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Eclipse - Stephenie Meyer
3/3/10 12:21
Oh Ms Meyer I thought we had reached an understanding during parts of ‘Eclipse’ but unfortunately it appears this was an illusion. You were all like ‘forced physical contact is not ok’ and I was all like ‘Hell yeah’, but then you had some kind of meltdown and practically forced poor Bella into a hair shirt, handed her a little, leather whip and sent her all through Forks flagellating herself. So it seems we still cannot be friends (I am probably more sad about that than you are because I do not yet have a millionaire friend).This is definitely the skeeviest book in the series so far. Edward steps up his campaign to be a patronising father figure rather than a love interest and Jacob encourages me to exchange my team Jake flag by being involved in an extremely abusive kissing scene. Even Charlie makes me angry as he fails to listen to his own daughter’s protests about that forced kissing business. There are a lot of scenes I could pull out and analyse in this book, but I feel this is already going to be long so let’s go to my top five ‘please don’t do that’ themes in ‘Eclipse’:
1.) That forced kissing scene. Not only is that unwanted physical contact, but it uses the language of a sexual attack scene, even though actual rape is not involved. There’s also a later scene where Jake tricks Bella into kissing him. She doesn’t want to, but she has to otherwise he will deliberately get himself killed (which of course sounds insane when you put it like that). Anyway she doesn’t respond during the kissing, but he continues, mistakes a different response for passion and goes at her harder. But then, oh it’s ok because just as it’s hitting a rape related vibe again Bella realises she loves him, she wants him and she starts to respond. Message to teenage boys: If your date doesn’t seem to like what you’re doing, she probably just doesn’t know she likes it yet so keep it up. Message to teenage girls: If you don’t like what your date is doing, you probably just don’t understand how much you like him yet, let him keep trying and you’ll probably warm up to him in the end.
2.) I’ve already spoken about this but the whole idea of a werewolf ‘imprinting’ with a two year old is wrong, even if it’s not romantic for him yet, even if he won’t try anything on until she’s of age. Him hanging around being super nice until she is the right age is grooming. And this idea of ‘why wouldn’t she choose him, he’s always been so nice to her’ is not logical – just because a guy is a nice guy doesn’t mean he automatically gets your romantic love, there are other things involved.
3.) Edward’s possessiveness ramps up in this book. He won’t let Bella out of his sight, Alice guards her for him, she has to ‘escape’ to see Jacob. As bad as this is, the way that Edward and Jacob come to treat Bella as a possession to be owned, to be won by whatever means necessary, nearly tops it. I guess Jacob’s transformation from caring friend to cunning suitor is Meyer’s commentary on the impossibility of friendships between men and women, or what happens when sex gets in the way of friendship (I don’t know that, I cannot channel her thoughts, but based on her the previous books I’d say it’s an educated guess).
4.) Jacob’s behaviour gets interrogated, but Edward’s rarely does, because Bella loves him. So Bella hates Jacob for trying to force himself on her, but when Edward later replicates this behaviour Bella is at the most a bit annoyed, because she wants Edward (generally). However at that very specific moment she doesn’t want him to try to sleep with her, she has to push off his advances and yet there’s no repeat of the anger she feels when Jacob tries to maul her. Message: If your boyfriend tries to touch you when you’re not totally willing it’s not as big a deal as if someone else tries to do the same thing. Bella feels annoyed by Edward’s excessively controlling behaviour in this book, but she responds to it with a kind of grumpy affection, not with outright anger. It’s a very controlling approach to making sure that the reader definitely wants Bella to end up with Edward (my view of Jake has definitely been affected by Meyer’s attempts, although I still like him).
5.) The idea that men and women cannot be friends and that women who have male friendships outside of their romantic relationships are leading men on is ever present. There’s also a horrible strain of ‘I know you have a boyfriend, but I love you and I know I am best for you, so I will not stop trying until you realise it as well, even if you ask me too.’ Also ‘I am a nice guy and for that I deserve sex’.
But still I read this book and I enjoyed it, despite seeing, understanding and accepting the awful messages Meyer is pushing. I feel I have to try to work out why I keep reading these books despite being able to see all the wrongness in them. It’s not enough anymore for me to say it’s because they’re fast paced fluff and I don’t think that’s all that appeals to the thousands of other readers who get the badness of the series, but still rip through them. We all find different things that resonate with us and here are a couple of my deeper down reasons that I’ve puzzled out so far:
1.) The ending where Bella thinks everything is her fault and everyone is like ‘no it’s totally not’ but she won’t listen to them makes me sad. Bella’s total lack of confidence and the way she blames herself for everything is probably the truest part of Meyer’s novels, as it shows just how insecure a perfectly normal, pretty, intelligent girl can be made by society and upbringing. Although I find her more annoyingly obtuse as the series continues I feel myself relating to her as we see the real extent of her paranoia about herself and her relationship. I can see that the way she views herself isn’t right and I can find this refusal to accept herself as she is annoying, but I can’t hate her for what boils down to a simple lack of confidence. As Meyer never clarifies, I assume this odd view of her self worth was created by the way the world treated her before she got to Forks and her mother’s own approach to relationships (I think there’s always something in the background there about Renee and men, especially in this book where she can’t take a day to fly to her daughter’s graduation because Phil has injured himself and is ‘entirely dependent’ on her – leave him a crutch and some food and fly back straight after the ceremony). With everyone making a big deal about how many women just aren’t that confident no matter what advantages they have Bella seems like a character these women could easily identify with (while also being really fed up with the part of themselves that makes them identify with her).
There are quite a few reviews that mention not liking Bella because she is so spectacularly unconfident and I’ve levelled that kind of hate at her before. But as the series progresses I find my response to her changing. It’s not her fault she’s so spectacularly unconfident when she arrives in Forks, feelings like that do not just originate in a healthy young mind without some cause (although Meyer never really clarifies who has caused her to feel this way). Sure there’s an excessive amount of Bella love going on in Forks, but that makes no difference to how she sees herself, because she can’t readjust her self image. Before she can properly readjust to being the desired girl she meets all these vampires who are straight off a catwalk, which would plunge any girl with a bad metal image of herself into gloomy times. She’s just a totally damaged girl and it’s not like they’re rare in our society.
I’m not saying this to let Meyer off the hook for her representation of teenage girls. She could have chosen to make Bella more confident, she could have allowed Bella to grow in confidence throughout the series, but instead she sticks with unconfident, paranoid, rather obtuse Bella. My dislike is now reserved for the author, not the character.
2.) While I won’t totally dismiss the idea that the appeal of the series is that it provides young women with a safe space to explore sex, I will significantly roll my eyes in its direction. I think the reason why the idea of the no bighting abstinence angle of Twilight as a safety net for nervous teenage girls, has gained so much support is because it makes people feel better to reinforce the preconception that girls are totally terrified of exploring sex, even in fiction. While I think all teenage girls feel a bit afraid about their first time I don’t think they experience the same kind of feelings about reading about sex for the first time. The entire world of fiction is a safe space for exploring sex, because characters aren’t going to leap out of books and start passionately pressing up against you. Whether a novel contains lots of sexual scenes, or lots of tortured eye loving they provide the chance for a more distanced exploration of sex than girls will find in a teenage boys bedroom.
Critics who support the argument that the books appeal is the lack of penetrative sex, with the presence of sexual tension, tend to talk about sex as if only the final stage of penetration is ‘the real sex’ and foreplay (which is what those angsty looks in ‘Eclipse’ represent) is the way women timidly approach ‘real sex’. For me foreplay is part of sex, not some separate action that comes before ‘the real sex’. That’s why as an adult I’m still attracted to Edward and Bella’s (kind of) physical relationship because it is quite sexual (in a representative way of course). The steamy eye looks represent foreplay, just as in other vampire books biting represents penetration. Their relationship incorporates representative forms of a different part of sex, not a lesser form of the sexual experience, used to substitute for ‘the real sex’. On an erotic level Twilight is never going to quite beat vampire tales like Anne Rice’s books which feature actual sex scenes and vampirey representation, but it’s easily as hot and heavy as something like ‘Dracula’, just in a different way.
If you look at the heroine of these books Bella is actually quite fearless about sex, she’s the one who is most insistent about sex. I know that Meyer’s intention is to warn women away from an enthusiastic approach to sex, as she constantly has Edward (a male figure of authority) warn Bella that she should be afraid of sex with him and should restrain herself for her soul’s sake, in much the same way that he cautions her to be afraid of vampires. Bella responds with a lack of fear about vampires, in fact she positively embraces vampires and this parallels her attitude to sex which she is eager for. It’s possible that in Bella teenage girls are finding a heroine who reflects their strong interest in experiencing the full range of sexual experiences and their eagerness to take control of their sex lives. While Meyer believes this is bad and so has Edward restrain Bella, she may have inadvertently given girls a heroine who reflects modern girl’s attitudes to sex. There’s still the danger that many are getting caught up in her intended message, that these feelings are wrong and marriage should come first, but teenagers with a greater awareness of media messages have a chance to reconstruct her message and take away something that really applies to their lifestyles.
Long huh? I swear that’s all you’ll hear about the series from me, until I read the final book.
On a related note do you think it’s ok for me to feed my friends vampire love story habit if I give her other vampire romances to get her away from repeat reading Meyer’s books?
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