• The Twilight Saga is a series of novels featuring a human girl, Isabella Swan, and her vampire boyfriend, Edward Cullen. Why do the rabid fan girls swoon at this rather poorly-written, somewhat misogynistic, cheesy excuse for a modern fantasy novel? The obscene, and unfortunate, popularity of this watered-down, Anne Rice-Buffy/Angel knock off is due to its use of vampires, characters people can relate to, and sharing many qualities with some of history’s most persistent stories.

    Vampires are a big draw. They are immortal and eternally young and beautiful. The annoying, complete perfection of the Twilight vampires also includes invincibility, superpowers and super-senses. “For generations women and men have fantasized about meeting the perfect partner who embodies everything we dream of.” People envy them, if only at the subconscious level. Sigmund Freud’s theory of psychology holds that our repressed desires are the biggest influence over our behavior, including the stories we read and enjoy. One such desire embedded in our subconscious is to be beautiful. Beauty is emphasized in our society, with all the media telling us how to be beautiful and the enormous popularity of cosmetics to keep us young and beautiful forever. Vampires don’t need any help to stay young and pretty forever, especially in Twilight. These vampires even get their physical imperfections correcting upon being sired (turned into a vampire.) Even the homeliest person will be stunning after being turned into a Twilight vampire. Even their voices are made more pleasant sounding, and their natural body scent is that of sweet perfume. Another desire repressed is to surpass everyone else (It’s natural; we surpass our rivals, get more mates, our gene survival goes up.) In terms of modern humanity, it means we naturally want to be better than everyone else. Thus, we envy the vampires’ superhuman abilities. For one, they have superpowers(some examples from the novels include: mind reading, truth-seeing, sending lightning from the body, causing debilitating pain with a single glance, and controlling emotion.) They are also invincible, not only never aging and dying, but these vampires don’t even have the usual vulnerabilities of a vampire, such as: burning up to dust in the sunlight (Twilight vampires sparkle,) burning upon touching holy items like crosses and bibles, turning to dust upon being impaled through the heart with a wooden stake or beheaded (Twilight vampires will reassemble if ripped apart) and Twilight vampires’ skin is impenetrable to everything but their own teeth. Twilight vampires also have super-speed, enhanced memory and sense perception. Vampires also appeal to our fear of death; we envy their immortality because we don’t want to die, or fear what happens after. Vampires encompass every unconscious desire we possess, making them the ultimate attraction in the Freudean school of thought.

    Stephenie Meyer’s characterization is so lackluster; all her characters are dry stereotypes. Since they’re stereotypes, they share traits with many readers. Bella and Edward are the typical teenage girl and teenage boy (despite Edward being over 100 years old.) Bella’s whole purpose is to feel like she doesn’t belong. She befriends Jessica, but soon feels that she’s too different from the superficial, “Like, OMG SHOPPING!!” girl. She always says how she somehow feels alienated from her group of human friends, she’s just different, and they couldn’t understand. She, like all teens, is looking for a place to fit in, her spot in the world. That is why she always finds herself insinuating herself into a tight-knit family; first the Cullen coven, and then the wolf pack. She wants to belong. “…gives women. . .a universal character in Bella Swan that mirrors the experiences, emotions. . . most of them lived through or are about to experience.” Edward is the ultimate teenage stereotype. He angsts for no reason. Most teenagers angst about the rules, school, their parents. Nobody understands them; their lives are so hard. In the grand scheme of things, their lives are actually pretty good. They get to go to school to better themselves in life and they have friends and family that look out for them. Thus, all their complaining is useless; there is no reason for it. Edward is the same way. He angsts about how horrible it all is, he’s such a monster, he’s damned for all time, and other such complaints (vampires in this series aren’t demons, they’re mutated humans.) Why is his life hard? He has not killed anybody; he has not hurt Bella in any way that resembles what others have done to their lovers. He is certainly not like Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer; that is a vampire who truly ahs a reason to angst. Edward did not send Bella on an emotional rollercoaster where she hated herself for hating him, but she loved him and felt bad hurting him but she couldn’t accept it so she physically and emotionally abused him right back. Edward did not make Bella doubt herself, everyone around her and her entire grip on the world. The worst that Edward did was leave her for a time. It didn’t send her on an emotional rollercoaster. He sent her into a one-track-minded missing him and wondering what she did wrong. He did nothing more than the average human man, yet he angsts about how horrible he is. He has done absolutely nothing; nothing exceptionally horrible that’s worth angsting over. He has a good life. He can play piano, speak multiple languages, has all the material things in the world, a family and woman who love him unconditionally. Many people don’t have those things, yet he angsts. Many readers relate to these feelings because they feel the same way, or remember feeling so. Bella and Edward are typical teenagers, making them relatable to the wide audience of the mainstream 12-17 year olds.

    Many popular stories throughout history have had the same underlying themes as Twilight. Twilight can be broken down into: women are, or should be, damsels in distress, a woman’s main purpose in life is to be a mother, and men should be strong and protect the weak women. These themes can be seen over and over again in Twilight. Bella is always the damsel in distress. Just in New Moon, she gets upset and instead of just dealing with the loss, she waits for a man to save her. She does all the dangerous stunts and Jacob always has to save her (i.e. forcing her to stop using the motorcycles, pulling her out of the water after her near fatal cliff-diving escapade.) When they are in Volterra, again, her life is put in peril because the Volturi want to kill her. Just by being a much exaggerated klutz makes her the damsel in distress, just by existing she puts herself in mortal danger. As far as motherhood being glorified, the entire series was building up to Bella having Renesmee; all Edward and Bella’s love culminated in the birth of their child. She glorifies motherhood so much that it seems as if she made the “vampires=sterile” rule only to break it because she suddenly realized that Bella needed to have a child for the story to be complete. It just seems to read that way. Even the rest of the Cullens contribute to this theme. The only thing that ever made them unhappy was their sterility. In fact, the one dimension of Rosalie’s one dimensional character is “Woe is me! I can’t have children!” She even chose Emmett as her mate because he looked like the son of an old friend of hers, who, to her, is the symbol of her desire to have children. Esme is also a one dimensional character. Her only purpose is to be a mother figure to the Cullens. She literally does nothing else, and it is implied that being mothering is her special power that gets carried over and amplified after one’s siring. As far as men being there to protect women, Edward is always protecting Bella, even when he isn’t there. In New Moon, Bella has figment-of-her-imagination Edward there trying to stop her from getting into dangerous situations. He told her not to use the motorcycles, not to jump off the cliff and not to approach a drunken mob. When he’s not there, Bella turns to another man to be the rescuer, Jacob. She does all the dangerous stunts to see Edward, but she knows that she is safe because Jacob is there. All these themes are prevalent in ancient and historic literature. Damsels in distress are in every single popular folktale. There is always a girl in a bad situation, enslaved, bewitched, locked away, that gets saved by Prince Charming. Motherhood is glorified in ancient stories, too. In fairytales, when a woman is a villain, she is the villain because she is not caring and motherly; the Wicked Stepmother, The Queen from Snow White, all the fairytale witches (and conversely, all the fairies that look after the girls.) Even in ancient religions these themes arise. “The Virgin Mary is the patron saint of a lot of things, including humanity itself-probably the most protective symbol in the entire Christian religion.” The Virgin Mary is one of the most venerated saints in all of Christendom. What did she do to earn sainthood? She was a mother. All she did was bear and raise a child. Considering Twilight’s similarity to the fundamental s of the ancient myths and fairytales (which are obviously really popular or else they would not have survived these hundreds or thousands of years,) it is no wonder that Twilight should be popular as well.

    Twilight’s ubiquity, while frustrating to those of us who have realized its many faults, is egged on by the fact that it contains vampires, has main characters that many immature young adults can relate to, and shares many themes with ancient stories that have remained popular through the ages. Vampires, especially the awful, too perfect variety found in Twilight, are very attractive to a person’s subconscious, and since stereotypes are often true to some extent, Bella and Edward are very relatable to the average teen. Twilight shares many traits with myths and fairytales, suggesting that its popularity is due to us not being as post-feminist as we thought. Somehow, through the anti-feminism and poor writing, readers see something in this dung heap of a series.