In recent years, vampire literature has been called into question as a viable source of intellectual stimulation. Vampire novels have been, quite literally, shelved. And individuals the world over have begun to spurn the sparkly monsters of yester-year. A driving factor behind this sudden aversion to vampire literature is Stephanie Meyer's beloved, and subsequently hated young-adult novel, Twilight. With this mixed bag of cultural distaste for and adoration of all things undead, I decided to throw my holy water soaked cruciform into the midst and see where it landed.
Short of saying "Twilight sucks", I bemoaned the subversive sexism of Meyer's Twilight and lambasted Bella Swan as a carboard cutout of the antiquated female. The public response was swift. But far from an angry mob of fellow Twilight detractors, I was met with a veritable legion of female-warriors. Brandishing keyboards and verbal prowess, the women of Facebook's Book Nerds Paradise weren't prepared to let their beloved novel be disparaged. In fact, Facebook user Candace Bradley (2019, para.1), extolled Twilight's heroine, Bella, as a study in character development. She asserted that, "The best characters... are the ones who seemed least likely to do anything at all but something chang[ed] in them [giving them] a fire no one can quench." She went on to explain that every character has a certain role to play within a novel, even the characters who are docile or timid. (Bradley 2019). Elaborating on Bradley's argument, Ciarra Marie Williams (2019, para.1) claimed that, "Twilight highlights women centric fears and experiences" such as "being attacked by a stranger, childbirth, blood and menstruation, [and] eldest daughters being used as caretakers for their unfit parents." Twilight, in the opinion of Bradley and Williams, is therefore not a subversively sexist novel, but a story centered on the very real concerns of women. In a genre dominated by male vampires, Twilight offers a female character who is both stereotypically timid and, "willing to die for [her] cause." (Salazar 2019, para.1) A character who, far from being the victim, decides to join the "monsters" and cast-off her cliché characterization as the weak female.
As I read the comments of women like Bradley and Williams and Salazar I began to wonder, "Why is Twilight so hated?" Sure, the vampire tale has been hashed and rehashed more times than Disney has spun-off Star Wars, but the Twilight tale is no different than its predecessors. Yes, Twilight's vampires sparkle, but aside from this sparkly addition to Meyer's telling the mythos is largely the same. Audiences bemoan the non-threatening nature of Twilight's Cullen coven, but non-murderous vampires are nothing new. Over a decade before Twilight's publication, Brad Pitt's self-hating, rat-eating Louis de Pointe du Lac, in Interview with the Vampire, captured the hearts of millions of women. Still, some Twilight detractors take little issue with the animal-eating Cullens and focus instead on Bella's female narrative. Female narratives, however, are nothing new. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Carmilla, and Aaliyah's Akasha in Queen of the Damned all boasted female vampires with unique narratives. So, what lies under these manufactured excuses? Why do individuals want to hate Twilight?
When I began scrolling through the comments on my post, I came to a shocking realization. It wasn't women who had perpetuated this distaste for Twilight and its female narrator, but men. The only male comment on my post seemed to enforce this theory with Rudy Juarez besmirching Twilight as a "weak and poorly written psychobabble crap of a novel" promoting "teenage abuse and stalking and... necrophilia." (2019, para.1). This lone male comment made me realize, I don't hate Twilight. While the novel is far from high-brow literature, and is most definitely flawed, Twilight is "essentially a self-interest series for teenage girls and thirsty soccer moms." (Ellis 2019, para.1). Facebook made me realize, Twilight is not the subversively sexist novel I set out to crucify online. In fact, it deals with the same motifs prevalent in all vampire Simon 2 literature with an added sprinkling of feminine understanding and kinship. And feminizing a genre over-crowded with machoistic male-vampires is exactly what we, as female readers, admire.
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Vampires: An Essay Collection
VampireIn recent years, the vampire has become synonymous with eroticism and seduction; he has become, "Gentleman Death in silk and lace, come to put out the candles." (Rice). The vampiric myth, however, dates at least as far back as Mesopotamia, with our...
