This essay was written in loving memory of Marina Husky Lopez, who did not survive adolescence. We love you and miss you.

Don’t you see, Bella? You already have everything. You have a whole life ahead of you. And you’re going to just throw it away. You have the choice that I didn’t have, and you’re choosing wrong! (Rosalie to Bella) Stephenie Meyer, Eclipse, 166 (2007).

Perhaps some exposition is in order. For those of you living in a cave or under a rock for the last year or so, the Twilight saga is a very titillating, sexually repressed teen romance between a plain, quiet high school girl (Bella) and an attractive, angsty, permanently-teenage vampire (Edward). The story basically chronicles the ups and downs of this relationship, with some vampire/werewolf fighting and a love triangle in between. Bella and Edward’s romance is tumultuous, mostly because Edward experiences a lot of inner turmoil over being in love with a creature that he is designed to hunt and kill. He has a lot of emotional outbursts, which Bella bears the brunt of by proximity. But Bella accepts the roller coaster of their interaction, and decides by the end of the first book that she wants to become immortal (turn into a vampire) so she can be with Edward forever. This—Bella’s willingness to throw away her mortality—I take issue with.

Please note that I’m writing this from the perspective of a fan. I loved these books. I spent an inordinate amount of time parsing through them, rereading my favorite parts, thinking about the minute details, being in love with Edward, justifying Bella’s actions to myself, and generally enjoying them way too much for a thirty-year-old. So these thoughts are expressed out of love. At the same time as I adored these stories, I think it’s important to examine some of their more disturbing aspects. One of those that particularly struck me is the trajectory of Bella’s goals and life. Bella’s main goal is to be with Edward; so much so that she’s willing to give up her mortality for it. As a result of her decision to trade her mortality for her man, I don’t think Bella survives adolescence; I think she dies. And I find that incredibly disturbing, especially in light of the fact that millions of teenage girls (not just thirty-something women) have eaten this story up. Surviving adolescence is something many teenage girls do not think they will do. We’ve all been there; it’s such a trying time in life, and most of us wouldn’t relive it for all the money in the world. But somehow we make it through; that one B- didn’t end our careers, that gossip about us didn’t end our social lives, breaking up with our first love when it just didn’t work anymore didn’t end the universe. Some of us had deeper struggles, and coming out of adolescence alive and in tact was an enormous accomplishment. Therefore, I find Bella’s willingness to give up life based on the flush of emotion that accompanies first love insulting; it’s kind of a slap in the face to those of us who have worked so hard to pull through childhood and live as strong and independent adults, fighting to be good role models for our sisters, nieces, and daughters. I’m scared to think about what kind of effect Bella’s decision has on younger readers.

I know, I know, Bella becomes a vampire; she doesn’t die. But what does it really mean to become a vampire? When Bella is finally changed, she gives this first-hand account:

My heart took off, beating like helicopter blades, the sound almost a single sustained note; it felt like it would grind through my ribs. The fire flared up in the center of my chest, sucking the last remnants of the flames from the rest of my body to fuel the most scorching blaze yet. . . . [M]y heart galloped toward its last beat. The fire constricted, concentrating inside that one remaining human organ with a final, unbearable surge. The surge was answered by a deep, hollow-sounding thud. My heart stuttered twice, and then thudded quietly again just once more. There was no sound. No breathing. Not even mine. Stephenie Meyer, Breaking Dawn, 385 (2008).

In Meyer’s mythology, becoming a vampire is very painful; your heart stops beating, your lungs stop breathing. Blood no longer flows through your veins, accounting for your pale countenance. You don’t eat (in the traditional sense), you don’t sleep, and you don’t change. You keep the same characteristics and attributes you had at the point of transformation; you don’t develop, grow, or mature, either physically or emotionally. All of these factors indicate to me that becoming a vampire is dying. You are no longer mortal; you are no longer human; your being no longer interacts with time. Some might argue that this transformation isn’t death; it’s just that the parameters of existence have changed for a person who goes from human to vampire. But don’t the parameters of existence also change for a person who goes from life to death? And what is death, if not the obliteration of one’s humanity and mortality, and, as far as those of us left alive know, the stopping of the clock, freezing one in time? Other characters in this saga appear to agree with me. Rosalie likens the transformation to death on multiple occasions. In the Cullen family vote regarding whether Bella should transform, she votes for Bella to maintain mortality, saying she wished someone had chosen differently for her. Later, she divulges her tragic story of transformation and chastises Bella for choosing to throw life away. Edward, the most skittish Cullen regarding changing Bella, definitely thinks the transformation constitutes some type of death; he doesn’t want Bella to make the change because he’s afraid it will claim her soul. He fights for her humanity and mortality throughout the series, trying to assuage her decision by first leaving her, then blackmailing her with college and marriage, and finally enticing her with sex.

If vampirism is death, why does Bella choose it? Of course, the easy answer to this question is she chooses it to keep her man. Which is not exactly a healthy or admirable goal for an eighteen-year-old. I know, I know, this story is a fantasy; it not only involves mythical creatures, but it’s about what we would do if we could do (hold on to that first “true love”), not what we actually have to do (let it go and move on). But think about it. If vampirism is death, not only does Bella not live through her adventures, she doesn’t even want to. She wants to die. She wants to permanently preserve the state of emotion that is falling in love for the first time. Rather than sucking it up and surviving a notoriously difficult time in life, Bella cops out and chooses permanent adolescence. And my resulting question is: how can she be a reasonable heroine if she doesn’t make it through?

I find Bella’s goal of vampirism throughout this saga particularly perplexing because I don’t think she is necessarily a weak character; I can’t just write her off as a ditzy girl without empathy or intellectual capabilities, a person who needs to be taken care of. Bella is a very conscientious young woman with a high capacity for the strange and unusual. She puts a lot of thought and energy into the feelings and comfort of her loved ones. She loves people/creatures unconditionally, regardless of who they are, and sometimes regardless of how they treat her. She wants to protect them, to fight for them and with them, and she hates that she doesn’t have the physical strength to run with monsters. She doesn’t like sitting safely in the back while others risk their lives on her behalf. She wants to do her part.

Bella is also emotionally sophisticated; she is a very serious young woman who thinks a lot about her emotional existence, prioritizing it over her physical existence. She’s in tune with her emotional self, and she feels what she wants with the full force of her emotions. However, despite her emotional sophistication, she is incredibly emotionally immature. This makes sense; she is only eighteen, after all. This immaturity is shown by the fact that she has no sense of physical self-preservation, only emotional self-preservation. When it comes to becoming a vampire, Bella doesn’t care about the risk to her physical body. She also does not consider the effect her transformation will have on her physical environment: she doesn’t ever really face what her changing will do to her mortal family and friends, or the impact it will have on those relationships. (And this is a point Meyer never really works out satisfactorily; for instance, Bella maintains a relationship with her father after her transformation, but not with her mother, to whom she is supposedly closer.) Bella’s only focus is the longevity of the one relationship, and how maintaining that relationship at any cost will help her avoid experiencing the emotional pain that comes with separation from Edward. Her youth and inexperience fuel her obsession with her man. That love/obsession causes her to give up her mortality. Her decision to change denies her the opportunity to turn her emotional sophistication into emotional maturity. All the potential to grow into a mature, independent woman is there, if only she could see beyond the cloud of emotions she seeks to infinitely preserve.

Experiencing, and living through, emotional pain (particularly the pain of first love) is part of the process of becoming an adult. Bella’s rejection of that process says to me that she doesn’t want to mature; she doesn’t want to grow up. (The saga is fairly explicit regarding Bella’s aversion to physically aging; however, I think the fact that she also displays an aversion to emotionally maturing is less noticeable and more troubling.) Is Bella’s ability to make her dream-like adolescence permanent why so many thirty-something women relate to her? (Indeed, I have seen some well-educated women, myself included, go nuts over these stories.) Is it because Bella is able to preserve the things we wanted so badly when we were eighteen; because she takes a route we weren’t able to take? That makes sense to me. I don’t have a female friend who wouldn’t want to relive those first love feelings (though perhaps not the entire first love experience). Some of us still look for that now, and against our better judgment, make long-term relationship decisions based on that rush of emotions rather than considering the realities of living with another person for an extended period of time. Bella’s fantasy is fine for (most of) us; we’ve at least seen these adolescent experiences to completion, know the sky doesn’t fall when that love is over, and are capable of handling new loves that come along with a more mature eye. But what about the readers who are still in the throws of adolescence? What message does it send to them? “Don’t be concerned with surviving the emotionality you are experiencing”; “don’t try to live through it and learn from it”; “this emotion can/will last forever, and you should do what you can to make it”? At the very least, having Bella as a major cultural figure/role model can’t be helping teenage girls see the temporary nature of what they are going through. I definitely don’t think these are productive messages for young girls, regardless of your political/religious/moral bent.

To be fair, Bella is slightly redeemed by the time she changes; after all, she does choose life, for a short period. After her wedding, after discovering how good sex can be, she decides she’ll live a few more years as a mortal, maybe go to college, and have sex with her husband every night. These happy plans end quickly; Bella finds out she is pregnant on her honeymoon. Because the baby is half vampire, with many vampire attributes and growing at a rapid rate, Bella is not expected to survive the pregnancy. Therefore, in order for her to exist in the world and be a mother to the child, Bella must become a vampire. Yet, it’s a waiting game. She can’t be changed too early, or her transformation will kill the baby. But if the Cullens wait too long to change her, it will be too late; she’ll be killed by a half-vampire creature ripping through her during childbirth. In creating this conflict and taking Bella to the brink of death before changing her, Meyer offers some redemption for Bella’s previous easy willingness to give up her mortality. Yet, Bella’s transformation under these circumstances is almost too neat of a package. It’s admirable (?) of Meyer to try to make Bella’s sacrifice of her mortality necessary, but this situation comes at the tail end of a ~3000-page saga, throughout most of which the heroine is begging to give up her life to be with her boyfriend. I don’t know if it’s enough. I don’t know if it’s enough to redeem Bella’s previous attitude, and I don’t know if it’s enough to convince us that Bella would have stuck to her post-sex decision to choose mortality had she not gotten pregnant.

Personally, I find a lot of beauty in a finite life, a human life that hopefully has the opportunity to run a normal course through time. To willingly cut off your mortality before you’ve even begun . . . I have a hard time getting behind that, even in a fantasy world where teenage girls fall in love with vampires and werewolves. Despite the fantasy, the underlying message doesn’t go away. Any way you slice it, Bella still loses her human life, and that’s the way she wants it. She does it to infinitely preserve her adolescence; she does it to avoid growing up. And I think that is a tragedy; for her potential as a character, for the millions of girls who have read about her and want to be like her, and for the legacy of the millions of women who have worked so hard to move beyond all that.

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