This week I’m looking at the wide scope of vampire lore to help define what makes a Twilight vampire different from vampires of the past and what traits are assigned to them based on toxic masculinity, rather than the expected traits innate to vampire DNA.
Stephenie Meyer successfully inspired a Twilight Renaissance when she released of Life and Death (2015) for the ten year anniversary of Twilight (2005). Since then, a bunch of Twihards armed with the internet started psychoanalyzing her characters and critically obsessing over her books. A second wave of the Twilight Renaissance was born with the release of Midnight Sun (2020).
That’s where I come in. Who is more dangerous in the Stephenie Meyer worldview: men or vampires? And how does Bella Swan survive someone who is both?
Oh the humanity! Today we are going to biology class together to talk about animals, humans, hunger, and vampires. I’ve been brushing up on all things vampire lore and gender theory to help decipher what makes Edward animalistic and cold: is it the vampire thing? Is it toxic masculinity? Is he just hangry? Perhaps it’s all of the above. Edward is set up for failure by Stephenie Meyer once again as she twists existing vampire lore to make him impossibly fast and strong, with skin that’s pale white and ice cold. Edward Cullen acts like an animal often, between his interpersonal skills and his menacing bloodlust. My question today is: did Stephenie Meyer write him like that because he is a vampire or because he is a man?
Cue theme music
A quick warning for those who have felt like prey to their romantic partners or who have survived attacks by human lions, this episode contains pertinent context about rape culture and may not be for everyone. As you already know, I’m going through the 4 main books of the Twilight saga, plus the book Life and Death, the gender swapped version of Twilight and Midnight Sun, the book told from Edward’s perspective. Though no book by Stephenie Meyer would explicitly state that something was rape or even assault, a big part of my goal here is to strip away the nuance so we can see the Twilight Saga for what it is.
One of the most classic lines from Twilight goes like this:
“And so the lion fell in love with the lamb” he murmured. I looked away, hiding my eyes as I thrilled to the word. “What a stupid lamb,” I sighed. “What a sick, masochistic lion.”
Stephenie Meyer is pulling out her bible to borrow and rework a metaphor that’s been written a hundred thousand times. Clearly, she’s worked it out so Edward is a lion and Bella is a lamb. The Bible has a couple meanings for the lion and the lamb, one where the lion is Jesus Christ’s resurrection and the lamb is his sacrifice. Another version was coined by the main Mormon himself, Joseph Smith Jr., someone Stephenie is certainly familiar with as a follower of Mormon faith. He borrows from the biblical book of Isaiah to say “the lion and the lamb can dwell together and the sucking child can play with the serpent in safety.” Clearly the power of this metaphor lies in the fact that a lion is a natural predator of a lamb and their peaceful coexistence would require an act of God to work. The way Stephenie Meyer has written it, the masochistic lion is in love with the stupid lamb.
Every problem I have with this story as a whole is summed up in those lines. For starters, a lion refers to an adult creature and a lamb refers to a baby creature. Even though I can safely assume that in the Twilight universe Bella knows this is a biblical reference, the age difference is one part of the reason the lion and the lamb are not lovers in most versions of this metaphor. Secondly, Bella blames herself. When the lion falls in love with the lamb, Bella thinks the lamb is stupid because she feels stupid for becoming prey and clearly she is the lamb in the situation. As with everything else in the Twilight series, when Edward does something it falls on Bella’s shoulders, and that includes falling in love. When you isolate this set of lines outside of all other context of the book, the lamb doesn’t even get to do anything. The lamb is an object for the lion and Stephenie Meyer knows it. Finally, why does Edward say the lion is masochistic? Masochism is when a person derives pleasure from something that appears to be painful or tiresome. When you’re wrapped up in the story, it makes sense that Edward sees his love for Bella as masochistic because he spends his down time on self-flagellation but the slightest step back from the situation reveals that in a hypothetical scenario where a lion falls in love with a lamb, the lamb is in the most danger, far outweighing whatever penance Edward would get to choose to perform if he accidentally killed Bella.
The lion and the lamb metaphor also taps into my greater frustrations about Edward’s self-loathing. It is natural for a lion to eat a lamb. It is natural for a vampire to want to kill a human. Frankly, even Bella wants Edward to suck her blood. He’s resisting his animal instincts to no one’s benefit, except for maybe some avoidable consequences from the Quileute tribe if he breaks the treaty. Bella is also frequently resisting what is natural for a teenager with hormones who is getting attention from the hottest guy in school. It’s also natural to want to try to see the good in a creature like Edward when your relationship started with him as a human to begin with. He’s standing there insisting he’s a monster and she wasn’t introduced to him that way and they have such a hard time reconciling these two truths that it takes four books and five movies to figure it out.
A huge catalyst for action in the Twilight story, and nearly all other vampire stories, is the existence of blood. With the exception of vampire characters written for children, all vampires pretty much go weak when they’re given the opportunity to drink some fresh blood. Picture a shark in blood-infested waters, somebody on a diet at a holiday party, or the hangry guy in the Snickers commercial that says “you’re not you when you’re hungry.” The vampire yearning for blood is a lot more intense than my yearning for a chocolate chip cookie, but even if they were the same at a base level, vampires are dealing with a unique scarcity that is more similar to wild animals than to humans. In most literary universes, Twilight included, there are no vampire vending machines with bags full of blood. Vampires who assimilate into human culture hunt infrequently and face many obstacles like sunlight or vampire slayers. The Cullens have the additional problem of never being fully satiated thanks to their “vegetarian” or “animal blood only” diet.
The bloodlust is animalistic, and just about as natural a response as a vampire is capable of having. The biggest test of blood self-control is in the ballet studio at the end of Twilight, where Bella’s blood is spilled and Edward has to stop her from turning into a vampire by sucking the blood out. We get to see a lot of Edward’s pain in this moment, a surprising amount considering that Bella is badly injured and losing blood while also narrating the story. She could see his perfect face twisted into a mask of indecision and pain.
The scene continues from Edward’s perspective in Midnight Sun, because he was actually conscious for the entire life threatening event, unlike Bella telling the story in the original. He talks about the satisfaction, joy, and bliss of tasting Bella’s blood after Carlisle convinces him to suck out James’ venom. James is the vampire who stalks and tries to kill Bella in the first book. Once Bella passes out, Carlisle tells Edward that it’s his decision if he wants to let her turn. Ultimately, Edward decides that he would be angry for the rest of eternity if James got to lay claim on Bella’s life by being responsible for taking it and he’s inspired to suck the venom out. I truly don’t believe that it was Edward’s choice and I’m incredibly frustrated that the whole scene is treated as something more traumatic for Edward than for Bella. They’re allowed to be traumatized at the same time for different reasons without taking away from the fact that Bella is writhing, so close to her goal of becoming a vampire while also so close to death. It happens pretty much the same in Life and Death except that Edythe actually asks Beau if he wants to turn into a vampire because “he deserves a choice” and she apologizes a bunch for no discernible reason. Edward thinks he’s entirely responsible for Bella’s choice and also doesn’t apologize. Bloodlust evidently has gender boundaries.
In Midnight Sun, we get more information about how Edward really feels about blood. He not only lusts for Bella’s blood but he envies her humanity and his own lack of blood reminds him of what he hates about himself. He hates his body more than his personality, even though his personality arguably needs more work. At one point when he’s trying not to eat Bella he says
Her pulse began to race as well. I could feel it under my hand and hear her galloping heart. Pink flooded her face from her chin to her hairline. The sound and sight of her response, rather than awakening my thirst again, seemed only to speed the rush of my more human reactions. I couldn’t remember ever feeling this alive; I doubted I ever had, even when I’d been alive.
“The blush on your cheeks is lovely,” I murmured.
I’d like to note real quick that Edward has been a vampire for the vast majority of his existence. Asking him to remember what it’s like to be human would be like asking Bella to recall the first 3 days she was alive: it was a long time ago with weaker senses and recall. However, he fixates on mourning his human body from time to time, without making very much progress.
As I already mentioned, the Twilight vampires identify as “vegetarian.” They only drink the blood of forest creatures, rather than humans. Twilight didn’t exactly invent this concept but calling it “vegetarianism” points to an ethical higher ground, maybe a liberal tilt to vampirism. Best of all, it says without saying that humans are the cattle of the vampire world. Humans aren’t humans at all—they’re something to be farmed and murdered. Edward is a vegetarian vampire so he wouldn’t murder a human (anymore) but not because he can’t. He chooses not to because of his personal morals.
His morals aren’t strong enough to actually protect Bella. His animal instincts could overpower his morals at any moment because he just can’t help himself. Bella looks so delicious. I’m confident in saying that most people’s morals would be trumped by their animal instinct in a situation that required it. The infamous Donner party is a classic example of people resorting to eating other people for survival when there is no other choice. In a less extreme example, many vegetarians will eat meat if they go on a trip abroad or vegans will eat cheese if offered a free meal with no other options. In Edward’s case, compromising his diet means taking out the first person protagonist of the entire Twilight saga.
In an essay by Lucy I Baker called “Fans and Vampires at Home” there is a clear light shone on this issue of humanity in the Twilight Saga. Twilight is strange because the vampires are clearly inhuman but the people are also stripped of human rights when they simply become prey, or the non-vegetarian option. Bella’s willingness to woo Edward and repeatedly offer herself as a host lacks any sense of human preservation, as Edward so often points out. Historically, humans have wanted to preserve themselves though in modern times, Bella’s willingness to die probably resonates better with millennials and younger, who tend to feel the imminent end of humanity on their doorsteps more than generations past. Even with that context, humanity is not traditional in this story. According to Baker, to be “good” in Twilight is to be conflicted about one’s self, even if that causes harm to others. As a contrast, the concept of being “good” in psychology is associated with empathy, kindness, and a lack of self-centeredness. In Twilight, Edward’s ongoing angsty identity struggle is seen as more human than Bella offering up her human blood for vampire snack time purposes. Bella sees humanity in the vampire and monstrosity in the human, which might be nice in a different universe but only fuels toxic dynamics in this world where Bella’s most important attribute is her body and Edward’s is his soul.
Life and Death doesn’t shed much light on this because we don’t know what Edythe is thinking. While there are stories of female vampires, they are greatly outnumbered by male vampires and stories of romance between a female vampire and a male human are less common. In some ways, the mere existence of Life and Death is original in that way, despite it being a warped carbon copy of Twilight. It might be too much to ask Stephenie Meyer to write Twilight a fourth time, from Edythe’s perspective but it would help tighten the screws on some of my arguments. I’m submitting that request now. Stephenie, please write Life and Death from Edythe’s perspective. I just want to see more of what a female vampire is all about: give me a story about Alice or Rosalie and I’ll eat it up just the same. In the introduction to Hospitality, Rape, and Consent in Vampire Popular Culture, the author suggests that vampire stories often uphold heteronormative, patriarchal white values, even when the vampire somehow threatens the status quo of a town. Plus, historically, romance stories involved a man courting a woman and/or a damsel in distress. To work in that context, a vampire has to be a man and the victim has to be a woman. Any creative reworkings of this structure have come in the fairly recent past.
The male vampire narrative as some extension of rape culture has been written about extensively. The aggression and animalistic nature of the vampire as a predator often extends right into the vampire’s sexual nature, and often reflects and exaggerates the human male courtship we see in real life. Something about this kind of story allows for aggression and rape under the guidance that once the human girl falls in love with the vampire boy, she’s not just offering companionship, she’s fully offering her lifeblood and isn’t able to withdraw consent once she makes the agreement. Edward Cullen doesn’t take advantage of victims the way other vampires might. For example, Damon in Vampire Diaries feeds on girls and then erases their memory so they don’t know it happened. Vampires in the Buffy series can’t have sex if they have a soul, because sex is so intrinsic to the hunt. There’s also a theory that comes from some vampire/Freud crossover universe that inviting a vampire into the home correlates to inviting the vampire into the body. The penetrative nature of a vampire bite can also be compared to sexual penetration. Human bodies aren’t sacred in any universe where murder of one is means for survival for another. Edward is, of course, morally superior and all about the long play and his relationship with Bella ends up with aggressive presumptions once they’re married. His constant presumption that he knows how she feels better than she does and assumed consent when none has been given is the essence of rape culture.
Humanity may actually be one of the creepier aspects of the vampire existence, and even the werewolf existence. It’s not so hard to villainize a bat or a wolf that attacks humans or other wildlife because it is completely natural. The creepier part is that a vampire or a werewolf passes as human at parties and attends high school and all that. A vampire walking among us is a lot scarier than a vampire on a hill that we could choose not to visit. Dracula, who by all means is a blueprint for all vampires that followed, would sometimes climb down the outside of his castle instead of flying, even though he totally could turn into a bat and fly. This really creeped out his neighbors who said “There was still more of the man than of the beast. This fact—that it was still human—was the most repellent attribute of the creature.” Throughout time, vampires have been able to shapeshift into wolves, bats, or mist but the Twilight vampires do not have such a gift. They pass as human all the time, blend in with the other humans, and face obstacles that are more or less human.
Twilight vampires have plenty of other gifts that get them along and make them difficult to associate with. It seems like there is no end to their possible supernatural powers. Within the Cullen coven alone there’s someone with subjective cognition, tactile thought projection, telepathy, mental shield projection, and pathokinesis. In simple terms, we have mind readers, emotion controllers, and future tellers. It seems like Stephenie Meyer wanted us to believe that vampires with special traits all get together to join the Vampire government known as the Volturi but Bella has powers the second she has turned. If we’re looking at a sample size of just the vampires we’re introduced to, the majority of Twilight vampires have some gift. Even the average vampire in Twilight is immune to garlic, wooden stakes, silver, sunlight, drowning, holy water, and they can even live through decapitation as long as the rest of their body isn’t destroyed in the meantime. The only thing that really messes them up is fire, which kind of makes sense because they’re so cold.
There’s a handful of times throughout the saga where being cold becomes a problem but particularly in this one scene in Eclipse where Bella is freezing cold and needs warmth. The only person who can provide warmth is Jacob, whose werewolf blood makes him run at a higher temp, which is conveniently the exact opposite of Edward’s colder temp. Jacob uses this moment as an opportunity to say “face it, I am hotter than you” which caused the crowd to scream when I saw this movie in theater. Jacob and Edward aren’t really all that different though, which makes the love triangle kinda boring. At the end of the day, they’re both animalistic men with super human powers and predatory tendencies. They both see Bella as prey and both think they know what’s best for her and they both think its their job to protect her. It’s easy to be fooled by the “fire and ice” contrast but Edward and Jacob are two half humans that comprise a whole. If I equated them perfectly, I’d be lying because Jacob is slightly more compassionate and Edward is slightly more dead and cold.
The cold Twilight vampire body is pretty gross to me. I don’t like that Twilight vampires don’t bleed, cry, eat or drink. It makes them too different from humans for my personal liking and it was definitely a choice by Stephenie Meyer, not a given for vampire lore. Touching a Twilight vampire is a dead give away that they are inhuman, which has to factor into why they keep so much to themselves. There’s very little chance of brushing arms with someone who always sits across the room. In Life and Death, Beau feels inclined to touch Edythe more often than Bella touches Edward. I’ve got an example like this practically every week: where something we might have thought was a vampire thing turns out to be a masculinity thing. Edward calls the shots on how often Bella can touch him because once he’s disclosed his dangerous nature and volatility, Bella knows better than to try to touch him, even when she wants to. He could snap. Bella and the reader take for granted the unspoken understanding that part of why Edward is dangerous is because he is a man. It becomes more obvious when Beau goes straight into the second half of the book saying things like “she was dangerous, I knew this, but I kept running into a wall when I tried to believe it.”
Bella, like Beau, doesn’t want to believe that Edward is dangerous but she does believe it. She’s scared of what Edward is capable of and makes a conscious effort to overlook his dangerous aspects in favor of helping him find his humanity. Edward and Bella have to have the conversation about Edward’s hunting habits, naturally. He says
“And you still want to know why you can’t see me hunt?” He seemed solemn, but I thought I saw a trace of humor deep in his eyes.
“I was mostly wondering about your reaction.”
“Did I frighten you?” Yes, there was definitely humor there.
“No,” I lied. He didn’t buy it.
“I apologize for scaring you,” he persisted with a slight smile, but then all evidence of teasing disappeared.
Edward is making light of Bella’s fear and not taking her at her word when she describes her own emotions. Regardless of whether or not she was lying, I feel like he shouldn’t just assume he knows better than what she’s telling him and I also feel like she should try being more honest about how she feels.
In Life and Death, it goes down a little differently, of course.
“And you want to know why you can’t see me hunt?” She asked. Her voice was serious, but her expression was a little amused. Not at all like it had been in the cafeteria earlier.
“Yes. And why you seemed so… mad when I asked.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Did I frighten you?” The question sounded hopeful.
“Did you want to?”
She tilted her head to one side. “Maybe I did.”
“Okay then, sure, I was terrified.”
Here, again, someone is making light of someone else’s emotions but this time Beau is refusing to take Edythe seriously because he doesn’t believe she’s dangerous as a vampire but also because he’s more concerned with flattering her, even though it’s clearly sarcastic, than he is with actually building a connection. It’s equally as messed up as Bella and Edward’s relationship but in both cases, it is the girl and not the human who are poked at for wanting the situation to play out a certain way. If everyone was honest in both scenes instead of flirty sarcasm and veiled fear, maybe this could lead toward a healthier relationship but that’s a different book.
Life and Death allows us to see more of how Stephenie Meyer views the vampire body. For one, we get slightly more diversity in shapes and sizes. Since the whole Cullen clan has gendered ideal bodies in the original, swapping everyone’s gender gives way to more androgyny than Stephenie Meyer ever would have written on her own. She chose over and over to rely on Anglo-American beauty standards instead of vampire lore, leading her down many problematic character arcs, including the disregard for any non-white vampire. I can’t think of a reason other than racism that the majority of the vampires in Twilight are white. If there was a rule stated that vampires had to be albino because of the sun or because they all hailed from the North Pole or something, I’d still call it racism but a half ass excuse would still be an excuse. These are American vampires for the most part, some Italian vampires, and if that’s not good enough, I’m pretty sure Twilight canon claims the existence of vampires on a global scale. The entire Cullen family is known to be adopted kids so Stephenie Meyer really could have written a black vampire or cast a black vampire in the Cullen family once the movies started coming out. It is well known among the Twilight fandom that Stephenie Meyer did not want any black actors in her movies. There is one vampire named Laurent who is black and proves the existence of non-white vampires. He dies. There’s also a random black vampire in the Breaking Dawn fight scene that’s basically just a stunt man because we don’t know anything about him. Traditional vampires are pale because they stay indoors during the day and live in Romania. Neither of those things are relevant to the Cullens. While we’re talking about problems, the hetero scenes sometimes get weird for me, too. Some scenes also get overwhelmingly heterosexual when all the het vampire couples are lined up but that only bothers me like once a movie when they beat you over the head with it.
So yeah, when you switch all the genders, there is slight diversity in bodies. The Alice character as Archie is still a shorter person and the Emmett character as Eleanor is still beefy, despite the betrayal of traditional masculinity and femininity. In the cafeteria when Edward is explaining how their hunting works, Emmett is sitting at another table with his thick bands of muscle that wrapped his arms and torso in a menacing fashion. In L&D, it’s the same thing: Eleanor’s muscles are intimidating all the way down her arms and legs. There’s a super fun scene in Twilight where all the vampires play baseball, and when the genders are swapped, everything stays the same. In the original, Emmett hits the hardest and Edward is the fastest. With L&D, Eleanor hits the hardest and Edythe is the fastest. Instead of Esme, the vampire mom, sitting the game out to be the umpire, it’s Earnest, the dad who sits out to call the plays while his wife, the successful doctor Carine Cullen runs bases. I also can’t forget to mention the absolute power play of Dr. Cullen’s introduction as a woman, in a world where most people jump to conclusions that someone with a doctorate is a man. Of all people, I would not think to give Stephenie Meyer this kind of credit.
When it comes to physical strength, there is gender equality in vampires unlike in humans. In fact, sports competitions are one of the main realms we still struggle with as a society to understand in a less gendered way. There is extensive conversation about trans kids competing in sports, there’s the issue of girls being forced out of baseball and into softball at a certain age, and there are clear gender discrepancies in performance for athletes from middle school track all the way up to the olympics. It goes without saying that I don’t think your worth is tied to your mile time and I’d also like to point out that these kind of discrepancies only really exist when everyone is super fit. If there’s a woman who runs every day and a man who works an office job and doesn’t work out, who are you going to ask to help you lift a heavy table? It’s sort of unreasonable but not surprising that most people’s brains go straight to “well Michael Phelps swims faster than Katie Ledecky” even though that has almost nothing to do with people’s physical performance in the regular, non-Olympic world.
Stephenie Meyer tries to run some feminist offense about stereotypical straight relationships in Midnight Sun. There is no doubt she understands basic gender equality, even though her nuanced misogyny is all over the page. At one point, Edward helps set up Angela with a date who turns out to be taller than her. He admires her disregard of such a trait and says “How silly humans were, to let a six-inch height difference confound their happiness.” I found this haphazard insert sort of laughable considering all the vampire couples were a man taller than a woman, with no challenge whatsoever to relational norms. I get that part of the allure of the Twilight vampire, and plenty of others to be honest, is a beauty that exceeds their life as humans. Stephenie Meyer got to choose what those beauty standards are, going off of whatever was around culturally. White, thin, dainty if female, muscular if male, with perfect complexions, and yes, men who are taller than their women partners. This is a choice. By including a short lived side plot where Angela is going to a dance with a short king, the author indirectly conveys that you’re technically allowed to do such a thing but not as the main character. A similar quote-unquote empowerment comes up in Twilight, where Bella encourages Angela to stop waiting for Eric to ask her to the prom and ask him herself.
It fascinates me that the entire Twilight Saga ends on a level playing field. After so much fixation on Bella’s vulnerability, fragility, clumsiness, accident-proneness, and general breakability, and after a super graphic birthing scene that would have been fatal if no vampires were in play, Bella is now strong enough after her change to fight in an all out vampire war in Breaking Dawn. Again drawing from that Baker essay, the hospitality of the Cullens attracted Bella and kept her around long enough to eventually turn into the sparkling heroine. The Twilight vampires are domesticated, changed by years of vampire stereotypes. Edward and the rest of the coven gave up some of their vampire identity by not sleeping in coffins and wearing cloaks but they exchanged it for a home that didn’t immediately scare Bella off. Dracula got to startle people who didn’t know what he was, whereas Bella got to do a Google search and confront Edward in a meadow. Say it. Out loud. You’re a vampire. But Edward wasn’t Dracula or Nosferatu. He was just Edward. He was quaint and tall and went to high school. At this point, keeping in mind that Bella found more humanity in Edward than anyone else, Bella’s change to become a vampire was actually the most access to her humanity she gets in the entire series.
As a human, Bella is stuck on trying hard and not getting very far, being incredibly mediocre at the things she does. Her vampire transformation is linked to her motherhood, since her transformation doesn’t happen until she is bleeding out on the delivery table for her precious little half-vampire baby. Now that she is a mother, she can do anything. She can clean and tend house quickly and easily, with all the strength required to do so. This is everything Bella has wanted since she met Edward: to reward his stalkerish and abusive behavior by offering up her body as a host for his venom. The more he hurts her, the closer she gets to accessing the domestic life she wants. This plotline makes more sense the closer your mindset is to Stephenie Meyer’s. On my end, it doesn’t make much sense at all.
The last thing I’ll leave you on is also a bit of a teaser for next week’s episode. One half of the animal nature of humans is the rage and the bloodlust and the iron-bending strength but the other half is the sexual nature, or at least it can be. When Edward and Bella are holding hands and kissing on the cheek or whatever in Midnight Sun, Bella speaks up.
“Your human instincts…” she asked slowly. “Well, do you find me attractive, in that way, at all?”
I laughed out loud at that. Was there any way in which I did not want her? Mind and soul and body, body no less than either of the others. I smoothed my hair against her neck.
“I may not be human, but I am a man.”
This podcast was written, recorded, and edited by Susie Shelton. The theme music is by Alexis Lopez. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review, share with your friends, and consider tuning in to the sister podcast Jawbreakers, also on the Nermer Nermer Network or following Nermer Nermer on Instagram. You can DM any feedback or questions to that account and I will get back to you. All sources used for this episode are in the description. If you or somebody you know has experienced sexual assault, please know that you are not alone. The number for the National Sexual Assault Hotline is 1-800-656-4673. It is confidential and available 24 hours a day. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline phone number is 800-273-8255. Special thanks to you for listening to this podcast and extra special thanks to Stephenie Meyer for ruining my life.