Fifty Writers on Fifty Shades of Grey (24 page)

CATHERINE HILLER

S
O, WAS IT?

There’s not much point discussing whether
Fifty Shades of Grey
, which has sold 40 million copies and climbing, is a good book. Reviewers and critics have been merciless in their assessment, deriding the story as implausible, the characters as one-dimensional, and the style as laughable. At the age of twenty-one, the beautiful heroine, Anastasia Steele, has never dated, has never even been attracted to anyone, has never felt the faintest frisson of sexuality—until she meets billionaire Christian Grey, described as “heart-stoppingly beautiful,” a man who likes to take control. The first time she’s in bed with him, she comes three times. Ana is young and pliant, up to a point; Christian is psychologically wounded, which has left him with a need to control women and a fondness for inflicting pain. He does not like to be touched, she does not want to be beaten—and they are in love. Will he let her stroke him? Will she let him beat her? These are the book’s great questions. Ana proclaims, “I know it
will take an eternity to expunge the feel of his arms around me and his wonderful fragrance from my brain.”

Sentences like this haven’t slowed sales one click. Some claim that the Fifty Shades phenomenon is partly explained by the growing popularity of electronic reading devices. Without a cover to reveal what we are reading on our Kindles or Nooks, we are free to pursue sexually explicit books in virtual anonymity. But the new electronic secrecy could lead us to read classic (and classy) erotica, books like
Fanny Hill, Story of O
, and
The Image
. Instead, we are sinking deep (or sinking shallow) into the Fifty Shades trilogy. Why is that?

For one thing, in erotic fiction, as in all genres, there is a need for contemporary material. Fiction helps tell us how people live; contemporary fiction tells us how we live now, which is why, despite the great writers of the past, we always need new authors. Today’s writers chronicle our society, our anxieties, our joys.
Story of O
is still a highly charged book, but it was written before AIDS, and condoms were not a part of the picture. They’re certainly part of the scene today, and part of Fifty Shades. Condoms are probably mentioned fifty times in the first book alone! The book’s very zeitgeist is contemporary, with an unabashed worship of wealth. Christian’s Red Room of Pain is notable for its luxury as well as its bondage devices. Readers of the Fifty Shades trilogy are titillated by scenes of dominance and submission and fabulous wealth. They read on to learn just how much the lovers will submit to each other. Then they recommend the book to their friends.

Why is that? Not for the plot, not for the characters, not for the style: women read
Fifty Shades of Grey
for that timeless erotic situation—the man urging the woman to go further; the woman slowly submitting—in a contemporary setting. And people also read it for the sex scenes. So, it is valid to ask (indeed, absurd
not
to ask): How good are those sex scenes?

A good sex scene contains enough erotic detail and pacing and originality to get us excited, which is sufficient for
pornography but not for fiction. Beyond being arousing, the sex scenes in mainstream novels and short stories must offer more.

Here it must be acknowledged that the line between pornography and mainstream fiction is sometimes difficult to draw. Women often need story and setting and emotion to get excited, so those elements are featured in pornographic novels for women, making them more like non-erotic fiction. And non-erotic fiction for women is often sexually explicit, because many serious women writers are bold about sex.

How do we even judge sex scenes in fiction? Novelist and critic Elizabeth Benedict offers some guidelines. Her lively, well-informed book,
The Joy of Writing Sex
, published in 2002, examines the question of what makes a good sex scene, and Benedict offers instructive criteria.

Let us use these to evaluate a single representative erotic encounter in E. L. James’
Fifty Shades of Grey
.

First, the scene. At three pages, it’s shorter than most of the sex scenes in the book, but just as explicit. It occurs about halfway through the book (starting on page 273 in my paperback edition). Grey is in Anastasia’s apartment. They are alone; her roommate, Kate, is conveniently away. On the threat of being punished, Grey warns Ana not to roll her eyes at him, but she rolls her eyes saucily anyway. “Come here,” he says. “I told you what I’d do. I’m a man of my word. I’m going to spank you, and then I’m going to fuck you very quick and very hard. Looks like we’ll need that condom after all.” He makes a grab, “tipping me across his lap … very slowly he pulls down my sweatpants. Oh, how demeaning is this? Demeaning and scary and hot.” Grey proceeds to give her a spanking, alternating his blows with fondling and caressing. “My body is singing, singing from his merciless assault.” Then he takes her from behind, slamming against her sore backside. After they come, he breathes, “Oh, baby. Welcome to my world.”

According to Elizabeth Benedict, a good sex scene:

1) is not always about good sex but is always an example of good writing;

2) should always connect to the larger concerns of the work;

3) is driven by the needs, impulses, and histories of the characters;

4) depends upon the relationship the characters have with each other.

So how does this scene rate?

1) E. L. James is not a graceful writer nor a keen observer nor an original thinker. The scene includes the lines: “My insides practically contort with potent, needy, liquid, desire” and, “The feeling is beyond exquisite, raw, and debasing and mind-blowing.” Although these pages are not always clumsy, no one would claim they were “an example of good writing.”

2) The book is about control. Christian Grey is looking for a good submissive. In allowing him to spank her, Anastasia finds unexpected “radiance” when she gives him the control he craves. The scene not only connects with “the larger concerns of the work,” it embodies them.

3) For weeks Christian has been exploring Anastasia’s sexuality and urging her into greater and greater submission. His deprived early childhood and his adolescent introduction to sex by an older “Mrs. Robinson” have shaped his psyche, and he has a great drive to dominate women. His need to spank Ana comes from a deep place, as does her excitement at being spanked. The scene is certainly driven by the characters.

4) Sex can make lovers grow closer, and in this scene it does. Grey has been begging Ana to sign a contract making their relationship explicit, but she keeps postponing it. By letting him spank her, she is showing her love for him, just as he shows his for her by the gift of an Audi. Spanking
Ana, and knowing she enjoys it, Grey exultantly cries, “Welcome to my world.” The scene utterly depends upon “the relationship the characters have with each other.”

So in three out of four of Benedict’s criteria, the sex scene discussed here succeeds. It feels essential to the growing closeness of these two rather improbable characters and leads us to the next stage of Ana’s submission. Perhaps the secret to the success of
Fifty Shades of Grey
is simple. Whatever else E. L. James does or doesn’t do, she knows how to write a good sex scene.

Anyway, it was good for me.

JOY DANIELS

O
N THE SURFACE,
Fifty Shades of Grey
is about the struggle between Ana’s desire for emotional intimacy (“more”) with Christian, and his desire for the security and distant that he gets from dominating his partners. Ana sees Christian’s need for control as being the opposite of her desire for love. He is “in the dark”; she wants to bring him “into the light.” To Ana, “dark” means sad, angry, controlling, emotionally distant, while “light” represents love, happiness, and interdependency. But Ana is in for a big surprise: Christian isn’t the only one with a dark side. Ana, who is so innocent at the beginning of the story that she has never even masturbated, is completely unaware of her sexual self. She insists that she isn’t submissive and doesn’t enjoy sexual bondage or pain, but her thoughts and reactions during sex tell us a different story. The battle between “light” and “dark” takes place within Ana herself as she is forced to confront and finally embrace the “dark, carnal place” within her own psyche.

Although Ana and Christian spend a lot of time talking about sex, including contracts, hard and soft limits, and “debasement,” they don’t get physical until chapter 8. Because Ana is a virgin who has never had an orgasm, this is her introduction to sexual pleasure of any kind. In spite of Christian’s claim that he doesn’t “make love” but “fucks hard,” he takes things pretty slow with Ana. Sure, it’s hot, but compared to what they’ve discussed so far, it’s pretty tame. Christian even follows the stepwise progression that we all know from the baseball metaphor. They’ve already kissed, in the elevator, so he started out with a single. He fondles her breasts (second base), stimulates her clitoris (third base), and they have intercourse (score for Christian!). Hell, the first time they do it is in the missionary position, which is about as “vanilla” as one can get. The second time he takes her from behind, which is a little more adventurous but hardly the kink he threatened (promised?) earlier. He then surprises them both by sleeping with her, something he has never done with any of his previous partners.

Ana clearly enjoys sex with Christian (who wouldn’t?) but has trouble letting go and giving herself over to what she feels. She tries to keep her breathing “under control,” but the sensations Christian provokes are “disordered, chaotic.” Her thoughts continue on a similar path through the early scenes (chapters 8 through 12). Her words give the impression that she is not acting but reacting, not experiencing but observing something happening outside herself. Everything is described in the third person, like someone else is in control: “my breasts press into his hands” (instead of “
I
press my breasts into his hands”), “my body resonates,” “my body writhes.”

The next day Christian ups the ante sexually, introducing Ana to light bondage with the infamous gray silk tie. When he brings her to orgasm while her hands are bound, she is not only out of control physically, but emotionally and mentally as well, losing “all sense of self” and “all cogent thought.” Christian restrains Ana again after she sends him an email saying, “Okay,
I’ve seen enough.” This time he not only binds her hands but also loops the tie through her bedpost so she can’t even touch him. Here, Ana seems to be losing the struggle for control for her own body: “I fight my body as it tries to arch in response,” “My hips flex automatically,” “my body bucks beneath his expert fingers,” “I’m helpless, lost in an erotic torment.”

For the first third of the book, Ana is relatively passive in the sexual scenes. Not because she’s supposed to be submissive (she’s not very good at that), but because she’s just too inexperienced to know what she wants. In fact, she’s so sexually clueless that she can’t even recognize that the sensations and emotions she feels during sex are reflections of
her own
sexual needs, not just reactions provoked by Christian’s expertise. But this starts to change in chapter 14. While Ana’s not yet fully aware of what she wants, her subconscious starts to make its desires known—like a taste for “kinky fuckery” like bondage and submission, in spite of what she claims.

How do we know this is Ana’s desire and not just something she’s willing to do to please Christian? She
dreams
about it. In her dream, Christian brings her to orgasm with a riding crop while she is completely restrained. Although Christian is the actor here, it’s Ana’s fantasy. Or maybe her subconscious has really come out to play. In her sleep, Ana can’t hide from her desires, she can’t distance herself from what she wants—and what she wants to do is
submit
, to be at Christian’s mercy while he pleasures her with the kinds of toys she has seen in his playroom. After being introduced to sex by a master, Ana’s sexual self is emerging—and it is
kinky!

If the earlier scenes revealed Ana’s desire for submission, the spanking scene (chapter 16) starts exploring the sexual possibilities of pain and punishment. She is ambivalent at first and the feeling of being out of control returns. She’s clearly confused by her reactions, describing the spanking as “demeaning and scary
and hot.” Again, she distances herself: he “makes” her feel this way and she’s unwilling to take responsibility for what she feels: “my traitorous body explodes in an intense, body-shattering orgasm.”

Ana embraces the pain-pleasure of spanking when she and Christian play with the Ben Wa balls. In that scene, Christian pushes her to
ask
him for the spanking, demanding that she recognize that she wants it as well. She acknowledges her feelings when she says, “I’m lost in a quagmire of sensation” and admits that the pain is not only “manageable,” but “yes, pleasurable.”

Ana starts to embrace her own desires, which in turn helps Christian become the partner she needs. When she submits to him sexually, Christian is able to relax his need for total control outside the bedroom and emotional intimacy develops between them. Ironically, as Ana gives over control to Christian in bed, she
stops
describing her feelings and reactions as being out of control or overwhelming.

Ana has come a long way from the inexperienced girl who fell to her knees in Christian’s office. When they have sex on Christian’s desk (chapter 21),
Ana
is the aggressor. She is no longer the naïve girl who believed that love was only “hearts and flowers”: “This is not making love, this is fucking—and I love it.” She can acknowledge her own feelings and desire—not just love but
lust
: “It’s so raw, so carnal, making me so wanton. I revel in his possession, his lust slaking mine.”

The two sex scenes that take place in the hotel in Georgia show how far Ana has come. First, Christian decorates the bathroom with candles—an example of the “more” that Ana wanted (and that Christian insisted he didn’t do). Christian is still in charge, of course, and tells her what to do (“Put your hair up,” “Lift your arms”). This time, Ana doesn’t hesitate or second-guess her own actions—she just does it. Because she is becoming
more comfortable with herself sexually, she is able to “ignore [her] natural inclination to cover [herself up].”

Christian caresses Ana while holding her hands so that she is really touching herself. Since Ana has never masturbated, this is a first—learning to give
herself
pleasure. Her thoughts make it seem like he is in control: “I am a marionette and he is the master puppeteer,” but she’s the one doing the touching. Her pleasure is truly in her own hands.

Christian takes Ana from behind, standing up. He is physically in control but Ana has learned that there is a difference between submission and passivity: “I grip on to the sink, panting, forcing myself back on him.” Afterward, Ana acknowledges the depths of her own desire when she wonders if she will ever get enough of him.

The scene in the hotel bathtub (chapter 23) is a major turning point. Physically, Christian is in charge: “He clasps his hands on either side of my head and kisses me. Deeply. Possessing my mouth. Angling my head … controlling me
.”
Her response? “I’m kissing him back and saying I want you, too, the only way I know how.” He is in control and she knows it. She accepts that possession is “what he likes … [and] what he’s so good at.” At first, he holds her hands but later when she asks he lets go and pleads with her not to touch him. This is
huge
. Previously, Christian held Ana’s hands not because he liked restraining her (okay, not
only
for that reason), but because he has a phobia about being touched in certain places. Now, however, he can let go because he trusts her to respect his boundaries. She is no longer “out of control” during their sexual encounters—she has acknowledged her needs and can rein herself in enough to respect his needs as well. As before, there is no language about losing herself or being overwhelmed. She understands and welcomes what is happening: “I am starting to recognize this delicious tightening … quickening.”

How does Christian respond to these changes in Ana? When they’re back at his apartment (chapter 25) it’s
his
control that
“unravels,” and when he comes, he groans “incoherently.” Because Ana is meeting him in the giving and taking of pleasure Christian can let go and allow himself to lose control. She has also come to see the pleasure of BDSM, describing the feel of his thrusts as “punishing” and “heavenly” in the same sentence.

The climax of Ana and Christian’s sexual arcs come in the final sex scene, which takes place in the playroom, which Ana refers to now as the “Red Room of … Pain … or Pleasure.” Kneeling by the door, she is “excited, aroused, wet.” She no longer thinks his desires are something evil, to be changed: “This is so … I want to think
wrong
, but somehow it’s not. It’s right for Christian.” (And evidently for her, too, since she’s turned on and he’s not even there yet!) She gives herself over to Christian completely, recognizing that submission brings both of them pleasure. She is tied spread-eagle to the bed, totally vulnerable as in her dream/fantasy, blindfolded, unable to even hear his movements.

In the beginning of the novel, Ana equated Christian’s desires and need of control as being “in the dark” and pledged to save him by bringing him into the “light.” Now she has discovered that darkness
within herself
and learned to embrace it. Her desire while she is waiting is “dark and tantalizing.” When he begins to flog her, she is “dragged in to a dark, dark part of [her] psyche,” and realizes that she’s “entered a very dark, carnal place.”

Ana has come a long way from viewing the world in black and white. By opening her mind and body to new sexual experiences, she has come to see that love and pleasure come in many shades of grey.