The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty
by Anne Rice
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Book Reviews of The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty
Book Review: A powerful, dynamic, erotic book
Summary: 5 Stars
This powerful book will shake the complacency of everyone who reads it.If read as an allegory, it is a marvelous story about the subservient role all of us accept to function in society. We face it every day in traffic; we sometimes have bosses who are overbearing; we deal with people who are a pain in the neck but to whom we must be polite. Our whole lives consist of suppressing our natural urges and instincts out of respect for the rights of others; in that sense, the human is never free, we are always a slave to the opinion and respect of others.
From the beginning, Rice's story sounds like an allegory to military training in which the goal is to destroy the individual's sense of personal identity and replace it with loyalty to the group. In the military, such dominance is enforced. In private life, companies sometimes spend inordinate amounts of money to develop similar loyalty -- consider the pressures to be a "team player" in most organizations.
One of the key statements is on page 62: "She must please him, must make him loving again, and then any pain at all would not be too much." Some women long to be dominated, they will do anything in an effort to please others. It's very sad, really. That is the story of this Sleeping Beauty.
It's why I have long been horrified by zoos; the thought of animals deprived of their freedom breaks my heart. Modern zoos are changing, one of the sad facts is that zoos have become necessary to save various animals that would be exterminated if left in the wild. It's better, sometimes, to be "in protective custody" than extinct; that may also apply to loveless marriages.
If so, Rice's story is a portrayal of the hell some women go through to please a husband. Any woman who's been in that situation, any woman who's broken free of it, will understand and sympathize. It will be exciting and erotic for them, because those feelings were part of their original love. It may even be something to try again, but it will not be something they can live with for long.
Various books are written as allegories. Frank Baum wrote "The Wizard of Oz" as a pro-capitalist story to counter the socialism that was prevalent at the turn of the century; Jack London wrote "Call of the Wild" to justify socialism. Both are still popular, with "Call of the Wild" regularly assigned in school. It's no longer regarded as "socialist" literature -- now, it's simply a good story.
Rice may have intended a similar allegory for this book. The popular image of marriage is of love and tenderness; her book says some marriages are an indoctrination into strict and absolute obedience.
This fight for dominance is by no means unusual. Look at the continual battle among even pre-school brothers and sisters for dominance. It's just not the older ones, the younger will continually challenge. The result is a continuing battle.
Rice tapped into a universal theme, that of dominance and the yearning to please. Some people demand unquestioning obedience, and I've worked for employers like that. A popular term is "control freaks." Rice was clever enough to apply it to some very personal themes among people; because it is very personal, it makes the story very frightening despite its intense eroticism.
I'm reminded of "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" by Alexander Solzhentsyn, and "Lord of the Flies" by William Golding. Solzhentsyn tells of the petty humiliations forced on prisoners to make them compliant; Golding writes about an degenerating battle for dominance, and the need to inflict humiliation on the weaker. Prison life is a good example of such behaviour, where daily life is a close example of some of the humiliations inflicted upon "Sleeping Beauty."
Even the name is demeaning. She may have been the "Sleeping beauty," but her real name is never used. That is as demeaning as always referring to a person by a number instead of their name -- a common habit in prison; or the "Hey, you" or worse by a domineering spouse.
Rice taps into some of our deepest emotions and builds a scary story based on those feelings. It's a powerful combination. The sex will infuriate some readers, but it is an essential element; the dominance theme will infuriate everyone who treasures individual freedom. But, if you read it at anything above a fairy tale level, it will make you think. And perhaps even cry. And that is good.
Book Review: Preposterous
Summary: 1 Stars
Let me make clear at the outset, I am no kinkophobe. I can certainly enjoy a bit of ... let's call it "consensual rope"; I've read some blindfolded-and-tied-to-the-bed scenarios that I enjoyed a lot. But I have a very peculiar kink of my own: I like the fiction I read, even the erotica, to make some kind of sense. I like my readings to hang together, to be based at least on some frail thread of real-world logic.
And these don't and aren't. Rice's "Beauty" trilogy is almost comically implausible. I think it was Shirley Jackson who offered a bit of advice to writers of fiction: the reader, she said, may accept for the purposes of a given story that there exists a Land of Oz, but he will not accept that he can see the Land of Oz from his kitchen window. Similarly, I can accept that there exists such a phenomenon as sexual slavery; but I cannot, for this or any other story, accept the notion that sexual slavery was the linchpin for the entire socioeconomic structure of Medieval Europe.
And yet this is the notion on which the entire series is based. "Beauty" and her "Prince" are unusual only in that he has *taken* her after awakening her from her hundred-year sleep. The rest of the slaves in his mother's palace -- dozens or hundreds of them, princes and princesses all, and every one not merely attractive but exquisitely beautiful -- are "tribute", sent by their royal parents from the surrounding kingdoms. (I valiantly resist the temptation to render that as "kinkdoms".) In this palace, they spend several years learning to be completely obedient and submissive sexual property (being spanked, being publicly displayed, being spanked, crawling around on their hands and knees, being spanked, being forced into various forms of pony-play, being spanked, picking up rosebuds from the floor with their teeth, being spanked, calling grooms and pages and kitchen help "my lord," being spanked); then they return to their own lands. And this situation has obtained long enough that Beauty's own parents, over a century before, served in this way themselves. Apparently every kingdom and principality in Europe participates in this one-sided "tribute" arrangement.
Oh ... did I mention that Rice *really* likes to describe her princes and princesses being spanked?
Also, Rice seems to have included any notion that struck her as "erotic" at the time, without stopping to consider the real-world implications. "Dear god, who knew that Ms. Rice had such a disgustingly vast knowledge of sexual torture", one review asked: well, she DOESN'T. She has no idea what she's writing about: Anne Rice is completely ignorant, irresponsibly so, about her subject matter. What we see in the "Hall of Punishments", to give one specific example, would cripple or kill a human being within a very few hours, although we're told that "punishments" are not to cause injury, only pain.
There were things in this book that bothered poor squeamish little me in other ways. I believe I've made clear that I thought Rice's obsession with spanking -- and spanking, and spanking, and spanking, and spanking -- her characters grew monotonous, excruciatingly so. And I REALLY didn't need the specific information that the fifteen-year-old heroine's "groom" arranges her hair in such a way as to make her look even younger than she is. (Nor is this the most offensive item. In the grotesquely racist third volume, Rice crosses the line into obvious pedophilia, mentioning the specific presence of "little boys" .)
And it goes on, and on, and on. Spanking. Tying up. Spanking. Lovingly detailed descriptions of how humiliated the heroine feels. More spanking. Leather straps. Suspension. Spanking. Pony-play (apparently this fantasy version of Medieval Europe has no draft animals at all, only "princes"). More humiliation. Spanking.
I can only apply to this astoundingly tedious book, and to its sequels, that single worst word that can be applied to any piece of erotica:
They are BORING.
Book Review: A brilliant concept stripped of characters and reduced to repetition, the book fails. Not recommended
Summary: 2 Stars
The Prince wakens Beauty from her century of sleep--and then, as his reward for saving the castle, takes her as his prize. He leads Beauty back to his kingdom, where foreign princes and princesses are trained to be sexual slaves, willingly submitting to the most "depraved" desires. The fairy tale premise strips the story of characterization and justifies an unbelievable land where Beauty and a hundred other royals undergo public and state-sanctioned humiliating display, oft-repeated spankings, and sexual encounters which never require consent. The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty has a few darkly erotic moments but quickly disintegrates into repetition, and lacks character growth which might grant it some sense of purpose. I do not plan to read the sequels, and I do not recommend this book.
Initially, the premise of Claiming appears to have beautiful simplicity, but this simplicity is its biggest downfall. An untouched Beauty, woken from endless sleep into vivid life by a Prince--the concept leads easily into sexual overtones. However, fairy tales are brief and reiterative, and trade character for archetype: the sleeping Beauty, the warrior Prince. Rice maintains both aspects. She cannot sustain the simple concept over a novel's length, and the story quickly becomes repetitious: humiliation, spankings, sex, humiliation, spanking, sex. Beauty believes that each instance is worse than the last, but it's hard for the reader to agree. Not much varies besides the order of events, and sometimes a slave is tied up for a while or there's a bit of sodomy, but other than that the book drives in the same circle until the end. Beauty and Prince have little characterization outside of their titles, and while Beauty eventually encounters characters with names and the ghost of an identity, on the whole characterization is kept to a minimum. Without characterization, there is no character growth and no one for the reader to identify with and care about, stripping the story of any sense of purpose.
To be fair, the whole book is not a cycle of simple repetition. Claiming has a few moments of dark eroticism, where the encounter is conceived in such a way that it is appealing to the sympathetic mind (which is to say that the content tends towards idealized sexual violence not unlike BDSM, and may not suit all readers). Such moments, however, are the exception rather than the rule. The number of spankings, each one just like the one before, is so exaggerated that one begins to wonder if Rice has a fetish. On a less humorous note, the variations on sex and punishment tread on the edge of objectionable--not because the two can't be intermixed, but because Rice intermixes them without stopping for consent. To a certain extent, the fairy tale setting justifies this: the Prince's kingdom is an absurd land stripped of characters and run on fetishized sex, wholly unbelievable and therefore excused from rational details like reasonable doubt and sexual consent. But the setting can't excuse the fact that the book begins when the Prince rapes Beauty to wake her and then orders her into slavery against her will. Nevermind the fact that Beauty is forever aroused by her trails--the fantasy of the entire book is still tainted.
There is ample room in literature for erotic fairy tales--especially for eroticism that reveals or revels in the darkness of human nature. (The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter is a breathtaking example of such, and I highly recommend it.) The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty, bogged down by blank-faced characters and dozen of identical spankings, plummets where it should soar. The result is a novel with only moments of erotic interest, never thought-provoking or intriguing but instead unbelievable, repetitious, and slightly unsettling. Rice cannot maintain the concept over a mere 250 pages, and I doubt that the two sequels are any better--I don't plan to read them. I was disappointed by this book, and I don't recommend it.
Book Review: ...Classic?
Summary: 2 Stars
I've heard this touted as an "erotic classic," I don't know if that's the general consensus for I don't normally read or pay attention to the genre, but I certainly hope not, because that would mean this rubbish is among the best it has to offer.
First of all, I'm lead to question why Anne Rice even decided to base this on the Sleeping Beauty tale at all, that seems like mostly a marketing decision. She doesn't go back to tell us why or how Beauty came to be "Sleeping Beauty," and after her awakening (within the first few pages,) it seems to do nothing for the rest of the story. The concept doesn't seem to be considered to its full potential either... I just imagine being a fifteen year old girl awakened from a 100+ year sleep by the loss of your virginity, and immediately whisked away naked, helpless, and alone into a sexual subservience of endless rape, torture, and humiliation in a now alien world. I know I'd either be attempting suicide or escape.
There's virtually no development to the history of the world or any of the characters, all of whom I hated--though I sympathized with many of them. Really, there's not one admirable quality in anyone, they're all too busy being either sadistic, masochistic, or just weak and subservient; with no exceptions, it seems, in this entire twisted world. Even Beauty's parents, who it's hinted had themselves spent time serving as sex slaves, are readily compliant to allow their only daughter to be bagged away to suffer under this sub-human prince in his torture chamber of a castle. I know if I were a king, debt or no, I'd have the rascal's head lobbed off in an instant for even suggesting such a thing; never mind his already assumptuous, outrageous behavior. But alas, it seems to be accepted practice in this world. Fine, I can accept that.
But when it comes down to it, the setting and the premise are just excuses for one big torture-filled, fairytale porn "novel." Hey, if that's what gets you off! Straight-up, this book is porn, and in so many *ahem* "flavors", if you get my meaning. I'll warrant, many of the scenes are written quite well, we can feel Beauty's pain and pleasure, and sometimes I actually found the sadistic side of myself getting a kick out of the whole inflicting pain business. But it becomes tiresome and repetitive; almost unbearable once we realize that it isn't leading anywhere worthwhile. The book is then exposed for what it is: one long tirade of endless spankings, rape, and human degradation.
It's painful because there's no sense of hope for relief, no justice, not a thread of decency or principle in anything or anyone. Knowing myself, I'm surprised at being so offended, but the more I trudged on the more I found it disturbing and pointless. A world where the only availible triumph is learning to endure the pain and domination; to accept it and inadvertently better oneself. Perhaps it could have been presented in a better, more enlightening way, but as is, this story is little more than degrading, fairytale-esque torture porn. If that's what you're in the market for then read this book and enjoy it, else it'd be better for your health to skip it.
Book Review: A "Good" 1st book, leading to the 2nd & 3rd books.
Summary: 5 Stars
As I read some of the reviews, I was taken back by the few people who said that this book was "Boring", or "Not what I expected", I think that if your an avid Ann Rice reader and know her work just the thought that she was writing a three part bondage, torture and discipline series centered on "Sleeping Beauty"? Come on people. This was one of the best Ann Rice series I have ever read in all my years. In fact this three book adventure is truly what made me a lifetime Ann Rice Fan.
I remember when I first started to read the first book, I was so taken by it and so captured by the very fact that Rice could've taken a childhood figure like Sleeping Beauty, and put her right in the middle of this very sensual sexual fairy-tail story was enough to make me never want to put it down, I was given the 1st book as a gift when I was a Paramedic at an amusement Park in the North East, and I took it to work with me everyday and read as much of it as I could, at times only reading just 1/2 a page because we were so busy, but I had to read it, even if it was that little bit of it for the day, I just had to know or at least get closer to knowing, what was going to happen next to "Sleeping Beauty". My co-workers at some point noticed that I was a very attentive reader, and were always asking me, what I was reading. I finally told a couple of them about the book and after reading a few snippets from the book to them, I was asked to start from the beginning and read aloud to them, and that was the beginning of what we called back then, "Story Time" with Tony.....
Once I finished the 1st book in the series, (which was the only one I got as a gift), I went crazy going from book store to book store, trying to find the next and last books. Not to mention that everyday I showed up for work without the books, my co-workers got angry at me and insisted I spend more time looking for the other books. Then one day I arrived to work, ready to be yelled at for still not finding the 2 final books, and to my surprise, there next to my desk, was a large floor lamp, with a very fluffy comfy chair and a small table just off to the side of them... and on that table sat 2 brand new books. My partner had found the 2 final books of the Sleeping Beauty adventures for me, and all my coworkers had set up an area for me, so that I was comfortable while I did our Story Time, and finished the next and last books in this series. Again, a very hot story about a childhood princes, who many wanted to bed anyway. So thank you Ann Rice, for another great set of books and I look forward to another set like these someday I hope.....