So I find myself drawn to the Twilight saga. I've read all the books several times and watched all of the films except the most recent one.
From a feminist point of view it know it's shit. Bella is pretty powerless until the last book, and then that's only because she's turned into a supernatural creature (not an option open to most women!). Edward is controlling, she's always tiptoeing around him coz she's scared of making him angry etc. Even Jacob, who I thought in the first three books was by far the superior suitor, doesn't really respect her (he's supposed to be in love with her but in that first half of the fourth book, in the bit told from his point of view, he expresses some quite disparaging views about her. For example, at one point, I forget where exactly, he sneers about how she's always martyring herself).
But I keep going back to it. I think it's the way they want her so badly, it would nice to be desired like that (without all the dodgy controlling stalker-y stuff obviously) and in that sense we as readers get to live vicariously through Bella. Jacob in particular goes back again and again, no matter how much she hurts him, in a way I don't think any man would in real life. I know, I know, this is supposedly explained in the fourth book by his imprinting on Renesmee i.e. he was attracted to Bella because she was going to be the mother of his soulmate (except in the third book Stephenie Meyer makes out that Bella and Jacob would have been soulmates and gotten together if Edward had never existed). (The imprinting thing really annoys me as a way of tying up loose ends. In reality we'd think there was something very unhealthy about a man falling in love with even the grown-up daughter of a woman he'd once been madly in love with, imprinting is a very clunky way of trying to get round this. I wih she'd just had the courage to kill Jacob off, intead of trying to force a happy ending for everybody).
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11 replies
AlexanderS · 23/11/2012 11:45
OP posts:
StewieGriffinsMom ·
23/11/2012 18:53
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