Erotic Fiction Finds Its G spot
The West Australian
Ros Thomas
Published: Saturday August 11, 2012
Section: Opinion

Who would have thought? Even the would-be Prime Minister has admitted reading Fifty Shades of Grey. (I hope Margaret Abbott gave him a good spanking for that!) In under  four months, one book of women’s erotica has gained such broad appeal, even the conservatives have dumped their inhibitions.

Sadly, I’m not sure I can talk dirty enough to explain this literary phenomenon. (Ok, I’ll try.) This novel is titillating in a lumpish kind of way. British housewife, E L James, real name Erika Mitchell might have the imagination of a deviant nymphomaniac, but her clumsiness ruined the sex for me.

I bet you blokes out there are tired of such excuses:  you already know this book comes with fringe benefits. I have a friend in London who works in banking and she says half the husbands on her trading floor are exhausted. Not from the GFC mind you, but from steamed up wives who’ve beaten them into horizontal submission. They can barely stay awake long enough to notch up an acquisition, at the same time nursing the carpet burns from too many mergers at home.

And I keep hearing the same stories here:  giggling footy mums telling wicked stories about the book that has revitalized their marriages. Rosy-cheeked nannas springing up and down the aisles at the supermarket while their husbands show up to golf unusually blasé about keeping score. This book has hit a hole in one.

No woman is ashamed to be reading erotic fiction anymore, or, more to the point, a novel containing really graphic sado masochistic sex. E L James, middle class former TV executive mother of two, was wise to insist on a nondescript cover for 50 Shades of Grey. That sober necktie on the front means you can be reading it nonchalantly on the bus ride home while secretly electrified at your heroine getting serviced in the back seat of her new Audi. (Might I add that the author not only rang a London garage to check sex in an Audi R8 was possible, but went and sat in one in the showroom to make sure.)

I happened to buy my copy several months ago in a lovely old Subiaco bookshop. I’d overheard two well-to-do sixty somethings in furious discussion at the counter with the equally animated book seller : ‘Why is it flying off the shelves?’ To which the book seller replied : ‘Because it’s about re-living the fantasy of first love’.

That was the kiss of hope. But I don’t think too many of us were deflowered in a dungeon by a megalomaniac fixated on bondage? Perhaps we should have aimed lower.

I don’t mind telling you I’ve read some porn in my time, for research purposes, of course, and most of it is rubbish. Melodramatic, overwrought and unintentionally funny. A bit like this book. (Hopefully not a bit like this column.) What fascinates me is why E L James has become a literary prodigy to rival Dickens – she has written the fastest selling paperback of all time.

So let’s take a little knee trembler through the annals of romance literature. Barbara Cartland, that froth of pancake makeup and tulle, was no less a sensation – as a young gossip columnist in the 1920’s, she was tickled pink (literally) to have her risqué society thriller published to acclaim at age 21. She went on to write 722 more runaway successes. No one ever admits to having read her, but she often claimed to be the world’s greatest writer of romantic confection. Perhaps she was.

For all her mascara and Pekingese, Barbara Cartland knew a thing or two about romance and she was adamant her leading ladies remained career virgins. E L James’ heroine Anastasia Steele is a virgin too, but unlike Ms Cartland, who set most of her stories in the 19th century, E L James is writing for now. Why then, does she choose for her virgin an alpha male autocratic predator who uses money and power to seduce her with his ‘red room of pain?’ And if we love that storyline so much, does that suggest liberated women today secretly want to be controlled, gagged, and dominated? Surely not? (Yes, yes, I know it’s consensual but let’s not forget this virgin doesn’t have the experience to know what she’s consenting to.)

Okay, so it’s about the sex then.  Erotic toyshops are suddenly sell outs and say they can’t keep up with the demand for handcuffs and shackles and any other rust-proof apparatus that needs a grease and oil change to keep it purring. Perhaps women are prepared to push their ‘soft limits’ after reading this book? Maybe we haven’t experimented enough?

If half the English speaking world is obsessing about this book, what was missing from our lives before the handsome bad boy Christian Grey came along? I think erotic fiction has finally found its G-spot. G for genre, a niche of its own. My mother’s generation had their bosom-heaving Mills and Boon’s, those now in middle age had Danielle Steele’s schmaltzy melodrama.  Generation X – me – and those growing up behind us? Until now, a dry spell. (Coincidentally, Mills and Boon was criticized in the 70’s for promoting the sexual submission of women to men, the very same formula at the heart of Fifty Shades of Grey).

Given the readership of this book is almost exclusively female, why aren’t men feeling left out? Because this story reaffirms the missionary position. Men on top. They have nothing to fear from any sudden renaissance in women’s erotica either, because in this case at least, it’s not about equal power in the bedroom. It’s about that ingrained female fantasy of ‘being taken’, of yielding to a dominant male, by virtue of being irresistible. Our heroine here has no ambition to crash through the glass ceiling, she spends most of her encounters flat on her back looking up at it. Her lover might be kinky, but he’s a slave to her satisfaction. No wonder womens’ libidos are quickening.

E L James has earned her notoriety from exploiting  a gap in the market, just as JK Rowling did with magic and Harry Potter. But unlike most 21st century fictional role models, the book’s heroine, Anastasia Steele, is no femme fatale, no James Bond-style Pussy Galore. She might be intelligent, but she’s also naïve and insecure and too willing to being taken for a ride. Shackled to a bondage swing.

It’s still true that few of us would want to be seen dead reading a romance novel, but if you insert a fetish or some S & M, it has suddenly become acceptable, if not cool, to stretch the bounds of literary escapism with a medieval rack and some rope.

Smart women don’t feel pathetic discussing this novel either – the porn gives it an edge, but deep down it’s really just a love story twisted to suit modern tastes, just as the Twilight series gave paranormal  romance a shot in the arm, with lovers masquerading as vampires.

So are men reading this book? Apart from Tony Abbott? None of the ones I know are, they’re just grinning smugly that their wives are keen to try a spot of method acting.

So, in the spirit of second honeymoons, I have fished out my crumpled nurses uniform from the bottom drawer and rifled through my lover’s wardrobe. I’ve found his old school tie, some horsey chaps and a riding crop from the garage and I’ve hidden them under my pillow. He’s in for a big surprise tonight. Let’s hope that wipes the smile off his face.