Do powerful women secretly want a dominant man between the covers?

I’m transported back to a time when she was in my flat, in her terrifying nylon robe, and I secretly looked at her… and fell in love.

“She drops the mop and promptly locks the door… As her tongue finds mine, she presses her body against me.”

Two years after her last book, EL James, author of the infamous Fifty Shades Of Gray, is back.

And if the above excerpt is anything to go by, she makes up for lost time by piling up the sexual clichés into nearly 500 pages of breathless, lustful prose.

The Missus has been panned by critics as cringe-inducing porridge – one compared it to a Mills & Boon novel written by Alan Partridge – and it’s not hard to see why.

The book is about the disturbingly misogynistic marriage between a British aristo (Maxim) and his Albanian cleaning lady (Alessia), who has been trafficked into sex trafficking.

In scene after sickening scene, the sight of Alessia dusting, ironing and cooking (she insists on continuing with her household role after they are married) sends Maxim into a downward spiral of desire.

Halfway through, Maxim’s groin “tightens” with such frightening regularity that I suspected he should have it looked at by a doctor.

But then, to give James even a little credit, it’s hard to write plausible erotic scenes for books.

This is something that even the world’s literary heavyweights can attest to; the likes of Ben Okri and John Updike have both been awarded Bad Sex In Fiction awards by the Literary Review – a gong given for spectacularly bland writing about sex in otherwise decent novels.

And as the author of a bestselling trilogy of risqué thrillers, I’m well aware of how challenging it can be to write about sex.

Choosing the right language is of utmost importance. Too poetic and it gets ridiculous, but being too anatomically accurate can be uncomfortably blunt.

And it’s worth noting that the way we think and talk about sex has changed radically since the advent of the Internet.

Porn and sexting have made explicit language much more familiar, if not necessarily comfortable.

Meanwhile, a kind of snobbery persists where romance is dismissed as “the ugly stepchild of the publishing world,” as Bridgerton author Julia Quinn puts it.

Generations of readers have gleefully devoured the work of Jilly Cooper and Jackie Collins, writers whose reach extends far beyond the bedroom to suspenseful plots and sharp social satire.

Yet so-called ‘bonkbusters’ are seen as second-rate compared to other genres – largely, I think, because they are written and consumed by women.

Sexy romance has traditionally been seen as an acceptable form of escapism for women – a polite version of eroticism.

But in the 1980s, both Collins and Cooper used their glamorous plots and hapless heroines to explore the contradictions of a rapidly changing sexual climate.

Readers still wanted the promise of romance, but there was happily no passionate clinch on the last page.

Instead, multiple partners, adultery, and steamy encounters in the most unlikely of places pushed the envelope far beyond fulfilling monogamy.

And while the formula of wildly attractive and totally unsuitable heroes like Cooper’s legendary villain Rupert Campbell-Black remained constant, sex wasn’t always shown as the path to simultaneous orgasm and marital bliss.

There was certainly ecstasy on offer – “he played her like a Stradivarius” remains one of my favorite lines – but sex was also written as awkward, absurd, and sometimes hilarious.

Perhaps one difference between male and female writers is that women don’t take sex so seriously.

Perhaps it’s because our egos aren’t so big that we can see the comic side of desire and willingly suspend our disbelief to enjoy the, ahem, ride.

As James himself says, “You mean women aren’t intelligent enough to realize this is for escape?” You basically infantilize women and don’t let them have fun.’

I was never a fan of Fifty Shades Of Grey, but I completely agree.

When I wrote my first erotic novel, Maestra, I wanted it to transport readers in the same way that Cooper’s book Riders did when I was a teenager, by being glamorous, escapist, and sexy, sure — but also a little playful.

Still, writing raunchy scenes has changed a lot since Cooper took up her pen.

Like it or not, thanks to porn and the internet, we live in a world where the kind of sex that was once considered extreme is now considered normal by a new generation.

A thriller set in the art world, Maestra focused on a young woman who enjoyed orgiastic casual sex with men and women.

Underground sex clubs in Paris, wild orgies in mansions and passionate chance encounters were all part of her adventures.

Some of it was quite baroque, with passages about old-fashioned bondage bondage and an outrageous scene involving a raucous sea urchin.

But while the book was as satirical as it was sexy, I was amazed at the response it received.

Millions of people exchange explicit sexual content online every minute of every day, but somehow it was still considered unacceptable in a book.

“Disgusting” was one of the more polite critiques. Readers who had expected a more conventional novel wrote to me by the hundreds asking why I had written such an unpleasant story.

My answer, then and now, is that crime novels often include scenes of horrific violence perpetrated on women’s bodies, so why should descriptions of consensual sex, however extreme, be considered unacceptable?

Ironically, the book was edited before it even went to print.

I decided to write the sex scenes in Maestra in the realistic language of the twenty-something heroine, but my American editor insisted that some parts be toned down.

However, many readers responded positively, suggesting that we are now more comfortable with graphic sex scenes.

While our sex lives are still mired in taboos, I think women are more relaxed about the idea of ​​physical gratification expressed in a way that feels contemporary and realistic.

EL James dared to break the silence surrounding women’s fantasies. Fifty Shades pushed the parameters so far that BDSM (bondage, domination, sadism, masochism) is now a mainstream genre in fiction, which would have been unthinkable a decade ago.

The Missus steers clear of BDSM; in the book’s sex scenes, no one will be holding their pearls in 2023.

But the days of Mills & Boon style ‘he gently stroked her breast’ timidity are over.

And I wonder if James has uncovered a dirty little secret with her new book that will resonate with readers, however much critics may want to dismiss it.

For sex scenes to work, they have to be borderline, verging on shocking play.

Sex isn’t sexy without a bit of sin, and if the most outrageous physical acts are now considered conventional, the transgression must be in our brains – thinking about the unthinkable can be a real guilty and delicious pleasure.

James’s books suggest that some women fantasize about men who are dominant both outside and inside the bedroom—characters occupying the traditional gender roles that are often (and often rightly) scorned today.

In reality, women may avoid anything that smacks of submission to a controlling man, but find it exciting to read about it.

A heroine who is ready to provide for all the household needs of her husband feels really shocking.

As James said, “Feminists have fantasies too.” What if those fantasies turn out to include hot sex with a man who goes crazy over the way you slide your fingers up and down the vacuum cleaner? Now that’s really obscene.