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What we're reading

Find your new favourite book or recommend one on our Book forum.

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Original poster

I find the adoration of Edward Cullen quite disturbing.

49 replies

HuffwardlyRudge · 29/05/2009 12:10

Why are grown women so breathlessly, girlishly excited about the love story between Bella and Edward?

It is a horrible relationship.

Edward is praised and lauded for not hurting Bella. She tries hard not to do anything to make it so that he can't help hurting her. The whole relationship is about him.

She surrenders herself to him absolutely and makes herself believe that she loves him so much she can't live without him. She also believes that she is the one who will change him.

She doesn't think she is good enough for him. She is terrified of him leaving.

He is bossy and controlling and patronising. He plays with her.

Now if you take out the vampire element, this reads to me like a fairly common abusive relationship.

Why do people seem to think it is a beautifully aching love story?

It's horrible.

I would hate my daughter to read this and think it is love.

Yes, it's a fiction. Yes, it's about vampires. However, I am making a serious point here. I find it disturbing that so many women read the story and swoon. I read it with distaste.

OP posts:

PleasinglyPointless · 29/05/2009 19:49

He is lovely, wants to protect her, is all big and manly, doesn't shimmer with a teeny bit of sunlight, oh and doesn't sod off and leave her!

KingCanuteIAm · 29/05/2009 19:50

Yup, and he is all wolfy

yappybluedog · 29/05/2009 20:03

no no no he is a huge overgrown child

PleasinglyPointless · 29/05/2009 20:07

The wolf makes him a man

yappybluedog · 29/05/2009 20:09

all that fur

KingCanuteIAm · 29/05/2009 20:53

Yes yappydog, that is why I would have liked him when I wsa a child

SolidGoldBrass · 29/05/2009 21:08

THose of you who like the Twilight books for the whole human/non-human/magic aspects, can I recommend you some better other ones? Try some Kelley Armstrong, Laurell K Hamilton (though not the later ones which really do get tedious, belive it or not they are just full of too MUCH vampire sex) or a look in the category WHSMiths charmingly call 'Paranormal Romance'? SOme of these are shit, to be sure, but many of them have some pretty kick-arse heroines and are sexy escapism without the rather unhealthy undercurrents that appear to be a feature of the Twilight books. Stephanie Thingy has, after all, been quoted as saying that the books are designed to promote abstinence, which makes me want to kick her in the fanjo on two counts. Firstly, I think the whole abstinence-peddling is unhealthy and sexist and nasty, secondly, writers who write novels to peddle a Message generally write lousy novels.

PleasinglyPointless · 29/05/2009 21:36

I have gotten worryingly addicted to L K Hamilton faerie books DH did a perfect replica of the face when I responded to "What are you reading?" with "Faerie sex."

SolidGoldBrass · 29/05/2009 22:56

PP: Must admit I don't like those as much as the Anita Blake ones.

Original poster

HuffwardlyRudge · 30/05/2009 06:29

Am I over analysing it?

I have no problem with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I have no problem with Angel.

I just finished reading a crap book about women breaking out of prison and I'm not chuntering about how a penal system designed for men fails women (which it does, by the way).

What I mean is that I'm not searching for a cause here. I just genuinely found that Twilight left a bad taste in my mouth.

And, again, I do think it is something worth saying because of the impressionable target market of the books. I think it is part of an insidious misogyny that needs to be questioned and rejected.

OP posts:

KingCanuteIAm · 30/05/2009 07:53

That is why I think you are over-analysing it, it is not misogynistic. You clearly read it that way but most people don't, most people just read it and enjoy a fiction book. The average (or even non-average) teen is not going to read this and think "oh I must be subservient to men 'cause they are the best" they are going to read it and think "huh, that was a good book/that was a bit lame".

It really irritates me when people try to give something a negative meaning for everyone else, ok, you got a negative from the book, great - don't read the others. But why do you assume that your take on it will be the same as everyone elses? Why are you so sure that, just because you picked something out of a text, everyone else will? Any of us can read just about anything as a subtext if we want to. You can twist and pick arguments to best suit almost any cause. In a text this large I could probably find a way to convincingly argue that the Author thinks that dogs should not be family pets.

The fact that you like other vampire "stuff" is immaterial, your objections are not about the vampires they are about the story

I don't think there is "insidious misogyny" present in this book, but then I also don't think that there is really any big deal in the fact that girls clothes, in some stores, thend to be pink. I am a practical, down to earth person and I do not see slights against the woman everywhere I go. I do see injustice, I do see things that are clearly wrong but I am not going to start jumping on the "women are being beaten into the darkages" band wagon on the strength of this argument, TBH it is arguments like this one being used that has made me completely lose sympathy with people who are arguing the female cause.

Yes, prisons fail women so go and do something about it, spread the word, I would whole heartedly support that but waste your time screaming sexist about a fairly innocuous and frankly quite dull book? That is when the voices in my head start screaming Loon and I start backing off - fast.

Disenchanted3 · 30/05/2009 08:11

I didn't read it that way at all.

You can't disregard the whole 'vampire aspect' because thats the whole basis of the book! You are totally misrepresenting it if you look at it as human to human.

Its like saying if you read Lord of the rings and Sauron is not a big evil all seeing eye but he is a postman ....

Silly.

People love to over analyse things, its a fiction book and last time I checked there were no real vampries so the relationship between one and a human is open to speculation

And besides... I Edward.

Disenchanted3 · 30/05/2009 08:15

And if you feel so strongly about the fight against abuse in relationships why do you go do some volunteer work for 'Womens Aid' or such instead of reading teen romance books and getting so worked up over them?

And please give young women some credit please, they are not going to turn from intelligent, self assured beings to gibbering submissive wrecks when they get a boyfriend just because they have read 'Twilight.'

saintmaybe · 30/05/2009 08:38

oh, I dunno. When I was a teenager the thought of being so irresistable, of just smelling so delicious that I would have driven the coolest most unattainable boy in school into a frenzy would have been heightened by the fact of having a good excuse to not actually have sex for a while, becaus that would have been quite scary. Same as, being the age I am, I loved all those androgynous new romantic boys in eyeliner, because it wasn't (in my fantasies) actually going to be about sex, just desire and anticipation.
And now, as an adult woman in an extremely happy, healthy, sexy relationship, and I have never been in an abusive relationship, I can actually quite enjoy the thought of a lover who is so strong that he could accidently kill me if we had sex. IN MY FANTASIES!

I think I'm going to regret posting this.

yappybluedog · 30/05/2009 09:54

well, I know a few teenage girls who have read the entire series and not one of them holds Bella up as a role model

sockmonkey · 30/05/2009 10:05

Yes, most of the teenagers I have discussed the books with think Bella is a bit of a drip. Infact most of them prefer Jacob too. Appreciation of Edward must come with age

KingCanuteIAm · 30/05/2009 11:38

Personally I think Edward adoration is a thing that has come from the film more than the book. The adoration is of the actor and the character as he portrays it IYSWIM (which is why he doesn't get my vote, he is a dreadful Edward IMO)!

redandgreen · 30/05/2009 13:39

I think the worst bit is that bella does all the cooking, cleaning and washing for her dad. I mean WHY?

There is just no excuse for this.

If my dsd somehow ended up 'looking after' dp like this one day I would think that many, many things had gone tits up in the world and in her life.

stitchtime · 30/05/2009 15:05

i think the fact that she cooks for her dad is incredibly endearing . one of the few things about her i like.

KingCanuteIAm · 30/05/2009 15:12

Why? Because she wants to. Are you saying that, to be truly "free", a woman should not take on household duties?

She is not a child in this book she is an adult, she makes choices for herself - a liberated standpoint IMO!

jabberwocky · 30/05/2009 15:43

I'd like to get into the deeper aspects of mysogyny, feminism and the question of abstinence but I'm too busy fantasizing about Edward Cullen atm.

redandgreen · 30/05/2009 18:31

I think it would have been really nice if she had SHARED all the household stuff with her dad. But she seems to spend her evenings cooking his supper and her weekends doing his washing.

Who chooses to wash their dads skid-marked Y-fronts? And there's no indication that she enjoys it at all. She just trudges through it like a sort of cinders. Lucy Mangan put it better than me.

I was pondering whether her dad is actually a vampire as well, explaining why he hasn't learnt to cook for himself in 17 years of living alone.

KingCanuteIAm · 30/05/2009 18:36

Don't be silly, he hasn't learnt to cook because he tends to eat in the diner, as it says in the book. It also says that he does cook, just badly. Sound like quite a lot of single men I know

Also, Bella has been playing carer for her mother for some considerable time before she moves in with her dad meaning she is used to doing household stuff as a matter of course. I notice there is no outcry over how terrible it is that she has had to be the grown up in her relationship with her mother, only the relationship with her father, odd that

stitchtime · 30/05/2009 22:52

yes, i thought the relationship with her mother was terrible too. she has had to be the adult theri, which may be fine at the age of 17, but very obviously not when she was 10.
she takes care of her dad because shewants to. no where does he ask her to do so, at least from what i remember, and i find that endearing.

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