Consensual non-consent: Comparing EL James’s Fifty Shades of Grey and Pauline Réage’s Story of O

This article explores questions of sexual agency and consent in mainstream representations of BDSM using Pauline Réage’s Story of O and EL James’s Fifty Shades trilogy as examples. It addresses normalizing tendencies and explores to what extent BDSM can be represented before being rejected by mainstream readers. Based on critiques of both novels, I outline the degree to which the concept of consensual non-consent, that is, the illusion of suspended consent in order to facilitate erotic power play, works in both novels. A close reading reveals a return to more traditional notions of femininity and female sexual agency in Fifty Shades, as well as a growing tendency to normatively limit the depictions of sadomasochistic desires.