Reception
The trilogy was a commercial success, outearning Interview with the Vampire and gaining a significant cult following. Anne Rice was able to secure the publishing contract for her next erotic novel Exit to Eden (1985) with an advance of US$35,000 from Arbor House. There have been allegations that Rice is a dominatrix in real life since the trilogy deals with the BDSM practice so exclusively, but her husband Stan Rice replied that "she's no more sadomasochistic than she's a vampire." The trilogy is read by many among those involved in the BDSM community, but Anne Rice told her biographer that she refused the offer to meet with its practitioners face-to-face, and in fact her brief encounters with "those people" resulted in the discontinuation of the Sleeping Beauty series after the third book, because of moral revulsion she felt when she was confronted with the actuality of the practice. However, when the director of the Columbus Metropolitan Library declared the trilogy "hardcore pornography" and removed all print and audiocassette copies from the library shelves in 1996, Rice intervened to object the director's accusations, arguing that the trilogy was "elegantly sensual" and harmless to readers. The trilogy is included in the American Library Association's list of "100 most frequently challenged books" of the 1990s, with the term "challenge" defined in American literature as "an attempt to remove or restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group".
Professor Linda Badley of Middle Tennessee State University wrote in her 1996 book Writing Horror and the Body on the trilogy that rewriting the myth of Sleeping Beauty as sadomasochistic fantasies enabled Anne Rice to explore "liminal areas of experience that could not be articulated in conventional literature, extant pornography, or politically correct discourse." Sandra Michaelson, the author of Love Smart: Transforming the Emotional Patterns That Sabotage Relationships, claimed that while the trilogy may provide erotic stimulation, it is "extraordinarily unhealthy" as a model for everyday living.
Read more about this topic: The Sleeping Beauty Trilogy
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