Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if everyone who got the wrong end of the stick in Twilight(which is literally every character but Bella), and the ones who really were unfortunate, were able to instead drop the whole supernatural stuff and just be normal teens in a normal world, living a normal life. That would be so fluffy, and such a wholesome AU!
Why Leah Clearwater has some Feminist Appeal. At Least Until it Gets Better in the Series. If it Ever Will. (Unlikely)
This may not be a battle or a competition, but with people praising Rosalie Hale (including yours truly), I think Leah should also get a lot of consideration.
In other words, some of why many people like her above all other characters.
(Even though her and the other native women’s portrayals in the story [books and movies] are also problematic in themselves. Link HERE about why.)
My enthusiasm will make this post a lot less formal in tone and less intellectual than my usual posts. I don’t really apologize.
Before the Cullens came back, it seems everything was going well for Leah. She was deeply in love with Sam Uley, her relationship with Emily was close, she has a strong sense of community and a lot more support than some white Twilight characters, her dad wasn’t dead, and it seems like she was eager to start college. Normal, everyday, but fulfilling things.
But the Cullens do come back.
The Cullens
Look, I love vampires and have read Twilight a bunch of times with affection, but this was a shitty thing to do to the entire reservation. Leah in particular has it really tough:
Leah loses the love of her life to a compulsory shapeshifter/werewolf phenomenon.
She loses her best friend, Emily, when envy and resentment and guilt enters the chat.
She has to keep a secret from her other friends and not hang out with them anymore, like how Sam, Paul, and Jared did; thus losing her previous, unmentioned social group.
She becomes the least liked member of her new group, just like Rosalie with the Cullens, she refuses to hide how unhappy she is.
College seems a postponed dream; the thing she could’ve used to escape but now can’t.
College has turned into an escape plan from when it was something to look forward to as the beginning of a new part of her life....
There’s a suggestion in the fandoms that her dad may have died from cardiac arrest when either she or Seth transformed for the first time. If this is canon, then if the Cullens didn’t come back they wouldn’t have transformed.
As a werewolf, she’s the only female onw and her menstrual cycle has stopped. (Does this mean she can’t even have kids even if she chose to have them? Who knows, she feels like a freak now.)
None of this was done with her approval or will.
She has no reason to like the Cullens and a lot of reasons to want them to not exist, particularly when they chose to come back despite the wishes of the indigenous people who know of them. Plus, for Leah and the rest of the pack members, you could say things would be a lot easier if the Cullens were just human-killing monsters who didn’t also have a deal with them. They and Leah wouldn’t have to tolerate their proximity, which triggers the werewolf numbers and transformations.
Leah’s still grappling with how to accept the fact that Sam is gone forever. Then she hears that Bella not only doesn’t hate or dislike them--she wants to become one of them?! She thinks she loves one of those monsters?! She thinks they’re good?!!!! (What I imagine Leah is thinking/feeling.)
So she also dislikes Bella, who seems to accept or not see the danger & injustice that is the Cullen family by wanting to be one of them, or never truly sits down in a kiki with Leah to discuss the hows and whys.
I too wanted like to be a creature like a Twilight vampire for the strength and speed alone. I don’t/didn’t even need the beauty part. Also, I wouldn’t drink humans even if I killed several by accident as a newborn because I simply don’t have to have blood on my hands if I don’t need to.
But Leah isn’t a monster for not liking Bella b/c of reasons already stated. She’s allowed to acknowledge her own hurt and anger.
We can’t judge a person’s morality or value by how much they annoy or discomfort us.
Not only does it make no logical sense, because it makes no sense and people do it anyways, it is selfish and cruel.
How are you going to determine a person’s morality of all things on how much you feel about them, especially before/without getting to know them? (Unless they are doing extreme and glaring acts, like rape. Fuck rapists.)
All an answer and reference to some people saying they don’t like Leah just because she didn’t like Bella and the vampires and treating them “unfairly” by actively avoiding them or openly glaring at them.
Vampires have historically fucked her tribe and have personally fucked her life up. They are the enemy to her and a danger to the people she loves.
I bet that many people would feel the same without having to be a Quileute if Twilight vampires suddenly existed.
So to Leah, Bella looks like a traitor of humanity and a supporting agent for the hurt in Leah’s life.
And Bella’s rejection hurts Jacob.
Which goes into what else I like about canon Leah. She shows empathy when it was so easy for her not to. She is able to develop the capacity to see others’ perspective and make a genuine connection between herself and others.
Jacob
She sees how Jacob suffers from the rejection of someone who he’s very much in love with and can’t help comparing it to her own plight with Sam. And more importantly, she frankly tells Jacob about it with little shame or in defiance of judgement. This also allows her to very bravely confront Bella alone in a house of vampires whose venom can poison her with one bite and who don’t regard her very highly.
Jacob didn’t regard her very highly either, because she didn’t try to hide her pain.
But she did that anyway, for him.
Emily
It’s clear that though things are tense between them, Leah still wants a relationship with her cousin, even though things will never be the same.
Does Leah envy Emily and still wish (subconciously) that Emily and Sam break up at some point before she decides to consciously move on? Possibly/probably.
Did she probably think that Emily “stole” Sam in an errant thought? Maybe. There is no evidence of either.
But again we have to remember she was in love with Sam and didn’t become a werewolf until much later, maybe in the events between New Moon and Eclipse, so she was literally in the dark of why Sam abandoned her.
For her freaking cousin of all people.
She went to a wedding that, by all rights, could have been hers! But she went anyways to support her cousin and unconsciously try to move on in doing so.
Sam and Emily
For as far as we know, Leah continued to be in love with Sam well into Breaking Dawn. But, she decides it’s best to save everyone the trouble and run to Jacob’s new pack.
Was it self motivated/oriented and a way for her to get away from pain? Yes. Was it also a way to keep some sort of peace without ruining relations more? Also yes. She still cares about Sam and Emily, and realizes that this is best for everyone. It isn’t a selfish act at all but a brave and selfless one.
Maybe everyone else (Sam, Emily, etc.) will come to realize it, maybe they won’t. Doesn’t change that the situation wasn’t getting any better, but even worse. Even Jacob comes to realize this.
And two things can be and often are true at the same time. (It’s called a paradox.) You can look out for yourself as you also try to remedy a situation you and others are involved in, especially when the situation came about because of conflicts between the involved parties.
You have to look out for yourself--you’re the key and the element, so to speak. What else would happen? How else?
If not a Queen, what else?
Rosalie
Leah is more appealing to me in a lot of ways because I can easily relate to her experiences as a POC woman. That doesn’t mean I can’t relate to Rosalie at all.
Leah is different from Rosalie more due to their very different backgrounds but their priorities are very much the same: self, family and loved ones. They both work on achieving some sort of balance between all three, but Leah is a bit more self sacrificing or readily empathetic.
A) Now it’s no secret that Leah hates vampires. Yet, when she hears that Rosalie would not be that against Bella’s death so she can get Renesmee to herself, what does she do?
She takes the time to understand without demonizing Rosalie’s lack of (as the Victorians and the Enlightened call it) “womanly” compassion for Bella. Or really prioritization of Bella’s life.
She sees, with her own presumed infertility, that she and Rosalie have something in common and is able to reason and see the parallels between the two of them.
Part of this could also be argued that because Leah’s not a changeless vampire and has the ability to at least have biological changes. Even if her fertility status is questionable, Leah still has the chance that she’d be able to give birth since Meyer’s whacky lore allows for a lot of stuff don’t don’t make biological sense.
Leah’s the very first woman werewolf after all. Who knows what she’s capable of? Leah herself doesn’t really know yet.
However, if we argue this we’re ignoring how we got to the place where we’re relying on fertility to justify Leah’s suffering.
Meyer makes both women being fertile as the only means of autonomy/value that has been denied them by outside forces and events.
Both are reportedly gorgeous women. Both have had their lives ripped away from them by events totally out of their control.
B) Even with others pressuring Leah or rebuking her for feeling the way she does, she continues to both feel for others without unconsciously agreeing to act and feel how others want her to feel and act. Very much like Rosalie, who also does not apologize for how she feels, only explains.
Rosalie apologizes for the way she acted, but didn’t do so for how she felt about Bella and just explained it. Leah does the same when she speaks to Jacob in BD.
Still, both women see violent, seemingly selfish actions, like killing Bella despite her not being an obvious threat, as a means of protecting their loved ones or the integrity of their social unit. They are willing to do the “dirty work”, as some might call it. That willingness is admirable, even the act is gruesome.
What marks them as different is that as a native woman Leah already comes in with the community-above-self mindset, whilst Rosalie is thinking more in terms of family and self.
While the white domestic-to-community space and the vampire world are largely more nuclear/individual-oriented, indigenous tribes emphasize community and family, which is more towards what people of the late 2010s to the present are advocating for.
Leah escapes Sam’s pack knowing/seeing it as her making it possible to alleviate both her own and Sam/Emily/the other wolves’ negative emotions and pressures that her presence brings.
It’s empathetic, emotionally resilient, and mentally adept of her. She has taken care of herself and others all at once. (Now I’m repeating myself.)
Leah
Here’s what @therealvinelle says about Leah (Link to Post):
It's in part because she's a great character, she's easily the most interesting of the shapeshifters (I do love Sam, but he's not Leah). She's the only girl and struggles with that, she has a tragic love story, we get to know her better in Breaking Dawn in a way we don't get to know most of the minor characters in Twilight.
It's also because Leah is one of the very few non-white woman characters in Twilight, and easily the one who gets the most screen time, attention from the narrative, and personality. Her actor in the movies is an actual Native American woman. That matters.
Here’s what I think and add to that (not a contradiction):
A) Meyer does let Leah transparently see other women’s needs apart of from her own while also looking out for herself.
She makes room for others (conceptually) enough to really look at what they are doing when she can, compared to Rosalie who also, in her own way, prioritizes herself and the group over one or two member’s feelings.
B) She’s frank with her actions and words about her experiences as a woman in a male dominated sphere...to the men who do no care to listen.
C) Worryingly, it’s like she is the character chosen by Meyer to shoulder all or most of the load of being an example of healthy living/adaptations within the Twilight universe.
D) She’s still burdened with the load of not only the other character’s expectations but some people’s hopes and desires for how Twilight “should” have been! Here I am waxing poetic about how she is so cool, yet why should I heap all of the responsibility of clearheaded-ness on this fictional woman character when I could on myself, Meyer, and you...anyone who takes the time to read anyway.
E) *Everything I said about her comparison to Rosalie.
Finale
Unfortunately, Meyer ties most of her narrative function to the fact she was dumped and must deal with the prospect of her being unable to have kids of her own with her being the only female wolf in tribal history.
Poor Leah. She is also one of the only characters that is almost un-conflictedly emulation-worthy but has been held back by Meyer’s and--admittedly my own-- ignorance of Quileute/native gender politics. “Almost” because she seems to have been ready to kill an unborn child along with its mother, but then again the wolves didn’t know what kind of danger Renesmee would present to their tribe so....point is, she is the most eye-catching and one of the least “problematic”.
Leah is a good (by genre) gothic romance heroine and the modern romance heroine, but she suffers for being so....why?
Because she isn’t white and Meyer is while also having never seemingly regarded POC outlooks. The latter person trying her best to make a character/love story benefits from being white (Bella/BellaxEdward).
Seth and Leah always exchange birthday presents. When they can’t afford to buy something, they’ll hand-make a present. Most recently, Seth made Leah a ceramic cup with World’s Okayest Sister carved into it. Leah gave Seth an IPhone box, inside of another box, duct taped shut, with $20 inside instead of the phone.
Colin cannot watch a movie without talking straight through it. This gets so frustrating that it became a common occurrence to throw things at him to get him to shut up
“That’s why they’re called throw pillows!”
“Shut up, Seth!”
Once a week, the pack gets together at Sam and Emily’s. They all pile on the couch and chairs until there’s no room left, and whoever can’t find a spot has to sit on someone else’s lap.
After Paul starts to flip the board every time he loses, Emily hides monopoly when he’s going to be there for game night. Monopoly gets too intense, she declares, no more monopoly.
Quil, Colin, and Seth form an alliance during uno, vowing to gang up against Sam until his hand is twice as big as anyone else’s.
In response to this, Sam taught Jared and Paul how to count cards, and they came for all the money Quil, Colin and Seth brought for Poker one night. The three older boys brought home $75 that night.
