Post Article Says That Twilight Saga Embraces Traditional Gender Roles Causing Further Divide of Gender Differences

by Avid Reader on August 16, 2008

in Avid Musings

This Wash­ing­ton Post arti­cle by Leonard Sax, whose pre­vi­ous works have included, “Why Gen­der Mat­ters” has writ­ten an op-ed piece that states that Stephe­nie Meyer’s Twi­light Saga seems to buck fem­i­nist ideas and embrace tra­di­tional gen­der rolesand this has some­how con­tributed to the suc­cess of this series.

It has been reported that Meyer’s read­er­ship is not as broad as JK Rowling’s whose read­ers included teens and adults of both gen­ders. The crux of the arti­cle as I inter­pret is to say that despite teen girls being taught that gen­der roles do not mat­ter in today’s soci­ety, Stephe­nie Meyer comes along and gives us Bella Swan, a young teen-age girl who is con­stantly being saved by her vam­pire boyfriend, Edward Cullen.

This is fic­tion after all. I do not find Meyer’s char­ac­ter of Bella Swan indica­tive of any­thing mean­ing­ful. While the author of the op-ed piece makes his argu­ments clear, I think he is really reach­ing here in think­ing that Bella Swan is some type of rep­re­sen­ta­tion of anti-feminism. As a nar­ra­tor in this series, Bella was annoy­ing and whiny and con­stantly pin­ing after a cen­tury old vam­pire who could have eas­ily made her his din­ner. I slowly grew dis­en­chanted with the series when the love story became encum­bered with forced contrivances.

I find the Twi­light series to be uneven in it’s char­ac­ter devel­op­ment and plot­ting. The oft used “love tri­an­gle” plot device that is used here and else­where was some­what a deal breaker for me. The plots often ven­tured into the ridicu­lous and unless you’re a teen, the teen-age angst was high enough to make one quit at New Moon. I don’t know. I just find Bella Swan such a bland char­ac­ter that to tack on any mean­ing behind her actions or the dis­sec­tion of her world to be fairly a waste of time.

As with any­thing that is pop­u­lar in pop cul­ture, there’s hid­den mean­ing to be found in almost every­thing that has cap­ti­vated a seg­ment of read­ers. For me, there’s fic­tion and then there’s real­ity. I think the media some­times tend to think that peo­ple do not know the dif­fer­ence. Hope­fully, some­one can address this arti­cle because I find myself lack­ing any type of moti­va­tion to do so.

For Fur­ther Reading

Tagged as: media-reader disconnect, Stephenie Meyer, Twilight Saga, Washington Post article on Popularity of the Twilight Saga

{ 1 trackback }

YA links for 8/29/08! « YA Fabulous!
September 19, 2008 at 2:57 am

{ 7 comments }

Abdullah Imran Siddique February 22, 2010 at 1:31 pm

i think that bella is a very good look­ing char­ac­ter who sim­ply has been put in a bor­ing role.She is very bland and whiny in the film and puts peo­ple of her.

Rob is great though.

Mimi September 25, 2009 at 6:21 pm

Bella was annoy­ing and whiny and con­stantly pin­ing after a cen­tury old vam­pire who could have eas­ily made her his din­ner. I slowly grew dis­en­chanted with the series when the love story became encum­bered with forced con­trivances.
So did I but like Aria I did like the series [except the sec­ond one New Moon too depress­ing] Leanne I respect your opin­ions but next time can you voice them less forcibly the rest of us have opin­ions too with­out being “1. very closed minded 2. jeal­ous of Bella or 3. homosexual.”

Leanna McH­ef­feldymer: The rea­son Bella is “bland” is because she’sa NORMAL PERSON! Just because she isn’t a freakin’ vam­pire doesn’t mean that she’s a flat char­ac­ter. and HAVE YOU TALKED TO A TEENAGE GIRL LATELY? every teenage girl is gonna whine and com­plain. she’s a relat­able char­ac­ter, even though the sit­u­a­tions she goes through are fan­tasy. but that just gives some­one the abil­ity to for­get about the rest of the world but still stay real because she does what a nor­mal con­flicted teenage girl would do. so if you’ve read the books and HAVEN“T liked them at least the slight­est bit you are either 1. very closed minded 2. jeal­ous of Bella or 3. homosexual.

michelle September 23, 2009 at 7:28 pm

so if you’ve read the books and HAVEN“T liked them at least the slight­est bit you are either 1. very closed minded 2. jeal­ous of Bella or 3. homosexual.

Woah, back the f*** up.
Leanna, I believe you’re the one whose incred­i­bly close-minded by believ­ing that. How on earth does sex­ual ori­en­ta­tion have any­thing to do with hat­ing Twilight?

Aria Mizame January 12, 2009 at 8:47 pm

Okay.

I have to con­fess, I’ve read all four of Stephenie’s books and I loved them.
However,

I hated Bella. She truly was a poor rep­re­sen­ta­tion of teenagers (Such as myself) and was over­all a ter­ri­bly over­done Mary-Sue type.
I hated her. Char­ac­ters like Alice and Jasper were much more devel­oped and intricate.

I’m one to enjoy fan­tasy and fic­tion, but I thought the Twi­light movie was a ter­ri­ble stead for the fan­tas­tic books Stephe­nie Meyer published.

Eh, what­ever… Who cares anywho?

Leanna McHeffeldymer December 29, 2008 at 11:05 pm

The rea­son Bella is “bland” is because she’s a NORMAL PERSON! Just because she isn’t a freakin’ vam­pire doesn’t mean that she’s a flat char­ac­ter. and HAVE YOU TALKED TO A TEENAGE GIRL LATELY? every teenage girl is gonna whine and com­plain. she’s a relat­able char­ac­ter, even though the sit­u­a­tions she goes through are fan­tasy. but that just gives some­one the abil­ity to for­get about the rest of the world but still stay real because she does what a nor­mal con­flicted teenage girl would do. so if you’ve read the books and HAVEN“T liked them at least the slight­est bit you are either 1. very closed minded 2. jeal­ous of Bella or 3. homosexual.

Randa-Panda September 2, 2008 at 1:50 pm

“Bella was annoy­ing and whiny and con­stantly pin­ing after a cen­tury old vam­pire who could have eas­ily made her his dinner.”

Thank you. You are my new hero.

Kailana August 19, 2008 at 5:45 pm

You think pretty much the same as me in regards to this series! I am still fin­ish­ing it, but man, it was not great… I didn’t like Harry Pot­ter either… Maybe there is some­thing wrong with me and pop­u­lar literature?

Comments on this entry are closed.

Previous post:

Next post: