4 ideas
Naive college student Anastasia Steele is drawn into a relationship with wealthy, controlling entrepreneur Christian Grey. Their attraction is built around a proposed dominant-submissive contract governing their intimacy.
The relationship centers on a written agreement enumerating limits and rules for dominance and submission. The negotiation of that contract dramatizes consent and control as explicit, bargained terms.
Christian's extreme wealth functions as fantasy fuel, framing control and possession as romantic rather than alarming. The book leans on money and status to make domination aspirational.
The narrative frames Christian's controlling behavior as a symptom of past trauma the heroine hopes to heal through love. This casts fixing a wounded man as the emotional engine of the romance.