Esther Gaytan Fuertes writes: According to a recent study published by the Journal of Women’s Health, the novels Fifty Shades of Grey and its two sequels portray an abusive relationship characterised by the woman’s intimidation and isolation, where BDSM is the main ingredient. Researchers from the Michigan State University and the Ohio State University analysed the behaviours described in the best-seller in which the young literature student, Anastasia Steele, gets involved in a complex relationship with the powerful and dominating millionaire Christian Grey.

The paper, provocatively titled Double Crap!” Abuse and Harmed Identity in Fifty Shades of Grey’, mainly focuses on the first part of E. L. James’ Fifty Shades trilogy, and identifies and describes patterns in Christian’s behaviour consistent with Intimate Partner Violence (IPV); and Anastasia’s responses which are consistent with women’s experiences of abuse. Their analysis draws some interesting and worrying conclusions: ‘it is clear that right from the beginning, Christian controls all aspects of the couple’s relationship using the emotional abuse tactics of stalking, isolation, intimidation/threats, and humiliation (…) Anastasia becomes disempowered and entrapped in the relationship as her behaviours become mechanised in response to Christian’s abuse’. There is a significant power imbalance and the couple’s behaviours are typical of people in chronically violent relationships.

One of the most alarming conclusions of this study is that the behaviours depicted in the book “reflect pervasive IPV—one of the biggest problems of our time. Further, our analysis adds to a growing body of literature noting dangerous violence standards being perpetuated in popular culture.” If that is the case, it makes it even more astonishing that the majority of fans of this book, which epitomises the so-called phenomenon of “mummy porn”, are women. Arguably, we still need feminism to raise more general awareness of how even in escapist literature abused female characters perpetuate women’s disempowered role in our society.

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