The Metaphors of Power: Gendered Stereotypes in E.L .James’ Fifty Shades of Grey

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The metaphors of power: Gendered stereotypes in E.L .James’ Fifty Shades of Grey A figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them is called a metaphor according to the Oxford dictionary. The metaphors of power employed by James is mainly “sex”, ”love”,” care”, ”money” and “education” which increases financial independence. Falling in the genre of romance and erotica the book is at once a best seller and mostly criticized by critiques as well. E. L James’ the best seller popular fiction trilogy, Fifty Shades of Grey, Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed, come under the genre of bodice ripper and romance novels and it tell the tale of Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey the great business magnet of USA respectively. Anastasia is an ordinary but beautiful young brunette of 23 years who falls accidently in front of Christian’s office one day when she went as a substitute for Miss Kavanagh who had to write a report in the college magazine about the success of Mr. Christian Grey of the Grey Enterprises. In bodice ripper novels, there is always a stereotypical description of power relation between the hero and the heroine. Mussel writes “the man always unbends at the end to show his love and need for her, but he retains the mastery to be firmly in control of himself and the heroine”. (1984, pg 126) The Fifty Shades of Grey is a hybrid of the well and established romantic genre, the bodice ripper, chic lit and the erotica. D. L King asks Is Fifty Shades of Grey erotica? and her answer is no. She writes: “These books are unabashedly romantic. They follow the tried and true formula for romance and the series end happily. This would hold true even if aliens came down and vacuumed all the sex out of all the copies in existence. With that in mind,

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