The Gospel According to Twilight

Women, Sex and God

Elaine Heath

• Publisher: SPCK Publishing
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780281066612
• eBook ISBN: 9780281066629
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

With over one hundred million copies in print, and having generated a series of hugely popular films, the Twilight saga is one of the most successful fiction series ever written. But despite its tremendous popularity, few have questioned Twilight's theological assumptions or noticed the disturbing messages it sends out about women, violence and sexual stereotypes. Elaine Heath is both deeply admiring and deeply critical of the Twilight novels, and offers here an insightful analysis of what they say about temptation, sin, salvation, heaven and hell, sex, power, reconciliation and organized religion. Whether or not you are already a fan, this book will lead you to a deeper appreciation of both the good news and the bad news that Twilight tells about women, sex and God.

Part One

An Eclipse of Women

Family, Sex, Gender, and Power in Twilight

Chapter One

The Good Family

Every great story lives in a narrative universe with its own internal logic. Readers quickly come to recognize the logic of the story world. In Tolkien’s Middle-earth, for example, hobbits are comfort- loving creatures of small stature who fear going on adventures with wizards. Because of this “fact” about hobbits, readers are increasingly captivated by the courage of Frodo and Sam, who risk comfort and safety in order to resist evil. A coherent narrative universe is one of the ways we enter and are “caught up” in the story.

In the Twilight series, the narrative universe is all about family: family values, the creation of families, broken families, longing for family. The family is the water in which all the Twilight characters swim, whether human, vampire, or wolf. Messages about the importance of family in Twilight are in some ways exemplary from a Christian point of view. Stable, healthy families, after all, are the basic building blocks for strong communities. On the other hand, what constitutes a “good” family in the gospel according to Twilight? Who are they? What do they do that makes them “good”? And is the ideal family in this story compatible with the good family according to Jesus? Because family is the basic element of the narrative universe in Twilight, we will begin there with our theological investigation.

The Exemplary Family

In one of the many ironies of Twilight, the exemplary good family is not human. The parents, Carlisle and Esme Cullen, and their children—Edward, Rosalie, Emmett, Jasper, and Alice—are vampires. Though a family, none of them is “blood kin,” at least not in the traditional sense of that term. The whole family was created the vampire way, through biting and venom, a terrifying and agonizing experience. The Cullens’ history together began when Carlisle, who had been lonely for centuries, decided to create a family for himself (Twilight, 341). (More about his transformation into a vampire in chapter 5, on salvation.)

Because he had disciplined himself to withstand the scent of human blood, choosing to feed on animal blood instead, Carlisle was able over a long period of time to become a physician. It was his way of offering himself as an agent of healing instead of death in the world, though doing so was contrary to his vampire nature. Edward’s birth mother, before succumbing to influenza in 1918, sensed that her doctor, Carlisle, had supernatural powers. With her last breath she made him promise to save Edward, also at death’s door. Carlisle did so, after a fashion: he gave Edward the gift of immortality.

Thus Carlisle became Edward’s father, healer, and “savior,” through transforming him into a vampire. A man of principle, Carlisle’s pattern through the decades was only to “change” those unfortunates who were about to die anyway. Esme, who became Carlisle’s wife, was on the point of death from suicide when Carlisle changed her. She had thrown herself off a cliff after losing her unborn child and running away from an abusive marriage. Rosalie, Edward’s adoptive sister, was the victim of a brutal sexual assault at the hands of several men, including her drunken fiancé.¹ Emmett, who is married to Rosalie, had been mauled by a bear before Rosalie brought him to Carlisle, who changed him.

Other family members were not Carlisle’s creations. Alice was adopted into the Cullen family after she became a vampire. She is married to Jasper, who was also already a vampire before coming into the family. Jasper and Emmett, who are in the family through marriage, are as much a part of the Cullen clan as the adopted children. All of them follow Carlisle’s lead, drinking animal instead of human blood and fitting in as much as possible with ordinary human society. The “vegetarian” diet is hardest for Jasper, whose life prior to the Cullen family had been dark indeed.

All of this adds up to a family in which every member is a survivor of unbelievable violence, yet they have chosen to live peaceably in the world. They have decided not to pass their history of violence on to others. Carlisle’s example and leadership are critical in the formation of his family’s ethos. He is the linchpin of virtue. The Good Family is good primarily because it has a loving father at the helm. (He’s also incredibly handsome.)

In addition to a strong, responsible, emotionally present father, the Cullen family has a nurturing mother. Like all the Cullens, Esme was changed as a young adult, so she is frozen at age twenty-six in terms of her appearance. Slender, beautiful, and yet “soft” looking, Esme’s predominant feature is her selfless capacity to love others. Gentle and hospitable to a fault, Esme anticipates the needs of everyone around her. The first time Bella comes to the Cullen house, Esme prepares for her a meal of Italian food, though human food is repulsive to vampires. She doesn’t want Bella to be hungry. Esme works hard to make sure their home is welcoming and beautiful, including keeping vases of fresh-cut flowers scattered about at all times. Her hobby is the restoration of historic buildings. When Edward and Bella get married, Esme restores an old cottage in the woods to serve as their first home. She is the quintessential domestic mother, tender and sweet, who clearly looks to Carlisle as the head of the home.

All of the Cullen children are highly educated, partly because they have so much time on their undead hands. Once they finish high school and college, in order not to blow their cover by remaining eternally young while their neighbors age, they move to another city. There they repeat the cycle. Carlisle is always able to get work in a local hospital, and the “children” enroll in school once again. (This explains why Edward is so knowledgeable about the phases of mitosis when he is Bella’s lab partner.) Prior to coming to Forks, Washington, the setting for the Twilight saga, the Cullens lived in Denali, Alaska.

Thanks to Carlisle’s ample income and Alice’s ability to forecast what is happening on the stock market, the family is rich. Their massive garage is loaded with luxury automobiles, something for everyone’s taste. Their spectacular home is secluded in the forest, with entire walls made of glass. Rather than a safe room, they have an impenetrable, opaque shield that can be raised outside the glass walls if needed, protecting the entire house from would-be intruders. Tasteful furnishings and artwork create an environment of elegance and comfort. No cellars, coffins, or cobwebs for these vampires; their house is filled with warmth and light.

This is an ideal American family with perfect looks, perfect clothes, a perfect house, perfect cars, perfect education, perfect parents, perfect children, and a perfect financial portfolio. They are living the American Dream.

To stress the American part, the Cullens’ favorite family activity is baseball. (Because of the thunderous noise made when they hit the ball with their supernatural strength, they must go into a secluded meadow during a thunderstorm to play; otherwise the humans in Forks would hear them.) In baseball as in everything else, Carlisle is in charge. When a group of roving vampires discovers the Cullens in the meadow playing ball, they negotiate with Carlisle, the patriarch, about joining the game. This is a perfect family that James Dobson (the founder of Focus on the Family)² would love, one in which father knows best, mother is “soft” and serves, and all the children obey—even after they are married.

The Cullens are also a great example of the perfect LDS family.³ (LDS stands for Latter-day Saint, or Mormon, like Stephenie Meyer.) Ideal LDS families are patriarchal, refrain from consuming caffeine and alcohol, observe family time on Monday nights, and are kind to their neighbors. In the Cullen family, Carlisle is the benevolent but patriarchal leader. The family is “vegetarian,” refraining from blood instead of caffeine or drugs, and they play baseball, hunt, and do other activities together. Marriage and family commitments are supreme because in LDS theology marriages and families are forever, with devout couples moving from this mortal life into the Celestial Kingdom (the highest level of heaven) where they procreate into infinity.⁴ As we will see in subsequent chapters, vampires in Twilight mate for life; in the case of the Cullens, we have a family that can live into eternity.

In her book Touched by a Vampire, evangelical Christian writer Beth Felker Jones makes a clear distinction between Christian messages and Mormon messages in Twilight, a division that is offensive to Latter-day Saints, who consider themselves Christian.⁵ The two moral universes are not the same, Jones writes, and discerning Christian readers should note where there are significant differences, using the Bible as a guide for reflection. Some of her critique of Twilight has to do with Meyer’s LDS idealization of family life, which she sees as deviating from the Bible’s message about God’s love shining through weak, flawed humans, including less-than-perfect families.⁶ Whether one reads Twilight through Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, or LDS lenses, it is clear that the Cullens are meant to be seen as the exemplary Good Family.

The Damaged Family

Ironically, Bella’s father Charlie Swan, who in general dislikes and distrusts Edward Cullen, raves about what a great family the Cullens are. They stick together, play together, and have mature parents, he says (Twilight, 36–37). Although Charlie doesn’t know it, the family that preys together stays together.

The perfection of the good Cullen family stands in stark contrast to the flawed Swans, whose failed marriage and family life is the fault of Renee, Bella’s stuck-in-emotional-adolescence mother. Bella’s parents are not bad people, but they are divorced, the only divorced parents in the book. In the narrative universe of Twilight, divorce means defective.

From early childhood Bella has been her mother’s caretaker. Bella was “born middle-aged,” far more responsible and aware than her flighty mother (Twilight, 106). Throughout her life Bella has known her mother as needy, immature, undisciplined, and sometimes selfish. Renee walked out on Charlie when Bella was an infant because Renee didn’t want to be trapped in the small town of Forks.

Bella has spent most of her childhood cooking, cleaning, and maintaining stability in her home with her mother. She has rarely visited her father, whom she calls Charlie. When Renee begins dating during Bella’s adolescence, it is Bella who gives her mother “the talk” about sexual responsibility (Eclipse, 67). Bella’s descriptions of her mother are condescending and at times bordering on contempt. (This is one of several characterizations in the novels that is smoothed over or completely changed in the movies.) Bella disapproves of Renee’s new husband, who “allows” Renee to engage in dangerous activities such as skydiving. But like a mother sighing over her daughter’s loser boyfriend, Bella concludes that she really has to let her mother make her own choices even when those choices are wrong (Eclipse, 45).

Renee’s dysfunction is comprehensive. On the trivial side, she is unable to grow flowers around her mailbox because she can’t figure out how to water and tend them. The inability to nurture, however, goes far beyond flowers. When Renee marries a second-rate baseball player named Phil and moves to Florida to be with him, she does so with no thought for disrupting Bella’s junior year in high school. In essence she emotionally abandons Bella, causing Bella to move to Forks to live with her dad.

The first e-mail Bella receives from her mother on arriving in Forks is a childish plea for Bella to help her find her pink blouse, which she has misplaced. She is packing to go off with Phil and can’t find her own clothes (Twilight, 33). When Bella is in the hospital recovering from a near-fatal vampire attack, she remarks that her mother’s concern for her recovery is the first time she has experienced anything like parental authority from Renee since she was eight years old (Twilight, 468). Incredibly, Renee chooses to miss Bella’s graduation from high school because Phil breaks his leg and Renee thinks she is the only one on earth who can take care of him (Eclipse, 314). Renee, who is clueless about how to care for her own daughter, is utterly enmeshed with her young new husband.

Renee is not the only helpless parent in this story. Charlie, who has lived alone ever since Renee walked out on him, is unable to cook or clean for himself. When Bella arrives in Forks, she quickly discovers that Charlie needs the same kind of domestic caretaking that she has provided for Renee most of her life. At one point Bella catches him trying to microwave a jar of spaghetti sauce with the lid on. He is unable even to boil pasta (Twilight, 31; Eclipse, 5). Bella does the grocery shopping, cleans the house, and assumes all the cooking, and Charlie is only too happy to agree to this arrangement. When Charlie comes in from work, he expects her to get his supper as if he were the child and she were the parent (Twilight, 295). Despite Charlie’s ineptitude at home, however, he somehow manages to be a responsible sheriff. The rest of Charlie’s life consists of going fishing with friends and watching endless hours of ESPN. Though he loves Bella, he is awkward at expressing any feelings other than mumbled thanks for her meals or occasional bursts of irritation or worry.

When Charlie provides Bella with snow tires for her truck, she is stunned by his kindness because, as already noted, she is not used to a parent taking care of her (Twilight, 55). The one thing Bella is especially grateful for with Charlie is that he is as uncomfortable with emotional exchanges and conversation as she is. They quietly live together in the same house, but with very little communication beyond small talk.

Divorce has not only left her parents dysfunctional and underdeveloped; it has dehumanized Bella, who has never been close to anyone except for her caretaking role with her mother (Twilight, 10–11). She discovers with bitter humor after coming to Forks that when she finally does develop true friendships for the first time in her life, it is with vampires and werewolves (New Moon, 294)! Bella, who is filled with self-loathing and sees herself as cursed with bad luck, is unable to be intimate in a normal way with other humans, whether they are parents, friends, or boyfriends. Bella’s lifelong alienati...

Table of contents

• Cover page
• Testimonials
• Half title page
• Title page
• Imprint
• Dedication
• Table of contents
• Introduction
• Part One: An Eclipse of Women: Family, Sex, Gender, and Power in Twilight
• Part Two: The Gospel according to Twilight: God, Spirituality, and Faith
• Guide for Reflection and Discussion
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Search items