The books surround one large extended, non-biological family, comprised of very rich and very beautiful individuals, the parents kind and intelligent (one being a doctor) and the children youthful with passionate fiery personalities. There is one beautiful and happy-go-lucky daughter who takes the protagonist under her wing, one charmingly egotistical son who can always get his way, and one cold, troubled, mysterious and blindingly beautiful son with a deep dark secret, who becomes central to the plot and the protagonists life – the protagonist being just a normal young naïve girl. A plain Jane with nothing remarkable about her (except a long-admiring male best friend, secretly in love with her) who gets caught up in this fast pace life of romance, action and deep dark secrets, becoming the only person who could ever capture the heart of the elusive, highly sought-after and mysterious son. There is some trouble and some precarious experiences involving vengeful enemies, but soon all is laid to rest, they get married have children and live happily ever after. Believe it or not, this is an accurate summary of the Grey family of the Fifty Shades trilogy, and nothing to do with the Cullen’s of Twilight.
So if the story, plot and characters are samey and entirely stereotypical of modern day fiction, the question begs even stronger, just how did these books become so massively popular in such a short space of time? The answer, unsurprisingly, is through women. In the past decade or so books, novels and fiction have had a modern day fantasy revival with huge global franchises such as Harry Potter, Twilight and The Hunger Games, gaining a mass cult following through teenage girls reading the books, and going on to be highly anticipated movies and productions, as the teens of the world pine and swoon as they watch their dreams come to life on screen. These franchises usually play upon the idea of the normal average person thrown spectacularly into an amazing exciting world that they could only ever dream of, thus creating this certain believability with the impressionable young readers believing that it could actually happen to them.
The Fifty Shades Trilogy acts upon the same principle but moves away from the teenage fantasies of magic, dragons, beautiful love interests and lots of kick-assery, and focuses more on the adult fantasies of a handsome, rich bachelor, who promises mind-blowing sex, unconditional love, a happy marriage and beautiful, well-behaved children. The books focus mainly on discovering ones ‘sexual identity’, with young virginal Ana losing her innocence in the most naughty and controversial ways. The book is famed for its frequent and explicit sexual scenes, earning the books the charming title of ‘Mummy porn’. But truly, is sex even that scandalous anymore? Is anything truly scandalous anymore? In an age where scenes of a provocative nature are nothing short of, well, everywhere, are we as a culture really that shocked that a book containing (collective gasp) sex has been published? Or is it the fact that this is ‘mummy porn’ – sex openly read, enjoyed and discussed by women that makes it so scandalous?