Fifty Shades of Grey: A Provocative Tale In More Ways Than You’d ThinkPsychology in Every Day Life

E. L. James’ racy bestseller Fifty Shades of Grey has been called an amusing, romantic tale of a woman’s (Ana Steele) exploration of sexual desire that has captured the interest and imagination of over 19 million readers. But, is there something more to the subject matter of this racy novel that has led to its huge success and the making of a movie? On the surface, its success suggests that despite women’s social advance, they still fantasize about being swept off their feet by a powerful, handsome and wealthy man (knight in shining armor) who makes all their dreams come true. This fantasy, along with the novel’s raciness,  and also the complicated relationship between heroine Ana Steele and Fifty Shade’s hero Christian Grey, seems to tap into an archetype of women that persists no matter their social advancement.

From the book’s huge success, we might think that this was the first racy novel ever written. But, racy novels have existed for hundreds of years. They are called sensation novels. Their themes often consist of women longing to be rescued from their dreary lives by powerful men who promise them access to pleasures, rights and freedoms typically enjoyed by men.

Sensation novels surfaced at the end of the Victorian era. Social changes going on at the time, such as reform in divorce procedures, tabloid journalism, public education and social anxiety over women’s sexuality and emancipation led to the popularity of these novels. Sensation novelists penned stories that made penetrating observations about an ongoing social or psychological problem of the time. The great disparity between men’s and women’s rights often took center stage. The stories often involved strong, daring women who rebelled against a repressive society by exploring their sexuality. Sadly, the stories always end in the woman’s downfall and public shame for having stepped outside of her social role. The fallen woman as the moral of the story was used to suggest the need for a new cultural standard that gave women the same rights as men, especially in the sense of self-expression.

Fifty Shades of Grey is a contemporary sensation novel. And, as such, it can be likened to the sensation novels of the past, even though I cringe to make this comparison with the great classics, like  D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Gustav Flaubert’s Madame Bovary and Nathanial Hawthorne’s Scarlett Letter of the day. And, just like Hester Prinn, Lady Chatterley and Emma Bovary, Ana Steele is seeking unbridled self-expression of body, heart, and mind through powerful men. But, sadly, these heroines usually end up with a frog who turns out to be quite dangerous to their mental and physical health. These fantasy lovers have a chink or two in their armor. Certainly, this is  the case with Christian Grey, who no doubt the author has fashioned after the corrupt, beautiful, worldly, and rich young man of the 1945 film, The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Christian Grey has fifty shades of a singular sado-masochistic character flaw to sexually possess, control, dominate, and debase women. And, whom does such a man go after to fulfill his warped, sociopathic version of romance? He seeks impressionable, unworldly, insecure and submissive women like Ana Steele. She’s an unassuming beauty of indistinct personal agency. She doesn’t even know there’s an underside to her, until she meets up with it through Christian Grey. Ana is unable to resist being pulled into a passionate, physical relationship of control, submission and domination with him.

There’s little difference in the emotional makeup between the Victorian women of the classic sensation novels and Fifty Shade’s Ana Steele. For the most part, these women are passive-dependent (codependent) women who need men to justify their existence.

Beneath the racy story line, Fifty Shades of Grey seems to make a social and psychological statement about women’s conflicts about their emancipation thus far. We can surmise from the passive-dependent prototype of woman (Ana Steele) who 19 billion women are connecting with that women feel ambivalent, at the least, about their sexual freedom and social advance. This intrapsychic conflict doesn’t surprise me, as women’s emancipation was bound to come with some anxiety about now having the same stresses of men. This by no means suggests women want to go back to the Victoria era, only that the pressures of sexual and social freedom bring new problems for which they may have been unprepared.

What troubles me most about Fifty Shades of Grey is the pathological character of its hero and heroine, and E. L. Jame’s immature prototype of gender relations (sado-masochism). I’ve treated many women like Ana Steele throughout the years, and they rarely leave such relationships mentally and physically unharmed. In fact, most of them are so emotionally wounded that they are unable to trust that healthy love can exist. Additionally, the Ana Steele of our day is often eating-disordered, suffers very low self-esteem and her self-defeating behavior makes her vulnerable to becoming an object of other people’s desires. Hence, the fantasies engendered by the glamorizing of the relationship between Grey and Steele should not fool us as to their psycho-pathology. No matter how you look at it, Christian Grey is a textbook malignant narcissist with sociopathic tendencies and Ana Steele is a passive dependent, masochistic personality.

All that being said, I’m led to ponder the relevance of Fifty Shades as today’s sensation novel and how it relates to the classics of the past. It may be that, as in the Victorian era, we too are socially anxious about women’s sexuality and emancipation that has led to the book’s huge popularity. At the least, James taps into women’s strong psychological conflicts about freedom versus domination.

I hope you liked today’s post. If so, please let me know by selecting the Like Icon that immediately follows. You can also Tweet or Google +1 today’s post to let your friends know about it. Warm regards, Deborah.

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