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

[magicnoire.livejournal.com]

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.)

So can I spoil you for the last book? I will spoil you for the last book!

- They indeed do not have sex until they are married. In fact, the daddy-boyfriend was a virgin himself! A 104 year old virgin.

- There is indeed a half-vampire, half-human miracle baby. And by miracle, I mean a demonspawn that grows at an accelerated rate, breaks Bella's ribs when it kicks, makes Bella want to guzzle blood (which is pretty funny considering the fact she'd faint at even the sight of a drop!) and then proceeds to break her pelvis and spine during childbirth.

Actually, the Holy Motherhood scred was made even worse because not only was there Bella with her miracle demonspawn, every other female character was characterized by her maternal instinct, her ability (or inability) to have children, or both. It was creepy.

[raecarson.livejournal.com]

Oh, dear lord. *dies* I seriously should have predicted 1) miracle baby, and 2) 104-year-old virgin. This has just brought my fundie cred into question!

[magicnoire.livejournal.com]

Oh! I forget the name! The miracle baby's name?

Renesmee Carlie.

(Renee + Esme and Carlisle + Charlie)

Jacob also imprints (soulmate) on Nessie and the first thing he notices? She has her mother's eyes. To which I say: Creepy and EEEEWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW.

[stillnotbored.livejournal.com]

And this is what the ten year old not-a-granddaughter Anna is hooked on....

I know my daughter didn't read these, because she is just like I was, let the kid read what they want and don't censor their choices. I also know she wouldn't be amused by the message here. I'm not thrilled, though I know Anna will survive one series of bad books.

Still, gah.

[tamnonlinear.livejournal.com]

Wasn't there something really horrible baby-hating about that pregnancy (I read parts of a piratical PDF, which makes me want to bleach my brain)? The kid damned near killed her, draining her body and breaking her and all of that.

At which point she gets a perfect child, so beautiful and wonderful, and here's the really great part; mature and fast growing. As in hair and teeth and looking like a toddler by the end of the first week or something creepy like that. After an atrocious pregnancy, she gets to skip all the parts of motherhood that are just messy catering to sleep-deprivations organism that can't talk or reason.

So perfect Bella says that pregnancy is a massive violation of the body and infants are boring and horrible.

Ick. Ick ick. I mean, quite frankly I don't think it's an unreasonable viewpoint to have if you're voluntarily childless, but combining it with a book that fetishizes motherhood as the be-all and end-all culmination of multi-book romance... it's kinda disturbing.

I also read a preview of the next book (wait! there's more!) on the author's website, and it makes it clear that endlessly sexy Edward is a hateful sociopath (but twoo wuv will redeem him!) and it made me want to not go near people for a while.

I haven't read the series. I'm just a fan of the wank.

[magicnoire.livejournal.com]

Back more on topic and less with the lulz, I should note that Stephenie Meyer does give her manuscripts to her bishop (I think that's what the equivalent of priests are called in the Mormon Church?) and get his approval before sending them on. So.

[magicnoire.livejournal.com]

Oh, I read the leaked PDF too. It was horrifying on so many levels.

The next book is actually Twilight from Edward's point of view. Because it wasn't painful and nauseating enough the first time around, apparently.

(I love the Breaking Dawn wank myself. This is why I have no many hater icons.)

[magicnoire.livejournal.com]

I admit a part of me dies inside when I think of the millions of girls reading these books. Because I know some of them do want to be like Bella and some of them do want a boyfriend like Edward, and I'm just like, "No, stop. Please, stop."

[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.

[stillsostrange.livejournal.com]

Eeeewwwwwww...

[raecarson.livejournal.com]

Jacob also imprints (soulmate) on Nessie...

Of course he does. It's very important to carry on the tradition of daddy-boyfriends.

(EWWWWWWWWW)

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Bingo. We were talking about this on my blog a week or two back, and the likes and dislikes divide exactly along this axis.

[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.

[magicnoire.livejournal.com]

However, it did cause some great MS Paint artwork to be created. There was one that had stick figures of Jacob and Nessie making out and then Jacob says, "Your mother did this better." It's so wrong but I just kept laughing and laughing and laughing.

[ruralwriter.livejournal.com]

I read on Holly Black's journal a comment that said that Edward's "fangs" could not be shown in the movie that's coming out.

"Fangs." Yeah. We know what they're symbollic of. Hahahaha!

You've nailed what is really gross to me about the Bella-Edward relationship - a 100 year age difference. But amongst fundamentalist Mormons (i.e., the ones who are still polygamists) it's a-okay to have such a significant age gap; works much better to keep the girls in line when they're indoctrinated from an early age and used to submitting to their elders.

As an aside, I've only read the first book.

I was forced to endure fundamentalism (not Mormon, though!) as a child. GAH!

[raecarson.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's an unreasonable viewpoint to have if you're voluntarily childless, but combining it with a book that fetishizes motherhood as the be-all and end-all culmination of multi-book romance... it's kinda disturbing.

Ick is right. It's not just fetishizing motherhood, it's fetishizing the sacrifical suffering of mothers. Many women in fundie cultures have no identity of their own, so they need this to validate their existence.

[raecarson.livejournal.com]

Ooo, I missed that. Would you mind sporting me a link? Now that I've done my own wanking, I'm curious to read everyone else's.

[raecarson.livejournal.com]

HA! I bet they're long and thick. I wonder if he's named them?

[purdypiedad.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the heads up. I'll be sure to keep these out of Kristine's library.

(I generally try to avoid teenage angsty books for the 7-year-old anyway. I figure, if she doesn't know about teenage angst, we might be able to avoid some of it.)

The whole sex theme without ever mentioning sex defines fundie romance novels. Even Francine Rivers couldn't get away from it. I mean, wasn't Marcus' allure completely sexual in her gladiator series (can't remember the name of it)? And I think we were supposed to want to have sex with Atretes, too, but I just didn't actually like him... however much like the stereotypical fundie husband he was (not unlike the vamp you just described).

I just choked on my oatmeal reading about the 104-year-old virgin vamp.

The series almost sounds satirical for Christian romance.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Here it begins:http://sartorias.livejournal.com/281873.html

Here's the follow-up...http://sartorias.livejournal.com/282654.html

[raecarson.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[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.

[ruralwriter.livejournal.com]

Hilarious!

[cristalia.livejournal.com]

Yes. And the diaper-changes and puke-cleanings are clearly not there because they're not dramatic suffering. Just the boring real-life kind. :p

[cristalia.livejournal.com]

Eh. I read a whole generation of books where strong women = stamp their feet and throw a tantrum. I lived. *g*