We’re finally at the end of the book. I know it wasn’t really that long of a read, but it was such a slog that I’m actually relieved to be at the end of it.
Recap: Ana headed back to Seattle. She and Christian did a bit of sensory deprivation play. Whatever situation he’s been trying to sort out still isn’t taken care of, but he still isn’t telling Ana what’s going on there.
Fifty Shades of Grey: Chapter Twenty-Six
Ana wakes up from a dream where she fell down some stairs. Well, at least it isn’t another weirdly symbolic dream (I think?), but that makes it come across as an even more random way to open a chapter, since all Ana’s previous dreams have been elaborate metaphors. It’s still dark, but Ana remembers she forgot to take her birth control pill, so she gets out of bed. Christian is playing piano in the other room, and she goes to watch him play. It’s sad music again, so I guess that’s supposed to be super meaningful, but it could be nothing more than a preference for melancholy-sounding tunes. Or he was trying to play something quiet so he wouldn’t wake up Ana, but I didn’t have Christian pegged as being that considerate.
What’s more telling is that he started learning piano to try and please his adoptive family and be the perfect son. I mean, at least there we’ve got actual character motivations, not just “he’s playing a song in a minor key, this obviously reflects his inner sorrow” or whatever bullshit.
Ana explains she got up to take her birth control, and Christian suggests she wait half an hour before taking it. His reasoning is that if she does this every day for a few days, eventually she can be taking her pill at 8 am PST instead of 8 am EST. Why doesn’t she just wait three hours the first day? It’s not like a three-hour difference would fuck up her birth control that much, would it?
Christian suggests they have sex on the piano (???), but first Ana asks him about the contract. He says he thinks it’s moot now. Why? What?
From what I can gather, the contract is still in place, she just doesn’t have to actually sign it. Which was what they were doing before anyway, so whatever. The rules about obedience and submission are also still in place, so, really, this changes nothing at all.
Ana asks to see the rules again, and Christian fetches them for her. After reading them over, Ana rolls her eyes without thinking, and Christian teasingly says he’ll have to spank her now. They get playful with each other and Ana pulls a “catch me if you can” thing on Christian, which he seems to find funny. It’s hard to tell whether Ana is enjoying herself or just making a game out of a scary situation, though.
Christian says to her “Anyone would think you didn’t want me to catch you,” and Ana replies:
“I don’t. That’s the point. I feel about punishment the way you feel about me touching you.”
So she was making a game out of a scary situation. It’s really disturbing she felt she had to resort to that, since that sounds like something an abused child would do.
Christian is shocked by Ana’s response and asks her if it’s really that bad. She amends that it doesn’t trigger her in the way that being touched triggers him, but it’s still pretty bad for her, and she only does it for him. She also clarifies that it’s punishment spanking that she dislikes, not the pleasure kind.
Christian says he wants to hurt her, but not go beyond her limits. She asks why he needs to hurt her, and he says he won’t tell her, because:
“If I do, you will run screaming from this room, and you’ll never want to return.”
The issues aren’t going to go away because you refuse to talk about them, Grey. All you’re doing is withholding information from Ana, thus preventing her from making an informed choice. You’re preventing her from looking after her own wellbeing, in effect. Nice.
They embrace and Christian pleads with Ana never to leave him. Foreshadowing, hooray.
Out of nowhere, Ana decides she wants Christian to show her his worst. It’s sort of a weird request, given Ana’s massive aversion to pain, and it sounds like a pretty bad idea since Christian’s idea of the worst pain he’d be willing to inflict on a sub may be far, far beyond Ana’s concept of the worst pain she’d be able to bear. Still, Christian agrees to potentially traumatizing Ana once she’s convinced him it will help her figure out whether or not she can sub for him.
He takes her into the playroom and bends her over a spanking bench, then takes a belt from a rack by the door and tells her he’s going to hit her six times. That’s his worst? I mean, it probably hurts quite a lot, but still, how anticlimactic.
By the third lash of the belt, Ana’s eyes are watering from the pain, and by the fifth she’s crying for real. When Christian’s done, he gathers her up for a hug, but she pushes him away angrily:
“This is what you really like? Me, like this?” I use the sleeve of the bathrobe to wipe my nose.
He gazes at me warily.
“Well, you are one fucked-up son of a bitch.”
“Ana,” he pleads, shocked.
“Don’t you dare, Ana me! You need to sort your shit out, Grey!” And with that, I turn stiffly, and I walk out of the playroom, closing the door quietly behind me.
This seems like a weird overreaction. I mean, I hate to side with Grey over Ana, especially when Ana’s calling Grey a fucked-up son of a bitch, because she’s right — he is a fucked-up son of a bitch. But this is not why.
Look. First of all, Ana expressly told Grey to do his worst. She was basically asking for something painful, and then got angry at him when it was painful. She could have safeworded and stopped after one or two lashes if she decided the full six was too much. She wasn’t coerced into this, for once; she volunteered for it.
Second, Ana’s basing her assessment of Grey’s fucked-up-ness on the assumption that he’s getting off on having beaten her to the point of teary anger, but… really, though I wouldn’t put it past this bastard, that’s a weird assumption to make too. He didn’t express arousal once he saw how upset she was; all he did was try to give her a hug, which I took as a “you stuck it out even though it was painful and you didn’t like it, well done” gesture. In fact, the word Ana’s narration uses is “compassionate.” The wording implies he feels bad that he’s hurt her to the point of tears. Is Ana even reading her own narration?
Look, I’ve said it a hundred times, but subs are supposed to be as into their punishment as Doms are into inflicting it. The point of sadomasochistic play in general is that it’s supposed to be mutually enjoyable. When Christian said he wanted to hurt Ana, but not beyond what she could take? Let’s work on the assumption that he was being genuine. He wants to inflict pain, but if his partner isn’t enjoying it, it’s not enjoyable for him. Isn’t that how we were supposed to interpret that?
Ana seems to be interpreting the situation as “Grey hit me really hard because he gets off on beating women to the point of tears,” when, really, what happened was that she asked him to hit her really hard, he hit her really hard, and then she got upset because… I’m not really sure, it makes no sense.
Anyway. Ana goes back to her room (the one she sleeps in when she’s with Christian) and curls up on the bed, sobbing. She treats the whole situation like it’s some kind of wake-up call, but, honestly, what has she learned except that she doesn’t like being hit with belts? She knew about Christian’s sadism already. He’s already spanked her several times. Hell, he said he wanted to take her over his knee and spank her way back in chapter 5 or thereabouts. She’s known about this side of him for most of the book. You can’t treat this as a revelation. It’s not.
She decides she has to leave Christian because of this. Oh, for god’s sake.
Yes, Ana, you should leave him. You should leave because he doesn’t respect you or your wishes. You should leave because he has violent mood swings and you live in fear of his temper. You should leave because he’s raped you, more than once. You should leave because you’re fixated on him and it’s unhealthy for both of you. You should leave because he stalks you across the country, you should leave because he tracked your phone without permission, you should leave because he’s manipulative and volatile and likes nothing better than to show off his money and power while insisting it’s all about what you want.
This? This is not a reason to leave him. If we take Ana’s mindset into account and pretend that Christian has done nothing worse than act a little moody and buy Ana expensive things she didn’t ask for, this is a nonsensical reason to leave him. All she has to do is tell him, “Hey, I really hated that, let’s never do that again” and then they won’t ever have to do that again. It’s not like the guy has any trouble getting off when they do it vanilla-style. It’s not like he’s the one who even suggested hitting Ana as hard as he could with a belt.
After some time, Christian enters the room and lies down in bed with Ana. He puts his arms around her. She doesn’t protest or pull away from him, and they lie like that in silence until morning.
Christian breaks the silence to tell Ana that he brought her some Advil and arnica to put on her bruises. Look, I get that we were just having a long poignant silence, but that’s the sort of thing you maybe want to tell her right away instead of waiting for hours. She’s been lying there in pain this whole time and you could have helped her out with that, Grey.
Ana apologizes for snapping at him and he apologizes for hurting her. She brushes it off and says she asked for it. Then, after a moment’s silence, she says that she doesn’t think it’ll work out between them, because their desires and needs are totally different. Grey agrees, and then they both get upset because even though they realize they’re incompatible as a couple, neither one wants to leave the other.
This isn’t such a bad scene, honestly. The characters are finally doing something that makes sense. They have mixed feelings, but they’re talking it out, and it seems like they’re going to take the sensible adult route and call it quits. (Well, until Fifty Shades Darker, at least.)
Ana tells Christian she’s fallen in love with him, and he reacts in horror. I guess he’s upset because he can’t make her happy, yet she loves him anyway, and he knows that she’s going to get hurt whether they stay together or break up. The implication is that he must love her, too, or at least care about her more than he lets on, but he’s stuck in a catch-22 where no matter what route he takes, he’ll hurt both her and himself. That’s… surprisingly decent for this writer. Nuanced emotions! Wow! And it’s left open to some interpretation instead of spelled out for us! Double wow!
Ana gets up to leave, feeling numb, and there’s a long sequence where she wanders mechanically through the apartment getting dressed and collecting her things. It’s not badly done for this author, but I can’t help thinking of how anticlimactic it’s all going to seem in retrospect when they get back together in book 2.
When Ana heads to the great room, Christian is having an angry phone conversation, probably regarding whatever issue still hasn’t been resolved from the other night. He hangs up shortly after Ana enters the room. She piles the computer and BlackBerry he gave her on the breakfast bar, along with the keys to her new car, and tells Christian she needs the money Taylor got from the sale of her Beetle. Christian is upset that she doesn’t want to take these things, but Ana explains that she never wanted them to begin with and especially doesn’t want them now because they’ll remind her of him. He finally gives in, albeit angrily so.
Taylor leaves to get the car to drive Ana home — Ana said she could get herself home, but Christian insisted. Once alone, Christian approaches Ana and tells her he doesn’t want her to go, but she tells him she has to. Grabbing her things, she heads for the elevator. They say goodbye in a way that’s obviously meant to echo their farewells back in chapter 1.
Once in the car, Ana finally breaks down and starts crying. Taylor hands her a handkerchief, which makes her cry even more.
Upon getting home, Ana collapses onto her bed and continues sobbing. Her inner goddess interjects that this emotional pain is much worse than the physical pain from being spanked. I think we’re supposed to agree with that even though that’s completely besides the point.
The end. Thank whatever gods you do or don’t believe in, readers; it’s finally over.
Title Drop Alert: Ana calls Christian “Fifty Shades” twice.
Holy Cow! Alert: One “Holy crap!”, one “Holy shit!”, two “Holy fuck!”s.
And Now, A Word From Ana’s Subconscious Alert:
[Ana looks at her reflection in the mirror] My subconscious nods with approval. Even she knows not to be snarky right now.
Does “Inner Goddess” Mean What I Think It Means? Alert:
[Ana collapses on her bed, in tears] Deep down, a nasty, unbidden thought comes from my inner goddess, her lip curled in a snarl… the physical pain from the bite of a belt is nothing, nothing compared to this devastation.
That’s Too Many Inner Voices For One Sentence Alert:
[Ana bends over the spanking bench] My subconscious has passed out, and my inner goddess is endeavoring to look brave.
[Ana is upset after having been spanked] My subconscious is shaking her head sadly, and my inner goddess is nowhere to be seen.
Oh My! Alert: Twice.
Closing Thoughts:
Before going into what I think of Fifty Shades as a whole, let me just comment briefly on this last chapter. Ending a romance novel with a breakup scene isn’t bad in terms of compelling people to pick up book 2, but this breakup comes right out of nowhere, and, as I already discussed above, Ana managed to ignore all the actual reasons she needs to get away from Christian and focus on how terrible it was that he went along with something that was her idea in the first place.
This ending also parallels a scene from the Twilight series. In New Moon, the second Twilight Saga book, Edward breaks up with Bella following an incident where she gets a cut and the smell of her blood almost causes his vampire family to eat her on the spot. Unlike the breakup here, which was mutual even though both of them are unhappy with the outcome, the New Moon breakup was entirely Edward’s initiative, as was his taking back everything he gave her (so that she wouldn’t be reminded of him). While Edward came out of that breakup looking highly inconsiderate and outright clueless about Bella’s feelings, he at least had a good reason for it — being worried your vampire family is going to eat your girlfriend is a reasonable concern. The breakup in Fifty Shades involves a rare instance of Christian and Ana talking things through like adults, but breaking up with someone for doing exactly what you told them to do to you is still fucking dumb. Especially given that the two of them were starting to make progress with striking a compromise in their relationship.
As for Fifty Shades of Grey taken in its entirety…
Like I said back at the beginning of this 26-part review, I didn’t go in expecting anything fantastic. I knew it used to be alternate-universe Twilight fanfiction, written to jump on a fandom bandwagon (at the time, or so I’ve heard, most Twilight fic was human!AUs so as to avoid having to deal with Meyer’s shoddy vampire lore, and someone else had just written a popular fic about Edward as Bella’s Dom). I expected schlocky. I didn’t expect the book to contain outright abuse, misogyny, and rape.
I’d generally try and think of something positive to say about the story, but I really can’t. Instead, I’m going to try and list off each one of the book’s many problems, using bullet points for (relative) brevity.
The prose. The way this book is written would have drawn criticism even in most fanfiction circles, where almost no one is a professional writer and no one expects the writing to be professional. Given the amount of grammatical errors and typos, I feel extremely confident in saying that this book was not edited (beyond changing of names) or proofread. In published fiction, that is and should be unacceptable.
Ana’s inner voices. The concept itself is annoying. It’s not fun to read and it bogs down the story. An English major not knowing what “subconscious” means is patently absurd; hell, I’m quite sure most 22-year-olds who aren’t majoring in reading books understand the concept. Ana constantly interrupting her own narration to talk about what her “subconscious” and “inner goddess” are doing detracts from any flow the story might otherwise have, and the two of them making all the decisions for her essentially means Ana never gets to demonstrate the self-assuredness she supposedly has.
The book’s view of consent. I genuinely feel a bit worried for E.L. James that she doesn’t recognize the abundant consent issues in her own fantasy story. I’m much more than a bit worried for all the fans of this book who came away from the story thinking it’d be sexy for a man to treat them this way. We already live in a culture that normalizes male sexual violence towards women. Stuff like this really doesn’t help.
I made a comment in a previous chapter about how this book wouldn’t pass the Bechdel test, so I want to elaborate on that a little. Alison Bechdel, who came up with the test, is a lesbian and she was talking about how media fails on a basic level to make itself relatable for gay women, which is something that’s often glossed over when talking about the test (a work of fiction passes if two women have a conversation together that isn’t about a man, and fails if this doesn’t occur). Naturally, Fifty Shades is not relatable to women who love women anyway. However, even straight women don’t lead lives that revolve entirely around men, and expecting two of this book’s straight ladies to at some point chat with each other about something other than their guy problems isn’t setting the bar too high.
In general, the supporting cast are a bunch of cardboard cutouts, only there to encourage the main couple to keep doing what they’re doing. Even more developed side characters, like Kate, don’t have clear character motivations outside of encouraging Ana to go get that billionaire dick.
The racism. This is something that’s often overlooked when talking about Fifty Shades critically, and I can see why; José is the book’s only character of color, and he isn’t in the story much. Furthermore, he’s building off of the already racist portrayal of Jacob Black in Twilight. However, having your only Latino character speak in broken Spanish, making him the sole working-class character, and portraying his attraction to Ana as creepy and threatening when Christian Grey also exists is undeniably racist. The book’s focus on filling the supportive cast with as many attractive blond white people as possible is also really weird.
Ana doesn’t, on any level, read as a convincing portrayal of an American college kid in the 2010s. People her age are digital natives, yet somehow Ana barely knows how to work a computer, doesn’t own a computer despite her writing-intensive major making it a necessity, and doesn’t even have an email address prior to Christian setting one up for her. Ana’s sexual cluelessness also makes no sense; she has no particular reason to be as sheltered as she is. Being a virgin at 22 who’s never really had a crush before is one thing, but not knowing what masturbation is? Not knowing what sexual arousal is? Referring to your genitals as “down there”?
The conflict the author attempts to set up throughout the book is that, despite Ana and Christian’s mutual attraction, they want very different things out of their relationship. This would be a genuine conflict if Ana and Christian had equal clout in the relationship, yet they’re sorely mismatched. Aside from Grey’s wealth and the power that comes along with that, he’s also a very controlling person who uses every trick in the book to emotionally, psychologically, and sexually manipulate Ana. She has no real defense against any of this, being the sort of girl who lacks the self-esteem necessary to even resist when she’s assaulted, let alone negotiate on his level. Every time the ball is in Ana’s court, she fumbles, and the only changes in their relationship come about as a result of Christian’s mercurial tendencies.
Christian’s tragic backstory, which we still don’t know in its entirety, actually makes his abuse of Ana seem even worse. The stereotype that victims of abuse always become the abusers later in life isn’t true, but victims who can’t acknowledge that they’re victims are much more likely to offend, which is exactly what Christian does. He can’t admit that “Mrs. Robinson” was a pedophile taking advantage of him by grooming him into a BDSM relationship, and he goes on to do essentially the same thing to Ana, apparently justifying it because it happened to him too.
Nitpicky things: British terms being used by American characters, Ana brews her tea for five seconds, we still don’t know what Grey’s company does, his company has Incorporated in the name but apparently isn’t a corporation, Ana can’t hold her liquor in one scene but never gets drunk on any of the numerous later occasions where she drinks to excess, the “contract” never gets signed but Ana agrees to it verbally numerous times and each time this is treated like a new development, all the product placement, James making up ridiculous tech specs for a laptop instead of just Googling it, and she seriously named a character Mr. J. Hyde.
I could go on, but you get the idea. It’s a terrible book on so many levels, and I’m genuinely appalled that it became such a pop culture phenomenon.
(Edit from 2023: It’s now been a decade since I reviewed this book, and I’d like to append another note to my closing thoughts. While I’ve talked about the potential harm this book does by portraying an abusive relationship as sexy / equating BDSM with abuse, there’s another way in which I feel this book did lasting cultural damage: it proved to publishers that books that used to be fanfiction can be successful. Absolutely nothing good has come of this. I’m not saying fanfiction is universally bad, but fanfiction writing is different from novel writing and fanfics with the serial numbers filed off don’t make for good “original fiction.” There are now multiple examples I can point to of books that used to be fanfics, and all of them are garbage. Of course, this is more the fault of capitalism than it is the fault of E.L. James specifically, but we do now have to suffer through the consequences of the precedent she set. And I’m not happy about that.)