By Sneha Rajaram
I first read the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer, about a vampire-human teenage love story, in my mid-twenties. The first book of the series, Twilight, was published on October 5, 2005, exactly ten years ago. I started reading it knowing that the heroine Bella Swan, and Kristen Stewart, the actress who played her in the movie adaptations, were said to be dull as ditchwater and as anti feminist as could be. But as I read on, I began to feel an itch to defend Bella Swan. Even now, as I encounter more and more pop culture with a standardized idea of what a feminist-approved strong woman looks like, I feel Bella is lurking just there at the corner of my vision, with her dour face, wearing a t-shirt that says ‘This is What a Feminist Looks Like’. Defending her to feminists is admittedly a masochistic venture. Because Bella isn’t exactly prime raw material. But I must do it anyway, because, even more masochistically, I identify with her. So deep breath:
First, the Cynicism
Feminism is a slippery serpent. Just when we think we’ve got hold of it, it turns around and bites us in the ass, or sheds its skin so easily, the skin we’ve worked years, or worse our whole lives, to build. Because there’s always a blind spot in our brand of feminism that reveals itself to us every few years, or an epiphany that destroys half our theories, or, worst of all, the age-related mellowing process that makes us let go of our teenage anger.
Next, My Pretensions to Second-Wave Feminist Theory
My feminist instincts against Bella seem at first to stem from the second wave of feminism (which is just a fancy word for my teenage brand of feminism). She needs rescuing all the time. She’s always infantilizing herself in front of her boyfriends, as one critic put it. She’s always fainting, being carried, falling over her own feet, can’t stand up straight without Edward (vampire, main man) or Jake (werewolf, side piece) supporting her. She forgives Edward for dumping her as soon as he comes back. In other words, she’s vulnerable. The physical vulnerability (of being human rather than vampire/werewolf, and a clumsy, weak woman at that) is used by Stephenie Meyer as a (some would say crude) metaphor for Bella’s emotional vulnerability. And we just need to listen to Brené Brown’s TED talk on vulnerability to know what strong woman advocates are up against when it comes to the strength of vulnerability.
Next, the Obligatory Unsubstantial Lip Service to the Third Wave
Although I fondly imagine the post-modern third wave of feminism is wary of touching the above objections to Bella with a barge pole, the third wave has much more to say about Bella (who seems to have been written in order to be the deceptive sitting duck for every feminism ever invented).
Bella isn’t tough. I don’t mean in body or feeling: these are forgivable for third-wavers, I feel. She isn’t tough in thought. She wavers and vacillates. She isn’t aware of the inevitable harsh truths about herself. Her feelings for Edward and Jake are pathetically, dully, cloyingly, sickeningly sweetly unleavened by any breath of fresh thought, idea or analysis. Rather than contemptuously refusing to participate in a particularly difficult phase of testosterone trouble between Edward and Jake, she participates to the fullest, making feminist-theoretical and behavioural mistakes – see for yourself. Her participation, however, leads to a reduction of hostilites. A more conventional peace-maker role for the woman. Why not? Let’s not be ashamed of making peace, however much that typecasts us as women.
Next, Subtext and Bella Don’t Mix
The feminist point of view that intellectually rejects and belittles all forms of patriarchal aggression doesn’t even occur to Bella because, to her, it’s all real: she sees these men fighting before her eyes and she won’t read between/behind the lines. She just responds to the physical and emotional field around herself. This refusal to analyze is a classic anti-feminist move – but what if it isn’t? What if the luxury of taking reality at face value, with no need to interpret it, can be a choice for women in some distant future, just like the luxury of not getting pregnant from sex is a choice today for some women?
Now comes the megalomaniacal self-ego-stroke: I am the founder of the fourth wave muahahaha! (Never mind if it might actually end up being regression into the zeroeth wave.)
Now She’s Bella Swaarth
Worst of all, Bella cannot relativize or contextualize anything. If she loses her extreme first love, it takes her too long to pick up the pieces. She is never humbled by considerations of de-prioritizing her feelings to make space for others’ points of view in her head; her demonstrations of self-effacement through all the books comprise one long self-aggrandizing celebration of her feelings. The words selfish and selfless are locked into a suffocatingly tight binary at many different levels in the books, tighter than Bella and Edward’s Fevicol-ka-jod embrace itself. But again, the fact that Bella is allowed to make a complete ass of herself, and doesn’t have to force herself into the Iron Maiden of today’s strong white woman, speaks for freedom of choice.
“My Body is a Coward And I’m Proud of It”
In my mid-twenties, I was a clumsy, introverted, gloomy, externally self-deprecating woman. It never actually went as far as damsel in distress (although it did make unpleasant men feel unpleasantly powerful in my presence). But I identify with Bella in that sense, and with her sense of powerlessness in, say, physical fights. From the few I’ve been in in my childhood and adolescence, my body has bypassed my feminist mind and learned that the opponent is always quicker and stronger, and my wits are too slow to actually do anything, even by cunning. My body has also learned that my legs carry it fast, and fast enough, and there’s no shame in that fact. ‘This is what a feminist looks like’, remember?
In Which I Justify Having Broken My Mother’s Favourite Dessert Crystalware, a Thermometer, Two Chairs, and About Four Ketchup Bottles
A clumsy woman subverts patriarchy at the first level itself, by being clumsy. She is not graceful like a cisgendered feminine woman, she does not dance (like Bella), her un-lithe movements are a sight for no man’s sore eyes. She is no good at housework because she drops and breaks things. So her dexterity is for no man’s stomach or home. She is introverted; her friendliness is for no man’s ego – no laughing at dumb man jokes. She is often glum; her smiles are, again, for no man’s ego. She is tongue-tied and shy; her words of praise and encouragement are for no man’s ears. She is absent-minded; she can’t listen to him or take care of him in sickening detail.
The Rather Limp Coup de Grace
I will hereby enlist the aid of what I rather fancy as a knowledgeable Jungian-archetype thing to say at dinner parties: The klutz archetype, just like the trickster and the witty person, sorely needs women. Why not women like Bella?
***
Having said all this, I must add that I’m aware of Stephenie Meyer being a bad-ish writer. (She was bad in 2005, but ever since the publication of the Fifty Shades series in 2011, she’s just been bad-ish.) And though I went through a post-Twilight phase where I wanted to wear only dark full sleeve t-shirts with jeans and hoodies, I don’t actually want to be Bella any more. I’m still happy being dour and clumsy and a fool, but I ain’t ready to take on a Twilight saga, and Bella is:
Edward. Edward. My life and his were twisted into a single strand. Cut one, and you cut both. If he were gone, I would not be able to live through that. If I were gone, he wouldn’t live through it, either. And a world without Edward seemed completely pointless. Edward had to exist.
Would you want that kind of relationship? With anything except caffeine?
Pssst! Are you ready to be entertained by a Tumblr that pokes superb holes in Meyer’s awful awful prose? Go to ReasoningWithVampires.
Photo credits in order of appearance: 11/365: Even Vampires Love the Ipod by Jin, Be Safe, Love by Nadia Hatoum, Midnight by Gary Cruz. All via Flickr/CC BY-ND 2.0