The Picture of Christian Grey

Beauty in the Fifty Shades trilogy is not only a major theme, but a magical quality all of its own. Christian's beautiful appearance somehow manages to convey all of the fifty shades of his personality: attraction, power, passion, danger,  vulnerability, sex.

Christian reminds me of another character in literature who is also beautiful and dangerous at the same time, and this is Dorian Gray, from Oscar Wilde's famous (and only) novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Like Dorian, Christian is also extremely beautiful, dangerous and sexually aggressive. Both men feel that they are cursed and damned beyond all hope. The scenes where Dorian plays the piano in Wilde's novel are haunting, mysterious, beautifully and irretrievably sad -- the same goes for parallel scenes in Fifty Shades.

However, unlike Dorian, Christian does not close the door to love: he lets love come into his life and heal his soul. Dorian also met one woman who loved him but, in destroying her, he also destroyed his own soul. 

Beauty paints a picture in the Fifty Shades trilogy, and it is a picture of hope, salvation and love.