an international and interdisciplinary journal of postmodern cultural sound, text and image
Volume 10, January 2013, ISSN
1552-5112
The Anti-Feminist Character of Bella Swan,
or Why the Twilight Saga is Regressive
Introduction
One of the biggest literary phenomena in
recent years, each novel in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight saga has gained international best seller status in its
own right. Stripped from Meyer’s additions of magic and the supernatural, the
four books in the series quite simply detail an old fashioned, traditional
romance narrative- Bella Swan and Edward Cullen fall in love, marry, have a
child and live happily ever after. The series was written by a woman, from the
perspective of a first person, female protagonist. However, despite these
deceptive advantages, the central character of Bella Swan is overwhelmingly
regressive in regards to feminist ideology.
Published in
There has been much debate surrounding the Twilight saga, in particular the
character of Bella Swan, her personality traits, and whether she is a good role
model to the thousands of young women who declare themselves devotees of the
series. Many literary reviews of the series label Bella Swan a heroine. By definition,
a heroine performs heroic acts- and consistently so. A heroine is noted, and
celebrated, for her courage and daring actions. The Oxford English Dictionary
defines a heroine as ‘a woman distinguished by exalted courage, fortitude, or
noble achievements’. Bella Swan exhibits none of these qualities. On the
contrary, Stephenie Meyer’s protagonist displays very little courage,
demonstrates very little fortitude, and is constant in need of reassurance or
protection from the dominant male figures in her life. Bella Swan spends the
majority of the Twilight saga
standing precariously on the side-lines of the action, in full faith that men
will fight her battles for her. Throughout the Twilight saga, she is constantly described as fragile and
breakable, her victimhood consequently exploited and fetishized. Much of the physical interaction between
Bella and her male counterparts reveals a loss of control- or rather, a willing
relinquishment. She is often pulled, dragged and restrained by her love
interests Jacob Black and Edward Cullen, with these adjectives betraying the
physical manifestations of her willing oppression that leak into the fibre of
the text.
A series written for teens, the books
almost parody teenage angst in order to illustrate an argument, ‘It wasn’t just
physically that I’d never fit in. And if I couldn’t find a niche in a school
with three thousand people, what were my chances here? I didn’t relate well to
people my age. Maybe the truth was that I didn’t relate well to people, period’
(Twilight 9). It is a recognisable
theme in teenage literature- an outcast, unpopular protagonist, at odds with
the world around her. But in Bella Swan, Stephenie Meyer has created a
character that openly wallows in self-pity and self-loathing, mourning her own
irreversible flaws. From the very first book, the Twilight saga has the potential to illustrate Bella’s bildungsroman style overcoming of her
shortcomings, but instead, thanks to a restrictive romantic narrative that
envelops the entire character, Bella simply isn’t allowed to develop. She
remains a passive, stagnant, character who, every so often, momentarily jerks
into life- but only when it is required of her by her male counterparts. Bella
flounders helplessly, absorbing blame that isn’t hers to claim, until a male
character makes a decision that she dutifully follows. Meyer’s unabashed patriarchal ideals openly
betray themselves in the text.
With a subplot of an additional love interest
(Jacob Black) the Twilight saga
manages to reinforce notions of women as possessions belonging to the
patriarch, to be protected and consequently handed over in marriage, not unlike
goods. In New Moon, the second book in the series, the Cullen family leave
the town of
‘Even
more, I had never meant to love him… But I needed Jacob now, needed him like a
drug. I’d used him as a crutch for too long, and was in deeper than I’d planned
to go with anyone again’ (New Moon,
192).
Bella Swan is a victim, a character that is
in a constant state of suffering and pain. In the saga this pain alternates
between the emotional and the physical. As Jacob Black, Bella’s forbidden love
interest, accurately defines in Eclipse,
Edward Cullen is Bella’s drug- an addiction that eases her pain. Bella falls
into a catatonic state of depression when Edward leaves her and she does not
recover until another strong male figure enters her life. Meyer uses the physical, hard copy of the
text to illustrate the blank despair Bella experiences. Meyer’s intent seems to
have strived to take the notion of first person protagonist to an emotional
extreme.
It’s no coincidence that Bella seems in a
state of complete unease with herself unless she has a love interest to handle
her. Charlie, Bella Swan’s father, lives
in fear that his chaste, virgin daughter will eventually find a boyfriend , ‘I
sympathised with him. It must be a hard thing, to be a father; living in fear
that your daughter would meet a boy she liked, but also having to worry if she
didn’t’ (Twilight 199). Bella’s first
person narration reveals the fear behind the fear: that she will not be claimed
by another man and consequently ever fulfill her dutiful destiny as homemaker,
mother, and wife.
As Bella is
passed from care of man to man, she becomes acutely aware of this fact. Halfway
through Eclipse, she notes that ‘…Edward insisted again on delivering me to the border line
like a child being exchanged by custodial guardians’ (282). This is a
patriarchal theme that is instrumental to the narrative, and Bella, a teenager
on the cusp of womanhood, is constantly infantilised by the men around her.
Underneath the hyperbole, Twilight is an idealised love story.
Stephenie Meyer’s brand of love is one that renders women incapable of looking
after themselves, in constant need of restraint, control and protection, and
ultimately stripped of their autonomy. It is a brand of love that requires a
woman to renounce her former life and assimilate herself into her husband’s world.
In Bella Swan’s case, her transformation into a vampire by the fourth book in
the saga (Breaking Dawn) requires her
to shed every aspect of her human self into order to live with the Cullen
family forever. The fact that Bella Swan’s vampire romance is preceded with
relocation to a new town, inevitable weak friendship ties, and a fragmented
family life, leaves her vulnerable, and ripe for the picking. When she
inevitably becomes fixated with Edward Cullen, she doesn’t have much to lose.
This is not a love that renders both participants equal.
Bella Swan spends her time outside her
obsession with Edward Cullen cooking for her father, doing homework and
household chores. Her ability to submit
to the will of others around her is astonishing. Stephenie Meyer has placed her
protagonist firmly in the kitchen. A significant proportion of the series
idolises Bella as the perfect woman child – fragile, frail and weak, in need of
constant watch and protection. Meyer has spoken out against the criticism
herself, claiming that the character of Bella is far from misogynistic. On her
official website, she states ‘I am all about girl power… I am not anti-female, I am anti-human. ’.It is true that Bella Swan
makes a small number of choices, but the only autonomous, decided choices that
Bella makes for herself is what her father, Charlie, is having for dinner on
any particular evening:
‘Last
night I discovered that Charlie couldn’t cook much besides fried eggs and
bacon. So I requested that I be assigned kitchen detail for the rest of my
stay. He was willing enough to hand over the keys to the banquet hall. I also
found out that he had no food in the house. So I had my shopping list and the
cash from the jar labeled FOOD MONEY, and I was on my way to the Thriftaway’ (Twilight
27).
Whilst Bella’s culinary choices seem
insignificant on the surface, her most proactive decisions in the Twilight saga involve her father’s
dinner. Bella’s life choices are already decided for her. Her ultimate
decision, to become a vampire, is less proactive, and more of the surrender of
a woman in love.
From the very start of the Twilight saga, Meyer cements her
protagonist’s accident prone nature. This is, in fact, a carefully considered
flaw that conveniently finds Bella in a number of undesirable situations that
Edward inevitably has to save her from. Some argue that Meyer paints Bella in
such a way to illustrate the fallibility of humanity, but it’s worth
considering Bella’s frail nature as a statement of the perceived fallibility of
women. The definitive and staggeringly entrenched inequalities in Bella and
Edward’s relationship prove this- Edward does not treat Bella as an equal, she
understands this and gladly accepts it. Bella does not challenge regressive
gender roles, she actively embraces them. This character is not progressive by
any means.
Conflations
of Lust and
Bloodlust
‘They have a name
for someone who smells the way Bella does to me. They call her my singer—because
her blood sings for me’ (New Moon 490).
Edward
Cullen is not only in love with Bella, he is also obsessed by the thought of
biting her and consequently draining her of her blood. This narrative requires
a careful juxtaposition of sex, violence and death that teeters between the
unacceptable and the desirable, and perilously weighs in on the side of
romantic desire. Once she learns of Edward’s hunger for her blood, Bella courts
Edward’s vampiric bite instead of running scared. Her reasoning for his potentially deathly
touch is somewhat predictable: ‘It was only fear for my soul, for the human
things he didn’t want to take from me, that made him so desperate to leave me
mortal. Compared to the fear that he didn’t want me, this hurdle- my soul- seemed
almost insignificant’ (New Moon 446).
Bella’s logic comprehends that by sacrificing her human life and becoming a
fully-fledged vampire, she can spend the rest of eternity with Edward. She is very aware of the fact that she smells
tantalising to Edward, and throughout the first book he is overwhelmed by his
vampiric desire to bite her.
In Vampyres:
Lord Byron to Count Dracula,
Christopher Frayling notes that ‘Novalis, the German Romantic poet, thought
that “perhaps sexual desire is only the frustrated desire to eat human flesh”
(“woman”, he added chauvinistically, “is certainly the best nourishment”)’
(387). This is a theme that acts as the
lifeblood of the Twilight saga, and
one that this essay will explore in depth using Carol J. Adam’s feminist-vegetarian
critical theory, The Sexual Politics of
Meat. Published in 1990, the book discusses the similarities between
patriarchal ideals of women, in comparison to animal flesh and meat, proposing
a ‘cycle of objectification, fragmentation and consumption’. She maintains
that:
Objectification
permits an oppressor to view another being as an object. The oppressor then
violates this being by object-like treatment: e.g. the rape of women that
denies women to say no, or the butchering of animals that converts animals from
living and breathing beings into dead objects. This process allows
fragmentation, or brutal dismemberment, and finally consumption…. Consumption
is the fulfillment of oppression, the annihilation of will, of separate
identity…. Finally, consumed, it exists through what it represents (58).
The vampiric, monstrous content of the Twilight saga fully supports
It is reasonable, then, to apply
Carol J. Adams continues: ‘What connects
being a receptacle and being a piece of meat, being entered and being eaten?
After all, being raped/violated/entered does not approximate being eaten. So
why then does it feel that way? Or rather, why is it so easily described as
feeling like that way? Because, if you are a piece of meat, you are subject to
a knife, to implemental violence’ (46). Drawing
Written in 1886, Richard Von Kraft-Ebing’s Pyschopathia Sexualis concentrated on
sexual desire disorders. For the most part, his work was generally homophobic
and misogynistic, but he did draw insightful conclusions on the restraints of
the performances of gender roles at the time. Of course, Kraft-Ebing didn’t see
these performances as roles; rather Pyschopathia
Sexualis regards men as innately active, and women as innately passive. In
this extract, Kraft-Ebing details the
stark connotations that can be drawn between lustful desire and anger:
Through
such cases of infliction and pain during the most intense emotion of lust, we
approach the cases in which a real injury, wound, or death in inflicted on the
victim. In these cases, the impulse to cruelty which may accompany the emotion
of lust, becomes unbounded in a psychopathic individual [...] In the
intercourse of the sexes, the active or aggressive role belongs to the man;
woman remains passive, defensive. It affords man great pleasure to win a woman,
to conquer her, and in the ars amandi,
the modesty of woman, who keeps herself on the defensive until the moment of
surrender, is an element of great psychological significance and importance
(56).
Whilst Bella Swan is arguably active in
terms of sexual advances throughout the Twilight
saga, there is plenty of evidence in the text to suggest that the crux of Edward
Cullen’s desire towards her is innately cruel. Kraft-Ebing refers to violent,
lustful men as ‘monstrous’ and the Twilight
saga centres around the apparent humanity of mythical monsters. In fact, much
of Edward and Bella’s discourse in Twilight
is littered with thinly veiled threats alluding to Bella Swan’s death:
“That
wasn’t the first time,” He said, and his voice was hard to hear. I stared at
him in amazement, but he was looking down. “Your number was up the first time I
met you” (Twilight 152).
Again,
Meyer draws on themes of sex and violence to portray a dangerous brand of love
between the two main characters.
It’s worth noting that both a loss of
virginity and a vampire bite have inextricably linked connotations. Both can
only happen once. A vampire bite is a metaphor for sex- or more specifically, a
metaphor for the loss of female virginity. This issue is explored in Eclipse, the third book in the
series. When pondering her eventual
vampire transformation, the first person narrative delves into Bella’s deepest
desires:
‘I wanted
Edward to be the one…It was childish, but I liked the idea that his lips would be the last thing I feel.
Even more embarrassingly, something I would never say aloud, I wanted his venom to poison my system. It would
make me belong to him in a quantifiable, tangible way’ (Eclipse 288).
With this loaded metaphor in place the idea
of Bella pining for Edward to bite her and have his venom spread through her
body takes on a whole new meaning. It’s no coincidence that Bella Swan is a
virgin for the majority of the book. Edward refuses to bite Bella until after
they marry, just as he refuses to have sex with her until their honeymoon. The
acts of both a vampire bite and a loss of female virginity invoke connotations of
hunter and prey. Both involve an exchange of bodily fluids. Both involve
penetration- whether it’s a penis entering a vagina or sharp white vampire
teeth piercing human skin. After penetration, a woman is changed forever. The
vampiric monster metaphor inadvertently reveals medieval misogynistic attitudes
towards women, sex and virginity. In the dominant patriarchal narrative,
there’s a notion of a woman soiled or changed after she loses her virginity-
the monstrous metaphor of the insatiable, vengeful female vampire, lusting
after blood and seducing unsuspecting human men proves this.
Furthermore, this marriage of venom and
semen invokes imagery of colonization- imagery encouraged by Bella’s comment
that only being injected with Edward’s venom would allow her to belong to him.
Not only does the predator/prey dichotomy apply here, but also age-old notions
of man as conqueror and woman as conquered land. Indeed, Bella Swan yearns for
this colonisation.
In her feminist critical theory text The Second Sex, Simone De Beauvoir
writes ‘we have seen that instead of integrating the powerful drives of the
species into her life, the female is the prey of the species, the interests of
which are disassociated from the female’s interests as an individual’ (393). This
can be applied directly to the Twilight
saga. Throughout the text, Edward consistently makes reference to the fact that
Bella smells delicious. Put bluntly, he wants to eat her. She struggles with self-esteem
issues in the first book, but she also entertains suicidal thoughts. This dangerous aspect of their teenage love
is fully recognised by both Edward and Bella, but, despite some hesitation at
the beginning of the first book, it doesn’t deter them from pursuing their
romance. ‘“Yes,”
he agreed slowly. “That is something to be afraid of, indeed. Wanting to be
with me. That’s really not in your best interest” (Twilight 233). Edward wants to consume Bella, in more
than one sense of the word. Edward’s vampiric form and Bella’s human form takes
the man-hunter, woman-prey metaphor to a literal perspective. Bella is both
food and lover to Edward. She recognises this, accepts it, and doesn’t object
to it:
‘About
three things I was absolutely positive. First, Edward was a vampire. Second,
there was a part of him- and I didn’t know how potent that part might be- that
thirsted for my blood. And third, I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love
with him’ (Twilight, 171).
In The
Second Sex, Simone De Beauvoir explores the social mentality of the woman
in love, noting:
She chooses to desire her enslavement so ardently that it
will seem to her the expression of her liberty; she will try to rise above her
situation as an inessential object by fully accepting it; through her flesh,
her feelings, her behaviour, she will enthrone him as supreme value and
reality: she will humble herself to nothingness before him. Love to her becomes
a religion. (653)
This is certainly true of Bella Swan. She is wholly
undeterred by Edward Cullen’s desire to feed upon her blood. And it isn’t just
Bella that recognises this:
‘“You and Cullen, huh?” he [Mike Newton] asked, his tone
rebellious. My previous feeling of affection disappeared.
“That’s none of your business, Mike,” I warned, internally
cursing Jessica to the fiery pits of Hades.
“I don’t like it,” he muttered
anyway.
“You don’t have to,” I snapped.
“He looks at you like… like you’re something to eat,” he
continued, ignoring me’ (Twilight
194).
Meyer eagerly intertwines the notions of
sexual lust and bloodlust. The Twilight saga’s narrative actively
encourages the regressive ideology of women as prey and men as predators,
painting the notion in a dreamy haze of desire, as well as romanticising the
possible violent consequences. Meyers
‘good’ vampires are described as vegetarians because they feed on animals
instead of humans. They
hunt. They stalk and pinpoint prey. And
then, they feed.
Simone De Beauvoir’s The Second Sex also encompasses this school of thought. Framing men as predators and women as prey renders woman the ever passive object:
For a man,
the transition from childish sexuality to maturity is relatively simple: erotic
pleasure is objectified, desire being directed towards another person instead
of being realised within the bounds of self. Erection is the expression of this
need; with penis, hands, mouth, with his whole body, a man reaches out towards
his partner, but he himself remains at the centre of this activity, being, on the
whole, the subject as opposed to objects that he perceives and instruments that he manipulates; he
projects himself towards the other without losing his independence, the
feminine flesh for him is a prey, and through it he gains access to the
qualities he desires, as with any other object. (393)
Stephenie Meyer could not make the
intersection of both blood and bloodlust any more obvious than when Edward
Cullen utters: ‘I’m
the world’s most dangerous predator. Everything about me invites you in. My voice,
my face, even my smell. As if I would need any of that…. As if you could outrun
me! As if you could fight me off’ (Twilight
231).
Poignantly, it’s
this romanticised glorification of Edward Cullen’s monstrous nature throughout
the saga that leaves the notions of both sex and death balancing on a knife
edge. The books unwittingly court the taboo, and when Bella admits that Edward
had ‘never been less human… or more
beautiful’ (232) after witnessing him preparing himself for a kill and
threatening her life, it is worth calling in to question the saga’s concepts of
masculinity and its consequential effect on the text.
In 2008, Stephenie
Meyer revealed to fans of the Twilight series
that a manuscript of the saga from Edward Cullen’s perspective, to be named Midnight Sun had been leaked
online. As a result, she halted writing,
as well as its release. Excerpts of the manuscript can still be found on the
internet, and one quote stands out in particular (emphasis added):
‘Her scent hit me like a wrecking ball, like a battering
ram. There was no image violent enough to encapsulate the force of what
happened to me in that moment. In that instant, I was nothing close to the
human I’d once been; no trace of the shreds of humanity I’d managed to cloak
myself in remained. I was a predator. She
was my prey. There was nothing else in the whole world but that truth.’
Regressive
Gender Roles and the Supernatural
Bram Stoker’s Dracula is perhaps the archetypal
vampire novel. Rightly or wrongly, in writing about vampires, Stoker used the
opportunity to explore gender roles in Victorian society. However, Stoker’s
female vampires were overtly sexual, infused by the possible power of
penetration, and drunk on bloodlust. Stoker’s writings revealed an inherent
fear of female sexuality in Dracula’s
social and historical context. It is
unclear whether Stephenie Meyer took Dracula’s
literary criticism into account whilst she was writing the Twilight saga. What is clear is exactly how the series
chooses not to concern itself with the challenging of gender roles. Christopher
Craft’s literary analysis of Dracula can
also be applied successfully to the Twilight
saga. But there is no confusion of gender in Stephenie Meyer’s vampiric
universe. She anchors her human beings into the role of female, and her
vampires into the role of male.
Indeed, it is worth
noting the character of Victoria- the only actively hunting vampire throughout
the entire Twilight series. She is
vengeful and bitter because Edward killed her life partner to protect Bella.
In the Twilight saga, human beings are weak,
inferior, breakable and in need of protection. Bella Swan’s simpering
tendencies can easily be dismissed by Twilight
fans as an important requirement- she is human whilst most of her counterparts
are vampires. But, taking Carol J Adams’ critical theory into account, there’s
a case to be made that suggests Meyer’s constructed gender roles go further
than biological sex, depicting weak, fallible humans as female, and strong,
indestructible vampires as male: ‘It was against the rules for normal people —
human people like me and Charlie — to know about the clandestine world full of
myths and monsters that existed secretly around us. I knew all about that world
— and I was in no small amount of trouble as a result’ (Eclipse 13)
Bella’s comparisons
between the human world and the world of monsters wouldn’t seem out of place
half a century ago in discourse between house-bound women, discussing the
active world of men and career. Her constant disparaging remarks about herself
throughout the narrative often allow Edward Cullen’s abusive behaviour. Because
she is human and he is a vampire, he is excused. She convinces both herself and the reader
that she needs protecting; their difference is biological and the inequality
between Bella and Edward should not be questioned.
There isn’t much difference
between Bella’s worldview and that of a woman adapting coping mechanisms in
male dominated environment. In Key Writings, theorist Luce Irigaray
wrote about the sexual and social difference between men and women, noting that
‘as long as women have no civil identity of their own, it is to be expected,
unfortunately, they will conform to the only existing models, supposedly
neutral, but in fact male.’ (208) These male norms permeate into every day
discourse resulting in consequential sexism.
Edward Cullen’s sexism in the saga is very much benevolent, but by
striving to protect Bella, he infantilises her. The fact that she is human and
he is vampire renders her entirely subordinate. It is worth arguing that
although these facts on the surface seem a necessary factor of the plot, the
fact that Bella is subordinate from the very first page of the Twilight saga reveals swathes about
relations between the genders in the books.
Bella reassures herself she deserves to be patronised, she deserves to
be restrained, she needs to be protected, and it is all for her own good.
It could be argued
that Edward Cullen’s strongly desired consumption of Bella is eventually
complete upon marriage. Even the words ‘consume’ and ‘consummation’ are
undeniably similar in etymology. On women and the religious institution of
marriage, Simone de Beauvoir comments: ‘She takes his name; she belongs to his
religion, his class, his circle; she joins his family, she becomes his ‘half’.
She follows wherever his work calls him and determines their place of residence
breaks more or less decisively with her past, becoming attached to her
husband’s universe; she gives him her person, virginity and a rigorous fidelity
being required‘(The Second Sex 449).
Bella does all of this and more, changing her genetic state from human to
vampire so that she can belong to Edward Cullen forever.
Christopher Craft
deftly argues the case for Bram Stoker’s Dracula
manifesting an inherent fear of female sexuality, illustrated by gender
conversion and monstrous female vampires using their penetration skills to the
highest advantage. Whilst these gender roles are indeed a social construct,
Stephenie Meyer’s main female vampires (Alice, Rosalie, Esme, and eventually
Bella) are steeped in chastity, the role of the maternal, and blessed with
dogged self-restraint. They are Meyer’s ‘good women’. These are the women
gifted with the power of male penetration who conscientiously choose not to use
it- who actively choose to deny themselves the satisfaction. Bella Swan’s
traditionalist, virginal, chaste personality traits follow her into to vampire
hood, and could not be more obvious when, once she achieves her vampiric state,
it emerges that her enhanced, special power is an incredible self-restraint.
Taking the vampire
bite as a metaphor for sexual initiation to its logical conclusion, it’s
interesting to note how the protagonist’s sexuality is consistently regulated
throughout the Twilight saga. Bella’s
desire around Edward is consistently stunted sharply- she is frequently gripped
by adolescent sexual desire, and Edward does not allow her to achieve her
goals. As the saga explores restrained female sexual desire, it is hardly
surprising that Meyer does not dare to touch upon the taboo subject of female
masturbation. Similarly, Bella’s super
power of self-control is a convenient one when taken into context of the
virgin/whore dichotomy.
Compared to Bram
Stoker’s overtly sexual female vampires, Bella Swan is a stereotypical ‘good
woman’. In fact, Meyer’s texts adhere specifically to Dracula’s condemnation of female sexuality, and this is apparent in
the demonization of the only consistent, female vampire who chooses to actively
satisfy her thirst for blood- the flame haired Victoria: ‘…if woman is depicted
as the Praying Mantis, the Mandrake, the Demon, then it is most confusing to
find on woman also the Muse, the Goddess Mother, Beatrice.’ (The Second Sex 284)
It’s worth drawing
parallels between the characters of
In Eclipse, Bella Swan and her female
avenger, Victoria, are brought head to head in a good woman versus bad woman
stand-off. Bella Swan is the Twilight saga’s
good woman because of all the reasons listed above. But the vengeful
As with Stoker’s
female vampires,
‘She could not keep her eyes from my face any more than I
could keep mine from hers. Tension rolled off of her, the all consuming passion
that held her in its grip. Almost as if I could hear her thoughts too, I knew
what she was thinking. She was so close to what she wanted- the focus of her
whole existence for more than a year now was just so close’ (Eclipse 481).
The sexual undertone
of the extract is undeniable, and it is possible to draw comparisons between
both Edward and
The idea of Bella
Swan as deserving of the perfect man inevitably stereotypes her as the perfect
woman- and with this category comes behavioural traits. The perfect,
patriarchal woman is obedient, cooks, cleans- and most importantly in the
context of the Twilight saga- is
protected. What could be more instrumental in the fortification of Edward
Cullen as perfect man than to frame Bella Swan as a character that is constant
need of protection? The fetishisation of Bella Swan’s victimhood allows Edward
Cullen to display his protective, patriarchal masculinity to its ideological
extent. Bella’s consistent weakness in turn illustrates Edward’s strength- ‘If
I had to, I could purposefully put myself in danger to keep him close… I
banished that thought before his quick eyes read it on my face. That idea would
definitely get me in trouble’ (Twilight,
185).
Bella Swan is more
than aware of this, and in New Moon,
she manipulates this fact, putting herself in danger and risking her life-
emphasising her apparent weaknesses so that Edward Cullen can in turn
demonstrate his strengths. She throws herself off cliff tops and
rides dangerous motorbikes in the hope of crashing, for no other purpose than
to hear Edward Cullen’s voice in her head. This self-destructive nature is not
frowned upon throughout New Moon-
rather, Bella’s repeated attempts at self-harm are portrayed as symptoms of a deep,
arresting love. But who encourages this fetishisation? Is it Bella, who
repeatedly makes reference to her accident prone nature, or Edward Cullen, who
warns Bella away from harm at every opportunity, leaves her notes in her car
warning her to ‘be safe’ (218), and utters sentences like this one:
‘I was wrong about you on one other thing, as well. You’re
not a magnet for accidents- that’s not a broad enough classification. You are a
magnet for trouble. If there is anything dangerous within a ten mile radius, it
will invariably find you’ (Twilight 151).
Bella Swan’s
supposed accident prone nature is more than just a quirk- it is central to the Twilight saga’s plot, as well as central
to the reinforcement of Edward Cullen’s masculinity. In it are gender binaries
that dictate the ideology that a man can only be strong if a woman is weak,
that a man can only be rational if a woman is hysterical, and so on. As Bella’s
female weakness is consistently celebrated and fetishized throughout the saga,
it reaches its natural pinnacle by Breaking
Dawn, in which Bella strongly desires her own self-sacrifice for the
benefit of those around her. Altruism is the core personality trait of the weak
female- epitomised by her compulsive needs to facilitate her surroundings for
those around her. In The Second Sex,
De Beauvoir wrote ‘To identify woman with altruism is
to guarantee to man absolute rights in her devotion, it is to
impose on women a categorical imperative.’ (284). No statement could be more apt in describing the character
of Bella Swan. Her existence is always defined by the men around her- whether
it’s Charlie’s chef and daughter, Jacob’s friend and infatuation, or Edward’s
lover and muse. But the most poignant aspect of Bella Swan’s entrenched gender-based
altruism has to be during her pregnancy in Breaking
Dawn, in which twenty-first century pro-life and pro-choice debates
regarding abortion permeate the narrative. The abortion debate centralises on
the idea of a woman’s autonomy, the argument regarding the sanctity of life,
and the conception debate. Anti-abortionists argue that a foetus is life and
therefore sacred and abortion should outlawed, whereas pro-choice activists
argue that a woman should have complete control over her body, free from
government legislation. In Breaking Dawn, Bella falls pregnant with
a baby that is half vampire, half human. The embryo begins to destroy her from
the inside, and visibly puts her health at risk. At one point in the book,
Bella is dying. But she still insists on keeping the baby. This
self-sacrificial theme is recurrent in the Twilight
saga, with Bella often valuing all other life above her own.
There is a
substantial amount of evidence in the text to support the argument that
Edward’s behaviour toward Bella borders on the abusive. Of course, this
behaviour is almost necessary of a dangerous love narrative that is steeped in
the language patriarchy and female repression:
‘We were near the parking lot now. I veered left, toward my
truck. Something caught my jacket, yanking me back.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’ he asked, outraged. He
was gripping a fistful of my jacket in one hand.
I was
confused. ‘I’m going home.’
‘Didn’t you hear me promise to take you safely home? Do you
think I’m going to let you drive in your condition?’ His voice was still
indignant.
‘What condition? What about my
truck?’ I complained.
‘I’ll have
Edward Cullen’s benevolent sexism betrays itself in a
restrictive, prescriptive, attitude in the text. His patriarchal chivalry,
permitted under the guise of care and affection, only serves to reinforce the
notion that as a woman, Bella is weak and in need of constant care and
infantilisation. Again, the author’s penchant for archaic gender stereotypes
render women in relationships weak and powerless. It’s worth analysing just how
this equality imbalance has been explored in texts of the past, and how these
theories can be applied directly to the Twilight
saga. Simone de Beauvoir wrote of romantic love emerging as a religion for
woman- purpose, worship and salvation:
My God- my adored one, my lord and master’- the same words
fall from the lips of the saint on her knees and the loving woman on her bed;
the one offers her flesh to the thunderbolt of Christ; she stretches out her
hands to receive the stigmata of the Cross, she calls for the burning presence
of the divine Love; the other, also, offers and awaits: thunderbolt, dart,
arrow, are incarnated in the male sex organ. In both women there is the same
dream, the childhood dream, the mystic dream, and the dream of love: to attain
supreme existence through losing oneself in the other (The Second Sex 659).
This dichotomy between the two main characters is glaringly
apparent in the first book of the Twilight
saga. Edward Cullen is an ethereal god, glistening, unattainable and male,
whilst Bella Swan is the imperfect human being- flawed and female- ‘“Well, look
at me,” I said, unnecessarily as he was already staring. “I’m absolutely
ordinary- well, except for bad things like all the near-death experiences and
being so clumsy that I‘m almost disabled. And look at you.” I waved my hand
toward him and all his bewildering perfection’ (Twilight 184). It is interesting how Stephenie Meyer uses the
adjectives and verbs of Christianity when writing of Bella’s awe of Edward.
There is something distinctly biblical about the language used, and as Bella
falls deeper in love with Edward, the language of idolisation appears to be
lifted straight from the King James Bible. The result of a fictional
relationship based on a worshipper/worshipped dichotomy is an inevitable,
irreconcilable inequality. When, after a particularly intense moment in the
text, Bella comes to the conclusion that ‘there was nothing more terrifying to
me, more excruciating, than the thought of turning away from him. It was an
impossibility’ (Twilight 217), the
extract reads uncannily like this excerpt from Hebrews:
For it is
impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have
tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted
the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then
have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are
crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to
contempt (Hebrews
6:4-6,
English Standard Version).
Whilst this assertion may seem
a tad hyperbolic, even the thematic, rhetorical content of this Bible quote can
be read time and time again in the Twilight
saga. Bella often regards Edward as a heavenly gift that she feels she
doesn’t deserve- ‘He was too perfect, I realised with
a piercing stab of despair. There was no way this godlike creature could be
meant for me’ (Twilight 224). All the
while, the use of words such as ‘godlike’, ‘magnificence’, and ‘perfection’
consistently woven through the text in relation to Edward Cullen simply serves
to reinforce De Beauvoir’s theory. She said that woman ‘calls out for the
burning presence of [man’s] divine love’, and the use of the word ‘burning’ to
describe this divine love is no coincidence. To describe a divine love as
burning draws an allusion to fire- an earthly element that can warm, but can
also harm.
This is the same love
that is propagated in the Twilight
saga. Edward’s love for Bella isn’t a safe or reliable love- it’s one with
sharp edges and the tendency to burn. But the burns Bella is on the receiving
end of often manifest themselves in Cullen’s controlling nature and his desire
to drain her of her blood. Consequently, Bella Swan often appears to exhibit
conflicting emotions when referring to Edward- as well as love, she also
expresses sentiments of fear or depression- ‘I tried to keep my eyes away from
his perfection as much as possible, but I slipped often. Each time, his beauty
pierced me through with sadness’ (Twilight
225).
Again, it is
important to reiterate the final line of the above extract- ‘the dream of love:
to attain supreme existence through losing oneself in the other’ (659). De Beauvoir
wrote of this cultural norm over sixty years ago, but we see this message of
this line come alive throughout the Twilight
saga. Bella Swan does attain supreme
existence (in the context of the saga, this supreme existence is vampirism),
and she indeed achieves this by losing herself in the other- she successfully
assimilates herself into Edward Cullen’s entire existence- and her former human
self is lost, along with her father,
her mother, her friends, her education, and her family home.
The Twilight saga says more about the sociocultural
background that Stephenie Meyer may like to admit. The first novel in the saga,
Twilight, was published in 2005, in
the midst of
In her book The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession
with Virginity is Hurting Young Women, American blogger and author Jessica
Valenti outlines an inherently misogynistic social narrative that uses the
commodification of virginity to measure young women’s self-worth. Purity balls
are events constructed for fathers and daughters, in which daughters promise to
be chaste until marriage, and fathers vow to protect their daughter’s chastity.
Valenti notes that rituals like these dictate a clear message- ‘it’s up to men
to control young women’s sexuality’- and this is a sentiment that is
repetitively consistent in Twilight- ‘His
body was cold through the thin quilt, but I crushed myself against him eagerly.
When he stopped it was abrupt; he pushed me away with gentle, firm hands’ (New Moon 45). Bella Swan is not painted
as the picture of passive innocence. Instead, the trait that makes her so
relatable to millions of teenage girls worldwide is honesty about her sexual
feelings:
‘I’m not trying to prove something. You said I could have
any part of you I wanted. I want this part. I want every part.” I wrapped my
arms around his neck and strained to reach his lips. He bent his head to kiss
me back, but his cool mouth was hesitant as my impatience grew more pronounced.
My body was making my intentions clear, giving me away. Inevitably, his hands
moved to restrain me’ (Eclipse 475).
However, with these
urgent sexual feelings comes the narrative’s preference to shroud them in
sexual shame, with Edward Cullen routinely regulating her sexuality. Valenti’s
comment on the chastity movement’s purity balls reveals not only a perceived
duty from fathers to protect their daughter’s innocence, but also of teenage
boys to police teenage girl’s sexual feelings. More often than not in the text,
Bella exhibits elements of desire towards Edward. Conveniently, the plot finds a
valid excuse for this- Edwards vampiric super strength leaves him a danger to Bella
in sexual situations- thus this policing bears an uncanny resemblance to the
ideals of the chastity movement. Valenti notes that ‘conservative messages
aimed at young men even call on them to be ‘virginity warriors’, driving home
the message that it’s men’s responsibility to safeguard virginity for their
female counterparts, simultaneously quashing any fears of feminization that
boys may have surround abstinence’. (The
Purity Myth 25)
The chastity
movement’s feminine ideal requires young women to be passive and sexless in
order to be objectified, but in reality young women are not so- thus Edward’s
regulation of Bella’s sexual feelings.
With this in mind, the fact that Bella Swan is a virgin at the beginning
of the Twilight saga, and then loses
her virginity only after becoming married to Edward Cullen is increasingly
significant.
‘What’s in a name? A
rose by any other name would smell as sweet.’ In act II, scene II of Shakespeare’s
Romeo and Juliet, the characters
discuss the significance of the signifier in relation to the signified. A
little discussed, but arguably no less prevalent, aspect of Bella Swan’s
character has to be her metaphorical name. The word ‘bella’ translates into
‘beautiful’ in the Italian tongue. This adds to the notion of Bella as the
perfect, passive woman- invoking imagery of virginal elegance. She is the
chaste, beautiful swan.
In Conclusion:
Stephenie Meyer and Women’s Writing
I shall speak about
women’s writing: about what it will do. Woman must write herself: must write
about women and bring women into writing, from which they have been driven away
as violently from their bodies- for the same reasons, by the same law, with the
same fatal goal. Woman must put herself into the text- as into the world and
into history- by her own movement (Cixous 2039).
It was with these
words that French feminist theorist Helene Cixous opened her work The Laugh of the Medusa. Published 1975
and 1976 in the midst of second wave feminism, it was a text that demanded
female reclaimation of traditionally male institutions- with writing being the
primary target.
This chapter aims
to unpack Meyer’s writings in comparison to Cixous’ literary demands. At a
glance, Stephenie Meyer has indeed adhered to Cixous’ list. She asks that
‘woman must write herself’, and although the Twilight saga is not autobiographical, it is indeed a female author
writing from a female protagonist’s perspective. Cixous demands that ‘[Woman]
must write about women and bring women into writing’. Again, on the surface,
Meyer has achieved this. But the
fundamental problem with the Twilight
saga is not that Meyer has put woman into writing, it is how she has done so. Granted, as an author she has completely subverted
the vampire genre- in the modern day vein of monsters with souls, she has also
written monsters with hearts that have freed themselves from temptation- but in
her texts, women do not win. Bella
Swan only achieves her life goal by sacrificing all that she owns, including
her human life. And when she does reach the point of vampirehood, the special
gift that she is attributed is a very telling one.
Cixous, in her
feminist deconstruction of writing as a canonical institution, notes that ‘…
the act for writing is equivalent to masculine masturbation...’ (The Laugh of the Medusa 2047). If this
is indeed the case, then the Twilight
saga slots neatly into this metaphor. In
the final book, Breaking Dawn, we see
no sex scene, no climax, no orgasm. The books are male masturbation with a
castrated twist- they are Germaine Greer’s Female
Eunuch, a picture of Sigmund Freud’s penis envy. This is women’s writing,
and therefore women’s masturbation, but denied of satisfaction. The sex scene
that readers have waited patiently throughout three books is cut. The Twilight saga is almost a form of
pornography- eroticised and sexuality commodified, packaged and sold, but
without the money shot.
In the context of
women’s writing, this self-restraint of both author and plot is somewhat
confusing. If women’s writing takes hold of a past time that has been likened
to male masturbation, and self-pleasure, then women’s writing is female
self-pleasure. Why then, has Stephenie Meyer chosen to restrain the climax? The
answer could very well lie in Jessica Valenti’s deconstruction of
If female
masturbation must be anesthetised, then this reveals an awful lot about women
and sex. If the highly erotically charged books are indeed feminine
masturbation, then the lack of an anticipated sex scene, the climax of the
saga, displays sexual shame, and an inherent fear of autonomous female
sexuality- the two cornerstones of the chastity movement. To reiterate
Valenti’s main argument from The Purity
Myth, ‘we must abandon the idea that women’s bodies are inherently
shameful, and that women’s sexuality needs to be restricted’ (97). But
unfortunately this is the idea that the Twilight
saga primarily submits, and the closing of the saga confirms this. When Christopher Craft asks ‘Are we male or female? Do we have
penetrators or orifices?’ he alludes to Dracula’s
gender-inverted female vampires, equipped and drunk with the power of
penetration. When Bella Swan is bestowed with that vampiric gift- she chooses
to restrain herself. When she is human and exerts her autonomous, if somewhat
passive, sexuality, she is restrained. When she finally reaches equality with
her partner as vampire, when she reaches male (vampire) status in the book, and
is presented with the opportunity to prey on females (or humans) she chooses
not to.
Because, woven
finely through the narrative of the supernatural, romance, vampires,
werewolves, family troubles and friendships, is a story that focuses intently
on first love and a teenage girl’s reaction to her own sexual feelings- even if
she does find these feelings awakened by an external, male source:
We’re living in a time when simply talking about women’s
pleasure is taboo in itself and is considered dangerous by the virginity
movement, since that kind of discussion frees women’s sexuality from its
restrictive only-for-procreation, only-when-married, only-when-straight
boundaries (The Purity Myth 196).
The boundaries that
Valenti speaks of are alive and thriving in the Twilight saga. Bella is ultimately a malleable female character
constructed by the men around her. As subversive to the traditional vampire
narrative that it is- the Twilight
saga does not stray from said boundaries.
This paper is not the first to challenge the anti-feminist ideals of the
Twilight saga. A chapter in Twilight and Philosophy, an edition of Blackwell’s philosophy and
pop culture series, loosely examines the same concept. In Vampire Love: The Second Sex Negotiates the Twenty-first Century,
Bonnie Mann writes ‘In a world that is still extremely heavy-handed in its
insistence that a young woman’s primary worth is derived from her ability to
awaken male desire, Meyer offers girls the fantasy of a male gaze that is
intense, constant, and faithful’ (137).
With this sentence,
Mann encapsulates the underlying essence of the Twilight saga. Edward Cullen’s male gaze is one so potent that it
literally brings Bella’s character to life. Her narrative before Edward enters
the plot is one of an awkward teenager, ill at ease with herself and her
situation. But Stephenie Meyer’s writing only allows Bella to grow and develop
under the watchful eye of patriarchal protective proscription. As a result,
Bella accelerates with alarming speed from girlhood to womanhood, with her main
driving force and purpose in life being Edward Cullen. But when a series of
internationally best-selling books rely on the notion that woman can only reach
perfection by assimilating herself into the eyes of man, readers must question
whether this is a truism, or a cause for concern worth challenging.
In an age where the fight for gender
equality is still on going, Bella’s primary aim throughout the Twilight saga is to lose herself, and
become Edward.
an international and interdisciplinary journal of postmodern cultural sound, text and image
Volume 10, January 2013, ISSN
1552-5112
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