I finally broke down and read Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer, over winter break this year. Curiosity was my entire reason for reading it, but that curiosity came from several different sources. One was how the series as a whole has been touted as the next Harry Potter, and how there seemed to be a significant overlap in readership (but only among girls, I found out later). Since I love Harry Potter, reading the book thus made sense.
I was also curious about its popularity, and how many critics have said the plot is horrendously unhealthy and unrealistic (aside from the fact that it’s about vampires) due to its negative portrayal of female sexuality. Additionally, I wanted to find out why some critics considered the series to have a pro-life message.
The series, written by Stephanie Meyer, covers several years in the life of Bella Swan, a girl of high-school age who gets involved with the underground world of vampires after meeting and falling in love with the vampire, Edward Cullen. The series covers their relationship from their first meeting to their wedding and the birth of their first child. It is narrated mostly in the first-person by Bella, and takes place mostly in the town of Forks, Washington – which actually has received significant attention and increased tourism due to the success of the books.
I will come clean right now about how much I’ve actually read. The series is made up of four books, and I read the first and skimmed the last, with a three-minute Wikipedia search to figure out the missing plot. I apparently missed some Romeo-and-Juliet-style suicide attempts and angst. My sister read the first two books, was told that the fourth, Breaking Dawn, was actually the third, and got several hundred pages in without noticing. Plus, I was the one who told her she was reading the wrong book.
My first source of curiosity about this series was sated about 50 pages into the first book: the series has only one thing in common with the Harry Potter books, and that’s popularity. Any critic who thinks that Harry Potter readers will automatically love this series clearly has read neither. Ignoring any comments on plot, character development, or quality of the writing, the Harry Potter series is an epic adventure, while the Twilight series is, over anything else, a romance; hence its overwhelmingly female fan base.
With regard to plot, character development, and quality of writing, J.K. Rowling’s series easily wins in each category. In case the fact that I skipped half of the Twilight series didn’t give it away, I did not enjoy reading these books. The main difficulty I had with them was that I disliked the person who narrates the books. The girl has very few redeeming qualities. Normally, self-deprecation in a heroine works well at keeping the character real, but all that Bella’s self-deprecation does is to keep her annoying.
She has very little self-esteem, even after causing the most handsome and mysterious boy in school to fall in love with her. However, you don’t feel sorry for her; you just want her to shut up. Her defining character trait (her only character trait without Edward) is her clumsiness, which is ridiculous: Meyer might as well have tried to define someone only by a speech impediment. She exists as a person only through her relationship with Edward. Trying to decide what Bella was going to do with her life if she hadn’t met him is a difficult and pathetic task, since she shows no real interest in any subject or activity, or even any interest in her “friends.” If you’re not a member of the gorgeous undead, Bella Swan wants nothing to do with you.
But Bella’s lack of personality is only part of why any remotely feminist critic would dislike this series. For some background information, Edward’s family, by definition, is a set of “vegetarian” vampires: they only feed on animal blood, not that of humans. Therefore, just being near Bella, whose blood is referenced as Edward’s “brand of heroin,” is a huge challenge for him. It’s made even more difficult by the fact that Bella really wants him to bite her and turn her into a vampire, even encouraging him constantly to do so. The reader is led to believe that his resistance to her temptation is noble and romantic.
The critics have a point, and there is a clear argument that Edward’s desire for Bella’s blood is a metaphor for any male’s desire to sleep with his lover. Her own desires (and therefore female sexuality as a whole) are painted as impure.
What the feminist critics miss by focusing on the negative portrayal of female sexuality is just how inherently stupid Bella’s plan is. She doesn’t want to become a vampire to do all sorts of vampire things; she wants to do it so that she can be immortal like Edward and be with him forever, and in the process cut off every other aspect of her life. As a source for comparison, Edward was turned into a vampire in 1918 to “save” him from the Spanish Influenza, had no choice in the matter, and was an orphan at the time of his transformation. In other words, he was going to die if he had not transformed, and was utterly alone.
Bella, however, has parents, has friends (although they, too, are barely developed as characters), and is not actively dying. She pushes herself on Edward with the ultimate goal of being one part of a whole, and nothing else. (Cue the various “I can’t live without you” suicide-plot variations of the second book.) This plan would be equally repulsive and idiotic if Edward and Bella’s roles were switched: no one, male or female, should be living solely for the existence of another.
My third source of curiosity was answered in the final book. The reason for the apparent “pro-life message” in this series appears in that installment, when Bella becomes pregnant immediately after her wedding. The child is a half-vampire, half-human baby, who grows rapidly, meaning that it would be nearly impossible for Bella to carry the child and survive the pregnancy. Edward encourages her to abort the fetus, but Bella refuses, stating she feels a connection to her child.
This is all well and good, and is a somewhat legitimate pro-life plot point. However, it is during the delivery that it all goes wrong. Bella’s labor is long, painful, and gruesome; it nearly kills her; and she is ultimately saved only by being transformed into a vampire. Meyer’s description of this childbirth is horrendously overblown, turning the miracle of life into a bloodbath.
The worst part of this supposed “pro-life” message is the way in which Meyer (through Bella) ranks the life of the child over the life of the mother. This is a gross misinterpretation of what the pro-life movement actually stands for, as the idea of ranking the life of the unborn baby above that of the mother is one which the movement has been attempting to refute for decades. Meyer (hopefully unwittingly) adds significant fuel to the fire just by writing a few hundred pages about a mutant vampire baby.
Politics and plot quality aside – to be fair, I know why this series is so popular for teenage girls. My sister, who read the first book before me, explained it rather well. She said, “I completely understand why young girls like this book. Every teenage girl wants a gorgeous, mysterious boy to fall in love with her for no reason, and then risk his life to protect her.” She’s completely right, and the series serves the purpose of romance novels very well.
Therefore, I can only hope that the girls who read this story see it as just a story, and don’t begin to make their moral and political decisions based on anything Meyer writes.
Christina Cozzetto is co-President of Brown Students for Life.
The twilight series to me is good, and in some way “addicting”. my friend told me that she loved the books and reconmended it to me. i thought it was the worst book in the universe and corny. Until i picked it up to read. Not everyone is going to love the book. everyone has a diffrent perspective. She can not make everyone happy.
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shhhitsasecret reply on March 25th, 2011 8:33 am:
I have the exact same opinion as you do!
And also the critic.
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Well i dont get your whole review about your book. I think you should talk more about the main character’s caracterization ,the theme:give examples from the text, try and also compare yourself to the main character which in this case would be bella and or from like another book. Give also the plot line to give a little more UMF to the review.
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i would like to say that i believe that your put too much thought into reading a book….. it’s a book…. and it was written for enjoyment.. so why analyze everything and give yourself a headache.. just read the book… if you dont like it read something else… but don’t be so hateful..becuase apparently there are some people who DO like the book or it wouldn’t be so popular….
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Erika reply on March 28th, 2011 5:46 am:
Critics analyze books so harshly because this is what people of our decade are reading. What’s Macbeth? Who’s Charles Dickens? The majority of teens in this generation are no longer stimulated by great novels anymore. Just throw in a hot guy with a shy girl and some evil vampires and we have a plot.
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bridget reply on June 21st, 2011 10:43 am:
I totaly agree with you, Kala!!!Its just a book,do books have to be realistic?sheesh people
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kat reply on June 26th, 2011 5:53 am:
u r soo much like me . read wat i blogged and u will think the same
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R reply on July 27th, 2011 4:03 pm:
She is a book critic…it’s what she does. It is her job to review this book. Duh!
You just don’t like that she didn’t like the book. Accept it…get over it.
Like she states in the review…the people who do like the book are teenage girls. ‘Nuf said.
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Victoria reply on August 20th, 2011 4:55 pm:
To review a book, to provide a critique, is based solely on ones perception of the writing, the plot, the characters and everything else involved in the story. Kayla, this is one persons opinion. I put a lot of thought in while I read a book – I pay attention to character development, plot themes and even the little side notes that most people who read for enjoyment do not have the joy of picking up on. This is not a hateful review, it is Christina Cozzetto’s honest opinion. And Bridget, no books do not have to be realistic in the sense that they should be non-fictional – however, they should be BELIEVABLE, which means writing 3 dimensional characters, not 2 dimensional.
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Jenny reply on January 7th, 2012 4:48 pm:
People review books in order to steer people with literary taste away from over-rated books. People read reviews so they don’t waste their time reading lousy books.
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youve obviously never fallen in love!
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janet reply on June 7th, 2011 9:58 pm:
No! This is not love. This is pathetic. If any of my friends were acting like Bella I would be very very concerned. It is so ridiculous.
Real love is not based on someones “perfect face.” And real love should not result in abandoning your mother and father who happen to treat her pretty good I might add. This critic was right from top to bottom.
I love when the critic said, the lead character has no redeeming qualities. So true. I read the whole series until half way through the last book. I pretty much guessed how it would end and don’t care at all if I am right or not. No more of my time will be wasted on this horrible story.
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T reply on July 27th, 2011 4:04 pm:
Thank you Janet! I couldn’t agree more.
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The twilight books were really scawy. They gave me nightmawes and I cried mysewf to sweep evewy night. The other is going to a special level of hell for this! My favorite part of the books I hated was the copywight page at the beggining of the book. It sewiously went downhill from there. But I am a Cwistian so I forgive them. I didn’t read the series at all, but I know that we must not ask what our country can do for us but what we can do for the welfare program of America!
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Totally agree with the reviewer. I started reading the entire book series out of boredom when I was doing my Grade 12 English in Ireland. I had finished my book, it was late and I needed something to unwind with, so my friend offered me Twilight. I finished it in one night. Not because it was so good I couldn’t put it down, but because it was a never ending loop that I could basically skip half of the book without missing out. I did end up reading the rest of the series, more out of curiosity, and hoping that Meyer’s writing ability would improve so that she would not inflict such poor writing on the younger generation, and I will admit to enjoying Eclipse to a certain degree. To me, it was the only book that had an actual plot. The fourth was just unnecessary.
I am more of a fan of the traditional vampire myths, so the changes she made did irk me a bit, though I’m pretty sure it would not have bothered me as much if the vampires didn’t sparkle in the sun. My overall critique of the Twilight series was that it had “potential”. The idea was interesting and it probably would have turned out better, in my opinion, had it been written by a better author and not by a woman who was in the middle of a midlife crisis and decided to write a novel of her own vampire induced wet dream.
I mean no offense by my comment, it is just my own opinion of the novels.
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Victoria reply on August 20th, 2011 5:02 pm:
I absolutely agree. I read the entire series more or less because I love vampires – I will give anything about vampires a chance, and tend to read for reading’s sake/boredom. I continuously hoped that Meyer’s writing ability would improve, as well – the overall idea behind the series was interesting, and I agree that had it been written by a more seasoned author, it would have turned out better. I enjoyed the entire series, though I have more to say negatively about it than others who enjoyed it – and that is only because I am an aspiring novelist myself, and many things that Meyer did went against all that I know of writing. One thing I have to say, regarding you comment “…and not by a woman who was in the middle of a midlife crisis and decided to write a novel of her own vampire induced wet dream..” is that people write what they know and feel. Stephen King got many of his ideas from nightmares he had, so I don’t see anything wrong with taking a wet dream and writing about it. However, she limited herself. Vampires, at least from what I have read and know from myth, are generally very sexual creatures, and to deny a sexual creature their urges is to really deny them their existence. And sparkling vampires are lame. :)
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U ALL GAY ESPECIALLY “NOPE”……GIRL GO ON WIT YO UGLY SELF NOBODY CARE IF YOU HAD NIGHTMARES..ITS PROBABLY CAUSE YO DADDY RAPES YOU…. YO MOMMA UGLY FAT AZZ SELF SHE LIKE THEM BIG FAT BURRITOS WITH KETCHUP… YALL NERDS STOP READING THIS GAY AZZ BOOK……”NOPE” GO SHAVE YO MUSTACHE YOU 304
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DICK IN YO MOUTH reply on May 18th, 2011 9:23 pm:
U PROBABLY EMO THATS WHY YOU CRY YOURSELF TO SLEEP PS. LEARN TO WRITE YOU BITCH
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bridget reply on June 21st, 2011 10:48 am:
ok, that has nothing to do with the story, shut up.
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kat reply on June 26th, 2011 5:48 am:
u might be talkin about yourself , asshole
and one more thing f*** offffffffffffffffffffffffffff
You are awesome. I completely agree with you. I’ve read the series. I loved the first book it was sweet in some ways. I almost cried reading the first book because he left her even if it was for her own good. In my opinion Bella has to be the most selfish character ever. I however did not get passed the third book. Every time I try I get half way through and half to put the book down because if the character of Bella were real I would literally want to throttle her. The same with the fourth book. Personally i liked the Harry Potter series better. The character development made the characters more relatable. However, give a book like Twilight to a love sick teenage girl and she looses sight of reality because of the , as you put it, Romeo and Juliet quality to the story. There is nothing romantic about trying to kill your self just to hear your boyfriends voice scolding you.
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I love your books and i cant wait for the next one and maybie even when it is in the cinemas i hope
Magda
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what is your problem?sure, the twilight books are unrealistic, but so are the Harry Potter books thatyou where talking about, and we dont have anything aginst them, do we?
Ok, i have to admit, bella would be kind of lost without Edward.I think the story would be better if she bonded with her friends more.But,it makes the STORY more romantic, when Edward comes.
Of course,I am 11,so you might have a different view on them but my mom and I think they are the best books ever!!!
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Mylene reply on August 6th, 2011 3:03 am:
She’s a book critic. She doesn’t have a problem with the book, she is just doing her job. It’s what she does. She never said that Twilight are the worst books in the world, she’s being realistic and giving her opinion.
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just someone ;) reply on October 16th, 2011 10:52 pm:
The difference, hun, is that the Harry Potter books are well written, they have great plots, they’re not a waste of time, the characters are likeable and mature with the books and the situations, and even though it’s about wizards, it seems like it could actually happen. Unfortunately, Stephanie Meyer has managed to do the opposite of all these things making the Twilight series, truly, not that good…
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I love the book, the movies are horrible.
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kat reply on June 26th, 2011 5:40 am:
sweety !!!!! the movies are really nice and the best thing about the movies is ofcourse robert !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Victoria reply on August 20th, 2011 5:08 pm:
I enjoyed the filming style of the movies, the use of a more somber tone in the coloring – I also liked the choice of music and costuming for the characters. I however feel that, though the acting was fine, the characters weren’t fleshed out well, which doesn’t mark a bad movie but a not so good writer.
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this book definitely holds something special about its story . the characters are perfect imean i just dont get why people take it so seriously . its a book !!!!! enjoy it . i truly did enjoy it till the end i never really met someone who didnt love this book after reading it . meyer might not be very creative but she knows what the people would find interesting or seductive , thats her thing !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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I totally agree with you, However, there’s another huge flaw that you didn’t mention: Edward Cullen. He’s so obviously the romantic idealization of what a woman who knows nothing about men expects them to be. There’s no way, in heaven or hell, that a man will ever say any of Edward’s lines. Men would rather be dragged through town tied to a pick up than say things like “You’re my life now” or any of the other syrupy stuff that drips from his mouth so casually.
I just hope that the girls who read these books don’t go through life expecting to see and hear a man act and speak like Edward Cullen, because they’re just setting themselves up for a life of unhappiness and disappointment. And, let’s face it, that’s not fair to the guys out there.
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I agree with half of your review. The metaphors and “Pro-life” movement or theme I disagree with.
Bellas actions aren’t painted as impure. Edward does not want to turn her into a vampire because he is a vampire and believes that the human life is better.
Also on the pro-life thing. I don’t remember seeing Meyer talk about writing for the “Pro-life” movement in her books. You are taking what critics have assumed as the truth in order for us to think of the Twilight series and Meyer with a negative portrayal. If Meyer goes against the pro-life movement, that’s a sign that the pro-life movement isn’t a theme.
Don’t get me wrong, I despise the books. They are horribly written, the main character is empty and full of flaws (Why the fuck did she go to forks in the first place??? No explanation) and it is very, very dull.
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I definitely think that the Twilight books have POTENTIAL. I think that if if weren’t for the unlikeable characters. Edward is too much and I fear that young readers will waste their life looking for a guy like him when, there is no man close to as “perfect” as Bella describes him. Bella has no traits to call her own besides her claim to be clumsy, which only shows a few times throughout the books. Bella also acts suicidal in the second book, and if i had a daughter who read the books, i would definitely NOT want her to be looking up to Bella. I think the books would be much more tolerable if narrated by someone more likeable. I found myself enjoying the last part of the fourth book where Jacob takes a turn narrating. Another issue is that Bella never matures, she seems like a robot who just keeps making the same mistakes over and over.
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I agree with the critic. Also let me state that some people say that the it is just a book and why look so deep into it.
Well, 1st a book should be well written and the characters should be solidly developed. And books are capable of that, which the movies sometimes don’t have the time for.
Cristina review is spot on about Bella’s character and her behavior. But it’s no wonder the book is written the way it is because it is intended for children, hence one of the only two awards that it won was One of Publishers Weekly’s “Best Children’s Books of 2005″.
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The Twilight series was addicting while I was reading them. But once I put down the last book I felt completely unsatisfied and felt like I had wasted my time reading them. Harry Potter wins with flying colors!
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I did not like the twilight series books or movies. I think it was horribly written and pathetic. No adult should have ever made that series without first, thinking about how a vampire really is and the fact is. “VAMPIRES DO NOT SPARKLE!!!” They burn up in the sun light and they drink blood and are cold blooded killers. I agree with any critic that has written a review about this series and a lot of celebraties do not like it at all! They thought it was an utter waste of time as do I.
Honestly.. I agree Harry Potter wins all as does Stephen King’s novels. All those books by those two authers and others that I and many more have read, have great plots and leave the imagination wanting; while Twilight on the other hand Stinks. The movies are just as terrible as the books. I would never waste my time reading or watching those movies. I’ll stick with grusome hangings and slashers.
Everyone has there own opinion and I expressed mine as well as others who do not like the series as well reading this. To each is to their own and if you don’t like reading my opinion then why did you read it in the first place?
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I liking Your style man
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Thought this podcast might be interesting to you guys. It’s from Boise State University’s (where I went to school and work with now) Beyond the Blue program which is a podcast series that focuses on the school’s academics.
This week’s is from Dr. Jeff Wilhelm, professor of English Education, as he explores whether or not non-traditional texts (such as vampire, horror, fantasy, manga, etc) are “real” literature and how teens engage with these texts.
You guys should give it a listen: http://beyondtheblue.boisestate.edu/blog/2012/01/17/let-them-read-trash-the-power-of-marginalized-texts/
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I agree with this review. One thing that I don’t think anybody mentioned was the fact that some of bella’s reactions were really quite disturbing. I meen Bella’s worst reaction to Edward doing what was efectavily stalking were he might have heard her talking in her sleep. Thats not me over anylising the story that is what she said. That worrys me added to the fact that young girls are reading this and…
This isn’t just me right?
Other people think this?
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i loved the book it was a work of art!!!! u need to not analyze things so musch and put yourself in the charectors shoes. you need to learn to live what their living with, become the character and then see what you think
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I enjoy, result in I discovered exactly what I used to be looking for. You have ended my 4 day lengthy hunt! God Bless you man. Have a great day. Bye
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