Fifty Writers on Fifty Shades of Grey

by Lori Perkins

  But those goddesses are not Ana’s goddess.

  Ana’s goddess harkens back to a far earlier concept, albeit one that is derided as much as the patchouli people—Sigmund Freud’s concept of id, as part of his larger explanation of the unconscious, comprised of the id and the superego. The id is the part of us that is all about pleasure, sexual and otherwise. The id is the bad boy of our psyche—pushing us to satisfy basic urges, needs, and desires.

  Which, in Freud’s terms, is a Bad Thing.

  In Fifty Shades, however, it’s a very, very good thing. Ana’s goddess “sways in a gentle victorious samba,” even though Ana herself is, as we know from the first scene with Christian, awkwardly clumsy. Ana’s inner goddess doesn’t wear tie-dye or Birkenstocks; this bitch is decked out in sequins and stilettos, doing her Olympic pole vaults and cheerleader leaps with equal aplomb.

  Plus, Ana’s goddess isn’t only about the pleasure principle; she wants Ana to take charge. To be dominant, even if Christian is the Dom.

  So she sulks, and pouts, and attempts to be brave as Ana faces the redoubtable Christian.

  Ana’s inner goddess is everything that Ana wishes she could be, even though she’s never realized she had the wish in the first place. She is the inner voice that heroes and heroines of romantic fiction listen to when they are in doubt about their own desires—when they doubt those desires’ validity and rightness.

  That Ana’s inner goddess espouses positive, helpful action is what makes her a romantic fiction id—as contradictory as that might sound. In literary fiction, the inner voice often encourages self-destructive behavior: “Have another drink,” one might say, or “Go ahead and sleep with your husband’s brother.” Not self-affirming at all, but again voicing secret desires. In romantic fiction, however, the id helps vault the protagonist into positive action—usually falling in love—where the hero and heroine are too foreshortened by their own insecurities, issues, or whatever to allow themselves to take the action on their own. They need support to accomplish their ultimate happiness.

  There are numerous examples of heroines, in particular, who can only reach their Happily Ever After if they finally listen to the voices inside their heads, and not in a Three Faces of Eve or Sybil kind of way. In Jane Eyre, Jane escapes from Thornfield Hall and ends up with the Rivers family, two sisters and a brother who are perfect in every way. Too perfect. Jane knows she cannot accept second best by marrying St. John Rivers, no matter how foxy he is; she doesn’t love him, her soul yearns for Edward Rochester. And so, when she hears his voice inside her head calling for her, she doesn’t question it. She takes off, returning to Thornfield Hall where she finds she can at last be his equal partner (that he is now blinded and crippled says something about author Charlotte Brontë’s own sense of self-worth, but that’s a subject for another essay).

  These voices are a way for the writer to reveal the heroine’s innermost desires, but they aren’t the only way writers have for doing this. In many early romantic novels, the letter or the diary of the heroine is used to allow the woman’s feelings and thoughts to emerge unscathed from the unconscious. Many literary critics and scholars have noted the diary device in writers of early nineteenth-century literature, from Elizabeth Gaskell to Wilkie Collins to Charlotte Brontë’s own sister Anne. In Anne’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, for example, the book unfolds through a series of letters written from Gilbert Markham’s viewpoint, and then segues into a diary written by Helen Graham. Helen’s diary entries not only describe the events, but also Helen’s feelings about them, in a poignant, passionate way. Helen’s “diary” is her only outlet to express how she feels about the deterioration of her marriage, since she won’t allow herself to voice her opinion about what is happening because she feels as though she owes her husband that much respect. But even in the context of her own diary, Helen won’t put words to her own deepest desire. She edges close to what she wishes would happen, but doesn’t state it in so many words.

  Of course the best example of diary entry as manifestation of inner voice is in Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary. If Bridget had not expressed so much of herself within those pages, Fifty Shades—and other books where women get to be sexual, and insecure, and clumsy, and somehow entice an incredibly attractive man into their romantic midst—would never have happened.

  Bridget’s diary entries are more a superego/id hybrid, because Bridget herself has so many opposing wishes and desires within herself. She does want things, but she is equally adamant about what she does not want, which Ana’s inner goddess isn’t. For example, Bridget says, “I will not fall for any of the following: alcoholics, workaholics, commitment phobics, people with girlfriends or wives, misogynists, megalomaniacs, chauvinists, emotional fuckwits or freeloaders, perverts.” If Ana’s inner goddess had suggested that to Ana, that would have ruled Christian Grey out entirely, since his personality fits at least four of those categories. Bridget recognizes her own temptation, though, following that proclamation up with, “And especially will not fantasize about a particular person who embodies all these things.” Neither Ana nor her inner goddess are that conscious—literally—of how Ana’s manifestation of id is acting on her desires.

  Let’s return for a moment to Freud, and how he saw the role of the unconscious in guiding a person’s actions. Not to be so presumptuous as to dismiss him as entirely wrong, but Sigmund, you gotta lighten up a little—satisfying “basic urges, needs, and desires” is not a bad thing. Especially when it comes to women, who—to cast a huge, stereotypical blanket over an entire gender—tend to do for others rather than for themselves. “Basic urges, needs, and desires,” when satisfied in a positive way, means great sex (or great chocolate, but again, another essay).

  It wasn’t until authors of romantic fiction recognized that women’s “basic urges, needs, and desires” weren’t being met that readers got to meet inner voices like Ana’s inner goddess. Ana’s inner goddess knows what Ana really wants, and tells her in no uncertain terms.

  And what does Ana want? Well, she wants to fuck Christian Grey. Many, many times. And harnessing, so to speak, her inner goddess in the service of those wants means that Ana doesn’t have to feel ashamed—or much ashamed, at least—of her desires.

  Is it cowardly for Ana to appoint an inner goddess as the mistress of her desires and not speak for herself? Perhaps, but it also makes the book far more compelling. Ana can’t, but her inner goddess gets to dance the salsa, do pirouettes, merengue, sit in the lotus position, jump up and down (both with and without pom-poms), glow, pant, roar, plead, and fall prostrate after Christian has satisfied her.

  Who wouldn’t be better with a little more inner goddess waving pom-poms in her brain? Not the inner goddess who would whisper that it’s okay to have the dessert, you deserve it—that’s more like your Aunt Betty, who’s stuck in the house with the cats and the Diet Coke—but the inner goddess who would encourage you to explore what it is you really want. Want to get in a helicopter with a control freak billionaire? Sure! How about inserting silver balls up in your lady business because it sounds like it’d be fun to do? Hell, yeah! Or biting your lip, even though you know it makes that same control freak billionaire crazy? Heck, you want him crazy. Crazy for you, and therefore for your inner goddess, who is your real you.

  Where Freud was perhaps too reductive in his conception of the human psyche is in applying moral judgment on what the id, the ego, and the superego do for the conscious human mind. There are nuances here—fifty shades of nuance, to get cute about it—and castigating Ana’s inner goddess as merely being a conduit for satisfying Ana’s needs and desires is simplistic and lazy. Not that one would call Freud either simplistic or lazy; anybody who could be that many shades of fucked up himself is not simple. But his theories don’t take into account the inability of people—such as a certain Ana Steele—to articulate, on their own, what they really want.

  Ana’s inner goddess might be annoying at times—she certainly makes her voice h
eard on far more occasions than some readers might like—but it’s her inner goddess who can articulate what Ana wants to do.

  And when Ana gets to do what she wants, the results are very pleasurable. For Ana. For Christian. And for the reader.

  MEGAN FRAMPTON writes historical romance under her own name and romantic women’s fiction as Megan Caldwell. She is the Community Manager for the Heroes and Heartbreakers website (www.heroesandheartbreakers.com), lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband and son, and usually wears black. She can be found at www.meganframpton.com or at @meganf.

  Intermission

  LAURA ANTONIOU

  Fifty Shades of Holy Crap!

  (“AT LAST!” the longtime BDSM erotica author cried upon reading the news. “Finally, I see what people really want in their smut! Apparently I have been doing it all wrong. No matter. I will correct twenty years of my career by writing exactly what the public wants.” Her maniacal laughter echoed through her apartment as she furiously typed …)

  Book One: Fifty Shades of Sellout

  “Double Crap!” Tiffany extrapolated, as she realized her perfectly perky 37D breasts had gained another D overnight. “Now what will I wear to meet and interview Mr. Momzer Macher, the new President and CEO and CFO and C-something-O of the Ridiculously Huge Seattle Startup Company?”

  Sighing with frustration, the gorgeous blonde who didn’t actually know how naturally attractive she was, gazed at her mirror image and fingered the honey-gold waves of her naturally wavy hair. “Darn my much more interesting and pretty roommate for getting sick and leaving me to make these hard decisions! I know! I will wear that daring leather bustier that my gay BFF talked me into buying at that strange street fair he took me to in San Francisco! Gee, I wonder if he worked things out with that hunk he met that day. He said he was into leather, but when I asked him where to find a good purse, he just laughed.”

  She blinked her cerulean eyes at the memory and then went to get her fetching outfit. It was tight in all the right places and really emphasized her 37-24-36 shape, and the leather felt so stiff and hot and sexy against her alabaster skin! And how it molded to her perfect 110 pounds! How will I ever get through the night without fainting? she wondered as she strapped her tiny, delicate alabaster feet into her four-inch heels, deciding not to take the really high ones. Good thing I already threw up.

  At the party, everyone was in their fanciest clothes and the music was awesome and loud and there was dancing and great foods like chicken fingers and the little hot dogs in teeny buns and sushi and tapas and stuff. Tiffany, having never seen such wealth, such style, or such alcohol, despite being about to graduate from college, chose a cherry popsicle that had a fancy imported liquor in it, and was on her third when suddenly she saw … HIM.

  Like. OMG. There he was, so freaking hot. In his leather pants from Dolce & Gabbana and his black silk shirt and really expensive black tie and black jacket and black diamond stick pin through the really expensive black tie and his ink-black hair and jet-black eyes and his big feet in big black boots. Oh, he was so into black!

  “You’re Tiffany,” He murmured as he leaned in toward her, gracefully looking at her plunging cleavage and her heaving alabaster breasts.

  He was so tall! Even with her lithe 5’7” frame enhanced by those four-inch heels, He was at least a foot taller! And His piercing black eyes pierced her to her very soul.

  “I … I …” Tiffany stammered, letting her booze popsicle drip, drip, drip down her hand to splat, splat, splat on the floor. She bit her full, ruby-red lips in luscious lasciviousness.

  “I’m disgustingly rich and dominant,” He sneered dominantly. “You will be Mine!”

  “Oh, wow,” Tiffany seized. “Um. Wow. Okay. Sure. What does that mean, exactly?”

  “I have a checklist,” He said triumphantly while texting a URL to her. “Go to My webpage and fill it out, and tell Me whether you like, dislike, or are neutral about the three hundred activities and fetishes listed there, and whether you’ve done them before and with whom, and what you thought about it, and then rate them on a scale of one to ten on whether you’d like to do it now, tomorrow, next week, or after the Mayan Apocalypse.”

  “Um,” Tiffany coughed out, a delicate flush gathering on her porcelain features, her beautiful, full lips, her high, sculpted cheekbones, her delicately feathered eyebrows, and her oh-so-cute upturned nose. “But I’m sure I haven’t done anything on your list at all! Despite being an adult in 2012, having been through college in a very trendy urban area, I am still completely virginal and know nothing at all about kinky sex! I am beautiful, although I don’t actually believe that.” At this painful honesty, she blushed, stumbled, chewed her lip, and wiggled her ears in panic.

  His anthracite eyes brightened under His heavy, midnight brows and He gazed at her with an acquisitional hunger, like a Guy who hasn’t had anything to eat in days. And yet she could see some painful memory, some dark—dare she think black?—secret lurking behind those onyx eyes.

  “Then you’re really going to be Mine!” He thundered. “Because I Alone can teach you the gift of submission, give rise to your slave heart, grant to you the loving dominance of My Masterful Aggression, all tempered, of course, with rationality and with all due care and attention given to risk-aware negotiation. I will teach you to serve Me with your submissive soul, your passive power, your girly gushiness, train you to come at the snap of My Fingers and find true freedom in your complete subjugation to My Will. Yes … you will even learn … bad grammar.”

  “Triple crap!” Tiffany declaimed. “All that? But … how is that possible? It all sounds crazy! And yet … when I look into your charcoal eyes under that irrepressible lock of ebony hair, as I run my searching, trembling fingers across the steel buttons on your sable silk shirt, all I can think of is … Jesus Christ, I am so horny I could die. I think. But I don’t really know, because of the virgin thing? It’s a pity I was never exposed to sex education in school. Or owned a computer. Or knew how to work that Google thing.”

  Mr. Momzer Macher took her pale, shaking hand and led her gentle, undulating form away from the party into his private boardroom, where the table could be set up like a bed, and tumbled her back onto it.

  “I will teach you, little one,” He said with intrepid confidence in himself. “And you will be my prized little party girl, slave possession for all time. Just like the last seventeen subbies I had.”

  “Oh, quadruple crap!” she extremed, as He tore away her leather bustier with one hand and fell on her like a ravening wolf. A ravening black wolf.

  Book Two: Fifty Shades of WTF?

  Tiffany accepted the large package delivered by the uniformed messenger and added it to the pile inside the door. Already, she had a computer from the future, hand designed by Steve Jobs with more memory than any Apple computer available, boxes of flowers, trays from the Fruit of the Month Club, and mysterious objects from the Dildo of the Month Club, a complete, mint set of Sheena, Queen of the Jungle comic books (she had been a comic book major in school), and even more mysteriously, a BlackBerry instead of an iPhone, also from the future. Having just discovered the existence of email, Tiffany was learning all about the exciting new world of “cyber things.”

  “Jesus Christ, Tiffany,” said her prettier, much more interesting roommate, Plotitia Device. “Is this guy trying to buy you, or what?”

  Just then, Oprah popped through the door and squealed, “And you get a CAR!” at Tiffany, tossing her a set of keys. “From Momzer Macher. Bye now!”

  “Oh, holy crap,” Tiffany sighed. “I just don’t know what to do! I should probably return all this stuff, except I kind of need a car and I never owned a computer and the fruit is good for me, although He insists I eat the whole box whenever we’re together. I hate that almost as much as the way He keeps threatening to beat the shit out of me in His Purple Room of Punishment. Which I hate almost as much as the way He tracks me through this thing He tagged me with.” She tugged at the rad
io transceiver stapled to her ear. “And I hate that almost as much as the way He threatens any man I ever talk to and pretty much goes ballistic if I make any plans that don’t include Him.”

  “Call me crazy,” said Plotitia, “but he sounds kinda messed up. Maybe you should back off and go slower with this stuff.”

  “If only there was a way for me to understand His Desire to do such awful things!” Tiffany sniffled. She remembered how, a few days after their tremulous meeting, she had turned from restocking the expired toothpaste from China on the shelves of the Super 99 Cent Depot where she worked, and there He was. Momzer Macher, all tall and wide shouldered and narrow hipped, with His pants hanging off His narrow hips (He forgot to wear a belt that day) and all His black clothing and His inky boots and midnight hair and soulful dark eyes hiding some mysterious, anguished past. He looked down at her and sneered dominantly, “Do you have plastic cable ties? And bungee cords? And hemp rope? And cotton rope? And burlap sacks? And two-by-fours? And clothespins? And gimp hoods? And the trademarked Rabbit Pearl Vibrator, as seen on Sex and the City? Oh, and extra batteries?”

  “Aisle three,” she stammered, wondering 1) what on earth He wanted to do with all those things, and 2) why a gazillionaire was doing His own shopping at the Super 99 Cent Depot. Then she stumbled, bit her lip, fluttered her eyelashes, and wrinkled her nose.

  “When you do those things,” He said to her, leaning forward so she could smell the scent of Him, all clean, like He’d recently bathed, using soap, “I wanna do bad things with you.”

  “Oh, crapola deluxe,” she whimpered. Yet, little did she know then, in the Super 99 Cent Depot, just what “bad things” meant. Because later on, after she accepted His invitation to coffee, after she allowed Him to rescue her from getting drunk and making out with a guy, after she met His mom (but not really His mom, but she didn’t know that yet), He then showed her that darn contract and took her to His Purple Room of Punishment. Which was His fancy name for a fuck room with a revolving, round bed, mirrored ceiling with disco ball, and stacks and stacks of cheap-ass bondage materials, plus a well-thumbed copy of The Frugal Dom’s Guide to Kink on The Cheap.