Helen Speaks

My boyfriend thought I was unreasonably prejudiced against Twilight. So I said I would read the book if he did. I’ve finished now, and here are my thoughts.

So, Twilight. It’s a book by Stephenie Meyer aimed at teenage girls that features a love story involving sparkly vampires.

I really like love stories. Honestly, I do. I adore Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. I like Love and Other Near Death Experiences by Mil Millington. I even rather like Notting Hill. My favourite Disney film is Stockholm Syndrome: The Musical! – otherwise known as Beauty and the Beast.

I also like a lot of books aimed at, and starring, teenage girls. I like The Princess Diaries. I like The Changeover by Margaret Mahy. I like The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, I know why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, and the Hetty Feather trilogy by Jacqueline Wilson.

And I don’t, especially, have a problem with sparkly vampires. Admittedly, the idea made me laugh when I first read about it, but vampires have a widely varying mythology. In I am Legend (the book), for example, vampires have reflections but have a horror of seeing them. In Underworld, they have reflections and don’t mind looking at themselves. And, give Meyer credit where credit’s due, I thought the description of Edward Cullen’s sparkliness was actually quite good. It gave the impression of a tougher, less fragile and prone-to-ashing vampire. It could actually make vampires more scary – taking away their weakness to make them supernaturally strong.

It bothers me that people criticise Twilight for being a book for teenage girls featuring a love story with a sparkly vampire. There’s nothing wrong with teenage girls nor catering to their tastes. There’s nothing wrong with love stories. You don’t like them? That’s fine. There’s not even anything really wrong with sparkly vampires, per se. It’s all about how you tell that story.

And anyway, there is so much that you could be criticising Twilight for…

(Twilight fans, please look away now.)

(Don’t say I didn’t warn you.)

Twilight features Bella Swan, resident ugly duckling and omni-klutz. She is a snarky teenage girl. Her mother remarries and Bella decides to move in with her father Charlie in the rainy town of Forks. Bella hates Forks and loves her mom, but she wants to give her mother the freedom to travel with her new husband. So far, so… well, sad, really.

First of all, it’s pretty obvious that Bella is depressed. She is, at best, snarky about everything – at worst, downright scornful at everything, but that’s everything including herself. She doesn’t seem to make any effort to fit in and make friends – she says she doesn’t relate well to people fairly early on. Her classmates seem to make an effort to talk to her, rather than the other way around. She lies to people to get them to stop bothering her – she lies to her mother about why she’s moving to Forks. She makes up excuses to guys who ask her out. When she actually found it within herself to tell a boy that something was “none of your business”, I actually cheered. She just seems so disempowered.

And this is OK. Heroines are sometimes Buffy Summers and sometimes Bridget Jones. Sometimes they are someone to look up to and say, “hey, I want to be like her” and sometimes someone to look at and say, “hey, I know how that feels.”

Our hero, is, of course, Edward Cullen, physically seventeen years old, actually a hundred and odd. And he is sooooo gorgeous, his face is perfect, he has an irresistible perfect crooked smile that makes me breathless, his shirt tight around his perfectly sculpted muscles, he looks more like a Greek god than anyone has a right to, he looks like an angel, oooooooooooooh Edward Cullen….

He’s also a dickhead.

How is Edward Cullen a dickhead? Let me count the ways.

Edward Cullen finds the scent of Bella’s blood his personal brand of heroin. The first time he meets her, he struggles with the desire to drink her dry. He is also in love with her. So he tells her to stay away from him, whilst also encouraging her to go on road trips alone with him, because he’s tired of trying to stay away from her.

Edward Cullen knows that Bella hates confrontation but traps her in an uncomfortable situation and then laughs at her.

Edward Cullen, despite fighting urges to drink Bella’s blood, visits her bedroom while she is sleeping, without a chaperone.

Edward Cullen rescues Bella from a bunch of guys who are about to attack her in Port Angeles, and then berates her for how she would’ve “ruined crime statistics” for the city. Later on, when she is in danger, he tells her that if anything happens to her, he will hold her personally responsible.

Edward Cullen repeatedly drags Bella about.

Edward Cullen wants to suck his girlfriend’s blood. He is worried about the relationship going wrong because then his family would be hurt. The fact that Bella, the love of his life, would be dead? That’s an afterthought.

Edward Cullen takes Bella to the prom as a surprise. She is really upset because she hates the idea of the prom. She has just spent the last 400 pages telling us what an omni-klutz she is. She never goes to dances. She hates going to dances. Because dances make her fall down and hurt herself. But he is romantic so he forces her into a situation that she hates. She had hoped that the “surprise” would be that he would turn her into a vampire – which would give her power and strength. Instead he forces her into a situation that is embarrassing and awkward. There is no hero’s journey for Bella – she remains disempowered.

So in summary, this is a story about the romance of a disempowered young woman and a controlling older man.

I do understand that it has an appealing element. Twilight is a protection fantasy. Bella is socially awkward and clumsy to the point of not being able to walk across a flat surface without tripping over. Bella was the responsible one when she lived with her mother, and now she lives with her father, she seems to do all the cooking and all the washing up (while he watches TV).
She’s the adult in her relationships with the adults in her life. Then when she’s with Edward, who is ostensibly her age but is actually much older, she becomes the child; at one point he ‘grips her like a toddler’, in another she’s compared to a baby seal. She describes herself with words like ‘petulant’ and ‘sulky’, and he orders her about for the good of her health (he drags her to his car so she won’t drive home). This is a shitty way for a boyfriend to treat a girlfriend in real life, sure, but this is a protection fantasy. When she’s with Edward, she can shed all of her responsibilities, and get carried about. Her weaknesses are endearing rather than crippling. This would be crap in real life but it’s appealing on the page.

It’s OK to enjoy fantasies on the page. Did I mention my favourite Disney film is Beauty and the Beast? Friends, DO NOT lock yourselves in castles with intimidating and abusive guys, because they will not change their ways and fall in love with you, and furthermore they are unlikely to own a singing teaset. But it’s OK to enjoy the story as it is, and it’s OK to be a Twilight fan.

I, however, am not a Twilight fan.

I am really bothered by the love story of Bella and Edward. Yeah, he saves her life a couple of times, which is good and all, but it’s like that Bruno Mars song all over again – have you heard it? I would catch a grenade for ya, throw my hand on a blade for ya… Yes, but would you do the dishes? They’ve been in the sink for days.

Which is to say that, despite being handy in a crisis, day to day life with Edward Cullen looks like it’d be no fun.

There’s another literary Edward to whom I’m partial – Edward Rochester of Jane Eyre fame. I will add, I think Mr Rochester can be a bit of a dickhead too. He deliberately makes Jane jealous and sad before declaring himself to be in love with her. Jane leaves Mr Rochester when his dickheadery makes it impossible for her to stay. But when she does return, she says,

“My spirits were excited, and with pleasure and ease I talked to him during supper, and for a long time after. There was no harassing restraint, no repressing of glee and vivacity with him; for with him I was at perfect ease, because I knew I suited him; all I said or did seemed either to console or revive him. Delightful consciousness! It brought to life and light my whole nature: in his presence I thoroughly lived; and he lived in mine.”

He loves her, approves of her, and lets her be herself. Yeah, he’s a bit of a dickhead sometimes, but you can see why she enjoys his company.

As for Edward Cullen… well… he’s just so perfect and angelic and…

Yes, but why does Bella like him? I never get the feeling from reading their conversations, that they are enjoying themselves. When they become a couple, Edward spends all his time grilling Bella about everything in her life because he can’t just read her mind and find out. You don’t get the feeling that she’s saying “we talked for hours” like when love is new and you’ve been on the phone to each other a million years and you could’ve stayed on a million longer but someone had to use the Internet (yes, I was born in the 80s). You get the feeling that it tires her out. She doesn’t like it. But Edward demands it. So she complies.

Can you be in love without enjoying your lover’s company? I don’t think so. I don’t believe in their love.

Also the book just seems, well, misogynistic. It feels wrong to accuse a woman of misogyny, but that’s very much what it looks like. Bella looooves Edward and only appreciates the female friend who leaves her alone. She is friends with a girl called Jessica who calls her up and includes her, but Bella seems to believe she is just shallow, insincere and boring, describing her as ‘jabbering on about boys’ and so forth. Bella doesn’t get a real female friend until Alice Cullen, some way through the book. But she is Edward’s sister – Bella doesn’t appreciate other women on their own merit.

At the prom, she actually says to Jacob “See anything you like?” whilst describing the girls as being like candies.

And at its heart, Edward and Bella’s relationship is abusive. He audits her behaviour, makes her traumatic experiences all about him, drags her around without her consent. He victim blames her, and tells her that he can barely keep from killing and eating her.

And at the end, when he takes her to prom, we have this line:

He couldn’t remove me forcibly from the car as he might have done if we’d been alone. I silently thanked my classmates, realizing that I wouldn’t always have that security.

I had to read that several times before I could think of any angle that wasn’t “He would have physically abused me but there were witnesses”. I guess he can’t forcibly remove her, because that would demonstrate his vampire strength? But hell, this sounds way more like something a victim of abuse would say rather than a happy girlfriend.

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh.

Right, positive things – I did like both Jacob Black and Alice Cullen. They both seem to be friends with Bella, and though Jacob fancies Bella, he doesn’t act like a douche about it. And Alice seems to like and protect Bella.

I thought the book was paced quite well, and the end bit was quite exciting. I appreciated that it turns out Edward can suck Bella’s blood (to save her) without draining her dry.

I actually thought that the vampire mythos of the book, sparkly or not, was quite nicely done.

But, if I’m honest, which I am, I think that Twilight is a terrible, terrible book. I’m going to go read some Jane Austen now. Thank you for reading.