Fifty Shades of Literature

Hello everyone, and welcome to the first post of the blog. Why don't we start things off? Tonight's post is going to be a doozy.

Here we go.

Fifty Shades is Grey is the story of Bella Swan Anastasia Steele. Anastasia is a normal, average girl who meets and falls in love with the irresistibly dazzling high-school hottie billionaire and business tycoon Edward Cullen Christian Grey. She experiences an instant, shallow obsessive overwhelming attraction to his dazzling good looks, but Grey tries to push her away for her own good; for you see, Grey hides a deep, dark, terrible secret. Christian Grey is a vampire into BDSM!

The rest of the book details Anastasia and Christian's relationship after this shocking revelation... and that's it. Pages upon pages and chapters upon chapters of Anastasia going back and forth on whether she is horrified by Christian's predilections or attracted to him in spite of them. And sex; lots and lots of sex.

Now, I know I'm a bit late in jumping on the Fifty Shades bandwagon; there have already been numerous posts and discussions about the book, from debates about its anti-feminist themes to examinations of its apparently inaccurate (and dangerous) portrayal of the BDSM community. But then, that is the reason why I am here tonight. Obviously this book has provoked a reaction from its readers; people are reading and discussing it, and it has sold enough copies to become a New York Times bestseller. Does this reaction that people have to the book, this popularity that it has gained, qualify it as a work of Literature?

Now, now, put away the torches and pitchforks and allow me to explain myself. In this examination of what "Literature" is, it will be helpful to have an idea of "Literature" is not. I agree, Fifty Shades of Grey is not Literature; it does not deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as Literature. But what is it that makes this piece of fiction so non-Literary?

Of course, the most obvious answer is the writing style. Literature should have an elevated writing style, a weaving of words and imagery to create art upon the page. It is no secret that Fifty Shades of Grey started life as Twilight fanfiction, and one can see the evidence of this in the way it is written. This book has it all: a conversational writing style, an abundance of cliches, poor grammar, and confusing or misused descriptions and metaphors; Anastasia apparently has a bed made entirely of white iron - that must be uncomfortable to sleep in - and a door that can somehow be closed and yet not shut. She is apparently able to survive terminal velocity, while Christian is apparently the Quantum Man, able to not be in the room and in the room at the same time. And don't get me started on the way the author abuses the thesaurus to make her characters and her prose seem more intelligent than they are.

And what about the characters? In Literature, the characters are complex and multifaceted; they are people whose development  and characterization can drive the story as well as any kind of plot. While Fifty Shades of Grey has little in the way plot beyond the development of the main characters' romance,

"Romance"

the characterization leaves much to be desired. Christian Grey is little more than a charismatic sociopath who uses his charm and/or money to get his way in all things, but of course he is just messed-up because of his dark and troubled past; he just needs someone to love him and bring him into the light! Anastasia is no better than her stalker rapist lover; she is a petty, shallow, selfish, and whiny sociopath. She treats her "best friend"/roommate Kate like garbage through most of the novel, and can barely stand her when she shows a normal amount of interest in and/or concern for Anastasia's well-being. Anastasia has pretensions of intellectualism, but is too dense to recognize the significance of a quotation from Tess of the d'Urbervilles, which is supposedly her favorite novel. Finally, Anastasia apparently suffers from some form of psychosis; she treats what she calls her "subconscious" like it's a different person than herself, describing its comments and actions toward her as if she were talking about another character; she also has an "Inner Goddess" which is treated in the same way, as a character separate from herself in thought and action. We get no respite from her, since she is the viewpoint character, and every other character in the story is completely overshadowed by her and Christian's true love (see above).

So what about the themes of the book; all of this focus and "characterization" of the main characters' love must add up to something, right? The short answer is no. Throughout the book, the author tries to give her story literary merit by bringing in light and dark metaphors, but these metaphors never move beyond the obvious and cliche. And, of course, we have the rather disturbing undercurrent of anti-feminism running throughout the story. Even outside of the Dom/Sub relationship of Christian and Anastasia, women are viewed as only possessing value in their relationships with men. Anastasia's mother is silly for pursuing business ventures, and needs her husband to clean up after her "harebrained schemes". Anastasia getting a boyfriend is treated by everyone else in the book as her greatest accomplishment, much more important than her graduating college. Also, "normal" women apparently possess a "need-a-boyfriend gene".

...

I have absolutely nothing to say to that, so here is a picture of a silly puppy.

Deep breaths. Deep, calming breaths. Focus on the silly puppy.

So we can see that this book has no literary value whatsoever. The writing style leaves much to be desired, the characterization is shallow and annoying, and the themes are insubstantial and hold nothing of value to the readers. In fact, the book itself offers nothing of value to its readers beyond the gratification they may get from the numerous sex scenes. It is fluff; it is as literary "as cotton candy is nutritious", to borrow one of its surprisingly apt phrases. The only value it has is that it provides a benchmark for what "Literature" is by embodying everything that is not "Literature".

Of course this is all my opinion; what do you think? Is there any literary merit at all to be found in Fifty Shades of Grey? Am I too harsh overcritical in my assessment of what is, in essence, published Porn Without Plot? Should we stop analyzing Fifty Shades of Grey, and just let it fade away into obscurity?

Next time, I read Deborah Harkness' A Discovery of Witches and analyze the line between Literature and Genre Fiction.