Sexy Literary Classics: Prep for ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’

With the release of the movie adaptation of Fifty Shades of Grey a couple of months away, you may need a few extra sexy reads to keep you warm until then. (Save a re-read of the first of the erotic trilogy for the week that the movie comes out.) Presented are a few literary classics that will keep you in the mood.

Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H Lawrence sheds a different light on the ideas of what makes sex great that was well before its time. As everydayhealth.com’s “Classic Erotic Books Before Fifty Shades of Grey” states, “The story was revolutionary at its time because it included use of some words that were deemed ‘unprintable,’ Centuries later.” Not only does this novel tell the story of an upper-class woman having an affair with a man who works on her property, but it demonstrates the ways a woman needs to be touched in order to feel pleasure and the forbidden couple practically speaks their own language of love.

If you are a fan of the “lost soul” motif in Fifty Shades of Grey, then you will appreciate the Don Juan myth portrayed by Lord Byron. Don Juan takes you on a journey through lost love. Driven away from his country for sexual indecency, Don Juan goes to different places as a drifter. Unfortunately, Byron’s poem is unfinished and may leave you feeling unsatisfied. However, the encounters he has with women can be enough to reach the incomplete end.

But if you do not want to create your own ending, Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert “is the story of married, middle-class Emma Bovary and the many affairs she enjoys in her efforts to find excitement and meaning in her life,” According to everydayhealth.com, “If you do not partake in this novel, “you are missing out on a classic book that was considered quite scandalous and revolutionary at its time.” It’s a story of a woman who needs an adrenaline rush and sexual gratification.

Perhaps you are only in the mood for a quickie. If so, Chaucer’s D.H Lawrence’s “The Fox” and Katherine Mansfield’s “Bliss” are sensual choices for you. “The Fox” will literally show you what happens when you let a fox into the henhouse! Mansfield’s “Bliss,” although not sexually explicit, will give you the sense that a climax will happen at any moment.

All of these stories, poems, and novels are scandalous in their own way. These selections are examples of how great literature makes you feel, even if they don’t have a happy ending. But, like Fifty Shades of Grey, they will leave you wanting more.