I’ve gotten into a bit of a back and forth about the Twilight series with pop-culture blogger Alyssa Rosenberg. It started with Alyssa’s article on the Atlantic website in which she argued that the Twilight is a poor excuse for a fantasy series because Bella is overly passive:
I don’t imagine that I was alone when I was young in wishing there was something magical about me – or in reading Talking to Dragons until it became dog-eared or keeping The Mists of Avalon perpetually on renewal at the library. What girl doesn’t wish she could discover some special attribute about herself that would smooth her way through the demons of junior high school and beyond—particularly if that something would get her noticed for the first time by a boy or girl with special attributes of their own? But earlier this week, when I stumbled over the Twilight finish line, reaching the final page of Breaking Dawn, the series’ last book, it seemed clear to me that even in my younger days, Bella Swann would never have captured my imagination in the same way Cimorene, or Juniper, or Wise Child, or Morgaine had, and still do. Those heroines understand the joy of being loved by someone else. But their stories make the case that being a witch, or a warrior, or a queen—even without a king—might be better than an eternity as a metaphorical princess in a metaphorical tower, no matter how much the vampire company sparkles.
I responded in an article on Splice Today:
The real issue is, as Rosenberg says, that Bella’s actions are all inspired by her love for family and friends, rather than by a desire to save entire kingdoms and uphold “justice and freedom.” Of course, by this standard, Elizabeth Bennett isn’t much of a role model either—why, she never saves anyone! And what about Jane Eyre, refusing to sacrifice herself by going off to do mission work among the poor and heathen and benighted. What kind of model for young girls is that?
Rosenberg might as well just come out and say, “You know what? I don’t really like romance—and, on top of that, I’m kind of a liberal do-gooder who thinks that abstract notions like justice and power are more important than love and family.” Rosenberg accuses Meyer of turning Bella into a “metaphorical princess in a metaphorical tower.” But she’s not a princess in a tower; she’s a wife in a family, and one who at the end is not only equal to her husband in strength and magical powers, but actually superior to him. That hardly seems rabidly anti-feminist to me-but I like Pride and Prejudice too, so what do I know.
Rosenberg came back on her own blog to tell me that I’m still wrong, most pointedly because she does in fact like romance novels. Assuming makes an ass out of me as they say…though, as I’ll argue here, for somebody who likes romance novels, Alyssa is awfully uncomfortable with some of the central points of the genre.
So first, on a couple of interpretive points. Alyssa takes me to task for overestimating Bella’s achievements and power. In my Splice Today essay, I argue that Bella has to practice to master her magical vampiric abilities in the last volume, and that she ends up being stronger than Edward. Alyssa responds:
I think Noah’s actually mistaken: when Bella finally uses her powers, she exerts them much farther than she’s ever been able to in her practice sessions, which kind of defeats the point if you’re trying to make an argument about “determination and commitment.” (Also, to the point Noah makes in a paragraph I pull out below about Bella being more powerful than Edward, Meyer seems to establish pretty clearly that that’s just because she’s a new vampire, not that it’ll be permanent.)
Bella does become much more powerful at the end of the book all of a sudden; the rationale is that her loved ones are threatened, and that gives her the inspiration to exert an extra oomph. But it’s not clear to me that therefore all the training and work was worthless. Surely the point could just as easily be, you put all the effort in, you exert yourself to the limit, and maybe that will be enough to get that miracle you need. It’s a little overly pat, sure; but I think it’s a stretch to argue that it’s not about Bella working to achieve success.
As for the strength thing — Bella’s natural vampiric strength will fade after she’s a newborn, sure. But her power seems to only be getting stronger — and it’s her power (the ability to negate other vampires’ powers) which really makes her more special, and more powerful, than Edward. (It’s also worth noting that Bella is unusuall self-controlled for a new vampire, which is a big part of the reason she’s even able to use her physical strength in a way that’s at all useful to her or anyone else.)
To move onto more substantial disagreements: Alyssa responded to my comparison of Bella with Elizabeth Bennett and Jane Eyre by saying this:
I think Noah forgets that I’m writting a critique of Twilight within the realm of fairy tale, and about why it’s a step backwards within the innovations of that genre. But I absolutely agree that I would be completely and utterly freaked out if teenage girls wanted to emulate Jane Eyre. Less so if they wanted to be little Lizzy Bennets, since she’s an intellectual and stands up to class prejudice (to the extent capable within her constraints of course). But I do think those books are regularly read with the acknowledgment that a) they’re about an era when women’s choices were substantially limited, b) frequently read in a context like a classroom where those roles can be discussed, and c) presented social criticisms in the times they were written. Twilight is neither set in another era (although it’s curiously removed from the technology of today) nor is it mostly read in a critical context like a classroom. And while I recognize that many, many Twilight readers can distinguish fact from fiction, I do think that some of the book’s themes demand a critical context, particularly the obsessiveness of the love affairs. Perhaps it’s just me, but I think it’s important, especially with young girls, to have a conversation about the fact that sometimes, no matter how much you love someone, if he leaves you, he is never coming back. I don’t think this is a trifling point: Bella never experiences permanent romantic loss, something a lot of contemporary fairy tales have managed to incorporate into the genre, and that’s a genuinely valuable lesson in a society where most people date before they marry.
So there’s a bunch there…but let’s start at the top.
First, I wasn’t saying that Jane Eyre was a bad model. On the contrary, I was saying that, at least in the incident I referenced, she’s a fine model. At the end of the book, the aptly named St. John tells Jane that she should marry him and come with him to be a missionary in some far away, benighted land. Despite great pressure, from St. John and her own conscience, Jane eventually refuses to go, putting her love and family above the call to change the world for the better. That’s a choice Bella would agree with. Would Alyssa?
Alyssa is more willing to accept Elizabeth Bennet from Pride and Prejudice as a role model…but even here, she’s leery. Elizabeth, after all, isn’t really sufficiently independent; she doesn’t save the world, she marries to devote herself to the estate and her husband — not quite independent enough, for all her spunkiness. So, to make Pride and Prejudice safe, we need to read it in a classroom context, where girls can be taught what to think and what not to think about their chosen romance.
As someone who spent 14 years developing curriculum for high school students, I can say with some certainty that this is utter nonsense. The only thing students get from studying a book in school is bored. If Pride and Prejudice ever had any relevance, the fastest way to denude it of same is to relegate it to the classroom. And Alyssa’s comments on Twilight in this connection are almost Kantian; the problem with the books is that they’re not read in a classroom context, and as a result, girls actually enjoy them! The fall of society and/or feminism is certainly at hand.
I also find this point kind of bizarre:
“Bella never experiences permanent romantic loss”
It’s true; Bella gets everything she wants. At the end. Along the way, though, she experiences intense, brutal despair, not once, but multiple times. Edward rejects here and she really thinks he doesn’t love her, causing her to be almost nonfunctional for months.Then Jacob rejects her, making her miserable for an extended period. And it’s those experiences, as much as (or more than) the eventual triumph, that are really the heart of the series. To suggest that Bella needs to be *more* depressed really seems kind of ridiculous. I do get the point that most girls are going to not get the first guy they love, and that it’s useful to point that out . But at the same time, Twilight is not shy about acknowledging, and even reveling in, romantic disappointment.
The real heart of our disagreement is here, though:
As for the assertion that “I’m kind of a liberal do-gooder who thinks that abstract notions like justice and power are more important than love and family.” First, it’s a mistake again to conflate the abstract concepts of justice and equality as they exist in fairy tales with contemporary politics. And one of the things I find fascinating about contemporary fairy tales of all stripes is the ways they’ve managed to make the condition of societies and of individual marriages co-equal. In a lot of contemporary fairy tales, the main characters have to establish peace or societal equilibrium in order to craft a space where a marriage can thrive….I actually think it exalts love to tie it to larger societal concerns, rather than to isolate it entirely from society, and it makes for wider-ranging and more interesting stories, too.
Abstract justice in fairy tales doesn’t map exactly onto contemporary politics, of course…but it isn’t divorced from them either. And, indeed, in the rest of her argument here Alyssa goes on to make parallels between how life and politics work in a fairy tale and how they work in the real world. She likes certain fairy tales, she says, because they present an image in which men and women fall in love and work together to save the world (or work together to save the world and fall in love.) The dream Alyssa wants is one in which social and political engagement maps onto romance, and the two enrich each other. That’s why she doesn’t like the message in Jane Eyre, where political and social engagement is shown as existing in contrast to love; it’s why she’s uncomfortable with the message in Pride and Prejudice, where Elizabeth Bennet never really thinks all that much about social or political engagement (Alyssa says at the end of her essay that Elizabeth engages in rebellion…but really, calling a little satirical wit rebellion seems fairly desperate wishful thinking.) And her enthusiasm for great social change and rebellion is also why Alyssa absolutely hates Forks, the little town where Bella spends her life.
There is no larger world beyond family and Forks in the Twilight books, and if I were immortal, I think I might get kind of bored with that after a while. But then, I was never the kind of girl who could stare at a guy’s face for that long.
Okay, sure, I get that the treacly romance eternal love thing is irritating. But what is wrong with Forks? And why, as Alyssa repeatedly insists, is it lame, or passive, to save your loved ones and your entire family? Why exactly is Bella a failure? Because she doesn’t want to rule a kingdom? Because she doesn’t want to save the world? Because she’s chosen to care for those she loves and not impose her passing messianic dreams on the rest of the populace? Because her story — which is much more romance than fairy tale — ends in private happiness rather than public triumph?
Alyssa reminds me that she works as a political reporter, and is therefore not a liberal do-gooder at all, but instead is non-partisan. All right. Then she should be fine with the following argument, hopefully. Most people — girls, boys, what have you — they’re not going to save the world. Most of them don’t even want to save the world, you know? Is that because they’re victims of false consciousness and read too many Twilight books? Or is it because wanting to save the world is a kind of megalomaniacal sickness that most people just aren’t especially afflicted with? Or is it because there are different strokes for different folks? In any case, the fact remains; Bella, like most people, cares about the people she cares about. On their behalf, she’s able to do great things — risk her life, battle against evil, even perform miracles. But she doesn’t get off — and most of her readers don’t get off — on writing the wrongs of the world. Does that make her, and them, less virtuous or wrong? Are all those people in the Forkses of the world just not ambitious enough? I’m a liberal do-gooder myself, but still, that seems like a pretty presumptuous conclusion to me.
Update: It sounds like Alyssa is probably not going to respond further, so I should probably add that she’s been incredibly gracious and pleasant throughout the whole back and forth. So thanks, Alyssa. It’s been fun.
"the only thing students get from studying a book in school is bored."–
This is kind of silly and not just because I teach books for a living. Universities are chock-full of English majors. Some of this is to avoid math, sure…but many students enroll in these classes because they enjoy reading…and discussing books in a classroom context. When you force students to take said classes in which they have no interest, often the result is (not surprisingly) disinterest and boredom. However, many students actually choose to be in those classes, read with enthusiasm, and are enthusiastically engaged in the conversations…even at a middling University like mine. Said students often get more out of books in a classroom context than they might on their own. I get comments like this all the time, in fact…"I hated Molloy when I read it at home…After class, though, I kind of liked it." Students do get bored in school at times, of course, and it's kind of sad if great books (like Pride and Prejudice) are only read in classrooms…but since that isn't really the case either, this claim doesn't really make any sense.
This strikes me as the kind of extreme claim made to strengthen how an argument sounds, but actually doesn't have any evidence out there in the world. Perhaps you were bored by all discussions of literature in school…but to generalize this to all "kids" is so obviously wrong that it's (almost) not worth arguing.
And, to be clear, I am far from some kind of idealist educator. Plenty of problems in schools of all kinds…and plenty of bored students in my classes (no doubt) and elsewhere…but plenty of us are having in there too.
Should say "plenty of us are having fun in there too"
I was exaggerating mildly for effect sure. It's worth remembering, though, that Twilight is read by kids in high school in large part. And things in high school are rather different than at even the worst colleges.
I enjoyed reading in high school. But that was often despite the teachers, not because of them. That John Donne wasn't ruined for me forever was through sheer stubbornness on my part, to take just one example. And, as you know, I was way more comfortable with school and its hoops than the vast majority of my peers.
Yeah, I'm with you here. "Non-partisan" doesn't mean a-political, or non-ideological. She's clearly arguing from a Progressivist framework, which is fine— just let it be known.
Full disclosure: I haven't read Twilight or any of the sequels. Or seen any of the movies.
Part of the reason why I haven't, despite being a (very) heavy reader who likes fantasy, likes vampires, and is pretty comfortable with "paranormal romance" and with romance plots generally, is that from all the plot summaries and discussions I have seen, Bella is obnoxiously focused on Edward and on the prospect of a future in which she will be able to devote her days to, I dunno, gazing longingly at Edward. And not much else.
I'm totally cool with stories where Person A is obsessively in love with Person B and wants to spend the rest of eternity with Person B in a cloud of pink bubbles. (Hello, 99% of all shoujo and yaoi romances.) I'm not so cool with stories where all Person A wants is to spend the rest of eternity with Person B in a cloud of pink bubbles.
The idea that women should focus on their husband and family, to the exclusion of all else, is most certainly not a characteristic of the modern romance, even in the most treacly of romance novels. Neither is it a characteristic of the modern fantasy novel, particularly those by women.
Fine, Bella cares about the people she cares about. But what else does she care about? What else does she do? I care about my family, and I will certainly do whatever I can to keep them as safe and comfortable as possible, but I also care about my work and the world outside my neighborhood. And I don't see that as overly ambitious, or as something outrageous to expect from fictional women. Or real ones. Even teenagers.
Bella's portrayed as being quite intelligent; she reads, does well in school, and so forth. She isn't necessarily shown as having a whole range of career ambitions — but, to be fair, she's fairly busy trying not to die and saving all of her loved ones and so forth throughout the books.
Bella doesn't just care about Edward; her family's a lot broader than that (including her parents, her child, lots of friends, and so forth.) I don't doubt that she'll spend eternity doing things other than just loving Edward. I'd imagine she'd read and probably travel a lot, for example.
It's not overly ambitious to care about your work…but, you know, lots of people really don't care about their crappy jobs. And, sure, you can want to save the world — but, again, lots of people don't, particularly. It just seems kind of silly to me to say, "yes, okay, she saved everyone she loved from horrible death — but what else has she done lately? Why hasn't she cured cancer too?"
I guess you could ask, what if a girl basically wanted to stay home and raise kids? That's more or less where Bella is coming from, to some degree at least. Does that make her less worthy as a person than somebody who wants to go off and become President or whatever?
"I guess you could ask, what if a girl basically wanted to stay home and raise kids? That's more or less where Bella is coming from, to some degree at least. Does that make her less worthy as a person than somebody who wants to go off and become President or whatever?"
Well, I dunno. A book, aimed largely at teens, that presents as the protagonist a teenage character who wants, without reservations, to be a career housewife (of a particularly glamourous kind, admittedly) certainly seems retrogressive (and Meyer does seem rather retrogressive). When I was 17, I was teaching myself calculus and trying to decide between physics and biology as a college major. None of my female friends expected to marry straight out of high school, and almost all expected to have a career before and after, and in some cases instead of, marriage. Twilight is obviously speaking to something that the fans find appealing, but if that thing really is the idea of staying home with the kiddies rather than education and employment, then that's actually kind of scary.
I have mixed feeling about Twilight. I only listened to the first book. On the one hand, I was creeped out by Edward's stalking. On the other, I thought Bella had some good agency and real motives–she takes chances and makes many of her own choices and forces the adults around her to do things, but in a very realistic way.
But if the comparison is to Bradley, well, I'll be honest and say that I think Bradley is one of the least feminist, most creepy, and scary writers out there. For one thing, she was a die hard rapist apologist. The Mists of Avalon condones a lot of scary things like incest and dubious consent and some rape, and the relegation of some women as broodmares, and all sorts of things. A *ton* of Bradley's works include some very nasty sexual activity of the predator variety.
Bradley herself was married to a convicted child molester. There were many accusations that she allowed and looked the other way as he molested and abused their children, friends, and foster children. He was eventually convicted of molesting a child at a sci-fi convention and died in prison. You can read some of Bradley's own testimonies at the trial, if you can stomach it. It's online somewhere.
I mention this because so many people really are uncomfortable with Twilight because of Meyer and her personal behavior, namely being LDS. For myself, I would MUCH rather my hypothetical kids read a book written by a happily married if slightly sappy homemaker than someone like Bradley. I also think the texts, both text and subtext, make Twilight superior reading for girls.
Just my .02. I still don't like Edward and his stalking, but compared to some things, boy does he start to look good.
Good lord, I had no idea about that stuff with Bradley. I always just thought her books looked kind of boring. That's kind of intense.
Meyer is certainly retrogressive. I mean, there's no way around that. I just don't know that I think that's especially "scary" in this context. Bella *isn't* especially interested in a career — but she certainly isn't taking orders from anyone; she's smart, and she very definitely has agency throughout the book. It's *never* about her giving up what she wants in order to cater to Edward; on the contrary, when she wants something more than Edward (her child), she deliberately and extremely cleverly does an end run around him.
I mean, I don't need to defend the book categorically — the stalking stuff is there and is creepy; it would be nice to maybe have Bella express some career interests. But to call the novels scary or suggest that they're really damaging to girls…I think that kind of handwringing just isn't especially justified. There's lots of reasons I can see why this would appeal to teen girls, and the vast majority of them are neither incomprehensible nor especially dangerous, as these things go.
Vom said:
"The Mists of Avalon condones a lot of scary things like incest and dubious consent and some rape, and the relegation of some women as broodmares, and all sorts of things. A *ton* of Bradley's works include some very nasty sexual activity of the predator variety."
Well, yeah, but The Mists of Avalon is based on the Arthurian legends, which are soaked in incest and non-consensual sex and the idea that a woman's main purpose in life was to pump out a son to be heir to the family and a half-dozen extras for backup, plus maybe a daughter or two for bargaining purposes. Rewriting everything to conform to modern ideas of Proper Gender Relations might still have resulted in a good book, but it wouldn't have the same connection to the original source material. Even T. H. White's take on the Arthurian legends, which are well-regarded as children's fiction, have the incest and the rape and the angst, played down but still present.
Much "High Fantasy" fiction for grownups has rape and oppression of women and what have you, because they're generally modeled on a pseudo-Medieval (or pre-Medieval) society that would have different expectations of sex and gender (and also because they generate angst and melodrama and plot conflict). Especially in the 70's and early 80's, women fantasy writers did a lot of talking about sex and gender in their works, which resulted in lots of rape scenes to demonstrate how oppressive the attitudes of the day (and by extension, the attitudes of the present) were.
If I was going to pick a depiction of rape in fantasy to disapprove of, I'd go for Stephen Donaldson's Thomas Covenant books, in which the victim immediately falls in love with the rapist and follows him around begging for his affection, or Piers Anthony's books, where it's usually presented as a natural response to women's "no means yes" coyness.
I sort of fell out of love with Bradley in my mid-teens, but at one point I very much liked her books, and it didn't prevent me from growing up to be a ball-busting feminist. As to her husband's crimes, I didn't know about that but I don't see it as a reason to dismiss or avoid her books. I don't recall ever feeling that she was advocating or defending pedophilia.
Noah said:
"It's *never* about her giving up what she wants in order to cater to Edward"
No, but she wants Edward and a kid, and what else? Saying that Bella has agency because she manages to con her husband into getting her pregnant (or whatever) is a very specific kind of agency. In the early-1900's women's fiction that I occasionally read, there's almost always a point in which the heroine has to make sacrifices and work hard to preserve her home and family, but that doesn't make up for the fact that the same stories (frequently explicitly) discourage their readers from wanting anything except home and family. What I've heard of Twilight kind of gives me the same vibes.
" the same stories (frequently explicitly) discourage their readers from wanting anything except home and family. "
Twilight simply never does this. It just doesn't. It never discourages girls from doing anything they want. Bella's choices are Bella's choices, but there's nothing that suggests that her path is proscriptive for anyone else.
Even the abstinence message is presented as a choice;something to be discussed between the couple rather than as a dictat or an absolute moral imperative.
I mean, obviously you can discuss whatever you want and there's no real harm done, but…if you're going to talk about this stuff, you might want to try reading the books, or at least seeing the first movie.
Also…Bella becomes pregnant, the child is going to kill her. Edward wants her to get an abortion. She refuses, and manages to make her choice stick even though, obviously, he's extremely upset about it.
So…is that unfeminist? Some people have said so. But if it's about a woman's right to choose, Bella chooses. (And she doesn't actually intend to die either — nor does she.)
"It never discourages girls from doing anything they want. Bella's choices are Bella's choices, but there's nothing that suggests that her path is proscriptive for anyone else."
Perhaps I could have been a bit more clear; I'm responding to your defense of the book, not the content of the book (which as you know I haven't read). I don't actually see much difference between a story that presents home and family as the required choice, versus one that presents it as the protagonist's voluntary choice without substantive discussion of the context of that choice. Especially when the choice in question is, not to beat around the bush, suspiciously antifeminist. Traditionally, women are not supposed merely to become dutiful wives and mothers, but to want to become dutiful wives and mothers, and to find pride and satisfaction from that state above all others. Bella's decision to have a child that might kill her fits into this perfectly.
If you were to tell me that Twilight actually contains a realistic examination of why Bella feels that these are the correct choices for her, a consideration of her other options, and an appreciation of the risks she is taking and the things she is missing out on by these choices, I might reconsider. I might even read it.
There's a fair bit of discussion of why it might not be a good idea to get married so young (in the context of Bella's mother, who did so and regretted it.) There are peripheral characters (Bella's schoolmates) who are pretty clearly destined to go off to college and do career sorts of things, and there's no implicit condemnation. Edward very much wants Bella to go to college because he feels she'll be missing out if she doesn't. There isn't a big ideological fight about it or anything, but there are clearly other choices in this world.
Some feminism can argue that wanting to be a wife and mother is limiting or a bad thing. I understand where that reaction comes from. However, there's also a strand of feminism which is about emphasizing the importance of wives and mothers, and pointing out that the work they do is worthwhile and valuable. (And, you know, Bella isn't only a wife and mother. She's also a superhero. So there's that.)
Surely your arguing both about my argument and about the book. And, come on, your argument would be stronger if you actually read the thing. Not that you should.
"Some feminism can argue that wanting to be a wife and mother is limiting or a bad thing. I understand where that reaction comes from. However, there's also a strand of feminism which is about emphasizing the importance of wives and mothers, and pointing out that the work they do is worthwhile and valuable. (And, you know, Bella isn't only a wife and mother. She's also a superhero. So there's that.)"
Being a wife and mother is entirely worthwhile and valuable for those women who wish to do so. It can, however, be combined with personal and career aspirations. It also really helps not to be 18.
Bella's not even old enough to drink. She doesn't have a college degree, and as far as I know she has no other employable skills (not that that necessarily matters in the book, but it's certainly relevant in a real-word context). She's making life choices that, as far as I am concerned, the average 18 year old is not mature enough to make, and which would in the real world have a large and mostly negative effect on her future quality of life. (Plus the whole "vampire baby can kill you" thing.) I don't see any way that this can be presented as empowering or laudable.
I'd be annoyed by a wish-fulfillment romance that ends with the protagonist becoming a wife and mother while still a teenager under the very best of circumstances. I'm afraid that reading Twilight will piss me off utterly.
Ah. Well, see, your argument is in fact based on your assumption that an 18 year old isn't old enough to make choices about her life, especially if those choices happen to be ones that you disagree with. And, certainly, 18 year olds can make dumb choices, much like the rest of us. But part of Twilight's appeal for young girls, surely, is exactly that it doesn't take your stance. Instead, it suggests that Bella is intelligent, brave, resourceful, and able to make choices that, while not always necessarily correct, are reasonable and worthy of respect.
You really can't see why that might seem like an empowering or worthwhile message to young girls?
Basically, you're doing little to change my already stated belief that the reason Twilight is so despised is that our culture despises teen girls.
"Ah. Well, see, your argument is in fact based on your assumption that an 18 year old isn't old enough to make choices about her life, especially if those choices happen to be ones that you disagree with. […] But part of Twilight's appeal for young girls, surely, is exactly that it doesn't take your stance. Instead, it suggests that Bella is intelligent, brave, resourceful, and able to make choices that, while not always necessarily correct, are reasonable and worthy of respect."
Part of my stance, yes. 18 year olds are not legally fully adult, and there is a reason for this. I do believe that teenagers can and should make some decisions for themselves. But Bella's choices are bigger and more irrevocable than those of the average 18 year old girl, and they are choices that, in the real world, have measurable and significant negative consequences. So far you have not given me any reason to believe that Bella's choices are in fact empowering or reasonable for her circumstances, rather than being driven by the author's retrogressive worldview. Nor has anything else I have seen about Twilight.
As to your assertion that our culture despises teenage girls, I assure you that I do not. I would have had just as much skepticism regarding the implications of Bella's choices as an 18 year old girl as I do now as a thirty-something woman, and I was a very independent and self-determined adolescent. As the child of a then-single mother who was often away, I basically ran the household much of the time. As a non-school-attending, self-educated child I picked the topics and material I wanted or needed to know and did well enough to get into a quite prestigious college (I liked learning, but school was boring, and Mom was sympathetic). Although I was fairly sure I wanted a child eventually, I did not want to become a teenage wife or mother, and I did not know anyone who wanted to become a teenage wife or mother, because among teenage girls in my peer group it was universally seen as a bad and restrictive choice. I doubt that this has actually changed for middle-class girls in the last 15 years.
My mother was a career housewife for most of my childhood, and I had quite a nice childhood because of it, but she made that choice at 30, after getting a degree, backpacking across Europe, holding several jobs, and considering graduate school. What circumstances prevent Bella from waiting to make her choices? It's not like she's going to become infertile or unmarriageable at 20.
Twilight is a wish-fulfillment romance; Bella, eventually, gets everything she wants. But I am deeply suspicious of why she wants what she wants, at that age. Bella could be intelligent, brave, resourceful, self-directed and totally in love with Edward without wanting to immediately marry him and have children. You can love family and friends, and have a husband and children, and still get a PhD and have a life outside the home and community. Or, if you like, you can choose to be a career housewife at an age and with the experience that allows you to realistically assess your choice.
In short, everything I have heard about Twilight suggests that I will hate it with the passion of a thousand suns, not because Bella's actions "are all inspired by her love for family and friends, rather than by a desire to save entire kingdoms and uphold "justice and freedom"", but because she ends up being suspiciously close to the embodiment of an outdated and restrictive ideal of womanly behavior that I have rejected since before puberty, and because I suspect that this is a deliberate, possibly even didactic, authorial choice. Which pisses me off.
Bella isn't actually intending to have kids. She makes a mistake. And she isn't all that excited about being married young or being a teen mother either. What she wants and how she ends up where she does are confused and conflicted and complicated, as such things tend to be.
The author is conservative; she's into family; she's into some traditional ideas about marriage and sex. She's also really into relationships built around communication and into respecting the choices of teenagers. There are a lot of stupid things about Twilight, but the didactic morality play you've got in your head just isn't something that I saw at all in the book.
"because she ends up being suspiciously close to the embodiment of an outdated and restrictive ideal of womanly behavior that I have rejected since before puberty, "
Again, I just don't think that's right. Bella does all sorts of things that don't fit into this image you've got. Cliff diving, for example. Or breaking rocks with her fists after she's a vampire. Or fighting off hordes of evil undead. As VM says, she's got a lot of agency and individuality, and never settles into a good little housewife 1950s television cliche, or anything like it.
Is it the best book in the world? No. Could the gender stuff be better handled? Yes. Is it an atrocious thing for teen girls to be reading? I just don't see that.
I've been trying to go at it from many different directions, and I just don't see the fairy tale in Twilight. Sure, it's got magic and junk, but there's nothing transcendent at all in the entire series, maybe save the last book. It never feels like an Other Place.
I think Alyssa was seeing it as a magical transformation. I think it's a little hard to see exactly as well, obviously. It's more urban fantasy, I think…which is a little different.
JRBrown; it might help to know that Bella had decided to go to college before she realized she was pregnant? And as a vampire she can't have any other kids, so she's going to have a very long life mostly without children. The ideal future ahead of her really is more a kind of wealthy yuppie couple jetting from place to place rather than a traditional stay-at-home-bake-cookies kind of thing.
Also, JR, I just want to say it's been fun talking to you. I may have gotten a little overheated, but no offense was meant. As I said, Twilight isn't perfect, and I can certainly see where one would be coming from to object on feminist grounds. In any case, I appreciate your interest in the blog.
No offense taken. :)
"Bella does all sorts of things that don't fit into this image you've got. Cliff diving, for example. Or breaking rocks with her fists after she's a vampire. Or fighting off hordes of evil undead. As VM says, she's got a lot of agency and individuality, and never settles into a good little housewife 1950s television cliche, or anything like it."
Domesticity doesn't necessarily require gingham and strudel; a female character can a Mamma Bear without being a feminist icon. Even if Bella ends up an idle rich, house-in-the-Hamptons-vacation-in-Paris style wife and mother who goes skydiving rather than a June Cleaver wife and mother who bakes cookies, if her "agency and individuality" never extends beyond home and family, it's still a retrogressive portrayal.
Frankly, most of the teenagers I know are little bundles of overweening ambition, who can't wait to grow up to have the cool and exciting lives they have planned out in their heads. Twilight, to me, sounds more like the fantasy of a harried stay-at-home mom who wants to go back to being young and pretty and irresponsible, like high school but without all the boring "school" stuff, while still holding on to her status as wife and mother.
But if it doesn't have anything to say to teens, or if it's so utterly divorced from their lives, why is it so humongously popular?
"if her "agency and individuality" never extends beyond home and family, it's still a retrogressive portrayal. "
It extends to a number of friends, and a family defined broadly enough that it ends up effectively meaning her community (most of the nearby reservation, for example.) And, not to beat a dead horse, but the fantasy involves *saving everyone she loves from horrible deaths through the use of her super-powers.* Again, that seems plenty ambitious to me. To denigrate that by saying, oh, well, she doesn't go to college and become a doctor, and/or criss-cross the world fighting evil — I don't know. I mean, surely some of us can be doctors, some of us can criss-cross the world fighting evil, and some of us can just save everyone we love from horrible deaths through the use of our super-powers. Isn't there room for all of us?
Basically, you're saying if career isn't more central to her life, then whatever choices she makes are invalid. There's certainly feminist precedent for that, I guess and Betty Friedan's great, but…well, I'd just prefer a feminism that had more room maybe for people to make some different choices, if that's what they wanted to do.
Your sneer at Meyer's life choices, for example, are palpable — even though, you know, she wrote a bunch of apocalyptically best-selling novels, the main effect of which will probably be to inspire lots of other girls to write fan fiction and quite possibly books of their own. I think Meyer's certainly got issues around wanting to be young forever, and it can't be said that she is a great writer necessarily. But to accuse her of being insufficiently successful, certainly by the time of the fourth book (when Bella becomes a mother) seems a bit wide of the mark.
Hi Noah;
Confession: I spent most of yesterday evening until midnight doing oviduct transfers, in which the mice decided to revolt by hiding their infindibulae, so now that I'm not wrestling with poking glass tubes into something 0.5mm wide and fragile I'm in a somewhat better mood. :)
I still don't agree with your defense, though.
"To denigrate that by saying, oh, well, she doesn't go to college and become a doctor, and/or criss-cross the world fighting evil — I don't know. […] Basically, you're saying if career isn't more central to her life, then whatever choices she makes are invalid."
No. I fully support those women who, after due consideration as adults, decide to become full-time moms or stay-at-home housewives. I just don't think that presenting that choice, made as an inexperienced girl of 18, as the ending to a wish-fulfillment romance aimed at teens is empowering.
And yes, she defends her family and her community. That's what women are traditionally expected to do and where women have been traditionally expected to show their strength, although usually in less overtly physical ways.
"But to accuse [Meyer] of being insufficiently successful, certainly by the time of the fourth book (when Bella becomes a mother) seems a bit wide of the mark."
I'm not accusing Meyer of being "insufficiently successful". She certainly became enormously successful. But I think the events of the book are rather transparently connected to her own life circumstances, rather than the aspirations of typical teen girls.
I would like to think that the appealing elements of the series to teen readers are more the sparkly hot guys and the melodrama, rather than the "married and mother at 18" part.
Alyssa Rosenberg's argument is that Bella is obnoxiously passive. Not because she wants Edward and wants to love him forever, but because she doesn't really want anything else. So far as I have seen, I agree with her on this. While I admit that reading the damn books might be useful to this discussion, the irritation I expect to experience plus the fact that it's 2000 pages of what, judging from the occasional excerpts that I have read, is excruciatingly badly written prose, make me pretty unwilling to do so.
Well, I think we're just rehashing our points here, so I won't go through it again. But if you're sort of interested in confirming your view, you could just watch the first movie; it's fairly faithful, and less of a commitment than reading all the books (or even just one of them.)