Recent success of the Book , the US bestseller,” EL James’s Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy has set the ball rolling on the point which type of books women prefer.
The Book Fifty Shades of Grey has been described as ‘Mommy’s Porn’ by News papers.
The book has received a staggering response and most of the readers are women.
The views of readers of the Genre of Romantic Novels, were elicited and the general consensus is that women prefer soft Romantic novels,with Fantasy,not really very Erotic, but Soft Romance.
( Typical Women reaction, conveying what is intended by seemingly rejecting it!)
Women , despite Feminists protests to the contrary, prefer/enjoy being submissive even in relationships,
Ask your Girl Friend /wife on intimate moments.
This taste is reflected in Reading Soft Romance with Fantasy and Mild Slavery thrown in.
Lady Chatterly’s Lover , though banned , was the best Underground Novel read mostly by women.
( by current standards,the Book is not erotic at all)
If some one carefully reads through the surveys of Porn viewing, women are doing well.(!?)
Many readers are likely to protest the view that women prefer porn and soft romance, but the more vehement the objections, more it confirms.
Final word.. Reading books of this nature , does not necessarily mean that you are morally decadent.
So why not accept it?
With their discreet black-and-silver covers, the breathless tales of Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey’s dominant-submissive relationship has become the most talked-about book of the year, selling 250,000 copies as an e-book before Century/Arrow paid a reported six figures for the print publishing rights to the trilogy.
Is this just a one-off, or the beginning of a new publishing phenomenon, and why has this genre, which, after all, has been around for a while, suddenly hit the mainstream?
For Valerie Hoskins, of Valerie Hoskins Associates, EL James’s agent, the success of her client’s work is a classic mix of old and modern. “This is escapist, romantic fiction at its best, with roots stretching back to the 19th-Century women romantic writers and myths like Beauty and the Beast — pure wish fulfilment.
..
There have been queues around the block on EL James’s American book tour and much talk of how her novels have saved marriages. “God’s gift to middle age” was the description of one grateful Chicago woman, quoted in the Chicago Tribune: “I’m going to dog-ear pages for my husband.”
Much of the press commentary — making liberal use of the derogatory term “mommy porn”, an update of the similarly offensive bracket of “chick lit”, in which to group women writers — has focused on the stereotype of the bored suburban housewife, with time on her hands and nothing better to do with it than indulge in a little bit of steam.
But according to academic and writer Katie Roiphe, who researched the phenomenon for a recent Newsweek feature, over half the books’ readers are women in their 20s and 30s. In her webcast on Newsweek’s The Daily Beast, Roiphe also pointed to an “exhaustion” felt by women nowadays, liberated by feminism to be breadwinners, to have lives and careers and families, all of which brings with it enormous responsibility; how comforting to indulge in a little retrograde fantasy.
Or maybe the truth is more straightforward. As Gunn-O’Connor says, “Women are overwhelmed with their lives nowadays, with families, husbands, and they can retreat into this fantasy, but the books have to have great characters and a love story and something that isn’t pornographic.”
This sentiment is echoed by Valerie Hoskins: “To me, this is not pure erotica — it is rather a very sexy romance. I am not a great reader of erotica… but it seems to be that most of it is not romantic.
http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/what-do-women-want-romance-plus-erotica-3105647.html
Related articles
- Porn Lit: Why the S&M “50 Shades of Gray” Is Freaking Everyone Out (alternet.org)
- Chick Porn (wisdomswake.wordpress.com)