The Twilight Books as Fundie-Girl Fantasy

[raefinlay]

 

I have read 1 and 1/2 of the Stephanie Meyer books.  I am struggling to get through the second.  I have not read reviews or commentary or spoilers.  (Though, after this post, I will read spoilers happily. I’m sure I won’t finish the series.)

 

About halfway through Book One, it became profoundly clear that these books represent the very best of Fundamentalist Girl Wet Dream Lit.  Here is how:

 

1) The protag, Isabella Swan (Yes, I kid you not. Isabella Swan.) is a typical self-absorbed teen.  She’s a terrible friend—can’t be bothered to listen when her amigas talk to her, doesn’t care about their lives, doesn’t share anything real about her own.  So, how do we know she’s a good person?

 

We know it because a) she’s so damned female domestic. She cooks and cleans. Her daddy needs her; b) because she’s a good student; and c) because like all good fundie girls, sure, she can be selfish and self-absorbed, but when it comes down to it, she would give her effing LIFE for the people she shares a dysfunctional co-dependent relationship with.  She’s a glorious martyr.  Greater love hath no fundie girl than this.

 

2) She doesn't have sex. She doesn’t say “sex.” And in spite of the fact that she’s a 17-year old girl who thinks at us so much about her hots for a guy that we get 500 pages of book and 150 pages of plot, she doesn’t even think about sex.

 

But the entire book, her entire world, is--very obviously--about sex.  SEX SEX SEX. (But no, she didn’t say that! She didn’t even imply it! It’s not her fault if you and millions of other readers have misinterpreted everything to be about sex! (This is what I call the Passive-Aggressive, Sexually-Repressed Fundie Problem.))

 

3) Her boyfriend instructs her on a lot of things.  He tells her what to do and how to act.  He gives information to her only as he sees fit.  He rescues her, especially from herself.  He is 100 years older than she is.  OMG, did I just say “boyfriend?”  I meant “Daddy.”

 

4) Her daddy-boyfriend is a very powerful, very dangerous dude.  Like God, he's not someone you want to make angry.  He could kill you in an instant.  He's on the verge of killing you every instant. You should see what he does to your enemies.  Yet, just like God, he loves you and all of humanity with incredible, self-sacrificial love.
 

5) Predictions for the future: They will not have sex until they are married. There will be a child (because true adulthood and self-actualization only come with Holy Motherhood.)

On a slightly more positive note, I do see why these books are so popular. The author uncannily captures teenaged-girl-angst. In particular, I am awed at how the protag can be so unpleasant, and yet so unmaliciously so. Just like a real teenager.

Comments

[stillnotbored.livejournal.com]

She's MORMON and the Bishops and Elders are approving the books?!! Oh flaming balls of greasy grimy gopher guts, that explains so much.

The entire Mormon cult is predicated on every woman and girl being a Madonna who serves the men in her life, bears child after child and has no identity of her own. This goes far beyond run of the mill fundie woman is subject to the husband creed. The most extreme are the polygamist Mormon sects where a man can have ten women worshiping his every word and sharing his bed.

Now I'm even more squicked and horrified.

[magicnoire.livejournal.com]

I know certain circles frown upon it when critics brings in Meyer's religion when tearing apart her books, especially the last one, and say that it's irrelevant. But honestly? If you read Breaking Dawn, or at least the parts relevant to the miracle baby story arc (so to speak because Meyer's books don't really do much arcing), I cannot see how you'd miss her religion informing what's there on the page.

Seriously, Bella went from someone who wanted to go to college and not have to kids to "Let's get married and now that I find myself suddenly pregnant the day after our honeymoon, I want to have it! Even if it is killing me!" Plus there are two other female characters who are defined by their inability to have kids, like this makes them less somehow and it's just so upsetting because those two are probably the most interesting female characters in the book.

[stillnotbored.livejournal.com]

Back when I was managing an art and framing store, one of the women who worked for me was a bright, young Mormon. She was my first assistant and had plans for college and becoming a biologist. This girl was freakin brilliant, always pulling out a 4.0 while working full time.

Her boyfriend came back from his two year mission on the other side of the country and they got married six months later. She continued to go to school for another semester until her birth control failed.

The Bishops and Elders "counseled" her on what her true priorities and responsibilities were now that she was a married woman with a child on the way. She quit her job, and school, in her seventh month. She never went back. The last time I saw her, about two years after the first baby, she had a six month old boy as well.

The majority of my father's family is Mormon. He left in his teens and never looked back. I've always been grateful for that.

[magicnoire.livejournal.com]

So... because Twilight brings the stupidity that never ends, there continues to be wank. From this wank, we've gotten two "gems."

One is from Seth, Meyer's website administrator and apparently her brother:

In an attempt to keep the books clean and not make young girls think about things that they don't need to think about, no other book mentioned anything about reproductive systems.

It's really hard to separate religion from the books when they make comments like THAT.

The other is from a Twilight fan and pretty much wants to make me cry:

:) Twilight books set feminism back, eh?

:) Good.

[stillnotbored.livejournal.com]

The web admin, especially if he is Meyer's brother, doesn't surprise me. The goal it subservient wives and mothers and if that involves a generation that lies back and thinks of England, so be it.

That second comment? Yeah, makes me want to cry too.

Get the facts

[(Anonymous)]

I do not appreciate the way Stephanie Meyer has portrayed the perfect woman. Bella is selfish and demanding, and too full of teenage agnst to be endearing. And having him fall in love with because of his beauty just makes me cringe, but what you have said about Mormon culture is completely untrue.

I have been a Mormon my whole life, and we do not practice polygamy. That is a religion that broke off from ours. Just like the baptists and the methodits are a break from the Catholic relgion. Would you superimpose a baptists believes on a catholic?

Also, while there may certainly be people in the mormon culture who think a woman should serv her man, bear child after child, and have no identity of her own that is not a MORMON belief; that may be a personal belief. That is a person taking our religion TOO far. And I will not lie there are sadly too many people who believe that way, but our religion has never taught that. I am very much an individul, and I will be an EQUAL to my husband when I marry.

I agree with everything being said about the Twilight books, but leave the Mormon religion out of it. I find it fascinating that famous people belong to many different religions, but rarely do people judge a religion based on that person as they do anytime there is a momron person in the public eye.

Re: Get the facts

[stillnotbored.livejournal.com]

You didn't sign your name, so I can't address you directly. And it's odd to come in on a thread from August and decide we need education, yet not give your name.

My father's family is Mormon, but he stopped practicing in his teens. When I was in high school in California, I explored LDS as well as other religions. I also had many friends, and later, employees who were LDS.

I was told, flat out, what my duty as a Mormon wife would be. I was told how to dress, how a proper woman wore her hair and that a woman was always, always, subject to her husband's commands. Second to her husband, a woman was to obey the Elders and the Bishop of her ward. That pretty much makes you subject to the whims of every adult male in the ward, since all of them are Elders, and this obedience was to be given without question. I could dabble in school if I liked, but once the babies started, that was it. And it was my duty to bear children.

I watched friends drop out of college when they got pregnant, never to return, because wives and mothers stayed home to raise the children.

So I don't make these statements in ignorance. I make them from personal experience. Note again, this was California, not Utah. Last I heard California wasn't on the extreme fringe of LDS, they were pretty mainstream.