Is Bella actually a secretly feminist heroine? … Nope.
I’ve never read a Twilight novel and I’ve never seen a Twilight movie. The only thing I know about the series is that Robert Pattinson ruined my ex-favourite bar in Vancouver and that Stephanie Meyer is super religious.
But like most things I know nothing about, I have fully formed opinions on the trilogy.
Enter this article at The Hairpin, written by the eminently qualified (read: Feminist & English Literature professor) Sarah Blackwood.
Its Big Idea is that contemporary feminism runs the risk of devaluing some aspects of the feminine (hetero marriage, childbirth) by placing an inordinate focus on those aspects that have been denied for so long (actualization, empowerment, physicality).
This may be the case, to an extent. When a Pro Choice woman chooses not to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, we might doubt her Pro Choice credentials. When a woman chooses to be a “stay at home mom” we might ask to see her Feminist membership card, just to make sure.
The part of the article that doesn’t jibe with me is the part where Blackwood challenges the denigration of Bella as a “bad example for young women.”
Bella is way more popular than the empowered female leads of the last decade, (Buffy Summers, or Veronica Mars for example). This demonstrates that the aspects of femininity valued in our cultural ideology are still primarily those of marriage and childbirth. To counter this, I think it’s OK, even good, to point out Bella’s lack of agency, her dependence on males, her perpetual helplessness. Denigrating Bella for being a lousy role model doesn’t equate to denigrating aspects of femininity that are less popular in the feminist discourse. I don’t think Bella is a bad example for choosing to get married and have a baby. I think she’s a bad example because she doesn’t do anything else.
Blackwood’s point is a fair one: that feminist literature and media aimed at young women doesn’t need to gloss over the possible eventualities of hetero love, marriage and childbirth. But I don’t believe it needs to explore these issues at the expense of empowerment and actualization.
Hey, I could be totally wrong though. Maybe Bella is a crazy empowered Buffy-esque woman that makes the informed choice to marry Edward and pop out a vampire baby. Like I said, I never read the books.
