the novel. The first novel
contains powerful and independent women, where the narrative principally focuses on Anastasia
and her best friend as the representative females in the story line. Anastasia is posited as the
virtuous every-woman in the story, who is introduced to sexuality by a dangerous lover.
Christian is the dangerous lover because he is highly sexualized with dark undertones to his
sexuality: he is a dominant, withdrawn, isolated, sadistic in the sexual sense, and uses bondage as
a sexual device. In literature, confinement is used as a way to silence the female and achieve
seclusion: Sleeping Beauty’s poisoned apple and glass coffin, Rapunzel’s tower, Snow White’s
banishment, and Anastasia’s BDSM and contracts. That is to say that in literature, female virtue
is still treated according to tradition. Female virtue remains a public matter with an eye towards
commodified marriage. The sexuality of the female and her voice are sequestered to the extremes
of privacy: the domestic, the maternal, the religious order, and so on, all in service and in
subjection to the male and society. It is the formula of the contemporary Romance, as addressed
by myself and Dr. Deborah Philips, in her essay Fifty Shades of Romance: Mills & Boon,
C a i s s i e | 36
Silhouette, Harlequin and the Nineteenth Century English Novel, that lays the foundation for
Fifty Shades to become the best-selling novel to date.
Notes
i
Esther Sonnet page 176: A second version of post-feminism, more closely influenced by post-
structuralist dissolution of feminism’s reliance on ‘identity politics’, is underpinned by a
narrative that casts post-feminism concern for difference (race, ethnicity, class, sexual
orientation, are and nationality) as a liberation from Second Wave feminism retrospectively
constructed as a monolithic, homogenous, puritanical and sometimes tyrannical discourse. Biddy
Martin neatly encapsulates this in identifying post-feminism in ‘polemic and ultimately
reductionist accounts of the varieties of feminist approaches to just one feminism, guilty of the
humanist trap of making a self-same, universal category of “women” – defined as other than men
– the subject of feminism. At its worst, feminism has been seen as more punitively policing that
mainstream culture.
ii
Sarah Frantz page 33: Here, Kinsale is actually agreeing with the feminist arguments about the
romance – readers are indeed abandoning the ability to go out and conquer the real world when
they read their romances. If women can find triumph in a fantasy world, that turn away from the
“what-might-have-beens” of a changed society and accept what the real patriarchal world allots
them, good or bad. However, Kinsale continues, “Romance novels aren’t the only manifestation
of this fact. Pro football, male buddy movies, and men’s general fiction exist for a reason.
Obviously, however, male fantasies are much more popularly accepted that the scorned romance.
C a i s s i e | 37
If the world – feminists included – could come to accept and valorize the romance as it does
male fantasies, might not that celebration of female power change the world as much as if
romance readers forced themselves to abandon their fantasies of power to attempt to change the
world without being renewed by the power they gain from believing they can recognize
themselves behind patriarchy’s mask? …Scorn, ridicule, derision, after all, keep the scorned
object in its place, thereby implying that the object has some ability to threaten the power
structure that scorns it.
iii
See Bordwell for more information.
The double plotline.
Typically the goals that govern least two lines of action, and at least one of these involves
heterosexual romantic love. A common pattern is a working/love pairing, where job problems
affect and are affected by romantic relationships. Recent examples: The Devil Wears Prada, The
Good Shepherd, The Prestige. In some cases one plotline is subordinate to the other, but both are
very often present.
iv
Standard definition of Ivory tower, drawing on both as informing the use: ivory tower noun1. a
place or situation remote from worldly or practical affairs: the university as an ivory tower. 2. an
attitude of aloofness from or disdain or disregard for worldly or practical affairs: his ivory tower
of complacency.
v
Virginity: Fifty Shades follows the tradition of female innocents and male experience; she is a
virgin and he has had literally hundreds of lovers.
C a i s s i e | 38
Female Sexual Agency: After her initiation, Anastasia takes on some sexual agency, but for the
most part Christian will remain the initiator of their sexual interactions. By the end of the trilogy,
sexual agency is lost as Anastasia becomes a sexual object rather than a partner. She is allowed
to enjoy sex, if not equally.
Rape: Though rape does not blatantly occur in these texts, there are several rape-like scenes,
starting with her initiation ritual. Christian brings her to orgasm with oral sex before gaining her
consent to take her virginity by “fucking” her “hard” (FSG, 117). Sex and violence occur rather
frequently in these texts, such as when Christian has Anastasia in bondage and withholds
pleasure, when he beats her at the end of Fifty Shades of Grey out of frustration (FSG, 504-509),
but most notably when he withholds affection as a course of discipline when Anastasia has
displeased him (all occurring outside of sex-play), a form of emotional violence.
Male/Female Occupational Power/Agency: The trope of the occupation and agency indicates
the true power distribution of the relationship, regardless what the emotional reasoning that the
double-plot of romance promises. Christian is a powerful CEO who buys out the company
Anastasia works for, effectively placing her under him as an employee. In this way, not only
does he have control of his own career, but hers as well. As for agency, Christian enjoys the
freedom to do as he pleases, answering only to himself, whereas Anastasia is answerable to
Christian in all things. A final signifier of Christian’s occupational and power agency is that in
the final book, once he has his happy ending – An exaggerated version of the American Dream –
then Taylor and Mrs. Jones are allowed to have a normal family life as well (FSF, 518). We can
see in this that not only does Christian have absolute power over his own life, but he also holds
that hierarchal position over the lives of Anastasia and all of his other staff. Anastasia in this
C a i s s i e | 39
interpretation is no better than the hired help and thus shares equally in their position of no
power or agency.
vi
According to Marx, ideology naturalizes, it historicizes, and it eternalizes. That is,
ideological structures appear to be natural, "according to the order of things" (naturalization);
ideological structures appear to be the logical conclusion to an historical
development(historicization); there is an assumption that now that this (natural) state of affairs
has been reached, things will be that way, barring regression (eternalization). Any ideology will
contain contradictions, will repress aspects of experience, will 'disappear' that which tends to
contradict it or expose its repressions. Ideology's cultural activity will include the construction of
pseudo-problems which are given pseudo-solutions -- e.g. our culture's obsession with stories
about 'love' relations which are 'solved' by individuals realizing the true worth of the other, as if
these issues were really central to our most fundamental human concerns, our moral and mental
health, the justice and equity for which the world is calling out; all sorts of moral and social
problems get 'disappeared' in the process. See Marx for more details.
C a i s s i e | 40
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