“I will be nothing without him, nothing but a shadow — all the light eclipsed." — Anastasia Steele
“‘I’ve lived in a bubble for years with nothing affecting me and not having to justify myself to anyone’.” — Christian Grey
THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS
Last October, I read Fifty Shades Darker, a spectacle I have been anticipating since I picked it up in a secondhand bookstore and read the hilarious opening line: “I have survived Day Three Post-Christian” (James, 2012, p.5). Resuming where Fifty Shades of Grey left off, the second novel in the inexplicably best-selling trilogy sees our unlikely heroes, Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey, rekindling their relationship and navigating the uncharted territory of vanilla sex. I thought that this sequel might make minor improvements to the quality of the writing and the storytelling that we’d seen so far, but alas: Fifty Shades Darker is just as bad as Fifty Shades of Grey, and I’m excited to explain why.
The biggest change this book makes to the Fifty Shades world is Christian and Ana’s departure from BDSM, a controversial move considering the BDSM element is what made the series so infamous. The end of book one shows Christian unleashing the full extent of his “kinky fuckery” on Ana, after which she decides she will never be able to satiate his needs and breaks up with him. In Fifty Shades Darker, Ana and Christian realise they cannot live without each other and agree to resume their relationship on the condition that Christian revokes BDSM. This is the beginning of what deteriorates into an even more toxic relationship than what we witnessed in Fifty Shades of Grey; on top of reforming Christian’s sexual preferences, Ana also endeavours to discover why Christian is “fifty shades of fucked up”. Book one touches on the reason for Christian’s participation in BDSM: he was molested as a teenager, so “in order to regain the control he relinquished [...] Christian uses his money, charm, and dashing good looks to coerce hapless women into becoming his own submissives” (Tribble, 2018). In Fifty Shades Darker, we learn that Christian was also abused as a child by his mother’s boyfriend. This cocktail is the provided justification for Christian’s psychopathic behaviour, and to the rational reader, it is clear that he requires extensive therapy (and potentially medical incarceration). Ana, however, believes she can fix him, an opinion supported by Christian’s therapist, Dr. Flynn, who tells Ana that in the limited time she has known Christian, she has made more progress than Dr. Flynn has in the last two years. It is incredible to me that Dr. Flynn has managed to keep his job for so long if an unqualified 21-year-old can achieve more in two months than he can in two years, but more to the point: it troubles me that Ana supposedly possesses the capability to fix Christian when his damage clearly extends far deeper than Ana’s level of psychotherapeutic expertise should be able to dig. Perhaps the evidence indicates success, but Ana is not receiving anything legitimate in return for what she is investing emotionally. We’re meant to interpret this book as a turning of the tables as Ana claims more control in the relationship, but in reality, Christian continues to manipulate her, dropping BDSM out of the equation but maintaining the rest of his psychopathic behaviours.
Christian reaches a new level of controlling in Fifty Shades Darker. In chapter one alone, Christian gives Ana three days to recover from their breakup before returning to harass her by delivering a bouquet of roses to her home, following up with an email to make sure she received this generous gift — “How did he get my email address?”, Ana wonders idly, as if this isn’t terrifying (James, 2012, p.8). In the same email, Christian manipulates Ana into accepting a lift to her friend José’s photography exhibit; upon arriving to collect her, the first thing out of Christian’s mouth is “When did you last eat?”, followed closely by a sensual comment about ‘keeping her in her place’ as he buckles her seatbelt for her and a derisive criticism of her decision to wear high heels to a formal event (ibid, p.13). At the exhibit, he buys every portrait of Ana so that no one else will be able “[ogle her] in the privacy of their home”, before insisting that they leave the exhibit after only 30 minutes so he can have her to himself (ibid, p.24). And you think that’s bad? Christian outdoes himself in chapter three: upon realising that Ana’s boss, Jack Hyde, is interested in her, Christian buys the company for which they work to keep tabs on him after specifically promising not to interfere in Ana’s career, telling her that even if she decides to leave the company, he will buy the next company too! Although Ana is initially furious, she eventually concludes that massive invasions of privacy are just the way that Christian shows love. That, and transferring $24,000 into her bank account — “‘How do you know my account number?’”, she asks, to which Christian creepily replies, “‘I know everything about you, Anastasia’” (ibid, p.89).
The word “love” is a frequent substitute for more apt descriptions, such as “lust, [...] need, pity, and validation” (Dominic Noble, 2018). Ana claims to love Christian, but her love primarily manifests as gratitude that a man as sexy as Christian finds her attractive: “This man — God’s gift to women — loves me” (James, 2012, p.205). She leaves him not because his violent sexual tendencies are too much, but because she thinks her fear of physical pain is unreasonable. When Christian promises to give up BDSM on her behalf, Ana bemoans her inability to conform to his needs, both to Christian — “you’re prepared to do all this for me. I’m the one who is undeserving, and I’m just sorry that I can’t do all those things for you” — and to Dr. Flynn — “‘I just don’t know if I’m enough. To fulfil his needs’” (ibid, p.37, 411). In contrast, the affirmations Christian affords Ana are “exclusively in relation to himself: ‘you make me feel like I don’t need the anger anymore, you make me want to live a normal life’” (Dominic Noble, 2018). Their relationship revolves around Fixing Christian, and Ana derives the majority of her self-worth from the success she has in this endeavour. Yet this success is not enough: Ana still requires constant reassurance that she is good for, and good enough for, Christian. Perhaps the most profound quote in this book reverberates unintentionally throughout the story: after unloading her worries of inadequacy on Dr. Flynn, the doctor responds, “Is that what you need from me? Reassurance?”, a question that neatly sums up the nature of Ana’s relationship with Christian: she depends not on his love, but on the affirmation of the fact that she is loveable (James, 2012, p.411).
Fifty Shades Darker ends on a happy note: the deluded couple are engaged after a whirlwind two-month courtship during which they both readily confess to hardly knowing each other, with Ana rapturously announcing that they “have so far to go, but [they] are made for each other. [They] are meant to be” (ibid, p.531). Where do the happy couple go from here? Presumably childbirth, given that this is a ripoff of the Twilight saga and that’s what happens in Breaking Dawn, but I’ll have to wait until I read Fifty Shades Freed to know for sure. Jack Hyde is looming ominously in the background, and I am supremely unexcited to see what crazy shit he gets up to after Christian fires him. All in all, Fifty Shades Darker was just as poorly written and alarmingly abusive as its predecessor, and I can’t wait for the third and final book in this God-awful series to be exactly as fucking horrible.
WORKS CITED
- Dominic Noble. (2018, February 23). Fifty Slightly Darker Shades of Physical and Emotional Abuse, a book review by The Dom [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIADkp-eL_4.
- James, E. L. (2012). Fifty Shades Darker. London, Great Britain: Arrow Books.
- Tribble, S. (2018, May 3). Fifty Shades of Grey by E. L. James (2012). Retrieved from https://thesepapertowns.blogspot.com/2018/05/fifty-shades-of-grey-by-el-james-2012.html
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