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50 Shades Freed: Ana’s eating habits and her jealousy

50 Shades Freed: Ana’s eating habits and her jealousy published on No Comments on 50 Shades Freed: Ana’s eating habits and her jealousy


1. Christian spends a lot of time reminding Ana to eat. She repeatedly neglects to eat when she feels distressed…which, come to think of it, means she eats very little throughout the trilogy. She needs to go see the doctor about her proprioception problems and her struggles with food.

2. Ana's insecurity and possessive jealousy rivals Christian's! I can understand her ambivalence and worry about Christian's ex-subs, including the erratic and threatening Leila, who previously threatened Ana with a gun and whose psychiatric treatment Christian is bankrolling. I also understand her serious objections to his continuing relationship with Elena, the child-molesting ex-domme who started raping him and making him her sub at the age of 15. For some reason, especially in book 1, Christian insists on maintaining a friendship with Elena, owning a stake in her salon chain and even consulting her for advice. Bad idea, Christian!

That being said, Ana takes things too far, especially in 50 Shades Freed. When she sees the architect of her and Christian's future home ogling Christian, she threatens to dismiss the architect unless the architect keeps her eyes to herself. "Please stop flirting with my husband; it makes me feel incredibly uncomfortable, and I'd hope you'd respect our marriage" would have sufficed. Threats and blackmail, understandable though they may be as borne of insecurity, are excessive and abusive.

In another example of going too far, Ana and Christian have the utterly predictable fight about her being pregnant. Christian stalks out [to get drunk, naturally]. When he returns, Ana accidentally discovers from a text on his open cell phone that he was meeting with Elena. [Wow, this man exhibits persistently poor judgment.] Ana decides to hack into Christian's E-mails to see what he's been doing with Elena.

No! No! No! That is a controlling and abusive invasion of privacy. It was a controlling and abusive invasion of privacy when Christian, wanting to know what was going on between Ana and her sexually assaultive boss, read her work E-mails. And it's a controlling and abusive invasion of privacy when Ana, wanting to know what's going on between Christian and his sexually assaultive ex-domme, reads his personal E-mails. I'm impressed and kind of horrified at how much emotional damage Ana and Christian inflict on each other. They are both so manifestly not good for each other.

I don't care what the author obviously thinks…There is no way in hell this is going to end well. Sure, this volume will close with delusions of contentment, but mark my words. Ana and Christian will eventually go through an acrimonious divorce, made all the worse by the presence of kids and the absence of a prenup [yeah, they discussed that before marrying, but not the subject of surnames — go figure]. And then…

Well, I'll just let the immortally wise words of This Be The Verse, a poem by Philip Larkin, conclude for me.

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