Fifty Shades: A Pro-Abuse Novel?

Fifty Shades of Grey is still in the news.  In fact, I was impressed to see that E. L. James's BDSM trilogy has already sold more copies than J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter!  Of course, Fifty Shades shows one story of sex between two characters...and we must be careful not to treat stories as if they're models for reality.  As with all good novels, Fifty Shades involves a descent into a dark place in order for the resolution of the story to emerge.  This doesn't make it an immoral book.  In fact, when writers like Alison Flood argue that Fifty Shades is pro-abuse, I wonder why they aren't arguing that Nabakov's Lolita is pro-child molestation, Chaucer's Miller's Tale is pro-objectification, and Shakespeare's Othello is a violent, racist, misogynistic read.

But then, Fifty Shades isn't "high culture" which means the "erudite" critics love to say it's immoral and desperately avoid parallels in Shakespeare.

The problem is that when sex is at the heart of a novel, it stops being a story and starts being dangerous.  But fiction is always dangerous!  If we take fiction and model ourselves on it, we're always in for problems.  The essence of a story is conflict.  And conflict is rarely 100% good.

Anyhoo, I'm thrilled to see that more and more people are talking about sex and trying new things in the boudoir, thanks to Fifty Shades.  And do check out Angela's fantastic article on the new Fifty Shades lifestyle magazine (no, really!) at the Go Deeper blog.