The vampire theme occurs in literature and usually features a predatory (male) character that bewitches and/or tricks a naïve female into becoming like him. Traditionally, the female has to invite the vampire into her home (and thus, her life), and his seduction begins. The “Twilight” saga challenges the traditional vampire in that, instead of being an older figure as defined in How to Read Literature Like a Professor, the vampire Edward Cullen shall remain perpetually frozen at age seventeen. But because his transformation into a vampire occurred a hundred years prior to the modern setting of the novel, Edward retains a timelessness that deems him an older figure. In Twilight, when Bella discovers Edward’s secret, he complains to her that every quality about him lures her in; he nobly denounces the lifestyle he lives, claiming he would have chosen otherwise given half the chance. He admits to being “sexy…alluring, dangerous, [and] mysterious,” as traditional vampire figures are (Foster, 16). Bella, a plain antisocial girl of divorce also challenges the victim role in traditional vampire stories. However, she has not lost her virginity, and the fact that Edward longs for her blood in a way dubbed “la tua cantante” (her blood sings to him) indicates her purity and innocence. Much like a traditional vampire story, Bella becomes a vampire, indicative of “a stripping away of her youth, energy, [and] virtue” (Foster, 19). But unfortunately, the “Twilight” saga ends with Bella as a happily married vampire with a hybrid human-vampire child, as if the family created at the end negates the fact that she has lost her chances at a normal, human existence. In fact, her naïve insistence on having Edward make her a vampire, and his moral insistence that the lifestyle is fraught with degradation into primal, evil existence, serves as Twilight’s antithesis to vampire lore. But Edward’s supposed protection of Bella’s virtue (and soul) develops into a sick dependence on and obsession with adrenaline-induced stupidity. When Edward’s newest adoptive brother loses his moral control over his instinct to feed on human blood and nearly kills Bella, Edward persuades his family to leave. When Edward has to leave Bella, he convinces her that he never loved her and that he chooses to leave. Just as Edward’s vampire nature is to feed on Bella’s blood, Bella feeds on the danger into which she puts herself when Edward leaves her.
Stephenie Meyer unskillfully makes attempts at retelling classic literary works. She connects her first work, Twilight, to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, with the vampire Edward as a modern-day immortal Mr. Darcy and the pedestrian Bella as a contemporary yet still headstrong Elizabeth Bennett. Meyer develops the saga in New Moon, her weak homage to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, with Edward and Bella as the lead characters and Bella’s best friend-turned-werewolf Jacob as Paris ("Stephenie Meyer Talks About Breaking Dawn"). This connection falls short, however, in that Juliet does not return Paris’s admirations, yet Bella eventually falls for Jacob and chooses Edward instead. The third installment of the saga, Eclipse, makes distinct connections and intertextual references to Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, with Bella’s obsession and selfish behavior mirroring that of Catherine. According to Meyer, the conclusion to the saga (told in primarily Bella’s perspective, that is), makes references to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, among other literary inspirations ("Stephenie Meyer Talks About Breaking Dawn").
In a scene from Twilight in an almost magical meadow secluded in the woods and hills, Edward demonstrates his strength and speed, comparing himself to a masochistic lion and Bella concedes that she plays the part of the naïve lamb tempting him. But these two characters pursue the relationship (even after knowing that it could emotionally and physically cripple the either of them), because “[Edward] refuses to defile her, and [Bella] loves him so dearly that she [desperately wants] him to do just that” (Flanagan, 1). Bella’s persistence and desire fuels the relationship, with Edward supposedly acting honorably by refusing to acquiesce. Bella manipulates the relationships she has (with Edward and Jacob) so that she ends up with her strongest wish – she submits to her human desires.
By examining Bella’s behavior’s after Edward leaves her (under the impression that he acted for her best interest), one can understand how the relationship registered as a controlling force that dictated the rest of Bella’s fate. When Edward leaves Bella stranded in the woods, incoherent from the news that he did not love her and only pretended to love her, the young leader who turned out to be the werewolf pack leader discovered her and brought her back home. Bella then lapsed into a comatose phase marked by four empty pages in the novel, each titled a passing month (New Moon, 85-92). Much like Lauren’s blank entry after the abortion in Rules of Attraction, these blank pages signify a loss and feeling of emptiness. For Bella, “it was a crippling thing, this sensation that a huge hole had been punched through [her] chest, exercising [her] most vital organs and leaving ragged, unhealed gashes around the edges that continued to throb and bleed despite the passage of time” (New Moon, 118). Even Lauren’s abortion couldn’t heal the ongoing hurt from Victor and Sean, as not a single character in Rules of Attraction took responsibility for sex or the repercussions of such irresponsible sex. If anything, Lauren fills the void in her life by holding onto Victor because she has no memory of how her first sexual encounter happened; and in contrast, Bella wants the loss of her virginity to be the last ‘human’ experience she has (she gets her wish).
Both Lauren and Bella deal with their loss and emptiness in different ways, as previously discussed; but Bella fills her void with Jacob yet Lauren stays wanting. Bella’s depression begins with Edward abandoning her: “ ‘You’re not good for me, Bella’…How well I knew that I [was not] good enough for him” (New Moon, 70). But with Lauren, as she attempts to re-assemble the broken pieces of her life post-Victor, she still pines for him: “I have not painted in over a week. I am going to change my major unless Victor calls” (Ellis, 102). While thoughts of Edward send Bella into a painful frenzy (she grabs her torso to keep herself from keeling over), Lauren’s every thought fixates on Victor, and every boy she sees is Victor in her head. As Bella slowly opens up and eases into her close friendship with Jacob, she realizes that “Like an earthbound sun, whenever someone was within his gravitational pull, Jacob warmed them. It was natural, a part of who he was” and this makes it easier for Bella to enjoy his company (New Moon, 145). The brotherly affection Jacob has for Bella develops into a romantic interest, one which Bella deflects because she has an obligatory, magnetic connection to Edward. But she concedes that Jacob fills the void left by Edward, only to feel guilty for betraying the once-magical surreal romance with Edward. She pursues adrenaline-ridden activities like riding a motorcycle and cliff-diving because she knows that Edward would be disappointed in her, and she develops hallucinations of Edward telling her to go home and to be reasonable. Bella realizes her insanity as she endeavors on an adrenaline run and asks herself, “Had I turned into a masochist – developed a taste for torture? I should have gone straight to La Push [the reservation where Jacob lives]. I felt much healthier around Jacob” (New Moon, 159). The joke about the definition of insanity as being the repetition of the same thing expecting different results; Bella realizes that her foolish actions do not bring Edward back to her small town, yet she pursues such ends in an almost unconscious act of suicide. She even knows that Jacob suits her better, provides a more stable relationship for her, yet she recoils from his advances out of spite and guilt. Even Lauren admits that her means of passing the time and grief do not fix the holes in her heart: “I like Franklin’s body and he’s good in bed and easy to have orgasms with. But it doesn’t feel good and when I try to fantasize about Victor, I can’t” (Ellis, 116). Lauren’s concession that her life had become a simplification to the abortion she had to have admits her downfall and her subsequent break up with Sean (“I realized I did not love him, and never had, and…I was acting on some bizarre impulse”) provides partial closure to the emptiness she felt for the majority of the novel (Ellis, 257, 265). Much like the Camden students in Rules of Attraction, Bella becomes so isolated from even herself that a human life and existence is not enough to sustain her; only the promise of Edward’s return and marriage proposal (with a demand of abstinence) completely pull her out of her isolation. Both Lauren and Bella fill their voids with obsessions – Lauren’s obsession with an idealized romance even though she experiences relationships devoid of any romance, and Bella’s obsession with trying to regain the tangibility of a ‘perfect’ relationship that combines love, sex, and romance.
Milan Kundera said that “we can never know what we want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come” (Barker, 235). Bella wants immortality with the man-child she supposedly loves, forsaking a life with her human family, and Lauren wants release from the pain of unrequited love. But unrequited, unresolved love occurs more frequently than a fairy tale ending, and for young girls and middle aged women to fixate on pursuing a perfect romance is not only careless and stupid, it is unrealistic. Edward’s ‘concern’ for Bella only existed because he ran on instinct – anyone who reads Midnight Sun, the fifth book in the “Twilight” saga as told from Edward’s perspective, knows that he had the strongest desire to shred Bella apart, and he fantasized different ways of killing her with the least amount of collateral. His moral ambiguity and dubious proclamations force Bella to choose dangerously. The fairy tale ending taught to girls just disappoints them when they face reality – not all boys will pursue as adamantly, very few boys will lay down their lives (let alone hearts) for a girl, and most importantly, relationships require commitment and sometimes end in disappointment. Rules of Attraction eloquently portrays realistic adolescent relationships, complete with an unhappy ending, and this kind of relationship should replace the carefree, picturesque notions taught in most young adult fiction.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ON1dTtpBgaUMeyer, Stephenie. “Stephenie Meyer Talks About Breaking Dawn.” LittleBrownBooks. 11 June 2008. Online. 1 December 2009.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVEvEtF08S8
