Fifty Shades of Grey: Why Didn't You Warn Me?

We all know the film, we’ve all heard of the book and we all know what a romantic ideal Christian Grey is. Don’t we? He’s the modern day Mr Darcy or Heathcliff for women, but with added grey ties. But, I hear you shouting at the screen, he’s not! He’s abusive, he treats her awfully, and pretends it’s all in the name of love. I’m here to tell you I agree, and that’s why he is the modern Heathcliff. He is just like the character who was so obsessed with a women that he ignored her own wishes for his own personal desires like Heathcliff did. He is just like Darcy who was abrasive to a woman he’d just met simply because of problems in his own past. The book itself even makes a comparison to a classic novel and character itself: Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Ana compares herself to Tess, and compares Christian to Alec D’Urberville and that is a problem. Oh is that a problem.
In the film it is a passing mention, a throwaway line there to signify that she’s a literature student who has read a book and to have a tongue in cheek reference to the fact that Christian is not like other men. The quote is this,

“Why didn’t you tell me there was danger? Why didn’t you warn me? Ladies know what to guard against, because they read novels that tell them of these tricks,”

Now here’s the context, spoilers for a book that came out 1891. Tess at aged 16 accidentally played a part in the family’s horse – their means for surviving – getting killed, and so to make up for that she was sent to her rich ‘cousin’ to work for him to provide for her, large, family. That ‘cousin’ then flirts with young Tess, very clearly against her wishes, and then proceeds to rape her in the woods. At aged 16 and feeling guilt ridden and questioning if she had a role in her own “debasement” she stays with him after but ultimately goes home and screams the above quote at her mother. She screams it, feeling betrayed by her own mother, her mother who knew that men raped and didn’t warn her. So why did Christian use that quote in particular? That’s what worries me.
I know E.L. James has read the book and I know she knows the context as this quote is after the rape. In the book there are more, other worrying references, to Tess of the D’Urbervilles but I can’t include them all so I will instead link to this great post on it here. Whilst some argue that the rape is ambiguous, it was written in the Victorian Era so rape could only be implied by Hardy, I disagree; Tess reacts with hate, disgust and anger at Alec and those who didn’t warn her. She even cuts off her hair and her eyebrows to keep men from finding her attractive later because the thought of being with a man is so repulsive to her – does that sound like the actions of someone who lovingly slept with an older man? No, I don’t think so.
So why does Ana, knowing the quote, simply shrug off that he used those lines to accompany the book? Is it simply because she’s impressed that he used a quote at all, is she too impressed to be given first editions of those books to question it, or is it because she – like the audience is meant to – reads the implied sexual deviance that those quotes suggest? But it’s a problem because Christian Grey is like a rapist in many ways in both the film and the book. He often ignores her boundaries – using the GPS on her phone to track her simply because she’s drunk. He often causes her pain and that she is to blame for his actions – she cries to her mother and gets away from him because he won’t let her be intimate with him. Christian Grey is an abuser who uses women and Ana is naïve and inexperienced in both sex and relationships, and she often leaves very concerning statements by him completely unquestioned – I did a piece of my thoughts as I watched it here so you can see what I mean.
Fifty Shades of Grey helped the world understand that women of all ages have sexual desire and needs. I understand that though I wish that a better book did it, and there are books out there with non-abusive men that have intimacy and a brooding male character for women to swoon over – such as this series. But Fifty Shades, in both book and film form, is not alone in creating abusive men who are not seen as abusive. Christian Grey is seen as a broken man, a man with a dark past that excuses the way he treats women, and as a man that a woman can fix.
I’m sorry women around the world but those men do not exist in the way you want. Yes there are men with dark pasts but they often go on to become abusers themselves, not ambiguously so but in ways that usually end up with them in jail. There are men who are dark and brooding but women usually see those men as arseholes. There are men who women desire to fix but here’s the thing: you can’t. You can’t do it with love, or with sex, those men need professional help. That is the problem with the Greys and the Heathcliffs, they teach women that the men who treat them badly do so because they can’t inarticulate their deep feelings, or because they love you. They don’t because if they did they wouldn’t be making you cry a few weeks into the relationship like Ana does.
This film is badly written, it has embarrassing lines throughout, the characterisation is poor and confused, and the colour scheme is so overhanded that it was infuriating but that is not the biggest flaw of this film. It is that it, amongst many others, teach women to take abuse, to romanticise it and that even if they stand up for themselves like Ana does at the end that their abuser will still pull them back in with lies about being sorry, as we will see at the start of the next film. Films and books like this aren’t just an affront to literature and to film but they send dangerous messages about a very certain type of man.
Ladies, if a man does any of these things they are not romantic and they are probably signs that you should get away from that man as fast as you can (all of these things are from the film):

• Use your GPS to find where you are, without your consent and after meeting you twice
• If they do not allow you to go to visit your family, if they get angry and possessive if you do, and especially if they track you down and find you when you do so
• If they take it personally that you got drunk, that you have male friends and if you want to make decisions about yourself
• If they send you expensive objects or electronics to communicate with without your permission – and if they sell your objects without your consent so they can buy you new ones

Whilst it may seem romantic to get gifts from your new boyfriend they should not be so expensive that you feel guilty or like you owe them anything – again, in Tess of the D’Urbervilles Alec sends Tess’ family toys and other things and she later tells him she wishes he hadn’t because it made her feel obligated to work for him. They definitely should not, after barely meeting you, be buying you electronics specifically so they can talk to you – that is something that stalkers do; do you really think Ana would feel like she cannot reply to his e-mails if it is on a laptop that he bought her? If you do you might not understand the control and hold that abusive men can have over women.
Abusers isolate their victims, they will want you all to themselves and whilst people might feel like that in new relationships abusers will go to great lengths to do so; Christian literally demands she lives in his home, he makes it clear he disapproves of her seeing her family when he doesn’t want her to, and he gives himself ways to find where she is at any given moment. Regardless of BDSM relationships and contracts they should not control what you eat, how much you exercise, what you wear, and what birth control you use – all things in the film and all things that abusers wish to control so you are the person they want you to be. They will do all of those things and then they will call them love, passion, caring. They will make you cry but have you blame yourself for your tears, they will cause you pain and blame a past they had no control over, and then by the time you wish to get away – to separate the pain and the love – it will be too late to get out without them tracking you down, and trying to hurt you.
The film, and the books, should be used as example of what relationships to avoid not what relationships to strive for. They should be critically analysed and discussed and they should not simply be allowed to exist unquestioned. This is not about the sex and it is not about a contract she hasn’t even signed by the end of the first film (though gaining sexual pleasure from committing violence against women should be questioned in the context of a patriarchal society - more on it here). It is about everything Christian does, everything he says and what his actions mean for what type of relationship he wants from Ana. It is telling that there is a variety of merchandise from this film, many people wanting a Christian Grey of their own, but that there is a distinct lack amongst those wishes of women wanting to be Ana anywhere outside of the bedroom.
Watch the films, read the books, read the classic novels but all I ask is that after you have that you go to google and research how abusive men act, how they operate, and the things they say. There are warning signs, there is help you can get before it’s too late, and I promise you there are women out there who might never read this simply because their partners control what websites they visit or if they use the internet at all. I promise you there is a way out, there is a way to help you avoid men like Christian Grey, and now it is up to women to understand that relationships like this don’t usually end with a happily ever after. They end up with women broken, bruised, and, heartbreakingly, dead.

So fuck you Fifty Shades of Grey.