The Byronic Hero Archetype and Christian Grey
Why America’s Favorite Sadist Is Nothing New
YOU KNOW THE TYPE: powerful, mysterious, brooding, and unbelievably sexy. He is the reason you watch period dramas even though you have no interest in literature or history. He’s the brilliant, cynical bad boy with a heart of gold—seemingly unobtainable, yet flawed just enough to make you think you stand a chance. In literature, he is referred to as the Byronic hero, and much to the dismay of feminists everywhere, women have been lusting over him for centuries. Now joining the ranks of literature’s sexiest protagonists is Christian Grey, the beautiful, twitchy-palmed control freak who has captured our hearts and excited other parts of our anatomy.
If you have a pulse, you have heard about the Fifty Shades trilogy and America’s favorite sadist, Christian Grey. I am a stay-at-home mom, and this series has become the topic of conversation at every playground, story time, and ice cream social from Rochester (where I live) to Timbuktu (assumption not based in fact). Last I checked there were over 1,000 people on the waiting list for Fifty Shades of Grey at my library alone. So, what is all the fuss about? Why have so many women fallen in love with Christian Grey? Why the overwhelming obsession?
Honestly, it is nothing new. Christian Grey joins the company of some of literature’s most famous panty-droppers, including Mr. Rochester in Jane Eyre, Gone with the Wind’s Rhett Butler, Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, and The Count of Monte Cristo’s Edmund Dantes. Christian Grey is Mr. Darcy with a darker past, a few more scars, and a more extensive sex toy collection. He’s the Rhett Butler who gets the girl. He’s a modern-day Heathcliff, sharing the crappy childhood but maintaining more self-control, less self-indulgence, and sparing us the ghost of his dead girlfriend. Think of Fifty Shades as your favorite epic romance with a touch of BDSM. With Christian Grey, E. L. James gives us the modern manifestation of the Byronic hero archetype—only this time the reader gets to know him more intimately than ever before. His allure is rooted in the qualities we have always been drawn to in our darkest romantic heroes, but now we get to go to bed with him (a lot), and women (myself included) just can’t get enough.
So, what makes a hero “Byronic” and how does Christian Grey measure up?
Originating with Lord Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, the term “Byronic hero” is defined by the Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms as a “boldly defiant but bitterly self-tormenting outcast, proudly contemptuous of social norms but suffering from some unnamed sin.” In other words, he’s a sexy badass who might have a chip on his shoulder, but is naughty in all the right ways.
Classically, this type of character possesses similar physical attributes. At first glance, the Byronic hero is utter perfection. He is usually handsome and sexually attractive, seductive, mysterious, and charismatic. He is physically powerful and has a commanding presence. When we first meet Christian Grey, protagonist Anastasia Steele describes him as “tall, dressed in a fine gray suit, white shirt, and black tie with unruly dark copper-colored hair and intense, bright gray eyes.” Much of Ana’s inner monologue is devoted to obsessing over his beauty, how good he smells, and his overall physical perfection. In a nutshell: this guy is hot.
In addition to physical beauty, these characters tend to be worldly and cultured, arrogant yet charming. Think: Christian Bale in American Psycho, without the chainsaw and psychopathic tendencies. Christian Grey drinks the best wine and orders the most expensive champagne. He knows his gin; he has cucumber in his Hendricks and lime in his Bombay. He is a brilliant piano player who speaks fluent French and quotes Antoine de Saint-Exupery. A pilot, a sailor, an opera enthusiast, he is the epitome of sophistication.
The Byronic hero also fits a certain intellectual persona. Since he is perceptive, intelligent, and enlivened by a good challenge, he often partakes in witty banter, which is aptly demonstrated by Ana and Christian’s email exchanges. Determined, capable, and bright, these men are typically wealthy and successful. In Christian’s case, he’s a twenty-seven-year-old CEO who makes about $100,000 an hour. Helicopter and a private jet? Homes in Aspen and New York? A fifty-foot sailboat named after his adoptive mother? He has all these things and more. He tells Ana that he wants to lavish money on her: “I could buy you your heart’s desire, Anastasia, and I want to.” Just in case I’ve lost you, let’s recap. Drop-dead gorgeous sex god? Check. Ridiculously wealthy? Check. And he wants to take her on a shopping spree with his black Amex. Are you swooning yet?
Ah, but there is a catch: beneath his physical perfection, sophistication, and wealth lies a complicated emotional persona. Christian, our self-proclaimed “dark knight,” has perfected the art of brooding. Like his fictional counterparts, he can be solitary, moody, aloof, and distant. His self-critical and self-deprecating tendencies can escalate to self-loathing if not kept in check. He can be obsessive and controlling to the point of suffocation.
A few minutes into their first meeting Ana calls him a “control freak,” to which he responds: “Oh, I exercise control in all things, Miss Steele.” He likes to be in charge and his penchant for social and sexual dominance allows him to use sex as a weapon. Repeatedly described as “mercurial,” Christian Grey is a “mass of contradictions.” He is strong, yet fragile, presenting himself as the quintessential alpha male only in an effort to mask his vulnerability. At times he is uptight, selfish, and depressive; at others, carefree and playful. Christian’s moods change so frequently that Ana actually Googles “multiple personality disorder”! It does not get much more confusing or frustrating than being in a relationship with a Byronic hero.
Sure, Christian Grey is conflicted, cynical, and at times quite unreasonable, but like many of the Byronic heroes who came before him, underneath his tough exterior are glimpses of his integrity and soul. Deep down he is a good man. He has a heart for philanthropy and dedicates much of his time and creative energy to feeding the world’s poor and developing technologies to better life in the Third World. However, unlike many of his Byronic predecessors, Christian recognizes his shortcomings and is well aware of his baggage. In this respect, he is a more evolved version of the Byronic hero. He is drawn to goodness and even though he struggles with integrity, he wants to do the right thing. He warns Ana, “You should steer clear of me. I’m not the man for you.” He marvels at her innocence and doesn’t want to taint it, yet he finds himself “like a moth to a flame.” The feeling is mutual. Ana expresses on numerous occasions that she fears she is “Icarus flying too close to the sun,” but no matter how hard she tries, she cannot resist “poor, fucked-up, kinky, philanthropic Christian.”
These emotional discrepancies result from yet another factor that Byronic heroes have in common: they are haunted, tortured souls who wrestle with demons from their past. In Christian’s case those demons would include being raised by a “crack whore” mother, beaten by her pimp, and left alone with her dead body for four days, scared and hungry, at the age of four. Oh, and one of his adoptive mother’s friends seduced him at fifteen and turned him into her BDSM boy toy. In turn he has learned to channel his anger by beating and having sex with girls who look like his birth mother. Super healthy, I know. “Paging Dr. Flynn!” So, in other words (Ana’s inner goddess’, to be exact) he “has a 747 cargo hold’s worth of baggage,” including a suicidal, gun-toting ex. (That being said, I would take Christian’s mommy issues over Mr. Rochester’s crazy, pyromaniac wife in the attic any day!)
Despite his beauty, intelligence, wealth, and power, the Byronic hero’s emotional baggage would prove too much for most women to handle. Is it any wonder that Ana, our heroine and Christian’s love interest, is a dewy-eyed literature major? Who better to fall for our Byronic friend than someone who has spent her entire life in love with his fictional counterparts? She even looks to her favorite romantic heroines for guidance: “Elizabeth Bennet would be outraged, Jane Eyre too frightened, and Tess would succumb, just as I have.” Christian and Ana are a perfect illustration of opposites attracting. Fifty Shades tells a tale as old as time: beauty tames the (sexy) beast; only a true innocent can unlock the Byronic hero’s heart.
What is it about the Byronic hero that certain women can’t resist?
Even Ana, our Austen-loving, Brontë-reading, Hardy-quoting protagonist, has trouble putting her finger on it: “No man has ever affected me the way Christian Grey has, and I cannot fathom why. Is it his looks? His civility? Wealth? Power? I don’t understand my irrational reaction.” Right now millions of housewives are questioning their own reactions (irrational or otherwise) to Christian Grey. Why do we love this guy so much? The answer is simple: we love him for all the reasons we have always loved our Byronic heroes.
Perhaps the most obvious trait we fall for is how ardently they love and adore their women. Byronic heroes say romantic things like: “If he loved you with all the power of his soul for a whole lifetime, he couldn’t love you as much as I do in a single day” (Heathcliff, Wuthering Heights). And this: “You have bewitched me, body and soul” (Mr. Darcy, Pride and Prejudice). And this: “You are exquisite, honest, warm, strong, witty, beguilingly innocent; the list is endless. I am in awe of you. I want you, and the thought of anyone else having you is like a knife twisting in my dark soul” (Christian Grey, Fifty Shades Darker). I mean, come on! That’s some good stuff! These men are passionate in their work, their causes, and their relationships. They are not afraid to tell you that you are beautiful and make no secret of how much they love you; they shout it from the rooftops. When Christian pays $100,000 for a dance with Ana at the Coping Together benefit, I couldn’t help but be reminded of a similar scene in Gone with the Wind when Rhett exclaims, “Mrs. Charles Hamilton—one hundred and fifty dollars … in gold.” How could you not fall for these rebels who will sweep you off your feet at any cost regardless of who they shock in the process?
In addition to being natural-born romantics, Byronic heroes are great listeners and are attentive to their lady’s needs. They recognize that women want someone to take care of them. From the beginning, despite his stalker-esque tendencies, Christian makes Ana feel safe and protected. These guys pay attention. After one coffee date, Christian knows how Ana takes her tea, what size she wears, and that the key to her heart lies in a first edition of Tess of the d’Urbervilles. When she is hung over, he is there waiting with orange juice and two Advil. She’s feeling naughty; he’s got Ben Wa balls for her to wear to a black tie charity gala at his parents’ home. Job security? He buys her a publishing company. Clothes? Personal shopper. Unsafe car? Have this Audi. Your Audi got trashed by my psycho ex? Here’s a Saab. Like to read? How about the entire British Library on an iPad? Her wish is his command.
These characters give their women all they ever wanted and expose them to things they never even knew existed. Ana says, “It makes me feel powerful, strong, desired, and loved—loved by this captivating, complicated man whom I love in return with all my heart.” Isn’t that what we, as women, long for? To be pursued and desired? To find someone to love and cherish us? Women have always wanted honest, trusting, and committed relationships, and now we are thinking we would also like a playroom with a “soft-boudoir Elizabethan-torture setup.” What better testament of trust than letting your boyfriend tie you up when you know his butt plug collection is vast enough to encompass an entire bureau? Implicit trust, giving yourself over—mind, body, and soul—to someone else … well, it doesn’t get much hotter than that. We crave that level of ultimate intimacy; the mind-blowing, kinky sex is just an added bonus.
Romance, undivided attention, and being desired beyond our wildest dreams are all known to get our juices flowing, but there is one more thing that makes the Byronic hero irresistible: he resonates with the female fantasy of bad boy reformation. Ana’s dilemma is age old: “He’s not a hero; he’s a man with serious, deep emotional flaws, and he’s dragging me into the dark. Can I not guide him into the light?” Ah yes, the thoughts of every girl in love with every bad boy since the beginning of time. What makes Christian different from that tattooed guy with the motorcycle you dated senior year of high school just to piss off your parents is that this beautiful and broken man is flawed but willing to change. His admission that he is “fifty shades of fucked up” gives us hope that, with a little faith and some patience, any flawed man can be saved. By nature, it is his very brokenness that makes this otherwise “unobtainable” man attainable. The fact that this ridiculously handsome, powerful, wealthy, and kind man could fall for any one of us if we took the time to care, took the time to save him, is appealing on multiple levels. Christian Grey is perfect in his imperfections because we want to save him and be saved in the process. Ana says, “There’s nothing I can teach him. I have no special skills,” but ends up teaching him the most valuable lesson of all: how to love and be loved in return. She becomes his lifeline; in the end love saves the day.
It is a beautiful thought that love really can conquer all, and it is obvious that Fifty Shades is an erotic, modern fairy tale complete with happy ending (no pun intended). However, merely establishing that Christian Grey is a Byronic hero and discussing the overall appeal of these characters still does not explain the insane obsession with him. He is just one on a list of many dark, sexy, brooding literary hunks.
So why the astounding, inescapable popularity of the Fifty Shades series? The novels are not well written; in fact, many would argue they are poorly written. Grammatical and punctuation errors abound, Britishisms pop up all over Seattle, and redundancy runs rampant. Yet, much to the chagrin of many academics, literary critics, and general condemners of erotic fiction, this series is resonating with people unlike any book I’ve ever seen. When I taught Effective Reading to college freshman, I would always tell my students: “If you think you don’t like to read, you just haven’t found the right book.” Whether we like it or not, Fifty Shades of Grey has become “the right book” for millions of people, the majority of whom are women. Am I advocating its addition to the literary canon? Do I think it should appear on every Brit Lit reading list? Of course not. Actually, I shudder at the thought. But just because it isn’t on par with Shakespeare or Austen and Brontë doesn’t mean it isn’t valuable. Fifty Shades is clearly meeting a need in the literary market by giving its reader exactly what she wants: sex and lots of it.
This series is successful because James has given the reader her ultimate fantasy: experiencing the Byronic hero in the bedroom. What woman wouldn’t want to read (in explicit detail) what happened after Rhett carried Scarlett up those stairs? Or what Darcy and Elizabeth’s wedding night was like? Jane’s sex life after Mr. Rochester regained his sight? Christian Grey epitomizes the sexy, brooding hero that women want and the love life that goes along with him. It is no longer left to our imagination. We get to hear the rip of every condom packet, every moan, every breath. We get to feel every touch and relish each caress. For the first time we get the hedonism along with the happily-ever-after. Cliché? Sure, but the cliché exists because of our common desires. Christian Grey is all of our fantasies wrapped into one.
As it turns out, deep down we’re all a little “sex mad and insatiable.” We want it all. We want the love and the lust. We want a man who will dance with us to Sinatra, take us soaring, and buy us our 12,000-square-foot dream home overlooking the Sound. We want the guy who can say, “I want you sore, baby” one minute and make love to the music of Roberta Flack the next. The guy who will whisk you around the world, drench you in diamonds, outfit you in designer duds from Louboutin to La Perla, reenact the piano scene from Pretty Woman, and make you come on demand. (Seriously, he says, “Come on, baby,” and poof, magic orgasms!) A loving, committed relationship with a hottie billionaire who is good in bed? Who turns out to be a spectacular father and still thinks you’re sexy when you’re bloated and pregnant? Who only asks for the occasional spanking in return? Hello!! Where do I sign up? With Christian Grey, we get to fall in love with the reckless bad boy who wants us mind, body, and soul, and we get to experience him in the bedroom. Dreams really do come true, “kinky fuckery” included.
JENNIFER SANZO holds a BA in English from Seton Hall University and a Masters from William Paterson University. She is a recipient of the Elizabeth Ann Seton Women’s Studies Writing Prize, a published poet, and former English professor. Jennifer lives in Rochester, New York, with her husband and two children.