The Many Shades of
Love Stories
As Fifty Shades of Grey opened to the delight of crowds of excited
women in America on this Valentine’s Day, we are reminded once again of our
obsession with a good love story. Is this film a love story though or just a
“lust story?”
I have not read the book
nor seen the movie and don’t plan on doing either. Women’s groups claim that it
degrades women and promotes hurtful sexual practices. I can’t say I agree or
disagree because I haven’t fallen prey to the “50” craze. However, the movie
and book interest me in a literary historical way.
“Fifty…” did not get good reviews in spite of
its phenomenal success as far as book sales go for author, E. L. James. The
book has been panned at the very least as “very bad writing” and even “trash.”
There is also a copyright question because the book is said to be based on a
fan-based attraction to the Twilight
novels.
“Fifty…” is actually
part of a trilogy. Fifty Shades Darker
was published in 2011, the same year as Fifty
Shades of Grey, which was book 1. Fifty
Shades Freed was published in 2012.
Although not heavily
banned as some other such novels I will discuss below, it was banned in the
library of Brevard County, Florida. Brazil also imposed a restriction on its
sale by demanding that it have the cover “covered” over.
As far as being banned
by the Catholic Church, Boston, or becoming the subject of a court battle over
“first amendment” rights, every author of such novels knows that being banned
is the best thing that can happen to their book because everyone then wants to
read it to see what all the hoopla is about.
These days we get our
fix for this genre on T.V. with the show “Scandal” and “How to Get Away with
Murder,” neither of which is on my regular viewing list.
The
Greatest Love Stories Ever Told
Before I get into the
historical aspect of novels of love and lust, let me remind you of some of the
greatest love stories ever told. These are the stories I love. According to www.yourtango.com these are the top ten “Greatest Love
Stories Ever Told.”
1.
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
2.
Anna Karenina by Tolstoy
3.
Romeo & Juliet by Shakespeare
4.
Casablanca, originally a play by Murray Burnett
and later a movie
5.
Midsummer Night’s Dream by Shakespeare
6.
Dr. Zhivago by Boris Pasternak, one of my very
favorite
7.
Sense & Sensibility, Jane Austen
8.
Dangerous Liaisons by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
9.
Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen
10. Hunchback
of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
As you can see by this
list, it’s the classics that survive the test of time.
Books
of Love and Lust
The books below I chose
as being the most well known as novels of love and lust. All of them were
banned, thus ensuring their popularity at the time of their printing.
Fanny
Hill. Memoirs
of a Woman of Pleasure, best known as Fanny
Hill, was the first pornography to appear in the form of a novel. An erotic
novel written by John Cleland in 1748, it told the story of a young girl, Fanny
Hill, who was forced into the world of prostitution in London. As you can
imagine, the book was much aligned, prosecuted, and banned. The book has become
a synonym for obscenity.
Lady
Chatterley’s Lover. A
novel by D. H. Lawrence was published in 1928. It tells the story of a physical
and emotional love affair between a working-class man and an upper-class
aristocratic woman. It’s the classic tale of “class” conflicts in Great
Britain. The book was heavily censored in Great Britain but was published in
America by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. in 1928. It suffered court battles in the
U.S., Canada, and Australia
Tropic
of Cancer. First
published in 1934 by Henry Miller, it was described as “notorious for its
candid sexuality.” In 1961 it was
published in the U.S. by Grove Press which led to the obscenity trials of the
1960s testing the laws of pornography. In 1964, the U.S. Supreme Court declared
the book non-obscene. Today it is regarded as an important masterpiece of 20th
century literature.
Forever
Amber. Probably the
first “romance novel” by Kathleen Winsor and published in 1944. I actually read
this book as a teenager. I think we all passed it around.
The story tells the
story of an orphaned Amber St. Clare who sleeps her way up through the ranks of
17th century English society by sleeping and marrying successively
richer and more important men. Again, a story of “class” struggles.
The story includes
portrayals of Restoration fashion with the introduction of tea in English
coffeehouses and homes of the rich; politics; and public disasters like the
plague and the Great Fire of London. Some reviewers praised it for its
relevance to the times by comparing Amber’s fortitude during the plague and
fire to the women who similarly held their homes together during the blitzes of
WWII.
Fourteen states banned
it as pornography. Of course the Catholic Church condemned it for indecency
which again increased sales, making it the best-selling novel in the U.S. in
the 1940s selling over 100,000 copies. Banned in Australia in 1945, the
Minister for Customs, Senator Keane, said “The Almighty did not give people eyes
to read that rubbish.”
Couples:
A Novel. By John
Updike, published in 1960. This book scandalized the public with a picture of
the way people live in a “post-pill” society, a time of “free love.” It
chronicles the lives of ten young married couples in a New England town who
make a cult of sex and of themselves. It was one of the attempts at a Utopian
life that was doomed to fail.
Myra
Breckinridge. By Gore
Vidal, 1968. Another novel which explores the sexual revolution of the 60s.
It’s the first novel in which the main character undergoes a clinical
sex-change. It takes place in the Hollywood of the 60s and shows glimpses of
life there at that time.
Portnoy’s
Complaint. By Philip
Roth, 1969. Another 60s novel in the same vein. It made Philip Roth a celebrity.
The book was controversial in its use of sexual words and its candid treatment
of sexuality. Portnoy’s Complaint has
been described as “A disorder in which strongly felt ethical and altruistic
impulses are perpetually warring with extreme sexual longings, often of a
perverse nature…”
Peyton
Place. Grace
Metalious, 1956. And so we come to our very own novel that has its own steamy
moments. We love this story and the fact that we got to witness the movie being
made up in Maine. It sold 60,000 copies in the first ten days of its release
and was on the New York Times best
seller list for 59 weeks.
This book cover line
reads, “The extraordinary new novel that lifts the lid off a small New England
town.”
I remember the
controversy when this book came out, which as a result, everyone wanted to read
of course. Grace was the E. L. James of her time except that no one disputes
that she really knows how to write. The book was adapted as a film in 1957 and
also became a T.V. series from 1964-69.
The book is America’s
version of a “class” difference. It follows three women: Constance MacKenzie
and her illegitimate daughter, Allison; and her employee, Selena Cross, a girl
from “across the tracks” or “from the shacks” as they all come to terms with
their identity as women and as sexual beings in a small New England town. In
the book we find hyprocrisy, social inequities, and class differences. Grace
didn’t leave anything to the imagination when she included such things as
incest, abortion, adultery, lust and murder. As a result “Peyton Place” became
a generic label for any community where the residents kept sordid secrets. The
book has been described as “Truly a composite of all small towns where ugliness
rears its head, and where the people try to hide all the skeletons in their
closets.”
Nora
Roberts
We can’t leave this
discussion without mentioning the most recognized and in fact the queen of
Romance Novels in America, Nora Roberts. She has legions of fans that rush out
and grab her very latest book as soon as it appears on the shelves. I’m not one
of those fans, but I have friends who are.
Roberts also writes
under the pseudonyms of J. D. Robb, Jill March, and in the U.K. as Sarah
hardest. Under J. D. Robb she writes the “In Death Series” featuring characters
in NYPSD or New York City Police and Security Department. As such, she has now
entered the mainstream of novel writers.
She was the first author
to be inducted into the Romance Writers of America Hall of Fame. As of 2011,
her novels have been on the New York
Times best seller list for 861 weeks, 176 of those weeks in the number one
spot.
I wish her luck in her
future novel endeavors.
Gee, you know what?
Maybe I should have put some steamy scenes into my book, The South End. My fictional South End in Shoreville certainly had
enough skeletons in the closet I could have exposed. Then maybe I could have
been banned in Boston and by the Pope; sold 1000,000 in the first week of
publication; and ended up on the New York
Times Bestseller for 100 weeks or so. What do you think? A rewrite?
Naaaaaaah.
If you have other books
you think I should add to this list, please email me at southendstories@aol.com.
Thanks for listening.
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