Fifty Writers on Fifty Shades of Grey (16 page)

SARAH S. G. FRANTZ

D
EPICTIONS OF BDSM activities are carved into the walls of Egyptian pyramids, painted onto Greek urns, tiled into Roman mosaics, and illuminated in medieval manuscripts. It is no surprise, therefore, that BDSM fiction has a history almost as long as the history of the novel.

The term “BDSM” itself is a very recent one, established in the early 1990s. It is a combination acronym of a variety of connected sexual practices: B/D stands for Bondage/Discipline, D/S for Domination/Submission, and S/M for Sadism/Masochism. Bondage can include any sexual restraint, from the most vanilla of sex play with scarves and blindfolds all the way to elaborate rope bondage, rope suspension, and the Japanese erotic rope art, Shibari. Discipline ranges from the practice of “punishing” naughty submissives during encounters that often include roleplay, to specific fetishes like over the knee (OTK) spanking and caning. Domination, submission, sadism, and masochism are
all both sexual practices and sexual identities. Domination and submission refer to power exchanges in which one partner is submissive to another, doing what they are ordered, usually (but not always) in sexual situations. Sadists are sexually aroused by inflicting pain on their partners, while masochists enjoy having pain inflicted on them.

Despite these activities’ apparent universality, the details surrounding them—how they are done, what society thinks of them, and what the people who do them think of themselves—all depend on the culture and the time in which they are performed. A sexual proclivity that is taken for granted in one culture might be completely alien to another culture, with different relationship expectations and sexual mores and even different technology. This means, of course, that the representations of these activities (stories, pictures, film, etc.) change over time and across cultures. These representations also build on each other, using conventions previously established by other representations. This affects not only how BDSM has been portrayed in novels over the last 250 years, but also how romance novels are structured and, most tellingly for a consideration of
Fifty Shades of Grey
, how BDSM and romance come together.

The early novel has a diverse ancestry, but it solidified into the form we recognize today in the early eighteenth century: specifically, in the 1720s, with Daniel Defoe’s character studies, Penelope Aubin’s adventure stories, and Eliza Haywood’s racy, explicit exposés; and in the 1740s, with Samuel Richardson’s extended character studies, Henry Fielding’s domestic adventure stories, and the demure stories of a reformed Eliza Haywood. Right in the middle of this flourishing of the British novel, John Cleland published the first pornographic novel in English,
Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure
(1748), much more famously known as
Fanny Hill
.

During the course of her sexual adventures, Fanny, a young prostitute, is introduced to a Mr. Barville, who was “under the tyranny of a cruel taste: that of an ardent desire, not only of
being unmercifully whipped himself, but of whipping others.” On a “sudden caprice, a gust of fancy for trying a new experiment,” Fanny agrees to (paid) relations with Mr. Barville and they engage in mutual flagellation: Mr. Barville achieves satisfaction as Fanny whips him, but Fanny is only moved to sexual arousal after Mr. Barville finishes whipping her. She is not, “however, at any time re-enticed to renew with him, or resort again to the violent expedient of lashing nature into more haste than good speed.” That is, Fanny was game once but is uninterested in pursuing more after that first experience.

Mr. Barville, in modern parlance, is more masochist than sadist, but has enough switchy tendencies that he partakes in both sides of the activities. But of course, no one had that vocabulary in the eighteenth century. A few things to note about this short interlude: First, Mr. Barville is depicted as relying on the BDSM activity for sexual arousal and satisfaction. It’s not just something he enjoys doing; rather, it’s necessary for him. Second, he insists on doing it in an ethical manner, stressing the mutual consent of both parties. Finally, the activity is remarkable enough to be unusual for Fanny, but not disgusting to her, as when she later sees two men engage in anal sex.

In 1791, just more than forty years after
Fanny Hill
, the notorious French aristocrat Marquis de Sade published
Justine; or, The Misfortunes of Virtue
. The story reverses the typical eighteenth-century narrative of virtue rewarded because the more virtuous Justine is, the more misfortune—rape, imprisonment, sexual torture—she suffers. The novel makes explicit the fact that if she bent just a few of her strict morals, she would suffer fewer horrific attacks. In 1797, de Sade published a sequel:
Juliette; or, Vice Amply Rewarded
, the story of Justine’s sister. Unlike her virtuous and miserable sister, Juliette is utterly debauched sexually, completely amoral, and lives a happy, successful life. Contrary to the nonconsensual flagellation incident in
Fanny Hill
, de Sade’s narratives revel in the nonconsensual sexual torture and murder of innocents, especially
early adolescent girls and boys. Because of his published writings, de Sade was imprisoned by Napoleon for the last thirteen years of his life, and after his death his family burned many of his unpublished manuscripts.

In 1869, almost eighty years after de Sade’s novels were published, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch published his infamous novella
Venus in Furs
, a fictional representation of Sacher-Masoch’s relationship with his mistress Fanny Pistor. In the novel, as in real life, after the hero convinces his mistress to dominate him cruelly, they go on a trip together to Florence, during which the hero enacts the role of manservant and is abused by his mistress, even as she disdains him. While the relationship is consensual, male submission is seen as a weakness and the heroine eventually finds another man to whom she wants to submit. The novel makes clear this ending returns the genders to their expected, “normal” societal roles. This return at the end of the novel to “normalcy,” to the way things are “meant” to be, becomes an enduring structure in BDSM fiction and romance (and is prominent in
Fifty Shades of Grey
itself).

A generation later, in 1886, psychologist Richard Krafft-Ebing published his
Psychopathia Sexualis
, in which the terms “sadism” and “masochism” were used for the first time in a scientific context. Krafft-Ebing appropriated these terms, obviously derived from the names of the most famous authors of each practice, from the code used in newspaper advertisements by people looking for like-minded partners—a nineteenth-century version of Craigslist.
Psychopathia Sexualis
was a notable addition to the explosive growth of psychology and psychoanalysis at the end of the century that attempted to examine and explain the vagaries of human sexuality. No matter how medicalized these terms have become, however, it is important to remember that they derived first and foremost from literary representations, from writers who had the courage to share their fantasies—no matter how disturbing—with the rest of the world, shaping all future representations of those fantasies. Then as
now, literature functions as an outlet and a framing mechanism for sexual desire.

Despite—although some argue because of—the sexual repression of the Victorian era, there was a veritable flood of erotic novels about BDSM activities in the second half of the nineteenth century. Besides
Venus in Furs
, one of the most famous was
The Whippingham Papers
, a series of poems, plays, and stories about flagellation, published anonymously in 1887. Many of these stories were set in English schools, in which corporal punishment was practiced. In fact, caning, birching, and spanking were so associated with British schoolboys and their later adult sexual practices that they became known as the English Vice. As the preface to
The Whippingham Papers
states, “The propensity which the English most cherish is undoubtedly flagellation … this vice has certainly struck deeper root in England than elsewhere.” Algernon Swinburne’s anonymously written contribution to the
Papers
, a ninety-four stanza poem, “Reginald’s Flogging,” gives us a taste of this culture:

“And how do you like it, Fane?” he says, “does it sting? does it sting you, Fane?”

Oh, fain was Reggie to rub his bottom,

To rub it with his shirt;

As he laid the rod on Reginald’s bottom,

“Does it hurt, my boy, does it hurt?” he says,

“Eh, Reggie, my boy, does it hurt?”

The first six cuts on Reggie’s bottom

He hardly winced at all;

But at every cut on Reggie’s bottom

You could see the salt tears fall, my boys, the thick tears gather and fall.

But wae’s my heart for Reggie’s bottom,

When the seventh and eighth cuts fell,

The red blood ran from Reggie’s bottom,

For Reggie was flogged right well, my boys, for his bottom was flogged right well.

The next three cuts on Reggie’s bottom,

They made it very sore,

But at the twelfth it was bloody and wealed,

And he could not choose but roar, poor boy, he could not choose but roar.

However, for almost a hundred years after the publication of
Venus in Furs
, most of the flood of stories and poems and plays were only available for reading audiences who knew
to
look for them and who knew where and how to find them. It wasn’t until 1954 that another BDSM story became famous enough to become a part of the public consciousness: Pauline Réage’s
Story of O
. Réage was the pseudonym of Frenchwoman Anne Desclos, who wrote her sadomasochistic fantasies in an attempt to keep the sexual interest of respected French literary critic and publisher Jean Paulhan twenty years into their affair. He encouraged her to publish the novel and wrote a preface. In 1955,
Story of O
won the prestigious French literary prize the
Prix des Deux Magots
, given to provocative works outside the mainstream. The controversy this created and the speculation over the novel’s true authorship kept it at the center of public attention both inside and outside France: for a while, it was the most widely read French novel in the world.

The novel tells the tale of a beautiful Parisian fashion photographer who is taken by her lover to Roissy, an estate run for the benefit of an exclusive club of men. There she willingly submits to beatings, abuse, humiliation, and oral, vaginal, and anal sex with any of the men who inhabit or visit the chateau. By the end of the book, after being passed from her lover René to his English mentor Stephen, and then on to a number of Stephen’s associates, O is utterly debased—naked, pierced, branded, masked, and treated purely as an object by those around her—but is transcendently happy, although not unambiguously so.

In 200 years of novels that explore BDSM topics, conventions emerged, and were adapted and built upon. As with
Fanny Hill
, O consents to everything that happens to her. As with
Venus in Furs
, the story tells of relationships. Desclos’ innovation is deep character development, to the extent that the novel is more
bildungsroman
than love story, depicting O’s emotional journey and exploring the erotic process by which O finds fulfillment and happiness—even ecstasy—in her voluntary submission. In comparison, Fanny Hill’s tale, in typical early eighteenth-century fashion, is one of individual erotic scenes strung together without much connection between them and with little development of the character experiencing them. Neither de Sade’s Justine nor her sister Juliette learns anything during the course of her story: they are merely the object lessons in their creator’s twisted morality tales. The couple in
Venus in Furs
are not happy in their desires. In comparison, although it is unclear at the end of the book whether O is passed to yet another master or whether she dies, over the course of the story she grows and changes and finds a form of contentment, her own happy ending within herself. None of these books, however, are romance stories.

After
O
’s success in the 1950s, the 1960s and 1970s offered four separate narratives of BDSM relationships that impacted the public imagination in very different ways. First, in 1966, John Norman published
Tarnsman of Gor
, the first of a twenty-seven volume series of science-fiction/fantasy stories about the planet Gor, on which is practiced a deeply hierarchical sexual Master/slave dynamic between men and women. These novels gained a cult following, resulting in BDSM practitioners still today who call themselves Goreans and try to follow the precepts set out in the novels.

Second, beginning in 1972, Avon Books started publishing blockbuster historical romance novels (often called “bodice rippers”). The first of these books, published and marketed in innovative ways, was Kathleen Woodiwiss’
The Flame and the
Flower
; the second, in 1974, was Rosemary Rogers’
Sweet Savage Love
. The blockbuster historicals grew from this start and became so popular that in the late 1970s, they accounted for a quarter of all books printed (just as the Fifty Shades trilogy accounted for 20 percent of all books sold in the second quarter of 2012). The blockbuster historicals were not explicitly BDSM-focused, but they certainly exploited many of the same conventions that make the Fifty Shades trilogy so popular: the virginal heroine; the older, domineering alpha male hero; the heroine’s sudden sexual awakening, matched with the hero’s sexual obsession; a focus on sexual violence; and finally the complete reformation of the hero for the sake of his love for the heroine.