This is going to be my first ever book review. I’ve never done a book review before. I’ve always thought about doing it, but I frolic so much around books that the idea of sitting down and thinking critically about what I just absorbed would require of me huge discipline.
Thing is, this book meant a lot to me. So much that I cannot not say something about it.
Plot Overview
Out of all the romance books I've ever read, the Fifty Shades trilogy is the most beguiling one of all. Far from Lisa Kleypas’ lovemaking-in-the-carriage scenes or Jane Austen’s witty, passionate characters, our heroine, Anastasia Steele, is an equal mix of these powerful psyches, only younger.
Ana is a 21-year-old literature graduate who’s ready to go out to the publishing world. She’s also a virgin. She meets the handsome 26-year-old billionaire Christian Grey, who offered to get involved in an exclusive BDSM relationship with him.
During the first chapters of the first book, she was dumbstruck, intimidated, yet lured by his charms, repeatedly falling off balance in his presence. Not having a clue that she exudes the same “bewitching” effect on christian, the manipulative man invited her to sign a nondisclosure agreement for him to have complete physical control over her life. In exchange for Ana becoming his very own sex slave, the agreement seals the deal for him to put her health and safety, and eventually her happiness as well, above his own.
After learning Ana’s “lack of experience”, Christian became angry with himself for assuming otherwise. He began to take great care with how he treats and approaches Ana. The amount of "training" he did with her gradually transformed him into a man who's capable at loving, especially toward the end. Although Ana's world instantly changed the moment she met Christian, ironically Christian's the one who would eventually experience drastic changes in terms of character. I mean, he's dealing with a woman who's never had a boyfriend all her life. You can't just force the lady to give in to your kinky desires, nor can Ana expect Christian to understand what normal romantic relationships look like, since he's never done the "boyfriend thing".
Lots of sex and orgasmic trysts later, Ana slowly begins to see the Christian Grey hidden from the public as she unravels the dark past that makes him his dominating, often sadistic, yet melancholic “fucked up” self today. In the first book, we only see a glimpse of Christian's psyche that constantly needs to control. In Fifty Shades Darker, James revealed his haunting past.
Mass Effect
To me, what’s most compelling about James’ masterpiece is how the trilogy challenges sexism in our separatist culture today – especially with the recent wave of feminism. Not that I'm against gender equality, just that I'm a bit of a traditionalist when it comes to romantic relationships. Christian is the classic patriarch (and insists to be so) who's all manly man and takes pride in his role as a provider (insists so) while Ana loosely embodies the modern transition toward more flexible gender roles.
I know this doesn't contribute to the worldwide phenomenon that Fifty Shades is today, and I'm pretty sure E. L. James didn't intend on portraying the ideal social system when she wrote about the couple in fan-fiction forums. More than 10 million copies have been sold and still on demand for reprints every day since its publication. Due to its mass popularity, suddenly, women are talking about their deepest sexual desires openly with their girlfriends, and men can put away their Maxims and FHMs away to join their private conversations. For married couples who read the book together, it helps either in reviving a long-forgotten sex life or in furthering their sexual exploits.
Despite its vanilla quality for the average man's taste for porn, Fifty Shades has offered real perspective for men across first-world countries as they've long mystified female orgasm. Men now understands that just like themselves, women have desires and fantasies too. “It’s an invigorating book and encouraging for a man to really be uninhibited sexually and to really try pleasing his partner, because she really can have orgasms and just might really enjoy them,” said student Gern Blanston to International Business Times.
As an Asian 22-year-old girl, I’m more interested about how it will affect the women in Eastern cultures, which obviously will take a longer time to observe.
Why I'm Sold
I bought the books mainly because of my curiosity as to how this erotica-slash-romance has swept millions of women worldwide under their feet. The only thing I knew at the beginning was that it’s a product that grew out of fan-fiction. And so I waited and waited until the hype dies down, but it didn’t. In fact, there’s been talks about its film adaptation not long after the book has lingered on the New York Times bestseller list for weeks.
As I said, I ended up enjoying the books very much because I could really relate with the characters. I admire Ana’s intelligence (“smart mouth”, Christian Grey would say) and her quiet beauty tucked beneath her English novels, plus the fact that her name is where mine has its roots from (this is not a valid reason I know lol), and that I’m also dating a working guy who’s 6 years my senior while I'm graduating from college. Naive, yet possessing the modern female’s independent spirit, Ana is the epitome of the average man’s fantasy girlfriend (“Always so eager, Miss Steele,” Christian kept saying). Yes she's a virgin and all, but she’s far from shy to try new things, so adventurous to explore even the most dangerous places of her own sexuality, added to the fact that it's completely untouched before there was Christian Grey, giving and trusting the beautiful man she barely knows all of her soul despite knowing his twisted practices. Before, she never knew she could withstand spanking, much less enjoy it. “Yes, sir,” she kept agreeing to his vicious deeds, letting him grab her pigtails (up the way he wanted them to, of course) and hitting her rear simultaneously.
In spite of his twisted ways, I can still find the same degree of relatability with Christian Grey as with Ana. Christian is like Mars in human form, constantly in war with his inner demons. From the outside, his divine physique and godly power over his HUGE holding corporation Grey Enterprises are all too alluring for most women. Other than his kinky obsessions, he’s actually an honest, kind, faithful, trustworthy, resourceful, generous, and wise man. In return for Ana’s complete surrender, Grey is more than overjoyed to own all of Ana’s six first orgasms “and all of them belong to me,” he boasted. Taking a woman’s territory before anyone else does is like Christmas to a man’s ego. The I-belong-to-you-and-you-belong-to-me pleasure normally shared between couples is further saturated with Christian’s and Ana’s dominant/submissive relationship, which is why I think this refreshing book is a major boost for couples to be better at communicating with each other and become more open in talking about their wants and needs.
Submission?
Another thing I love is that trust is a big theme in Christian's character development. According to him, trust is the big glue that makes a dominant/submissive relationship to work. “Relationships like this [BDSM] are built on honesty and trust,” said Grey to Ana. “If you don’t trust me – trust me to know how I’m affecting you, how far I can how with you, how far I can take you – if you can’t be honest with me, then we really can’t do this.”
I can so feel this because I've always had trust issues with men. My boyfriend has been tolerant with me for a little over a year now, and I’m slowly opening up more to him. And again, this is just me, but I believe men were biologically designed to dominate and women to submit, so even though I tend to be distrustful of new people and situations and react to this distrust with a predominantly controlling attitude in life, deep inside there's this lingering longing to surrender all control. My theory is that every woman has, at least once in their lives, dreamed up a submissive sexual fantasy, and I also think it's precisely because we're living in such a feministic era that Ana's side of the Fifty Shades storyline has activated such primal instincts for us women and given us the permission to give in to this fantasy - it fulfills the modern woman's submissive desires. Why else would we feel this sense of guilt whenever we're publicly given bigger roles of power and authority in society, even though we worked our ass off? They even have a term for this phenomenon, i.e. the impostor syndrome.
Without someone she can trust to fully rely on, dependent upon, ask for things, provide for things, be completely honest with and still know she is loved, a woman can only fantasize some more – wherever her imaginations take her to believe in her worth beyond her will.
Have you read the books? What are your thoughts?
Love, Stace
