Hard and Soft at Once

The key question posed by Fifty Shades of Grey, as sociologist Eva Illouz recognizes in her brilliant 2014 book on the topic, Hard-Core Romance: “Fifty Shades of Grey,” Best-Sellers, and Society, isn’t why a poorly written BSDM romance novel would capture the imagination of millions of women. Poorly written and slightly rapey romance novels have been firing the erotic imaginations of millions of women in the book-buying West for more than a century, ever since the romance genre became a mass market phenomenon.