After thinking things over a bit, Ana semi-seriously sends Christian an email breaking things off.
As if Ana chanted his name into a mirror five times, Christian Grey just appears in her room, and short-circuits any discussion with Ana by moving directly to sex and light bondage. This time he actually ties her to the headboard.
Do I need to repeat that silk neckties are not good for bondage?
At long last we get to the infamous contract. It’s pretty lengthy, and I suspect that like a lot of legalese, such as website terms of service, the readers of this book just breeze through it.
The problem with BDSM contracts is that they aren’t legally binding (unlike the NDA which Ana signed earlier). They’re social agreements, not legal documents. Like a lot of BDSM, master/slave contracts are about the trappings, or signifiers, of authority, but divorced from real authority. A person may be addressed by a title, but that title doesn’t matter to anybody except the submissive. Quite literally, the power of the government depends on the consent of the governed. All of this legalese is interesting, and adds to the mise en scene of the interaction between Ana and Christian, but it isn’t really necessary.
Despite the cliffhanger, Christian’s mother visiting is rather anticlimactic. Even though she’s perfectly pleasant, Ana feels self-conscious.
Christian switches into steel-hard business mode, and gives her a copy of the contract.
“This is the contract. Read it, and we’ll discuss it next weekend. May I suggest you do some research, so you know what’s involved.” He pauses. “That’s if you agree, and I really hope you do.” He adds, his tone softer, anxious.
“Research?”
“You’ll be amazed what you can find on the Internet,” he murmurs.
For a change, Christian is doing the right thing. He should let her read the contract, and give her time to process all of this new stuff, before going any further.
The morning after, Christian’s hangups about wasted food come up over breakfast with Ana. Kate calls and checks up on Ana.
This is another worrisome moment. Because of the non-disclosure agreement she signed without reading, Ana isn’t sure how much she can tell Kate about her night with Christian. It’s hard not to feel that there is a subtle process of isolation at work, with Christian introducing Ana to this new world with new rules, and Ana being legally prohibited from talking about them with anybody else and getting a second opinion or reality check. Again, there’s a creepy sense that Ana just doesn’t know enough to be at all concerned about the patterns of this relationship.
“The first time I fuck you, I might scare you a little. Because I’m a man, and I know how to do things.”
Girls
Initially angered at her virginity, Christian then becomes baffled, though he doesn’t take this as another reason to ease up the pressure on her. Ana is still focused on the idea that somebody wants to have sex with her.
“Do you want to go?” he asks, his voice gentle.
“No, unless you want me to go,” I murmur. Oh no… I don’t want to leave.
Ana’s classic non-answer, and mixed message, is just want you don’t do in negotiation, even in non-BDSM sex. This inability to express what she wants and doesn’t want is the source of so many problems in BDSM.
Christian immediately takes her to his bed, as if her virginity is something that needs to be corrected like a ruptured appendix.
I’m still talking about this chapter because this is when this book’s deeply flawed understanding of BDSM is first exposed.
Please him! He wants me to please him! I think my mouth drops open. Please Christian Grey. And I realize, in that moment, that yes, that’s exactly what I want him to do. I want him to be damned delighted with me. It’s a revelation.
There’s a subtle but important shift in the verbs in this paragraph. In the first two sentences, she uses “to please” as something she does to him. But in the sixth sentence, she shifts to “to be pleased with me”, as something he is with her. In a single thought, she goes from something she does, to something she expects him to do. It’s the difference between doing something because you take satisfaction in a job well done or you believe the task is worth doing, and doing something because some external party will reward you for it. This underlines two different things kinky people mean when they talk about “service”.
“…But, my dearest Catherine, what have you been doing with yourself all this morning? Have you gone on with Udolpho?”
“Yes, I have been reading it ever since I woke; and I am got to the black veil.”
“Are you, indeed? How delightful! Oh! I would not tell you what is behind the black veil for the world! Are not you wild to know?”
“Oh! Yes, quite; what can it be? But do not tell me—I would not be told upon any account. I know it must be a skeleton, I am sure it is Laurentina’s skeleton. Oh! I am delighted with the book! I should like to spend my whole life in reading it….”
Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
Christian brings Ana into the playroom. Ana seems nonplussed.
This is something kinky people have to deal with sometimes: introducing a prospective partner to their kink, or to kink in general. A perennial topic in BDSM circles is whether you can convert a vanilla (I.e. non-kinky) person to kink. The consensus seems to be that it is possible, but the odds are maybe one in three.
Christian flies Ana in his private helicopter to his private building in Seattle. Christian keeps dangling his Gothic secret before Ana, who keeps batting at it like a not-terribly-bright cat pawing at a string.
They also talk about Thomas Hardy’s novel Tess of the D’Urbervilles, which is supposed to be familiar to both of them. Not only do I not think either of them have actually read it, I wonder if E.L. James the author has read it either.
Ana wakes up in Christian’s hotel suite the next morning. Christian not only had her undressed, but sent his bodyguard off to buy her a complete set of new clothes.
Um, wasn’t Ana’s friend and roommate Kate nearby when Ana passed out, and wouldn’t she have been a more natural choice to look after an unconscious Ana than a relative stranger like Christian?
Let me call process for a moment. I started thinking about the previous chapter’s commentary while I was still reading the text, and I was going to talk about how this wasn’t supposed to be a snarky commentary. That is, no cheap shots, no snobbishness, etc. Accept it for what it is, and understand how it fits into the world.
After saving Ana from the vicious bicyclist, Christian holds onto her tight. Ana practically has some kind of stroke at his touch, silently begging her to kiss him. She does ask him to kiss her, and certainly doesn’t move to kiss him herself. “Kiss me damn it! I implore him, but I can’t move.”
Christian Grey responds, or rather says, as she has neither done nor said anything to respond to:
“Anastasia, you should steer clear of me. I’m not the man for you,” he whispers.
He rejects her. And what does he do to make her go away? Mails her a set of vintage books that cost five figures. This kind of mixed messages indicates either a high level of manipulation or a moderate level of schizophrenia.
