Andrew reads Fifty Shades of Grey. Do not expect an objective analysis. Read at your own risk, although I tag for common subjects of concern and will tag for anything else you'd like. Butthurt and marriage proposals should be directed to the askbox. So should corrections. I make mistakes too.
Fifty Shades of Grey is the first book in a trilogy of erotic romance novels by E.L. James. The second and third books are Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed, respectively.
The Fifty Shades trilogy has its roots in a Twilight fan fiction called "Master of the Universe", also written by E.L. James. She wrote the fic under the rather charming alias of Snowqueens Icedragon and, when she realized how popular it was, decided to capitalize on her success by changing the characters' names and descriptions and publishing the book as original fiction.
E.L. James says on her website that she is a "TV executive, wife and mother-of-two based in West London." and that "[s]ince early childhood she dreamed of writing stories that readers would fall in love with, but put those dreams on hold to focus on her family and her career. She finally plucked up the courage to put pen to paper with her first novel, Fifty Shades of Grey."
About the blog
Fifty Shades of Why's goal is to tear the Fifty Shades trilogy apart. ("Edit" or "comment upon" are too gentle of a way to phrase it.) It would be nice if we all learned a bit about writing while we were doing it, too.
The blog is strongly influenced by Dana's Twilight snark blog, Reasoning with Vampires. If you like blogs of a sort similar to Fifty Shades of Why, you should give Reasoning with Vampires a look. It's very quality.
About the blogger
You can call me Andrew. That's not my name, but that's not really the point.
Frequently asked questions
Q: You're an asshole.
A: That's not a question. Thanks, though.
Q: Do you even have a life?
A: It depends on who you ask.
Q: You're only deconstructing someone else's work because you're too shitty of a writer to produce a novel of your own. You're just jealous, man.
A: Nope. I’m currently working on my third novel. I'm not going to pass judgment on whether I'm a better writer than E.L. or vice versa, because a) I'd feel weird doing that and b) good writing has more dimensions than a simple continuum with 'good' at one end and 'dreadful' at the other. However, I will say that I am far from jealous, and that if I had E.L.'s writing skills I would probably cry myself to sleep nightly.
Q: Why are you doing this?
A: I would love to say that my motivations for running this blog are pure and noble and that I want to educate the public about writing and be constructively critical and learn lots about how to avoid writing mistakes. I can't say that, though.
I'm in this for shits and giggles, pretty much.
Though one can learn a lot about writing by taking apart something someone else has written, no matter how good or bad that something is, if you or I learn anything it'll probably be a happy coincidence. A happy coincidence buried amidst shits and giggles. Sounds lovely, no?
If by 'why are you doing this' you meant 'why are you snarking', well, I don't have much of an answer for you except that it runs in my father's side of the family.
Q: What fonts do you use?
A: All of the fonts in the blog came default with the blog layout. The ones in the image are Courier New for the text and Arial for the comments. The older posts use Agent 'C' by Carl Leisegang for the comments. Courier New and Arial come with Windows computers, and Agent 'C' is free on dafont. You can download it there if you want.
Q: Are you going to do Fifty Shades Freed and Fifty Shades Darker as well?
A: I'm not sure yet. I don't know where I'll be in life when I finish Fifty Shades of Grey, since it's a laborious process and I have a lot going on IRL at the moment. I may or may not do Fifty Shades' sequels, depending on if I have time and how sick I am of E.L. James' shiteous writing then.
Hope you're doing all right. It's been a while since you posted, and I know life is tough right now.
I'm very, very busy with school and am super tired with a result. I haven't forgotten about this blog, but I've kind of had to take a break whether I wanted to or not.
Oh god. Why didn’t the book just end at the epilogue? Even the epilogue was too much. E.L. is so invested in these characters and this story that she just can’t stop writing things about them. I don’t want to harsh her mellow, even if she stole the characters and most of the story from the Twilight series and the rest of the story from Pretty Woman and Secretary, but, you know what? Just because she wrote it doesn’t mean she had to include it in the book. Like, if she absolutely had to get this shit out there somehow and she was so into writing about these characters, why not write a whole collection of supplemental material and put it into a nice anthology book with a list of characters and statistics and a timeline for the fans to buy? This franchise was already making so much money that it would have been an obvious choice.
Ugh. Anyway. Christian’s in his office, thinking about how he doesn’t want to golf with his personal trainer even though he has to play golf with all his various business associates. E.L.’s written Christian-voice is distinct from her Ana-voice, something for which I have to give her credit, but also, my god, I hate the way Christian thinks. It’s very dry and pretentious-sounding in a way that makes him sound like an uncool 17-year-old trying desperately to sound like a troubled, budding genius.
“The sobering truth is that the only thing to capture my interest recently has been my decision to send two freighters of cargo to Sudan.” WHAT DOES THIS COMPANY DO??? E.L. never fucking decided. It’s just a Rich People Business, which started out as a telecom company in the first book but then morphed into a shipping and ship- and airplane-manufacturing company in the second book, but it also funds hair salons and lumber companies and…oh, who cares. It’s all bullshit anyway.
“I glance at my schedule and reach for the phone. Oh, Christ! I have to endure an interview with the persistent Miss Kavanagh for the WSU student magazine. Why the fuck did I agree to this? I loathe interviews—inane questions from inane, ill-informed, vacuous idiots.” Oh hell no. Oh hell fuck no. I do not want to read this. I don’t at all want to know what Christian was thinking when he met Ana. I care about this so little that it’s a negative number. Also, why would an extremely busy multibillionaire agree to an interview with some twenty-something from a college newspaper? That’s the most unrealistic thing in this series after the thing where Ana was able to withdraw 5 million in cash from Christian’s bank account.
Christian’s irritated that Ana’s coming instead of Kate. Apparently, Kate’s dad owns Kavanagh Media, and Christian agreed to the interview because he wanted her dad to owe him a favor.
““Show her in,” I mutter, aware that I sound like a sulky teen but not giving a fuck.” I hate Christian even more now that I’m getting to see his point of view. I didn’t know it was possible to hate him more.
As you may remember from the first book, Ana trips on her way into Christian’s office and he helps her up.
“Clear, bright-blue, embarrassed eyes meet mine and halt me in my tracks. They are the most extraordinary color—guileless, powder-blue—and for one awful moment, I think she can see right through me. I feel. . .exposed. The thought is unnerving. She has a small, sweet face that is blushing now, an innocent pale rose. I wonder briefly if all her skin is like that—flawless—and what it would look like pink and warmed from the bite of a cane. Fuck. I stop my wayward thoughts, alarmed at their direction. What the fuck are you thinking, Grey. This girl is much too young.” E.L. hasn’t introduced a main character in so long that I had forgotten exactly how pretentious and purple her descriptions are.
“A nervous, bashful, bookish type, eh? She looks it; hideously dressed, hiding her slight frame beneath a shapeless sweater and an A-line brown skirt. Christ, does she have no dress sense at all?” What a jerk.
Ana’s flushed like seven times already. Christian keeps thinking about how unassertive and “submissive” she seems and having sexual thoughts about her. I’m not enjoying reading this.
Ana fumbles setting up her archaic mini-disc recorder because she’s so anxious. “As she grows more and more flustered, it occurs to me that I could refine her motor skills with the aid of a riding crop. Adeptly used it can bring even the most skittish to heel.” Yeah, reading this from Christian’s point of view is about five thousand times more unpleasant than reading it from Ana’s was. She was all ‘wow he’s so hot I am so nervous this is so awkward’ while he’s more ‘I look down on this girl in almost every way but she’s hot so I also want to injure her sexually.’ Great.
“Stop being such a shit, Grey.” At least he knows he’s doing it.
Christian realizes that Ana didn’t do any background work for the interview and disapproves. Unfortunately, I’m with him on that one – Kate should have given Ana better notes, and Ana should at least have bothered to Google Christian and read his Wikipedia page.
“What a fucking dull question. Not one iota of originality. It’s disappointing.” I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Christian Grey is such a tool.
Blah blah. Interview. Christian spends the whole thing smugly talking about how powerful and rich he is and having thoughts like “Yes, okay, I admit it. She’s an alluring little piece.” Ugh. Like, it’s okay to find someone attractive or to have sexual thoughts about them, but the way Christian thinks about Ana as an incompetent piece of meat with convenient fuck holes is not okay. Everything Ana says and every movement she makes becomes something else for Christian to fantasize about.
“She sounds like a rich kid who’s had all she ever wanted, but as I take a closer look at her clothes—she’s dressed in Walmart, or Old Navy possibly—I know that isn’t it. She hasn’t grown up in an affluent household. I could really take care of you. Shit, where the fuck did that come from? Although, now that I consider it, I do need a new sub. It’s been, what—two months since Susannah? And here I am, salivating over this brown-haired girl. I try a smile and agree with her. Nothing wrong with consumption—after all, it drives what’s left of the American economy.” Mmmmm, delicious capitalism. It’s much more appealing when you’re at the top of the upper class, isn’t it.
Ana asks if Christian is gay. “How dare she! I have to fight down the urge to drag her out of her seat, bend her across my knee, and spank the living shit out of her, then fuck her over my desk with her hands tied tightly behind her back.” Ooh, he’s a homophobe as well as a misogynistic rapist.
“She shouldn’t be driving in this weather, but I can’t forbid her. The thought irritates me.” If you have thoughts like this, please talk to a therapist about them.
Christian creepily touches Ana’s neck as he’s helping Ana put her coat on to see if he “affects” her. He’s so into Ana that, as soon as she’s left, he calls Welch to have him do a background check on her. Dude, not cool.
Creepy! A few comments: I can’t believe Ana has a 4.0. I guess it’s easier to do that when you aren’t in a single club or campus group and don’t use the Internet for anything but homework because you don’t know how to socialize like someone of your generation (or really at all, honestly). I’ve also never met someone named Robbin with two Bs, but that doesn’t mean such a person doesn’t exist.
Christian rereads the background check repeatedly over two days. He can’t stop thinking about her, so he goes to Clayton’s to see her again. I hate him so much. Like, if he was so into her and wanted to see her again, he shouldn’t have stalked her, he should have, oh, I don’t know, asked her to email him a copy of the article when it was published, and then tried to start a conversation on the email. At least, that would work if Ana had her own email address – which she didn’t before he got her one, even though pretty much every college ever will assign you an university email address before you arrive. (Not sure how that one worked. I guess E.L. hasn’t been to college in decades, so she wouldn’t have known.)
“I’ve never actively pursued a woman before. The women I’ve had understood what I expected of them.” Oh, that’s right! Christian didn’t try to contact Ana in a normal, non-creepy way because he too has no social skills. That’s something to work on in therapy if you’re unwilling to talk about your Big Fictional Traumatic Past.
Speak of the devil. “I haven’t mentioned her to Flynn, and I’m glad because I’m now behaving like a stalker. Perhaps I should let him know. I roll my eyes—I don’t want him hounding me about his latest solution-based shit. I just need a distraction. . .and right now the only distraction I want is working as a salesclerk in a hardware store.” Buddy. Absolutely talk about this with your therapist. Behaving like a stalker is bad.
“It takes me all of three seconds to spot her. She’s hunched over the counter, staring intently at a computer screen and picking at her lunch—a bagel. Unthinking, she wipes a crumb from the corner of her lips and into her mouth and sucks on her finger. My cock twitches in response. Fuck! What am I, fourteen? My reaction is fucking irritating. Maybe this adolescent response will stop if I fetter, fuck, and flog her. . .and not necessarily in that order. Yeah. That’s what I need.” Oh my god. Go home, jack off, and figure out a reasonable, respectful way to initiate conversation with this woman. Or, even better, since you and I both know you don’t know how not to abuse the people you sleep with, go home, jack off, then talk to your therapist about Ana while staying very far away from her.
He stares at various parts of Ana’s body while she leads him around the store helping him find hardware store supplies she doesn’t realize are for bondage purposes – “long legs,” “perfect tits,” “fantastic ass,” et cetera.
“I could just ask her out for dinner. Like on a date? Would she come? When I glance at her she’s examining her knotted fingers. She can’t look at me. . .this is promising.” I hate this because I’ve just read three whole Fifty Shades of Grey books and already know where it’s going.
Blah blah, coveralls, ~electric~ fingertip touches, blah blah blah. You all remember this from the first book, right? I’ve kind of blocked it out, but it’s just as unpleasant this time around.
Christian agrees to come back to Portland so Kate can have someone take his picture for the school paper. Christian checks out and tells Ana he’s glad she came for the interview instead of Kate.
“That’s all. . .for now. Thank you, thank you, thank you for reading. E L James”
It might be interesting to see you do a run-through commentary of a not-awful book... maybe one of the ones that are considered quite timely right now, like 1984 or Fahrenheit 451? Not sure if that would interest you though.
Hmm, that could be interesting. It’d also give me a chance to read some of those books they make everyone read in public high school, which I never attended.
“My sweater is scratchy and smells of new. Everything is new. I have a new mommy. She is a doctor. She has a tetscope that I can stick in my ears and hear my heart. She is kind and smiles. She smiles all the time. Her teeth are small and white.” Oh my lord. There are six entire pages of this baby-speak first-person prose. I’m not sure I can handle it. I’ll skim it for you all, because I’m just that nice.
Grace has Christian help her decorate the tree. “Orn-a-ments. Orn-a-ments. My head says the word. Orn-a-ments.”
Young Christian is relieved that Grace – New Mommy – only touches his hair.
“I don’t talk at all. I have no words. I have words in my head.” I don’t know what feeling E.L. is trying to make me feel right now, but all I’m feeling is discomfort at how hard she’s pushing the whole look-how-adorable-and-heartwrenching-this-abused-child shtick.
“I smack Lelliot when he is mad at me. New Mommy is mad at me if I do. Lelliot does not smack me. Lelliot is scared of me.” Grace and Carrick, in this little story, seem like very kind and gentle parents, but, oh my god, why have they not found this child a therapist?
Grace plays the piano for Christian and Elliot.
“I have a stock-ing. It is red and it has a picture of a man with a red hat and a big white beard. He is Santa. Santa brings presents. I have seen pictures of Santa. But Santa never brought me presents before. I was bad. Santa doesn’t bring presents to boys who are bad. Now I am good. My new mommy says I am good, very good. New Mommy doesn’t know. I must never tell New Mommy. . .but I am bad. I don’t want New Mommy to know that.” I don’t know how much more of this I can stand. Parts of it are familiar to me as a survivor, but it’s all tainted with this feeling that E.L. wrote it because she really, deeply enjoyed Exploring the Psyche of an Abused Child for Fun and Profit, and I am not down with that.
Christian gets a toy train, plane, helicopter, and car. E.L. writes “helicopter” in the list twice, though. It’s a remote-control helicopter.
The story ends there. There’s not any kind of progression in it. E.L., you had six pages. You know that’s long enough to write a short story with actual change or meaning to it. Like, come on. You’re writing a short story about a very young abuse survivor’s first Christmas with his adoptive parents. It would be so easy to write an emotionally impactful, conclusion-having short story with that premise. But did you? No. You just wrote in baby-talk for six pages, providing a slight amount of insight into early Christian’s thoughts but not much else. Nice try, but you struck out.
I'm gonna miss your readthroughs and comments but I can understand how you'd be sick of these books. Any plans for this blog now that it's all over?
I plan on watching/commenting on the movies at some point, but other than that I am not sure what to do with the blog yet. I read a fair amount and, because of what I’m studying in college, watch a lot of movies, shorts, and documentaries. I could start posting about those if you all were interested.
are you going to review Grey, the one from Christian's POV? sorry, you might have answered this before, but i can't find it
I’m not sure. I would consider it if I could find a PDF of it somewhere online, but right now I don’t have a copy. I’m also starting to get sick of Fifty Shades books.
This author’s note begins “I am aware that today you cannot walk into an American bank and withdraw five million dollars.” Okay, good, at least she knows.
So, how’d Ana get the money? Christian called the bank, swore at the manager, and threatened to move his accounts to a different bank. E.L. includes a transcription of this phone conversation. She obviously wrote it with the intention of including in the actual book but which her editor, or someone else who didn’t want her to waste time and space with it, made her leave it out.
The fact remains that, even if you could talk your bank into letting you withdraw 5 million dollars from your husband’s bank account with an outdated driver’s license that gave no evidence that you were married to him and no other I.D., a bank simply would not have that much money on hand to pack up and give to you in half an hour. I don’t find that realistic. Ana would absolutely have had to wait days to weeks for that money to get to her. And, since it would have taken up a lot more room than two duffel bags, there would probably have been some kind of armored car situation going on…basically, that whole 5 million dollars thing was implausible on several different levels, and I think it was lazy of E.L. to write it and condescending of her to assume that her readers would not realize it was so implausible.
It’s May 2014 – three-ish years after Christian and Ana first met. Ana’s at her and Christian’s new house. She’s lying out in the yard, feeling utterly content. She mentions living in the moment, but the story immediately shifts to a flashback…of a sex scene with Christian flogging her while she’s pregnant, blindfolded, and tied up. Like, “The strands of the flogger skim across my swollen belly at an aching, languorous pace.” Yikes. That does not sound safe. You’re not really supposed to whip/flog/whatever someone’s stomach during BDSM play, even if they’re not pregnant – there are delicate, important organs under there!
Then, another flashback: Christian and Ana cuddling while she’s pregnant with her second child, a daughter. “I think she likes sex already.” DUDE. WHAT THE FUCK. YOUR CHILD IS NOT EVEN DEVELOPED ENOUGH TO HAVE COHERENT THOUGHTS. ALSO, SHE’S RELATED TO YOU. THIS IS THE CREEPIEST THING I HAVE READ IN THIS ENTIRE SERIES, AND THAT’S SAYING SOMETHING. Why. Why did I have to read this. Why. I hate E.L. James so fucking much.
““I like this,” he murmurs, stroking then kissing my belly. “There’s more of you.”” Christian Grey is definitely a feeder.
The next thing he says is about drinking Ana’s breast milk. I feel like the stuff that E.L. mentions in passing – Christian making Ana have sex on a dangerously full bladder, him licking her feet and creepily watching her eat, him drinking her breast milk – is way kinkier than the boring, entry-level stuff she writes them doing in detail. Like, I’m sorry, but handcuffs and edging are not that out there. Breast milk? Yeah, that’s a little out there.
Another scene: hide-and-seek in the meadow with Ted (the son) and Christian. “His patience with Teddy is extraordinary—much more so than with me. I snort. But then, that’s how it should be. And my beautiful little boy, the apple of his mother and father’s eyes, knows no fear. Christian, on the other hand, is still too overprotective—of both of us. My sweet, mercurial, controlling Fifty.” Why is that “how it should be,” huh? I feel like the gender roles are hitting especially hard in this epilogue, what with Christian saying he doesn’t want his daughter having sex until she’s 30 and Ana thinking that Christian ought to be more patient with Ted than with her. Honestly, Ana has never seemed maternal (or parental in any way) whatsoever, so I have no idea how either of them would manage to raise even remotely emotionally healthy children. Yikes.
Ted has copper-colored hair. Of course he does.
Sophie, Taylor’s ten-year-old daughter, comes to give Ted a popsicle. Sophie doesn’t deserve to be anywhere near this horrible couple, although maybe she can provide a little bit of the upbringing that Ted isn’t getting from Christian and Ana.
Ana wants to name her and Christian’s daughter Ella after Christian’s birth mother. He doesn’t want to. That should be the end of the discussion, but apparently Ana has asked about this before. Ana, this is not your business. I can’t even believe you suggested that. I know you have an astounding amount of empathy for Christian’s dead birth mom, but he hasn’t reached that point and, even if he does, this is going to be a loaded issue for him forever. Giving your daughter a name that will give him flashbacks to his traumatic childhood is a terrible idea, and you ought to know that already.
Ted starts crying because he dropped his popsicle. “My mercurial little boy, just like his dad. Well, at least he has an excuse—he’s only two.”
Later, Christian reads The Lorax to Ted. E.L. puts a footnote in the story for the readers who might not realize that the line “I am the Lorax! I speak for the trees” is a line from The Lorax.
The story goes into a flashback-within-a-flashback as Ana, in the memory of watching Ted sleep, starts to remember having an emergency C-section when he was born.
It’s a pretty run-of-the-mill C-section story. At the end, Christian and Ana look at their son, whose full name is Theodore Raymond Grey, and cry together.
Back in the first layer of flashback, Christian suggests the name Phoebe for their daughter. Ana likes it.
Christian sets up a present in the living room for Ted: a wooden train set with solar-powered trains. “Christian seems anxious for the sun to rise. I suspect that’s because he wants to play with the train set himself.”
Okay, we get it, he can cry at the sight of his own child and likes to play with trains. He still abused Ana. I don’t know why we’re ignoring that now.
Ana thinks about a family party they’re having the next day. Turns out Kate had a child as well, who is now two months old.
Christian and Ana watch the sun set from their house. They say they love each other and that’s the end of the book. Ugh. I hate this ending. I don’t necessarily think that Christian doesn’t deserve happiness, but I think it’s highly unrealistic that this marriage would have worked out this way, and suspect that at some point the other shoe is going to drop and Ana is going to have to fight a custody battle for her children against Christian and his very expensive lawyers.
That’s the end of the epilogue, but there are still 40 pages left in the book. There are some bonus materials. I’ll blog those too. Why not? We all know I enjoy suffering.
