“One is not born a vampire, but becomes one”: Motherhood and Masochism in Twilight

Abstract

Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight saga has been a runaway success with its target market of prepubescent girls; however, the series has proved less popular with feminists, who have expressed concern about the marginalized role Bella plays within her own narrative, and the messages her story is sending to a generation of young women about relationships, families, and gender roles. Meyer has stoutly defended her vision from all attacks, claiming that theories about Bella being an antifeminist character “are usually predicated on her choices.”¹ Her implication is that true feminism supports a woman’s right to choose her own path, even one that limits her whole purview to marriage and babies. This may well be the case; however, it is disingenuous of Meyer to imply that Bella really has a “choice.” At the periphery of the overarching plot of the intermale struggle for dominance—over females, territory, knowledge, and, ultimately, the self—the female characters in the saga create a feminine narrative in which motherhood is the only licit objective of womanhood. This theme returns with increasing frequency through New Moon and Eclipse, reaching its apotheosis in the final installment, Breaking Dawn, by which point the subtext has become overt—that in the Twilight universe, mothering is what women are for, and that it is the only role in which they can find true fulfilment.

“I tried to visualise the Cullen family without their creator, their center and their guide— their father, Carlisle. I couldn’t see it.”

—Bella, Breaking Dawn