We start off with that dream Bella was talking about in Ch. 3, which features Edward "radiating" light from his skin (Foreshadowing!?!?). After having this dream, Bella's obsession with Edward reaches a critical level, though in the month following the accident, he is aloof toward her. Her natural conclusion is that he, um, regrets saving her from the van? So she tries to ignore him until he starts talking to her again and, uh --
Jesus. You know what? This chapter is 17 pages long and here's what happens in it:
- Mike asks Bella to the upcoming spring dance.
- Eric asks Bella to the upcoming spring dance.
- Tyler, the van guy, asks Bella to the upcoming spring dance.
- Bella refuses each guy by suddenly deciding to have a trip to Seattle that weekend.
- Edward is aloof toward Bella, then disdainful toward her, then amused by her, then he tells her they shouldn't be friends, then he finds her hilarious, then he condescends her some more, then he tells her they shouldn't be friends, then he invites her to go with him to Seattle, then he tells her she should stay away from him.
- Bella fumes.
CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT: It wouldn't be so hard to handle Bella if other characters treated her like the outsider she thinks she is, but everyone loves her without reason, the tally of boys who are obsessed with her has reached four now, and she continues to view the people of Forks with enough disdain to curl wallpaper. Surely someone at the school realizes how much Bella hates everything. The girl hasn't experienced one iota of genuine joy the entire time I've been trapped inside her head.
I think what fans of the series don't seem to realize is that Bella's pessimistic, self absorbed qualities are not the central obstacle for readers like myself. I can deal with pessimistic, self absorbed characters, as most any teenager would at times display these qualities. What I CAN'T deal a character who is endlessly admired and never gets treated in the way she would actually be treated. What's worse, none of Bella's admirers have any real bearing on the plot. It would in fact make MORE sense if people hated or ignored Bella when she first arrived in Forks. It would give her an actual motive to seek a connection with the Cullens, the other outsiders at school, and it would make her more sympathetic. But it's as though Meyer couldn't imagine a world in which Bella was not the center of attention.
For readers that are capable of seeing Bella as themselves, it might make enjoying the book that much easier. Instead of having to deal with all the typical obstacles of making friends, fitting in and being liked, the self-inserted girl has all of those problems steamrolled out of the way by the author. Since everything in the world outside of Edward is portrayed as dopey, dull and insufficient, there is no reason for us to worry about any of it.
But I digress. On to more important things, like Bella and Edward's steamy, erm, "relationship." Edward is all over the map, only consistent in the way his moods shift dramatically during his conversations with Bella, from amused to angry and back again; he's a series of extremes and contradictions. He insists "You really should stay away from me" (84), just seconds after asking Bella if she'll go to Seattle with him. And I'm pleased to see Bella acknowledge and be angered by his assholish capriciousness. "Do you have a multiple personality disorder?" she asks on p 82. For once, she and I are on the same wavelength.
Edward does little to explain his behavior. He's prone to vaguely creepy, cryptic remarks, the weirdest of which is, "...I'm tired of trying to stay away from you, Bella" (84), which you could certainly picture someone whispering as they catch up to you at night in the Walmart parking lot, just seconds before the chloroform kicks in. Creep. Tastic.
But what makes this even stranger is Bella's response to Edward. She kind of hates him, which is fun to observe, but when she looks at his face, his beauty is so overpowering that it causes a debilitating physical and mental reaction.
"I couldn't believe the rush of emotion pulsing through me -- just because he'd happened to look at me for the first time in a half-dozen weeks. I couldn't allow him to have this level of influence over me. It was pathetic. More than pathetic, it was unhealthy." (74)
Oh. OH. So Bella knows that her reaction to Edward is unhealthy. And yet, she can't seem to do anything about it. So what does she feel exactly when she looks at Edward's face? Adoration? Joy? Love?
"His eyes were light again today, a deep, golden honey color. Then I had to look down, to reassemble my now-tangled thoughts." (81)
"His eyes were gloriously intense as he uttered that last sentence [the "I'm tired of trying to stay away..." sentence]. I couldn't remember how to breathe." (84)
"[after Edward asks Bella to go to Seattle] I couldn't speak yet, so I just nodded." (84)
Hm. If Bella feels anything remotely pleasant when she looks at Edward, she doesn't talk about it. In fact, Bella even closes her eyes at one point so that she doesn't have to look at Edward's face and can think straight. In short, Edward makes Bella go stupid any time he looks at her, and Bella seems to be really uncomfortable with this. She knows that Edward could ask her anything and she would be unable to refuse him. Really, it's more akin to being glamoured than having a crush on someone.
(Hahaha...man do I love True Blood.)
I'm also really annoyed by how the secondary characters are treated in this book, but it's consistent with the fantasy Meyer has created. Meyer goes out of her way to show that none of these characters have inner lives aside from Bella and Edward, or if they do, their inner lives aren't important. Bella's friend Jessica, who has a crush on Mike, is consistently shown being nothing but jubilant around Bella, and yet she's categorized as liking Bella only for her "inexplicable popularity" (71), an unfair assessment that we're supposed to read as god-given truth, just because Bella thinks it. Charlie, who showed potential in the first chapter, has been resigned to sitting in the background and eating Bella's cooking. Bella's mother is a hysterical parental figure meant to be consistently lied to.
In all of this, Bella stands alone as the one whose life is worthy of a 500p novel. Replace the name "Bella" with the name "XY or Z," rinse and repeat.
PLOT DEVELOPMENT: I'm still perplexed over details involving the car accident. We discover that Bella's truck has suffered "minimal damage" (76) in the collision, while "Tyler's parents had to sell their van for parts." What...did it explode? Setting aside the retard logistics of Bella's truck only needing a new taillight, how fast was this idiot Tyler going? Was he drag racing in the parking lot -- STOP! Stop. Thou shalt not apply logic to Twilight, for ye shall be sorely disappointed.
Really. REALLY. Logistics do not matter. I have a feeling that if you've reached this point in the novel and are asking questions (Minor ones like the one above or even broader ones: Why do all of these people like Bella? Why is she putting up with Edward's behavior? Why aren't we supposed to care about anybody but these two people?) then this is NOT the book for you.
LANGUAGE: Language problems persist, particularly in the dialogue tags, which continue to be annoying. Meyer shows some talent for dialogue itself when the secondary characters are talking; they sound like actual teenagers. Bella's language tends to be stiffer than her friends', less so in dialogue but ridiculously so when she's addressing the reader. "To my dismay, I found myself the center of attention for the rest of the week" (68) (What teenager says, "To my dismay"?) This is done to depict Bella in a class above her peers. Oh, and Edward also talks like he's got something up his butt, however...he's a vampire so...I'll deal with it.
SUBTEXT: Meyer has gone on record as claiming that she is not anti-feminist (she's "anti-human," which is...better...for some reason?). Her opinion is that the foundation of feminism is "being able to choose." Well...that's an interpretation that a lot of women seem to be adopting, but it's not what I adhere to. For instance, a woman can "choose" not to vote because she believes that men have a better head for politics, which was in fact the stance of many women during the suffrage movement. I see feminism as being about equality, assuming equal weight in society, taking responsibility for your actions and recognizing the impact your choices have.
But no matter. Let's apply Meyer's definition of feminism to Bella Swan so far. How much of what has happened to Bella happened because of the choices she's made? Well, she made the initial choice to come to Forks, I'll grant her that. But did she choose to have Edward talk to her? Did she choose to be obsessed with him? Did she choose to have him rescue her? Um. She did not. She didn't even choose to go to Seattle with him. The story makes very clear that she was so tongue tied and stupefied by Edward's beauty that she physically could not say no to him.
So far, Meyer's whole universe is set up so that Bella can be carried from plot point A to plot point B. (She's a Port-a-Bella!) Choice is irrelevant. Do I think Meyer sat down at her computer saying, "I'm going to write an anti-feminist novel now"? No. I think Meyer's fantasy of Edward took the front seat, and it never occurred to her to make her female protagonist an autonomous individual whose decisions have actual weight. This kind of setup has obviously appealed to a lot of people.
WHAT'S WORKING? Do girls want this? They really want a guy who stupefies them into submission? A multitude of women share Meyer's fantasy. If I take a step back, I sort of get it.
If someone falls in love with you through no action of your own, think about the pressure that takes off of you. You wouldn't need to actually be interesting (In fact, On p 79, Bella takes a paragraph to think about how uninteresting she is, how it is impossible that Edward likes her, and I'm inclined to agree; none of her thoughts or emotions have been particularly insightful so far and she doesn't have any hobbies to speak of). And you wouldn't need to say or do the right thing or go out of your way to impress anyone; your guy would be in love with you regardless, and he would rescue you any time you found yourself in some perilous situation, which would occur often through no fault of your own. Not-doing-anything is part of the fantasy.
It's understandable. Teenagers find themselves in a weird half-state, girls particularly, struggling to hang onto their childhoods while facing budding sexuality at the same time, feeling the pressure that comes with turning into responsible adults. Flanagan discusses this in her article about Twilight, in which she claims that girls have a tougher time with sexuality than boys because they are "far more rooted in the domestic routines and traditions of their families, which constitute the vital link between the sweet cocooning of childhood and their impending departure from it." Hm. That's a huge generalization but...okay. Whether or not you think that's true, Twilight provides certain tropes (and these aren't old tropes, folks; they've been around for thousands of years) for its female readers to fall back on: in the Twilight universe, Bella has an extremely handsome love interest to take care of her; she's essentially carted around like a child, and much of what happens to her is not her own responsibility.
THIS. IS. GOOOOOOOOOOOOOLD.
In the meantime however, Furious Bella is a bit more tolerable than Mopey Bella. There's a moment in this chapter when she contemplates rear-ending Edward's Volvo with her megatruck, and another moment when she refers to him as a "stupid, shiny Volvo owner" (83) both of which tingled my enjoyment neurons. That last bit is also funny because the comma usage is incorrect; the sentence doesn't read that Edward is stupid and owns a shiny Volvo. It actually reads that Edward is stupid, shiny and a Volvo owner, which is amusing to anyone who knows what happens to Meyer's vampires in sunlight. (Shaolin Grammar PUNCH!!! YAAAAH!!)
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Chapter 5 for next week. Edward reveals to Bella that he was booted off the set of True Blood and now cannot legally come within five hundred feet of Anna Paquin.
Wish me luck,
Jenchilla
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