Twilight

As a whole, I have not been very surprised by the novel Twilight. Based on what I had heard from fans of the series beforehand, and also the phenomenon that it created, I expected the book to be an easy and fairly captivating read. Sure enough, once I picked up the book, it became easy to run through multiple chapters without noticing it. While the book is enjoyable enough, reading it with a feminist lens made it more difficult and a more trying experience. While I understand the book was written for a young audience, I still wish there was more character development and less focus on stereotyping.

The protagonist of the story, Bella, is presented throughout the story as being completely helpless and defenseless. Her character is extremely bland, and is never given any real defining characteristics. Almost as soon as Bella meets the vampire Edward, she is consumed by him: all she can think about is Edward and her love for him, how much she needs him. At the same time, Edward spends a large amount of time stalking and watching Bella while she is sleeping or just unaware of him. His reasoning behind this is that he feels compelled to protect her, as only he apparently can. While Edward protects Bella, she spends her days going to school, coming home to cook for extended periods of time, doing homework and sleeping at night. During all of these activities, Bella also constantly obsesses over her love for Edward.

Overall, Bella is filled with constant desire for Edward, who is always stalking her and warning her that he has the ability and urges to kill her. While most people reading the Twilight series don't look to the book for morals and feminist lessons, it is worrying that some of the young people reading it could idealize values seen in this book. Considering Twilight has one of the more obvious anti-feminist protagonists in recent memory, it is surprising it has become the phenomenon that it is. While I have not read the entire series, and Bella could change to a more complicated character by the end of the books, I still feel as though the first book does a lot to damage the image of women.