Fifty Shades of Grey

Rarely does pulp fiction—mass-marketed paperbacks that deal in racy or sensational topics and are expected to be read by a broad audience—become the object of copious critical and cultural analysis, yet that’s what has happened with Fifty Shades of Grey. The book has inspired numerous articles and essays in scholarly journals, as well as competing arguments about what the book suggests about women’s current cultural situation. There are entire books about Fifty Shades of Grey intended to facilitate and expand the sometimes-heated discussions the story seems to generate. All the conversations and critique make sense. When a book rife with sex rises to the level of popularity Fifty Shades achieved, especially among women, discourse is necessary.

Much of the critique concerns assessments of why the book is so popular. In the Newsweek article “Working Women’s Fantasies,” Katie Roiphe argued women readers can access sexual boundary-crossing inside the safe narrative of romantic love (Roiphe, Katie. “Working Women’s Fantasies.” Newsweek, 16 Apr. 2012). In most stories considered “romantic,” whether in romance novels or on screen, love comes before sex, or at the very least, sex is secondary to love. In Fifty Shades, the sex and sexual tension between Christian and Ana comprises most of the book. Ana wants love, but she mostly gets incredibly good sex and multiple orgasms. Because she mostly wants love, her character takes the reader’s hand and walks her safely into something women have long been unable to do freely without stigmatization: have sex without love. Roiphe further argues that women fantasize sexually about submission for similar reasons. When submissive, women don’t have to claim responsibility for sexual desires and actions. Sexual submission also gives women a break from the exhausting work of equality.

Roiphe’s article received much backlash. Writers argued women don’t fantasize about submission as an escape from how hard they work to get more equal positions of power but because women have more freedom to sexually experiment. Besides, at least one argued, men fantasize about submission too.

Many researchers and writers are interested in what the book’s popularity means about women today. Some say Fifty Shades of Grey reflects heterosexual women’s ambivalence about men and sex in an era when systemic sexism still contributes to economic and cultural power structures. Consent culture assumes heterosexual women are either consenting or not consenting from an equal playing field as men. It assumes women have spent their lives with a similar agency in sex as men. In reality, women continue to wrestle with their desires and fears when it comes to sex in ways men don’t. According to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, commonly known as RAINN, one in six women are victims of sexual assault and rape (“About Sexual Assault.” RAINN, 2022). Additionally, 8 out of 10 of those assaults were perpetrated by someone the women knew. (“Perpetrators of Sexual Violence: Statistics.” RAINN, 2022). For heterosexual women, then, danger is often tied up in sexual desire. Fifty Shades of Grey creates a framework where women can escape this ambivalence: They can experience both desire and danger, and it’s safe because there is literally a contract for consent.

Debate about the book also centers on Christian’s toxicity. His controlling behavior stretches beyond the boundaries of BDSM. He tracks and stalks Ana, tries to limit her social interactions, and demands she fulfill his need for her to have almost no autonomy. These are all behaviors of an emotionally abusive man in an emotionally abusive relationship. Some writers suggested that the book uses BDSM as an excuse for abuse and that Fifty Shades eroticizes the abuse, not just the sadomasochism.

Much has also been said about the surprising success of a book so frequently critiqued for its quality. Book reviews often note the bad writing. Entire articles are devoted to the “worst bad quotes” or “laughingly bad” writing from the book. The book is sometimes even used to teach aspiring novelists what not to do. Some have expressed concern, though, that the backlash about the writing veers into mean-spirited and at times sexist territory. The idea that the book is “mommy porn,” for example, belittles and stereotypes the Fifty Shades trilogy’s millions of readers. The romance genre is notoriously considered less important than other genres of writing, almost certainly because it concerns “women’s interests,” i.e., the domestic sphere of love and sex. Yet, romance and erotica are the highest-selling genre in the publishing industry, and E. L. James is one of the highest-earning authors in the world.