It’s one thing if we like a book and feel it’s being unfairly maligned (which is how I felt about the Harry Potter series). It’s another thing if we read a much-acclaimed series and don’t care for it. I can’t help feeling that when we authors write negative criticism, it’s too easy for us to come off as sneering out of jealousy.
Writing is a solitary and often lonely profession: we writers spend long hours in uncomfortable chairs squinting at text on computer screens or scribbles on paper when most decent people are in bed. Often craving recognition is the base vice that keeps us plugging away at a manuscript when the virtues of serving the Muse or the Holy Spirit have failed us. We are chronically prone to jealousy, small-mindedness, and getting sour when someone who’s written an inferior work gets a big book contract and a movie deal and lunch with Oprah.
Hence my hesitation to slam the Twilight saga. As a small, relatively unknown novelist myself, I can’t help thinking that criticizing Twilight is just my own Green-Eyed Monster seizing the keyboard. And how can I be so certain that you all won’t read what I write and say to yourself knowingly, “Ah, but she’s just jealous . . . her own books . . . well, you know . . . ” And you might be right! Although I have to say that I would be a real crank to want to bring down Stephenie Meyer, whose blog and website sparks with the nicest of cheerful enthusiasm (I have to say, I find Stephenie Meyer as a person a lot more charming than her creation, Bella!).
However, earlier last year, when I was procrastinating on editing one of my novels, I started reading the series and writing reviews on the books as a favor for a friend at Hollywood Jesus. Then I started having concerns about the series. And then, after I mentioned this to another friend, I found myself on the receiving end of emails from moms wanting to know what I thought of the series, and whether or not I thought their girls should be reading it . . . oh dear. This is not what the novelist wanted to get herself into!
So it is with great reluctance that I am procuring this retrospective on the series. Hopefully this will be the last time I venture into literary criticism. At least, until the next big young adult blockbuster comes down the pike and captures all of popular culture, and I am procrastinating working on one of my books and . . .
I freely admit I enjoyed most of the books, though I found myself yawning and checking the page count during both Eclipse and Breaking Dawn. There simply wasn’t enough action in any of the books to satisfy the fantasy-lover in me, and too much time spent on sighs and thrills in the spine as Edward and Bella sweet-talked one another page after page after page. But given that Christians are praising the series for featuring both a virginal heroine AND virginal hero, whose long-awaited marital bliss is passionate, intense, and apparently well worth waiting for, why wasn’t I jumping on the bandwagon to endorse the series?
I guess I just kept being bothered by a recurring question: Was any of it real?
And therein lies the problem.
Obviously there aren’t any real vampires, internet rumors aside. Certainly no humans can claim to have escaped from mortal life into an undead life of eternal shopping sprees and joyrides in hot cars. Yet in a romance novel, however fantastic the trappings, the love has to be real. A good romance novel has to speak the truth about love. Romeo and Juliet, Jane Austen’s novels, the novels of the Bronte sisters somehow managed to communicate something true about the human experience when it comes to love. And I’m not sure that the Twilight saga does.
The love story in Twilight is just not real, virginal or no. It’s love with a pink haze, without the real struggles of selfishness and pettiness and failure that the best of lovers in this fallen world experience. Even the sexuality remains a female head-trip that not once breaks through into real life: not a speck of real dirt or bad smell or PMS moment mars the sexual ecstasy of Bella and Edward. As one girl reader observed, their romance is much more like infatuation than love.
Not once does Edward ever come close to resembling a flesh-and-blood man that a reader is likely to meet. In some ways, Edwards’s love for cool cars reads as more realistic than his undying love for Bella (no pun intended). “I Love Edward” fan clubs are chasing after a phantom.
There are no answers to the riddle of men and women here: only sweet lies that can whet the appetite for something that doesn’t exist. This can be more damaging to the female spirit than entertaining, especially if Twilight-style books are her steady diet.
In Twilight’s moral universe (as in too much modern girl/women fiction, sadly), women are never really wrong. Every moral action by a female can be excused “for reasons of the heart:” even the vengeful bloodhunt of a female vampire in Eclipse. Men’s actions, however, are automatically suspect. This kind of slant can make for emotionally charged narrative, but can make your head spin when it comes to giving a moral judgment.
But moral clarity is sometimes exactly what is needed. For example, it bears pointing out that Bella and Edward’s four-book-long habit of snuggling non-sexually in bed night after night isn’t kosher. In Christian terms, it’s a sin.
Of course this sounds Inquisitorial to say this: after all, we’re talking about a fantasy world of vampires with infinite powers of self-restraint. And after all, “nothing” really happens between Edward and Bella: their union remains unconsummated until (by Edward’s request, not Bella’s) they are publicly married.
So why is it a sin for two unmarried people to sleep together, even if nothing else goes on between the sheets? I’m not talking about a “Wake Up, Little Suzy” one-time accident or extreme circumstances like war or natural disasters: I mean the kind of habitual intimacy Bella and Edward practice.
It’s wrong for at least two reasons: the chance for actual sin to occur, and the sin of scandal.
Meyer seems to rule out the chance of actual sin occurring by constantly stressing Edward’s absolute self-control and high moral standards. But is it really so noble of this vampire to sleep with his girlfriend? (Okay, technically, Edward sits or lies down next to her while she sleeps: [yeah, I know, vampires don’t sleep . . . ])
Christ reminds us that “any man among you who looks at a woman in lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” It’s simply ingenuous to think that a woman who looks at a man in lust is doing just fine. And Bella is (frequently) aroused to lust after Edward, and despite the fact that he slaps her hands away, he’s not really helping the situation by tantalizing her with such emotional and physical closeness.
So in terms of protecting Bella’s chastity (instead of legalistically just protecting her physical virginity), Edward fails pretty miserably. From this point of view, he’s actually fairly selfish.
And then there’s the sin of scandal. While Bella and Edward were actually “doing no wrong” in bed together, how is anyone else from the outside supposed to know that? Bella rightly presumes that her father wouldn’t approve if he found out (and that Bella’s caring father is made to look like a dunce throughout the book also bothers me). Even I, as a reader, sure wondered throughout the first book if there was something else going on in that bed beyond the singing of lullabies.
Should we care what people think? So what if they think we’re sinning: we can stand before God with a clear conscience, right?
Not exactly. If you want to have it spelled out in Scripture, St. Paul deals with the sin of giving scandal when he warns those whose consciences allows them to eat food sacrificed to idols to avoid scandalizing their weaker brethren. And Christ was even stronger: “Anyone who causes scandal to these little ones: it would be better for him to be thrown in the sea with a millstone around his neck.” Ouch.
If sleeping with a guy “in a platonic way” still seems just fine to you, think of it this way: would it be wrong for me, a married woman, to lie in bed with another man who was not my husband? Uh, yeah: and if for some reason I couldn’t see what’s wrong with it, I bet my husband could.
I wouldn’t do it–and I wouldn’t want my husband doing it with another woman, either. If it’s wrong for a married person to do it, it’s wrong for a single person, no matter how restrained or how chaste they think they’re being, no matter what a pretty picture is painted by the image of Edward humming lullabies over Bella’s gently dozing form.
The truth is, we should avoid even the appearance of sinning, and in this regard, Bella and Edward act blindly and selfishly. We’d like to think that our actions affect only ourselves, but much to our dismay, we can have an enormous effect on others for good or evil.
And I hate to say it, but Stephenie Meyer might herself be guilty of this if some of her ardent fans try sleeping together in imitation of Edward and Bella, and end up with lost innocence and broken hearts. Double ouch.
There’s another more subtle way that Edward (and Jacob, Bella’s “best friend”) are bad for Bella: they constantly tell her that she is good: she is self-sacrificing and thoughtful and full of kindness and generosity. Having been inside Bella’s head for four books, I may be missing something, but I have to say that there’s nothing morally superior in Bella’s character that would earn this kind of praise. She’s pretty average, on the whole, and many times this reader (and others too) have found her fairly selfish and self-centered. She loves Edward, true, but “even the pagans love those who love them.” For her boring human friends and relations, she behaves with the usual amount of eye-rolling, politeness, fake niceness, and white lies that many of us tend to indulge in. In short, Bella’s no better than any of us.
In this light, Edward and Jacob’s constant showering of Bella with adulation isn’t much good for her. It doesn’t call her on to something better: it doesn’t help her be less selfish: it makes her more and more satisfied with herself and blinds her to the glaring faults in her relationship to her dad, mom, and friends that even most readers can see. In the short run, what a head trip! In the long run, people outside of fiction who are surrounded by this kind of affirmation turn into selfish jerks.
We women might dream about a man idolizing us, waiting on us hand and foot, but if we’re honest with ourselves, we have to admit that’s not good for us. We have a sinful human nature too, and sometimes the best way for men to love us is when they call us to change instead of massaging our egos.
Unfortunately, the Twilight saga not only fails to tell the truth about human relations: it also tells some pretty sugary falsehoods instead. In that way, it comes pretty close to what I would term female porn. If we define pornography as a literary or visual work that plays on the weakness of one gender in order to bring about a selfish sexual absorption, then these books come pretty close.
Male pornography preys on a man’s visual orientation to bring about a self-centered sexual response. Female porn exploits a woman’s longing for emotional satisfaction and fulfilling relationships to bring about a self-centered sexual response. For women, it’s the steamy romance novel, not the X-rated photo, that’s their downfall.
Now, I completely agree that Twilight is hardly as steamy as the average teen or woman’s novel in the same genre. In fact, compared to the Gossip Girl novels, they’re models of restraint. Meyer eschews graphic in-your-face descriptions: she’s discreet instead of crass. And much of the emotional power of the book stems from the fact that it’s not graphic. As in the memorable scene when Edward leans over Bella’s neck in the first book and inhales, then comments, “Just because I can’t taste the wine doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy the bouquet.” Meyer also taps the reality that a man who controls himself, and who is, like Edward, a gentleman, is enormously attractive to most women.
Pornographers typically argue that their obscene works are “art,” but generally the average person can easily distinguish between the artistic value of the Sistine Chapel’s Last Judgment and a Playboy centerfold. But the difficulty with what I would call female porn is that it is indeed very difficult to figure out what constitutes art and what is truly problematic. What I do know is that a steady diet of this can ruin good relationships and good marriages, as women closeted with their private reads reject boyfriends and husbands who can’t match the romance offered by an Edward or one of his counterparts in the romance industry. Again, I hesitate to classify Twilight as this kind of female porn book: but it seems pretty borderline, given how much of the book’s action was heavily padded with extended descriptions of physical affection and sweet-talking. If Edward had spent more time fighting the Volturi and less time tracing the corner of Bella’s lips lightly with his fingertips, I’d have been more entertained and less worried.
So I suppose I consider the books . . . problematic, especially (now here I’m going to speak to the moms who are reading this) for those readers who are still growing up. Considering that many girls aged ten and just above are reading books, since the word is out that the books are ‘clean’ with ‘no sex,’ I’m afraid too many impressionable minds are being primed learning to fall in love with a man who just doesn’t exist. I actually feel really sorry for the teenage boys who are having to compete with Edward.
As a romance writer myself, I try to be kind to the average guy. While it’s laudable to create an idealized hero that will raise the standards of girl readers, I’m not sure it’s fair to make him so beyond the pale that no average guy can aspire to be like him. But I could be wrong.
Twilight and its sequels had some enjoyable parts: the vampires, the werewolves, the superheroes, the epic showdowns, the fantasy elements kept it a fun read. But ironically, the parts of the story that pretended to be “realistic”–the relationships between Bella and Edward and everyone else–were the actual fantasy. And for girls still forming their ideals about sexuality and relationships, this apple could be poisonous. Beware.
Please know that this review was written by an aspiring novelist whose sales will probably never equal Stephenie Meyer’s, and it just represents one opinion. This novelist is now resolved to return to writing her own manuscripts and to try to steer clear of literary criticism–at least for now!
March 20th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
Regina, interesting thoughts. I do agree that negative effects could come out of younger, more impressionable readers believing what they read. There is a real danger in this “chasing after a phantom” (that I’ve already seen happen in the case of several girls I know.)
I personally enjoyed the books very much, but not really because of the romance. Edward wasn’t all that appealing to me; I thought Jacob was a more realistic and much more human character. I was annoyed with Bella until she stood up for the life of her unborn child in book 4, but I did enjoy Meyer’s expressive style and intensity.
The books should be taken with a grain of salt: as fiction.
March 20th, 2009 at 4:15 pm
Great job, Regina!
I was told once on a Catholic forum that Twilight was evil because they were making vampires look good and there were such things as vampires and a bunch of other things too.
Yeah, I was confused too.
I really enjoyed the books and found myself relating to Bella alot (which is now very much embarrassing!) but Edward helped me realize what I wanted in a man.
No, being a vampire is not on the list of things I want.
But I realized I kinda wanted the HUMAN version of Edward, the guy who respects and protects, is a gentleman and wants to protect HIS virtue!
One last thing: Although I really love Twilight, I am also a Shakespeare and Austen buff and am always dying to find more books to read.
March 20th, 2009 at 11:10 pm
WOW! Way to be stright up, Regina! I wish this review could be posted on high school walls everywhere. Your insight was soul deep and Biblically solid. Thank you for the honesty. If it steers even one young girl clear of material that is spiritually and emotionally damaging, it was worth your time away from the manuscript. Many blessings to you in your future novel writing!
March 21st, 2009 at 7:16 am
Regina,
The best literary critics are/were novelists. Take C S Lewis and G K Chesterton, for example. I wouldn’t want a performance of Beethoven Sonatas reviewed by someone who did not know anything about performing music. I certainly hope to see reviews from you in the future.
Thanks for the good review and great advice. Thank you for having the courage to tell it like it is. You can be sure I will share this with my teenage daughter.
March 21st, 2009 at 3:34 pm
Thank you for your honest opinion and I would simply like to add that the “love” or “romance” between Bella and Edward always seemed more like attraction or lust than true love, seeing as each of them did not truly want what was best for the other, ever. In the first book, Bella pursues Edward, more or less, simply because he is SO good looking. In turn, Edward, as time progresses, does Bella no favors by simply giving her everything she wants. He is practically a doormat so besotted by Bella that he would (oh, and does) kill her if that is what would make her “happy”. Even if it was not really the best thing for her.
Furthermore, I never really noticed a meeting of minds or of a friendship between Edward and Bella, which I have always understood to be essential to a marriage or any meaningful relationship.
March 26th, 2009 at 6:37 pm
thanks!!
April 1st, 2009 at 5:16 pm
That was a really thought provoking review Regina, thanks!
I’m just coming to the end of Braking Dawn at the moment, and I was getting a little bit confused- like, hang on a minute, what where the morels exactly?!
What you said about novels being the female porn, kinda got me thinking. I’m fifteen, and not all that experienced in these matters, but when you put it like that…I’ve been trying to convince myself as I read through the saga, that i was only interested in how it would end;desperately trying to deceive myself into thinking the the cliff-hangers where more than i could take,so I simply couldn’t put it down. That’s why every time one of my siblings asks why I’m STILL reading it and didn’t just give it up ages ago,I would reply something to that effect. Now at least I realize it’s because I’m hooked, like all those other girls (and boys!)
I also found the saga bad for me for another reason. one of my ambitions- ONE of them!- is to be an author. the character’s and their ‘romantic issues’ started to seem childish and…frankly too pure! it sounds awful, but that was what i was thinking. Luckily now though, i can look back at them and say “hey, at least Regina won’t be able to write one of her powerful reviews on it when it’s published!!!” ha ha ha!
Thanks again (I really can’t wait for your next book!)
April 3rd, 2009 at 10:35 am
I couldn’t agree with Annie more! No really, the whole comment was freakily like my own thoughts.Really….
First, I was really caught in the headlights by the intensity of the series and I wasn’t really on guard against a novel everyone was saying was inocent and ‘cool’ if I may say so. I am sixteen but I was fifteen when I read most of the series.
While I learned how attractive it can be for a guy to be honest/protective/gentle/strong ext, ext; I really found his mix of personality confusing. If he really loved her, why did he let her be so stupid all the time then reward her with phisical closness? Bella was just.. well…. flawed, I guess you could say. She loved her dad but didn’t treat him well at all. (The cooking was mostly for her benefit I have decided.)
Thank you so much Regina for being open about this stuff even if it’s uncomfortable for you to say. I admire you so much and LOVE to read you books. They are a constant fallback when I need to get a grip.
Annie, I am so with you. Writing is also only one of my future aspirations but a big one. (some of my others include illistrating, guitar, youth ministry and dog training.
In Christ
April 7th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
I just want to start off by saying that I adore your books and I respect you and applaud you very much for sticking up for Catholics in a secular world where being Catholic is generally considered a bad thing. As a staunch Catholic who constantly sticks up for my religion in my college classes, reading your books is a breath of fresh air.
I see where you are coming from with your opinion on this series, but I must say, I am more inclined to believe Bella and Edward’s love and romance as real than Romeo and Juliet’s. Bella and Edward go through so much together and date each other for a year before they end up marrying while Romeo and Juliet marry each other within two days. THAT is infatuation. They see each other at a party, use the nurse as their go between, talk for ten minutes clandestinely on a balcony and then tie the knot the nest day. And what happens to them? They both commit suicide. Austen and the Brontes come a bit closer, but for the most part the heroes in those novels treat the heroins in a degrading fashion before “falling madly in love.” Mr. Rochester acts like a complete dirtbag to Jane Eyre and barely notices her existence. “She is tolerable but not handsome enough enough to tempt me.” - Mr. Darcy. Edward’s making fun of Bella a little pales in comparison. At least he respects her. My parents have been married and madly in love for twenty-five years and poke fun at each other on a daily basis. Don’t get me wrong, I love Austen and Shakespeare as much as any bookworm, but this just proves that it is almost impossible to define or write true love. It is an ineffable, individual feeling between two people relating uniquely to their own circumstances. Any attempt to write it or define it as something universally solid will not even come close. The only true love we can depend on as true in it’s purest form is the love God has for us.
Is Twilight far-fetched? Absolutely. Will young impressionable girls develop too high standards about men because Edward is too perfect? Of course. But Disney movies can to the same. Cinderella knew Prince Charming for about four hours and they based their marriage on whether or not her shoe fit (by the way, are you thinking about writing a Cinderella retelling?) Sleeping Beauty only saw Prince Phillip once while she was an infant and then decided to marry him because he gave her her first kiss. Ariel knew Prince Eric for three days (ok four, she saw him on his ship the day before she destroyed the life she knew for a man she had never even spoken to). Jasmine knew Alladin for about a week and he was lying to her the whole time. Even in Enchanted, a movie about truly reevaluating love, Gisele and Robert know each other for two days. The only accurate depiction of a developing romance by Disney would be Beauty and the Beast, where they get to know each other over months and learn to look past appearances (and yes I know he was holding her hostage, but that aside, they take time to get to know each other before realizing they love each other).
In conclusion, Twilight is not perfect, but what is? I would rather young girls read it than Gossip Girl.
July 16th, 2009 at 3:11 am
this was a good review. i’d like to mention that infatuation can last a long time, my ex boyfriend and i dated for almost 3 1/2 years, given, that last half year or maybe a little more was trying to figure how to get out of it, but infatuation can last. i was thinking about marrying him, if i would have i would have married a non Christian, i don’t want to think about that. i do want to get married eventually, but to a Christian. i didn’t read the books but i read a lot about the books and i know it makes me not as aware, but i can’t read these books because of the way it’s written, i just want people to know that girls are being affected by them in bad ways. i also want to say that when i was trying to get out of the relationship, it wasn’t abusive, but i’ve got to think about his feelings, also i’m 22 now, and that relationship was when i was 16 to 19. sorry if this is written badly, i’m tired.
August 10th, 2009 at 12:00 am
Great review, Regina. I will be sharing this with my friends
October 11th, 2009 at 10:18 pm
Regina,
Your review was pure awesomeness!! I am 17, and was almost 17 when I read the Twilight Sega. I did enjoy the books, but felt I could not recommend them to anyone (except my 21 year old brother, my 19 year old sister at the time, and my best friend, who also all felt the same about them as I do.) We all had pretty much the exact same thing to say about the books. I will not permit my younger 15 yr.old brother,13 year old sister or any of my younger siblings to read them. The books were highly recommended to me by a friend, and after months of hearing about them, I finally picked it up. After reading them, as a young Catholic, I cannot recommend them to others. I have discouraged the young girls at school from reading them, because I felt the same way about them as you have expressed in your review! Except that you have worded it far better then I EVER could! So thank you very much! After doing a review on the books for our school librarian, I am thrilled to read your review and know that my family and friends who feel the same about them as I do, may be “crazy traditional Catholics who dont approve of modern stuff”, but at least we know we are striving for the betterment and salvation of our souls by stating what we firmly believe about these books!! And there are FABULOUS authors such as yourself whose novels have made your way into the hearts of every girl in our highschool! (all 30 of us!..i go to a very small catholic school from K-12.) I love being able to recommend your books to the kids at my school, and know that I am, in NO way, causing them scandal, and they can get nothing but GOODNESS from reading your novels!
So thank you so VERY much for your wonderful work!
And I cant wait to read your newest novel about alex and kateri!!!
God Bless you and your family,
with many prayers, Bernadette
January 22nd, 2010 at 9:44 pm
Wow Regina, that was great! I admit I’ve never read the series before, but from what Ive heard and this article, I’d rather have a guy like Bear then Edward.
July 1st, 2010 at 1:45 pm
Thank you soooooo much for writing this review! This has really helped me understand even more the faults of the Twilight saga. I am a big fan of your books and so I am truly glad that you reviewd this series from a Catholic perspective. Thanks and God bless!