Twisted Love

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The Twilight Novels of Stephanie Meyer

Villains are not traditionally sympathetic characters, but there has been a recent trend in literature to change this. No longer is it sufficient to simply have an unquestionably wicked villain; rather, many postmodern fairy tales are rewritten from the villain’s perspective, trying to understand him/her as a person with thoughts, feelings, and a really rough childhood. One example would be Gregory McGuire’s novel Wicked, the story of the Wizard of Oz retold with the Wicked Witch of the West as the heroine. A similar thing occurred with the translation of Gaston Leroux’s Phantom of the Opera to Broadway, where the novel’s creepy, evil villain becomes a seductive, pitiable tragic hero.

The same transformation has happened in recent vampire literature. Stoker’s Dracula is a true villain; the heroes in his novel are the courageous vampire-hunters, trying to protect their families and loved ones. The 1922 German silent film Nosferatu, which is based on Stoker’s novel, depicts the vampire as pure evil; he is hideous and frightening, with long fingernails and two fangs protruding from the front of his mouth. There is nothing pitiable about him.
But in recent vampire literature, such as the novels of Anne Rice and now Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series, the vampire has been reimagined as a tortured hero. In Rice’s novel Interview with a Vampire, the story is told through the eyes of Louis, a young man who was transformed into a vampire, but is resisting the change. Louis originally refuses to drink human blood, out of a “lingering respect for life,” as he sardonically tells the vampire Lestat. But he soon realizes this will not be easy for him, and he becomes a tragic hero, meant to be admired for his noble intentions and pitied for his miserable condition. Rice’s vampires are not hideous monsters, but preternaturally beautiful, enticing creatures.

Meyer has followed in the footsteps of Rice, by writing a story with a “good” vampire as the hero. Like Louis, Edward and his family refuse to drink human blood out of moral qualms. Meyer also took some liberties with traditional vampire mythology, throwing out the old superstitions about sleeping in coffins and stakes through the heart, and, in a clever appeal to the sensibilities of the adolescent girl, having her vampires “sparkle” rather than incinerate in the sunlight. What preteen girl wouldn’t love a boy who sparkles – everything else she owns does. And like Rice, Meyer’s vampires are exquisite. Edward has a “sculpted, incandescent chest,” “scintillating arms,” and “glistening pale lavender lids.” He looks up at her from under long dark lashes, his voice smolders, and he causes Bella, the heroine, to forget how to breathe so often that we want her put on a ventilator.

But there is one aspect in which Meyer wanted to depart from Rice’s vampire mythology, and that was the link between vampirism and twisted sexuality. Rice’s books are steeped in it; there are many sexual encounters in her novels, as well as homoerotic undertones. Not so with Meyer. In fact, she has been hailed as a proponent of chastity by many conservative moms, Mormon and Christian alike. Meyer’s characters consciously wait on sex until after they are married; even though Bella claims to be ready, Edward insists on doing things properly since that is how he was raised. For this, the books have been compared to Austen novels and held up as modeling conservative values.
However, although the books claim to promote physical chastity, the same cannot be said for emotional chastity. As one reviewer, Stephen Greydanus, noted:

Chastity is a precious thing, and the struggle to be chaste is both an inevitable part of a moral life and a legitimate subject for narrative art . . . At the same time, a narrative that wallows in the intoxicating power of temptation and desire, that returns again and again to rhapsodizing about the beauty of forbidden fruit, may reasonably be felt to be a hindrance rather than an affirmation of self-mastery. [1]

Christians are called not just to sexual purity, but to emotional purity as well. Daughters need to be taught to guard not just their “carnal treasure,” but also their hearts. High school crushes may seem harmless, but emotional restraint is a muscle that will atrophy unless it is exercised. The habit of giving free-reign to one’s thoughts and desires cannot suddenly be switched off after marriage, when emotional fantasies become adulterous. In other words, if Meyer is truly trying to promote chastity, she’s not doing a good job of it. Bella spends all her time fantasizing about Edward, and the teenage reader is being powerfully invited to do the same. There is no real purity and restraint.

Further, Meyer sets up a twisted vision of love in her novels. Edward is a character who appeals in every way to teenage girls: a guy who powerfully desires you, and yet is self-restrained and will never pressure you. Teen girls talk about how they love Edward’s “protectiveness” over Bella. Yet in reality, Edward is not a protective hero. He sneaks into her bedroom at night, spies on her while she’s sleeping, and constantly endangers her by his presence. In the fourth novel, Breaking Dawn, the morning after the wedding night Bella has bruises all over her that Edward caused. He is regretful, but she says, “No – I’m fine, it was perfect.” As Gina Dalfonzo of National Review Online aptly noted, this “should send a chill down the spine of any parent with a daughter.”[2]

Meyer’s version of love is enticing to teen girls, getting them to think that real relationships – and real men - should be wild, exciting, and dangerous. When Bella is asked by Edward to marry him, her response is disgust. The idea of marriage doesn’t fit with her idea of Edward and of their relationship. She says that she can’t imagine applying the bland term “husband” to Edward.[3] This low view of marriage and of human love hardly fits with a Christian view of real life. Marriage is wonderful, but it also requires a lot of sacrifice. And it doesn’t involve one’s heart stopping every few seconds. One can hardly imagine Edward and Bella working on taxes, or taking out the trash, or changing dirty diapers. And yet these mundane, oh-so-human details of life, when done in faith, are blessed by God beyond what we can imagine. It is a glorious thing to be human. Chesterton spoke of it as “the pride of the house of Adam, which holdeth the stars in scorn.”[4] We were created to rule over the angels.

Yet the theme that ultimately prevails in Meyer’s novels is a distaste for human life. But this is only consistent with the author’s religion. In Mormonism, being human is not a glorious thing – it is the lowest state. The ultimate goal of Mormonism is no longer to be human: to become gods. Traditional Mormonism teaches that God himself, Elohim, was once a man like us. A familiar catch-phrase is, “As man is, God once was; as God is, man may become.”

This is what being a Mormon is all about – becoming a god to billions of worshipful souls through whom one’s own godhood is sustained. The ultimate reward is a powerful motivation for Mormons: ‘Godhood is to have the character, possess the attributes, and enjoy the perfections which the Father has . . .’[5]

In Mormonism, in order to become a god, you also have to create an eternal family which will be with you in immortality. And that is precisely what Edward’s “father” Carlisle does: he turns people into vampires in order to create for himself an immortal family. And Edward, in the end, creates his own immortal family, beginning by turning Bella into a vampire. Here Meyer again departs inexplicably from traditional vampire mythology: vampires are undead and have no bodily fluids; they can’t have children. But Edward manages to impregnate Bella with a part-vampire child. For Meyer, procreation between humans and vampires is not impossible, as it is in most vampire mythology. It is interesting to note that according to Mormon theology, Elohim – God – had sexual relations with the human Mary, and she became pregnant with Jesus. Perhaps this is the basis for Bella’s pregnancy through a supernatural creature.

Throughout the Twilight series, Edward is described with the epithet of “god-like.” And it is true: Meyer’s vampires are very much like gods. They have supernatural strength, power, and beauty. And Bella’s goal through the entire series is to become like them, to leave her weak, plain, human self behind. When once accused of misogyny, Meyer is famously quoted as replying, “I am not anti-female; I am anti-human.” This sentiment proves true in the end: Bella becomes a vampire and is at once happier, preternaturally beautiful, powerful, and all that she wanted to be. Human life, human love, is worthless.
But ultimately, the threat of these novels for teenage girls will not be a temptation to want to form immortal families or join the Latter Day Saints, but to let their emotions run wild rather than guarding their hearts. It would be difficult for a teenage girl to read this series and not fall for Edward. The temptation is to think that this is what true love is like – passionate and dangerous – and to subconsciously look for a guy like Edward: beautiful, dangerous, perhaps even abusive. Stephen Greydanus insightfully noted that this may stem from a cultural crisis of masculinity. It takes real men, real human heroes, to shatter this false image of love and exemplify true Christ-like love to a fallen world.