Putting words to my thoughts

[frualeydis]

An excellent article about the new vampire books, women and feminism. I have longed to have the energy to write about this, though I also wanted to link it to the romantic era with it's backlash for women (compared to the Enlightenment), it's demonic lovers, obsession with purity and abstinence and the same female submission as you see in these new vampire books. Scary stuff.

Oh, and Edward Cullen is a seriously creepy guy.

Comments

[jehanearbonne.livejournal.com]

It seems to me though that this critisism only applies to the Twilight series. The author of Meyer can hardly be seen to represent all current vampire fiction. That would be like having the Harry Potter series represent all current childrens/YA fantasy.

[frualeydis.livejournal.com]

Well, she does give several other examples, but I'm not a scholar in literature, as she is, so I don't know how much she misses.

/Eva

[jehanearbonne.livejournal.com]

She excludes those examples that don't support her theory though. Like the gender ambiguity of Anne Rice's vampires, the vampire as nothing but a monster in Nancy Collins' Sonja Blue stories, the kindly hedonistic vamp in Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's StGermain stories etc. Of course, that's what arts scholars do, but I don't think it's scientific.

[therru.livejournal.com]

I haven't read the Twilight books, but I did see the first film. I found it both gripping, absurd, and very, very disturbing. Bella is basically a non-entity, an empty vessel, and she submits completely to Edward, regardless of the danger. What does this say to young girls (who are, by and large, the target group for the novels) about love and relationships? If Edward had been a crack-smoking, violent mobster with anger issues, he would scarcely have been more dangerous to be with.

I know it's a fantasy, and the Dangerous Man does have a kind of allure, which I suppose is why the (more-or-less) romantic vampire genre is so big, although the Dangerous Man as romantic hero is not at all limited to that genre. But it does make me uneasy.

[http://users.livejournal.com/aure_/]

I don't know about the other vampire fiction, but the author is dang right about Twilight, IMHO. And maybe the scariest thing is that since Mayer says she didn't know the vampire genre at all before writing the novels, she is actually enforcing the misogynistic view on her own.

I love all *teh crazy* around the fandom, because it's just keeps on giving, but the books themselves are the most disturbed pieces of fiction I've ever read.

[frualeydis.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the fandom is great. One of my best friends is totally crazy about the books, Edward, everything, but she's a grown up woman who can choose her own porn ;)

/Eva

[cathyr19355.livejournal.com]

Good article. Thanks for the link.

For awhile, I kept picking up copies of Meyer's books, reading a few scenes and putting them down again.

Then I realized I would never be able to stand reading them, because Bella is such a non-entity. She's actually reasonably bright, but before she meets Edward, all she wants to do is gripe about her lot in life, and all she does afterward is moon over Edward (who is creepy but displays almost as little personality as she does, in my opinion). Ick.

[operafantomet.livejournal.com]

Eva, please write that article of yours! I think the link you draw is most interesting. And I'm also so fed up with the submissive and decorative women view these days, I need to read something else, something sharp, something, balanced.