Anastasia Steele and the Bondage of Bad Writing

I had heard about E.L. James' Fifty Shades of Grey, a New York Times bestseller and perhaps, also a cultural phenomenon. But proponents and detractors lost me immediately at the tagline “Twilight fan fiction,” and I never felt a desire to read it. Then a good friend of mine bought me all three books for my birthday with the plea that she wanted someone to talk about them with.

So, I read Fifty Shades of Grey and its two sequels, Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed. And I read them with an open mind, conscious of my friend’s desire to discuss them.

And I did not like them.

Perhaps it’s my own dark shadows from a past of emotional eating, but after I finished reading, I had the very same feeling of empty ickiness that always outweighs the fleeting satisfaction of pure consumption.

The writing and characters

For being main characters, you’d think 

the words "penis" and/or “vagina” would pop up 

at least once in any of the three books.

Nope.

The writing is bad. In fact, I would probably use terms like atrocious, cringe-worthy, and god-awful to describe it, which would be three synonyms more than the author could come up with than the words she used to describe Christian Grey’s personality.


E.L. James has woven her tale in a two-dimensional world in which her characters are “mercurial” and “infuriating” with smiles that “don’t reach [their] eyes” and pants that “hang on [their] hips” in a way that creates amazing sensations “…there.”  The descriptions are insipid, the dialogue is uninspired, and the prose is clunky. It all makes for very poor character creations.

Insisting your characters are intelligent and attractive is not the same as describing them thusly. Either the reader is lazy and just takes the author at her word, ignoring later events that might call that assertion into question, or the reader is continually frustrated by the inherent contradictions.

For example, we’re told that the female protagonist Anastasia Steele is self-assured, confident, and taking control of her sexual relationships, but her constant need for reassurance belies her complete insecurity about this sexual relationship and her value to her partner. You cannot paint your character as a duck and then set it to barking dismissing the contradiction as a merely “mercurial” trait. Contradiction alone does not make a character “complex” or “multi-faceted;” it makes the character malformed and exposes the writer as an amateur.

Also, I was left wondering if E.L. James has ever met a man. I say this only because it is painfully obvious that she cannot write men, and I often found myself picturing a bronze-haired butch lesbian when I was reading Christian's dialogue. Men and women do not inherently think alike or speak alike. Moreover, characters in a novel should each have a unique voice, so it was very distracting to re-read passages to determine who was speaking during those "emotional" discussions.

The relationship and the sex

Anastasia has a super-human ability to orgasm every time, 

on command, often after a jack-hammering. 

College would have been a lot more fun 

had I been blessed with her wünder-snatch.

I’ll preface this by saying everyone has their kinks, and God bless ‘em. I have nothing against sexual relations between knowledgeable, consenting adults. I do internally wrestle with the psychology of what might be considered the harder side of BDSM – namely the sexual gratification got by inflicting serious pain or injury (e.g. semi-permanent to permanent marking, scarring and blood-letting) and subjugation based on embarrassment and humiliation – because I can’t seem to wrap my brain around how those acts stemming from purely negative emotion and motivation can be considered mentally or physically healthy. Aside: If you want to open a dialogue about this with me, I’m more than happy to listen and discuss. But, I’m not going to wag a finger at anyone for his or her selection of 31 flavours.

My revulsion to the relationship between Anastasia and Christian Grey is borne of the horror I have to Anastasia shrugging her shoulders at Christian’s darker side outside the bedroom, continually excusing his bad behaviour because she’d rather have a stalker now hoping he turns into a boyfriend later.

And lucky for her…oh yeah, he never really changes. At least, not in the way that would make this relationship an equal partnership in love. Christian is still very much the control freak, monitoring her comings and goings, her interactions with friends, and by the end of the third book, the reader is expected to relinquish their own autonomy along with the protagonist with a collective dreamy sigh of, “That’s my Fifty.”

More than anything, this is what made me stabby.

This is classic abused-woman syndrome, and it doesn’t touch any of the physical violence that happens in the playroom. The sexual sadism is gray, like the main character, and only goes truly black in one catalyzing moment. There, Anastasia accurately declares that it is “fucked up” and disappears from Christian’s life for a millisecond to rationalize his behaviour on her own before going back to him after he vaguely promises to “try” to give her “more.”

Thanks for that. Girl power fist pump.

The sex itself is not really that scandalous. It’s also not that titillating. The descriptions aim at artful, but land somewhere between technical and cheesy with the author’s limited vocabulary and her reliance on Shift+F7. There’s dominance, submission, bondage, spanking, flogging, and sensory deprivation, but they all get short shrift in way of detail. In fact, the reader either has to have an imagination already in high gear or must do a little Googling to build a fantasy around the sexual encounters, putting this book squarely into erotica-light, along with V.C. Andrews, according to my scale.

Bottom line

You want a quick and easy read heavily peppered with erections and panting? By all means, read Fifty Shades of Grey. If you want more from your summer reads – emotional power, rock-hard realism, whip-smart dialogue, intellectual tickling – find a new playroom.


Addendum: I just got a few texts from my friend that got me the books. I hope she knows I'm not angry about reading them. I like reading, and I love taking recommendations from friends, plowing through the pages even if I don't ultimately enjoy the story.

There is certainly a long list of reasons why Fifty Shades sucks as an attempt at literature, but I don't mean to convey that this trilogy is completely devoid of value. For some, this book can be a satisfying form of escapism: a non-threatening, imaginative foray into previously untested sexual waters; a conversation centerpiece for a greater discussion about sex and relationships; a quickie thrill.


It's not créme brulée. It's Jell-O. Jell-O can never be créme brulée. But sometimes you just want Jell-O. Ain't nothin' wrong with that.