Cinderella Meets the Byronic Hero

Although I’ve blogged here before about 50 Shadesof Grey, and I recently blogged here about the persistence of the Cinderella myth, I’m going to bring it all up again. The much-anticipated 50 Shades film recently came out, just in time for that most horrifying of holidays, Valentine’s Day, and many of us literary folk have been scratching our heads as to why, exactly, a poorly-written, poorly-plotted, sex-negative “mommy-porn” has made so much money and appealed to so many women.

Mad, bad & sexy!
Lord Byron

To me, the reasoning is fairly simple, though I will caveat my argument with the fact that I have read the books, but I have not yet seen the movie. Going by the books, however, it seems pretty obvious that 50 Shades combines two (possibly three) very powerful cultural myths: that of the rags-to-riches story (cue Cinderella) and the rake-reformed (cue the Byronic hero).

Although 50 Shades began as a Twilight fan fic, it owes almost as much to Pretty Woman as it does to its vampire progenitor. Pretty Woman is obviously a reworking of the Cinderella story, but if we look closely, we can see that it is also a story about bringing a sardonic, isolated, and brooding billionaire back to life—just like 50 Shades of Grey.

The Byronic hero or antihero (your choice) has his own gravitational pull. He is mysterious, alluring, charming, brooding, prone to outbursts, and intellectually superior to those who surround him. He is doing penance for an unknown past sin, suggesting emotional vulnerability obscured by a carapace of irony and self-loathing. He is cocky, self-assured, highly intelligent and, of course, wildly attractive, handsome, sexy, etc.

It’s hard to find a television drama these days without a version of our beloved Byronic hero—named after Romantic poet Lord Byron who was described by a contemporary as “mad, bad, and dangerous to know.” The archetype of the Byronic hero draws on both Byron’s personality as well as on his works—such as the character Manfred in the closet drama of the same name. Other Romantic and Gothic texts took up the rough outlines of the Byronic hero and helped build up his allure.

Victor Frankenstein, Heathcliff, Mr. Rochester, Sherlock Holmes and Eugene Onegin are some nineteenth-century examples that contributed to the growth of interest in this type of hero. Today, the obsession continues with various Sherlock Holmes movies and shows (Elementary and Sherlock), Dr. House, the entire Batman franchise, Edward Cullen and now Christian Grey.

Michael Fassbender as Mr. Rochester.
He's so tormented! Don't you just want to make him a sandwich?

The idea that a woman could “fix” the bad boy Byronic hero and open his heart to love has been around a long time as well. In some cases, our heroines succeed (Jane marries Mr. Rochester, though only after becoming financially independent); in others, they don’t even bother trying (Cathy is her own kind of Byronic heroine in Wuthering Heights, one could argue).

One of the most alluring conceits in the 50 Shades of Grey series is, no doubt, that Anastasia Steele succeeds in reforming her rake and, even more potently, that it is her innocence, purity, and tenderness that tame the beast (cue the Beauty and the Beast myth). While outwardly the novels appear to be about Christian’s dominance over Ana (and many feminists have castigated the work for supposedly glorifying stalker-like, abusive behavior in romantic relationships), at the heart of the appeal of 50 Shades of Grey is the powerful notion that this young woman is the only person powerful enough and special enough to reform Christian and his sexual deviance.

One of the earliest press release photos
underscores the difference between Ana
and Christian: college student and
sexy billionaire.

Ana is so morally and emotionally pure, that not only is she a virgin before she meets Christian, but she refuses many of his monetary gifts. She doesn’t want him for his money—though ultimately his money is the other crucial part of the powerful fantasy and appeal of E.L. James’s novels. Christian is so wealthy, that Ana’s money problems are solved forever once they get together. His wealth means most people are at his command—but not Ana. Though she agrees (sporadically) to be his submissive in the bedroom, she is constantly challenging him. Although she is physically weaker, younger, and financially insolvent in comparison with her lover, it is actually Ana (the woman) in the relationship who wields the real (emotional) power—and who “wins” at the end of the novel. Winning here means helped Christian leave behind the world of BDSM (mostly, anyway) in exchange for domestic bliss (and “vanilla sex”).

That is a powerful fantasy. And that, to me, is why these books are so addictive. It’s not just the sex. And it’s not because all these women are yearning to be in abusive relationships. It’s because these novels draw on culturally-embedded myths: Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, the Byronic Hero. Further, they take these myths and rework them into a female fantasy in which empowerment is only necessary insofar as you are able to change your sexy, brooding Byronic hero into a sexy, no-longer-brooding billionaire husband and baby-daddy. Thematically, thus, 50 Shades of Grey is not so different than Pamela or Jane Eyre.

No doubt poor Charlotte Brontë is spinning in her grave!

Now, don't misunderstand me...there is plenty that is problematic, to say the least, about these novels and the spin-offs they have engendered. But it seems worthwhile to look at them in the context of archetypes and cultural myths, for they reveal the persistence of certain ideas in our culture. Further, literature has always been a place in which to explore (and create) fantasies in a safe place. Eighteenth-century fictions presented their readers with heroines in sticky situations, often for the purposes of entertainment--not always for moral instruction. 

We can read Eliza Haywood's Fantomina, for example, as a text about a deeply misguided young woman brought to the brink of obsession by a man. Or, we can read her as a conniving, powerful young woman in control of her sexuality. Both Fantomina and 50 Shades illustrate certain persistent inequalities in our society without making a definitive judgment about these inequalities.

This is not to suggest that 50 Shades is important in any "literary" way. It's poorly written with ridiculous dialogue and flat characterizations. It's erotica, and by definition erotica is repetitive--there's only so many ways to go about that particular business. But the very popularity of 50 Shades and its protagonists is what makes them so interesting to consider.

What’s In a Name?: Periodicity and How We Study Literature

One of the panels for next year’s MLA Convention considers the relevance and repercussions of naming the time period that we study, specifically the eighteenth century:

Naming the 18th Century
Special Session
What's at stake in naming this period "long" (1660-1830), "short" (1715-1789), early modern, Enlightenment (etc.)? What's its role in the new MLA? 300-word abstracts by 15 March 2015; Dustin D. Stewart (dustin.d.stewart@gmail.com) and Joshua Swidzinski (js3683@columbia.edu).

Literary studies logic:
Start with the old stuff.

It is an interesting question, one that many scholars side-step in their research. This issue is not specific to eighteenth-century literary scholars and historians, though that is the time period I am most familiar with. Overall, the study of literature in English is overwhelmingly still dominated by geographical and chronological divisions: American Literature is separate from English Literature; both of which are at times excluded in courses dedicated to Global Literatures in English. Similarly, most doctoral programs still emphasize periodicity through the demand that potential scholars declare which time period is “theirs.” Oral examinations and dissertation projects are similarly expected to be tied to specific time periods in preparation for the job market (or what’s left of it), in which many scholars still hope to be hired for a time period-specific job.

The idea of the period-specific scholar is both a new invention and an old one, and one could probably make a convincing argument for the continued importance of focusing on individual time periods versus becoming a “Generalist”—a designation that is increasingly popular on job postings yet remains suspiciously bland and non-rigorous in the minds of many scholars.

Anthologies suggest distinct time periods...but is that such a good idea?

Literary survey courses often present literature and literary history to students in a chronological order, neatly dividing (as the Norton splits often do) British literature into six distinct and orderly time periods of literary output: Medieval; Early Modern; Restoration and Eighteenth Century; Romanticism; Victorian; 20th Century and Beyond. But as we read, it is impossible not to note that there might be many different ways to consider British literature.

We could consider it via genre, theme, style, topic, or in even more arbitrary ways, such as alphabetically by the title of the work or author’s last name. Even with such an arbitrary organizational method, we could probably find a way of making sense of these juxtapositions. Consider a course on “B” literature, and the fascinating juxtapositions of Borges, Bulgakhov, Bronte and Balzac.

Of course, one of the most pressing reasons for reading works chronologically, aside from its seeming “logical” to go “in order,” is because in literary studies, authorial output is often influenced by what the author read him/herself—and those are, of necessity, works written earlier or concurrently with his/her own. The idea of being able to trace an author’s reading history and to find those influences in a work is a powerful and appealing one. Similarly, in our scholarship, we often imagine that by studying by time period, we may uncover changes in style, topic, and form that might otherwise escape our discerning eye. Scholarly claims often focus on making an argument for how a certain kind of reading shows us something about the time period it was written in or the ideas circulating at the time. Certainly this is evident eighteenth-century studies, where the eighteenth-century is the “first time” that we find an example of X; or Y trend in this time period indicates that such-and-such was changing in the eighteenth-century.

It's comforting to think of history as progress and improvement...
but that's not always the case.

Projects relating to the Enlightenment and Enlightenment personhood are also very of-the-moment. Various claims have been made for the eighteenth century, the long eighteenth century, the Enlightenment, the Neoclassic period, the Age of Johnson, the Age of Satire, late Early Modern period…the list could go on. We ponder why certain styles of poetry became popular while others receded; we theorize the rise of nationhood at this time; we make arguments as to the changing role of women, class divisions, sexuality, and race. But in many ways, these arguments seem constrained by our emphasis on the time period rather than liberated or enhanced by it.

Is the eighteenth century truly the Age of Satire?
Why not the 19th century?
Or the 20th century?

My own research focuses on the body, desire, and, more specifically, female cross-dressing. It’s hard to write about female cross-dressers of the eighteenth century and their representation in literature without running into various claims that such representations “reached a peak” in the eighteenth century or that the cross-dresser was “socially accepted” in the first half of the eighteenth century, only to become socially undesirable by the end of the century.

Such claims seem, at least to me, to construct a false history of the female cross-dresser and her role in British literature. To look at female cross-dressing only in eighteenth century literature is to ignore the role of cross-dressing in medieval and early modern England as well as its continuing role in nineteenth-century culture. Similarly, to look at female cross-dressing only in an English context or even an English-speaking context is to risk making claims about this phenomenon that are incomplete. Female cross-dressers were not limited to an English context, yet most scholars would find it difficult to find a way of writing about these representations in other cultures unless they were in a Comparative Literature program.

To bring up the issue of Comparative Literature means also having to consider literary studies in different languages. Literary studies in other language—Spanish or French or German, for example—may have other kinds of chronological divisions in their time periods. Periodicity is, after all, tied to certain time periods that have a distinctive relationship to the history of the country that they represent.

I don’t mean to sound as if I’m only throwing up roadblocks here. I love what I do and what I study; I love being an eighteenth-centuryist. I enjoy going to ASECS, learning about the eighteenth century, and spreading my love of it to everyone I know. At the same time, I try not to forget the limitations of my methods and thinking. It’s important for our students to know that no time period is homogenous and that our world is never just progressing forward; sometimes we’re marching backwards. The linear progression of history and creative output is an organizing fantasy, one that may need to be rethought as the modern university changes and one that we cannot, should not ignore in our own research.