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Authors: Lori Perkins
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book?
Why is Grey the new black?
• • • • •
F ADE IN :
Somewhere …
In
your
fantasy life—your place, present day …
Christian Grey’s long, tapered fingers lace his silky silver tie tightly around you, the weave from his tie imprints your flawlessskin. You inhale his freshly washed linen scent in a sharp intake of breath as his fictional persona imprints on popular culture and you anticipate the smart of his hand smacking your (roll fantasy sequence, it goes here).
• • • • •
D OES THIS AROUSE … your interest, Miss Reader?
Honey, take a number—these days we’re all “in the kink.”
Fifty Shades of Grey
hit the 20 million mark the week I’m writing this and author E. L. James is signing them from Comic-Con to Costco.
Never before has one throbbing manhood held a nation in such sexual thrall.
What is his hold on our collective carnality, uh, I mean, our imaginations?
Looking at it as a literary agent—one of fifty takes on
Grey—
my thoughts center on why this is happening. This is the fastest-selling book of all time, yet it might not have been published on its merits alone had it been submitted to an agency slush pile. I decided to look deeper at why the bondage-themed novel is spanking the bestseller list and sparking a publishing phenomenon. What is it about this book that hits the sweet spot: the tipping point where culture really pops?
Here are a few thoughts on why
Fifty Shades
really hits the G-spot:
It is a very fresh and modern tale.
Fifty Shades
tells an erotic story of desire and boundaries, love and dysfunction, trauma and trust issues. Anastasia Steele—who has never known a man’s touch—or noticed she has a clitoris—meets Christian Grey. When Mr. Grey’s steely gray gaze alights on Miss Steele, romance ensues. Guy meets girl. Girl is spirited to his millionaire man cave. Girl is deflowered, awakened, impassioned. Guy offers girl his hand in bondage.
We also get classic romantic tradition.
Girl with spirit and pluck meets man of property is ever a panty-peeling premise in the Victorian novel. Literature is riddled with submission/dominance themes. The very tales of literary heroines that
our
literary heroine, virginal Anastasia Steele, has been steeped in.
An expert on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century women’s novels, Susan Greenfield, calls this hot title
recycled literature
. Indeed,
Fifty Shades
revels in the classic romanticism of Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters, and the plot specifically references Thomas Hardy. Echoes of each reverberate through
Fifty Shades
like the convulsions Christian expertly wrings from Ana with those long tapered fingers … um, where were we?
Oh, yes, so Ana’s trio of literary heroines: Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Jane Eyre, and Elizabeth Bennet form a sort of
Sex and the City
–like posse for the virgin-turned-BDSM initiate. As she and Grey discuss their contract language and deal points to begin her new life as his submissive, Ana tells the reader, “[Austen’s] Elizabeth Bennet would be outraged, [Brontë’s] Jane Eyre too frightened, and [Hardy’s] Tess would succumb, just as I have.”
Anastasia Steele went out there an understudy … and she came back a star.
Steele and Grey have joined the all-star cast of literary couples. The S&M-crossed lovers were first conceived as Bella Swan and Edward Cullen, the
Twilight
duo written as fanfiction for the Twilight fandom. For the literary zeitgeist, we could say that as the erotic trilogy draws on its precursors’ influence, you start to see how
Fifty Shades
could be called Next Generation Jane Eyre or the literary lovechild of Lizzie and Darcy. We might call them the new Carrie and Mr. Big or something meets
Pretty Woman
(and that other rich corporate raider guy).
After all, these are the shades that launched a thousand ‘ships.
Tess of the d’Urbervilles
, referred to throughout the novel, put me in
Why is Grey the new black?
• • • • •
F ADE IN :
Somewhere …
In
your
fantasy life—your place, present day …
Christian Grey’s long, tapered fingers lace his silky silver tie tightly around you, the weave from his tie imprints your flawlessskin. You inhale his freshly washed linen scent in a sharp intake of breath as his fictional persona imprints on popular culture and you anticipate the smart of his hand smacking your (roll fantasy sequence, it goes here).
• • • • •
D OES THIS AROUSE … your interest, Miss Reader?
Honey, take a number—these days we’re all “in the kink.”
Fifty Shades of Grey
hit the 20 million mark the week I’m writing this and author E. L. James is signing them from Comic-Con to Costco.
Never before has one throbbing manhood held a nation in such sexual thrall.
What is his hold on our collective carnality, uh, I mean, our imaginations?
Looking at it as a literary agent—one of fifty takes on
Grey—
my thoughts center on why this is happening. This is the fastest-selling book of all time, yet it might not have been published on its merits alone had it been submitted to an agency slush pile. I decided to look deeper at why the bondage-themed novel is spanking the bestseller list and sparking a publishing phenomenon. What is it about this book that hits the sweet spot: the tipping point where culture really pops?
Here are a few thoughts on why
Fifty Shades
really hits the G-spot:
It is a very fresh and modern tale.
Fifty Shades
tells an erotic story of desire and boundaries, love and dysfunction, trauma and trust issues. Anastasia Steele—who has never known a man’s touch—or noticed she has a clitoris—meets Christian Grey. When Mr. Grey’s steely gray gaze alights on Miss Steele, romance ensues. Guy meets girl. Girl is spirited to his millionaire man cave. Girl is deflowered, awakened, impassioned. Guy offers girl his hand in bondage.
We also get classic romantic tradition.
Girl with spirit and pluck meets man of property is ever a panty-peeling premise in the Victorian novel. Literature is riddled with submission/dominance themes. The very tales of literary heroines that
our
literary heroine, virginal Anastasia Steele, has been steeped in.
An expert on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century women’s novels, Susan Greenfield, calls this hot title
recycled literature
. Indeed,
Fifty Shades
revels in the classic romanticism of Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters, and the plot specifically references Thomas Hardy. Echoes of each reverberate through
Fifty Shades
like the convulsions Christian expertly wrings from Ana with those long tapered fingers … um, where were we?
Oh, yes, so Ana’s trio of literary heroines: Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Jane Eyre, and Elizabeth Bennet form a sort of
Sex and the City
–like posse for the virgin-turned-BDSM initiate. As she and Grey discuss their contract language and deal points to begin her new life as his submissive, Ana tells the reader, “[Austen’s] Elizabeth Bennet would be outraged, [Brontë’s] Jane Eyre too frightened, and [Hardy’s] Tess would succumb, just as I have.”
Anastasia Steele went out there an understudy … and she came back a star.
Steele and Grey have joined the all-star cast of literary couples. The S&M-crossed lovers were first conceived as Bella Swan and Edward Cullen, the
Twilight
duo written as fanfiction for the Twilight fandom. For the literary zeitgeist, we could say that as the erotic trilogy draws on its precursors’ influence, you start to see how
Fifty Shades
could be called Next Generation Jane Eyre or the literary lovechild of Lizzie and Darcy. We might call them the new Carrie and Mr. Big or something meets
Pretty Woman
(and that other rich corporate raider guy).
After all, these are the shades that launched a thousand ‘ships.
Tess of the d’Urbervilles
, referred to throughout the novel, put me in
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