Volu m e II - Purdue University Calumet

The Clearing
“…his face was absurdly handsome ─ with piercing, hate-filled eyes.” (Twilight 27).
Stephanie Meyer makes it clear on her official website that she considers feminism to be about
choices. She never says this outright, but her insistence that Bella made choices about what she really
wanted out of her life, and feminism is supposed to be all about choice, then Bella must be a feminist.
According to Meyer, the fact that this series is also about vampires and werewolves gives further proof that
it cannot be taken seriously because of the impossible situations Bella faces. Meyer fails to recognize two
very important issues with her definition of feminism: first, within the series itself, Bella consistently
attributes fate or destiny to the way her life has turned out, both of which deny the existence of choice
within their very definition; and second, feminism cannot be whittled down to “oppressive can‟ts” (Meyer
uses the example that women used to be told they could not be astronauts because they were women) and
“freeing cans.” According to this logic, society has gotten rid of most of the oppressive can‟ts for women so
if they choose to have children and marry young then they are displaying their agency to do so. This would
be a wonderful thing to happen for women if anything was ever that simple. What may seem a „choice‟ to
Meyer may actually be an inability to imagine life any differently due to the limited access to alternative
examples of female agency.
The title of the first book, Twilight, suggests the confusion and uncertainty that a girl faces when she
first realizes she is too old to be just a girl, but still too young to be considered a woman. Expectations of
friends and family for this child are changing, societal rules become more nuanced, and she must learn to
navigate this ever expanding world in order to understand what is expected of her. This is a time when a
girl learns what behaviors are „appropriate,‟ for her and then must reconcile that with what she wants out of
her. Mary Pipher, PH.D, author of Reviving Ophelia defines early adolescence as a “time of physical and
psychological change, self-absorption, preoccupation with peer approval and identity formation” (23-4).
She goes on to say that “[i]t‟s a time of marked internal development and massive cultural indoctrination”
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