We first meet Loid as Twilight. The man with a hundred masks, the best spy in all of Westalis. He’s impossibly competent at what he does; in fact, it’s become a running gag/joke in the show that he can handle pretty much anything thrown at him.
He’s so capable that his standards for what is normal are completely distorted. This probably explains (narration-wise) why he remains oblivious to Yor’s secret identity as an assassin. He doesn’t actually know what normal looks like, and so he misses the obvious signs that anyone regular, sane person would notice, even though he's a super spy. Loid is excellent at seeming normal, but it’s only ever an act. He can imitate the role perfectly, yet the feeling itself probably escapes him since he’s only ever mastered the performance, not the actual reality behind it, not the simple, domestic daily life he’s been tasked with creating and somehow learning to live in since the start of the show.
For example, in the below gifs, when confronted with abnormal things, such a Yor's crazy feats of drop-kicking a criminal and sending them rolling ten feet away (and that man would have probably rolled much further away if there wasn't an alleyway wall to block his path lol) or being able to catch a tray with her foot with no explanation, he only tells her he admires her "dedication to not wasting food" and that it was "improper" of her to use her feet... you know, like any normal husband would 💀
My reaction to that was much like Dominic's— that's what got you, Loid?? 😂
(This is what it would feel like, by the way, Loid. This is what a real family would feel like 😭)
For Loid, being a spy isn’t just his job, it’s basically his entire identity. He can compartmentalize his emotions in seconds, slip in and out of new roles without hesitation, and discard them just as easily. Logic and gaining knowledge are nothing but survival tools for him; he doesn't gain any joy in learning new things or take pride in the fact that he has perfect recall (photographic memory). Since the start of the show, we see him view pretty much everything in a detached, impersonal manner.
From what we learn of his past, Loid was asked to throw away his name and become nothing more than a "shadow for his nation." The WISE recruiter who approached him didn’t have to persuade him much; ■■■■ (or Redacted) had no one left in the world who would remember his real name, so that old name held no meaning anymore. He had no family, no stability, just vengeance, and was left with the memories of people whom he thought were dead. Even when he eventually discovered that his friends, whom he believed died because of him, were actually alive all along, it was only for them to die "again" (in his eyes) during "an incredibly rushed and reckless campaign." His hatred and purpose for living in the world began to hollow out, and even before he met his friends and found out they were alive, he was already questioning himself and wondering what he was doing with his life and why he kept going, kept fighting, kept picking up a gun for his nation.
Loid had similar sentiments introduced to him as a child, before the war started. And this is what I count as the first form of isolation that ■■■■ grew up in.
He was isolated long before the bombs fell. Even as a child, before the war started, he was already set apart. While the other friends wore military gear and played at being soldiers, he was the only one without the gear. His father forbade any talk of joining the army or fighting Ostania, rejecting the propaganda that was prevalent everywhere across their nation. But as children growing up with this propaganda constantly being fed to them one way or the other, it just caused ■■■■ to feel alone and isolated by his strict, abusive father, who was right on paper, but the way he imposed those beliefs on his child just built another type of cage.
Instead of teaching his son through understanding and patience, he taught him by using authority and violence. His father wanted ■■■■ to obey him and meet all of his high expectations without ever realizing that children don't prosper or learn anything through violence or constant reprimands. All that teaches children is to fear, builds distance and resentment, and eventually, you have them lying to you so they don't get hurt and scolded again. So, of course, he feels confused about what is right and what is wrong, especially when his father's opinions seem so different from the majority.
The second form of isolation I want to explore is the isolation of ignorance and how not having knowledge means a loss of control.
Ignorance can often be manufactured. Some of it is carefully curated, take propaganda, for example. Who benefits when citizens don't know something? Who profits when a nation is told a certain narrative, such as which side the war started on? Who stays in power when people are distracted or divided?
These are the questions ■■■■ eventually has to grapple with, and this ties into what might be my favorite quote in the entire show.
"Ignorance... is such a weakness. It's also such a sin."
I believe this line marks the very root of ■■■■’s core and the moment his worldview began to take shape. Ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance, to ■■■■ is the worst state to be in. As a child, he watched adults cling to denial, even his own father telling him that war wouldn’t come, that everything was fine even as both Westalis and Ostania both hurled abuse at one another, even as the kids were taught that the other side should be seen as inhuman, as "devils". The adults maintained that there would be no war right up until the bombs fell upon them. Their ignorance wasn’t bliss, it was fatal and cost them their lives. It cost him his home, his family, his childhood.
To him, not knowing isn’t peace, it’s the complete opposite. Ignorance means danger, ignorance means that everyone you love will be killed, and you are powerless to stop any of it. It means the same blind helplessness that once destroyed everything he loved. That’s why knowledge becomes so sacred to him. It's a defense mechanism, and survival hinges on it. Every fact, every deduction, every piece of information is power.
Psychologically, this is a textbook trauma response. When a child grows up in an environment where life feels unpredictable and unsafe, they often develop what’s called hypervigilance, which is basically the constant need to scan for threats, to anticipate every possible outcome before it happens. It’s the mind’s way of keeping the child safe and alive because no one would do it for them. They would have no other choice but to learn to rely on themselves. With no external figure of safety to rely on, he had to become his own protector. For ■■■■, information becomes his shield and weapon. Being isolated from knowledge will only ever make him feel powerless.
A child’s brain depends on stable, predictable input to develop a sense of cause and effect. Without it, the world is random and full of senseless violence. For him, every tragedy reinforced that knowledge would always be withheld from him and/or out of his reach before he could grasp it. So later, as an adult, he clings to it rather obsessively because having information now means he’ll never again be waiting for the next disaster and having no knowledge of when the next bomb is going to drop. No, instead, now he can take action himself. He can save people with this knowledge, he can disarm bombs or evacuate people to safety, and—
He also has the chance to prevent tragedy.
Having control or needing control of every situation is also a trauma response. Having control over what he knows gives him a sense of agency he never got to have as a child. When everything around you collapses without warning, you start to believe that if you can just understand enough, you may have had a chance at stopping the bad things from happening. The tragedy is that this belief never really lets him rest.
Peace, to him, probably feels like a false sense of safety, and for good reason. The bombs first fell on an ordinary, sunny day, with a festival planned for the next morning. After that, every peaceful moment can feel terrifying. He and everyone around him lived in the shadow of the next explosion, listening for air-raid sirens, knowing that even the bomb shelters would not guarantee survival.
One moment, he was fishing for dinner for his mother, and the next, his peace and sense of safety were cruelly ripped away from him again, and these tragedies, one after the other without rest, just teach him to not trust peace.
Then he has to live with the fear of wondering if his mother and their house had been bombed again or not, wondering if she was dead or alive. Live with that terror and fear, and then witness those very fears come true.
And after, he has to learn to navigate through this grief alone. And this is what I consider to be the third form of isolation.
He has always, constantly been alone. He grew up all alone, stuck in a war-torn nation, witnessing acts of senseless violence and cruelty over and over again. He didn't have his father or the croquette lady to remind him that the enemy was human, and even then, that would have seemed to be a privileged way to think when all around him were bodies of the people who were killed, that just kept piling up.
In his grief, he was also alone. At least his friends had each other to rely on; they could remember together, carry each other through the loss after believing him to be dead.
But he had no one. While they grieved for him, he grieved for everyone and blamed himself on top of it. Their deaths, then his mother's, and then the constant death and war after that, just fueled his grief into hatred, and so he picked up a gun and started fighting back.
Seeing his friends alive again eased some of that burden of survival's guilt on him, even though he only got to see them briefly before they went and died for real. I think for ■■■■ to see them alive and well, their grown-up selves really helped him with dislodging that guilt of being the one to have found that military storage space they used to play in as kids. Still, the damage had been done, and he spent most of his life blaming himself and that sort of thing does not just go away easily :(
It hurts even more when he realizes what he missed. All this time, he wasn’t as alone as he thought, and his friends were alive and well. Their bond likely deepened through their shared grief, growing up side by side amid the war, finding comfort and strength in one another. Meanwhile, ■■■■ had no such anchor. While they built a connection through his loss, he drifted further into isolation. They grieved and healed together, and he survived alone.
And yet again, he's left alone, grieving all over. He learns about their second deaths, and all that remains of them are their dog tags and his memories again.
Once again, life is happening to him, and he has no control over it. Once again, he's confronted with just how powerless he is. He had no knowledge, no control, no way to change the outcome. Just the hollow realization that everything he valued could vanish in an instant over and over again, and he would still be standing there, helpless to stop it.
All this loss and loneliness shaped Twilight into the man he is in the present. He's never had the chance to fully form genuine relationships, because they've always been ripped away from him before he got that chance. Getting close to a person emotionally will always feel dangerous to him because that is giving into the possibility, the chance of losing them all over again, something that he cannot risk. That opens himself up to the same grief, the same unbearable fear of losing everything all over again. It’s safer to stay cold, to shut it all off, to convince himself that keeping people at a distance is strength.
His only purpose became protecting children from the terror of war and the weight of grief he carried alone. But in doing so, he never learned how to heal the broken parts in himself. He just kept moving forward, patching the world while leaving his own unhealed wounds untouched, just determined to make the world a safer place and ensure that no child would ever have to live the way he did. Eventually, he becomes content with the idea of being no one, because no one remembers him. He gives up his name, his sense of self, and clings to that one goal.
For a man who’s lived his entire life in isolation, being forced to build a family for the sake of a mission is pretty ironic. Yet this will definitely be the mission that's going to undo him, the thing that breaks him open and, piece by piece, teaches him how to heal. For the first time since childhood, he is surrounded by people who have come to love and adore him. And he's learning that this messy, chaotic, imperfect, simple, beautiful life is what it truly means to have a family.
He’s learning, slowly and painfully, to open himself again, to feel, to trust, to love. Loid, Anya, Yor, and Bond were all alone before this. They all learned to survive on their own, to depend on no one or learning to care for others but never themselves. But now, through each other, they’re beginning to unlearn that. They’re forming the kind of family none of them ever got to have.
At its core, Spy x Family isn’t about the espionage or the family deceiving each other; it's the fact that despite all their secrets, they're a group of broken people learning to lean on each other after their childhoods were stolen by the war, by violence, loss, and fear. Loid Forger might be the last one to realize just how much he loves his found family, but we can all see it clearly. Beneath all the hundreds of masks he wears, that lonely, grieving inner child in him is very slowly learning to rely on people, learning that he doesn't need to be completely in control anymore. He's learning to love again.
New Moon is supposed to be “inspired by” Romeo and Juliet, and I can definitely see the inspiration there, but I think it’s closer to Hamlet, with Bella in the position of Ophelia.
In Hamlet, Ophelia is led to believe Hamlet loves her, only for Hamlet to completely shatter this by saying he doesn’t love her and telling her to “get thee to a nunnery.” Hamlet later says after Ophelia’s death that he actually did love her, and him saying he doesn’t love her was a lie. Ophelia is then left completely alone. Her father is killed, her brother is off in France, and Hamlet is headed for England (and unknowingly to his death). She goes mad and ends up dying in such a way that it’s debatable whether or not she committed suicide.
In New Moon, Bella was led to believe that Edward loves her, only for Edward to shatter this by saying he doesn’t love her, doesn’t want her, and that she isn’t good for him. Later, after they get back from Volterra, Edward explains that all of that was a lie and that he really does love her. Bella is then left completely alone. The Cullens and Edward leave, and Alice has stopped looking into Bella’s future. Bella also can’t really tell anything to anyone because she can’t reveal that the Cullens are vampires. Bella becomes incredibly depressed and hallucinates Edward’s voice, and she ends up going cliff diving because of these hallucinations, which leads Alice to think that Bella committed suicide.
I do see the parallels between New Moon and Romeo and Juliet. There’s the forbidden love, and the end of the book where Edward wants to end his life because he thinks Bella is dead, which is the tragic ending of Romeo and Juliet. However, I think it somewhat fails as a parallel of Romeo and Juliet because the star-crossed lovers aren’t together for most of the book, and the main connection is the miscommunication about Bella dying. I think there are more parallels between Hamlet and New Moon if you look at Bella as a parallel of Ophelia. Also, Edward matches Prince Hamlet’s level of angst.
A few ideas around the theme of twilight but if it was slightly darker.
Edward should have been the one to nearly attack bella in new moon.
Jasper attacking her does make sense, as he has not only had the least amount of time as a vegetarian vampire but I personally think because of his gift he's also feeling all the other vampires desire to drink human blood on top of his own.
But, Edward has such good self control around Bella, you say. He even managed to stop drinking her blood, why would he attack her? you cry.
Well, in this au, in the weeks leading up to Bellas birthday, something nearly happens to her, like a near death experience. She isn't hurt, as naturally edward is there to save her, but Overthinker Edward, convinces himself had he not been around she would have died and decides he must stay with her even more closely than usual. But this means skipping hunting and he thinks this will be tolerable... but on the day of her party, he hasn't fed in weeks so when she cuts herself....
Suddenly there is no careful, protective edward (was there ever?) , there is only a starving inhuman creature ready to slaughter a defenseless terrified girl.
(At least that's how emo eddy thinks of the incident.)
And of course it's doubly dangerous because jasper still loses control so there are TWO vampires trying to snack on her and two are much harder to restrain.
Edward now has the final proof he needs to decide he is truly a soulless monster that should stay away from Bella at any cost, and Bella is still heartbroken by his leaving but at the same time, it's like her bubble has popped. Because she was genuinely so convinced edward would never lose control, or hurt her. Her nightmares are now about edward hurting her. And even if she forgives him, it would always be a thought lurking in the back of her mind wondering if he might snap again. Later on it causes her deep anxiety about being a vampire and meeting charlie again - what if she attacks him the same way?
Bella SHOULD have attacked that hiker as a new vamp. She kills him, Edward is unable to stop her, and by the time he catches up her satin dress is saturated in the blood of an innocent man. I get Meyer wanted Bella to be Not Like Other Vampire Girls so thats why she wrote her with perfect control, but it just makes no sense. Bella with brilliant self control could work but only after that, because she is so traumatised by that murder that from then on she finds the strength to resist human blood from fear of being a monster, like Carlisle.
I'm really just obsessed with the idea of twilight as a darker story that has slight a more horror type undertone. Edward met bella and immediately started plotting all the different ways to eat her. That is SO dark. Like eddy bro thats your future wife she is NOT a sandwich.
Bella, throughout the series, had these weird dreams that were like premonitions. What if Bella's special vampire talent was that of being the only vampire to be able to to sleep? And she'd have visions like Alice everytime, but they'd be more metaphorical but more accurate when interpreted correctly.
I feel like Carlisle has to have some extreme guilt and anxiety about practicing medicine for so long. He's over 300 years old. Medical practice has changed a ton in those years. I feel like he would have constant guilt about his treatment of his patients which he later found out was harming them. In addition to that, I think he would have a lot of anxiety about what he's doing now, and if he'll find out it was harmful later.
For example, how much cocaine did he prescribe? How many patients smoked and died from lung cancer before he found out smoking was harmful? How many lobotomies did he recommend? How many blood transfusions were for the wrong blood type? How much harm did he cause in 300 years because he didn't know and trusted what was supposedly the cutting edge of medicine?
I don't know if this concept is explored in the books but I think it's interesting. I don't think Carlisle is some all-knowing doctor who knew what practices would be found harmful and if he did he didn't spread the word to prevent more harm. Carlisle lived through Victorian era medicine, arguably one of the most bat shit insane and harmful eras of medicine. Carlisle is also practicing in the US and Europe, aka Western countries. Western countries have historically been behind the curve when it comes to medicine. The most well-known example being c sections, something practiced safely and successfully in Africa for hundreds of years and only beginning to see success and introduction in the mid to late 1700s. Western doctors also only started regularly washing their hands in the late 1800s and 1900s 😐
This is a literary thesis, argument, theory (not really), and not confirmed by Meyer whatsoever—>all from me analyzing the written parts of Twilight franchise.
Was a past post, now rewritten because I changed my mind.
Sources
The Twilight Guide
All the Twi Books Meyer wrote except Life and Death because that doesn’t count
Britannica entry on Romanticism
The Church of Latter Day Saints’ website (which are somewhere down below. I’m lazy.) defining the “natural man” tenet/principle
Bella’s History
A)
For Bella, I saw her as distancing herself from most people because of all this and learning to be polite but not…."free”, unless it is to help people out. And even then, to use as emphasis on a sarcastically/logically-made argument.
Bella is an only child; her mom appears to have been a little self absorbed, excitable and very easily distracted as a parent. She appears to have wanted to hang out with Bella, but Bella needed up being the more practical and responsible person of the two, making sure Renee didnt so things that she didnt prepare for enough and get herself in inconvenient or painful situations. Charlie loves Bella, but for most of her life he wasn’t there due to the physical distance. When Bella arrives in Forks, Charlie seems more concerned with giving her the space she needs so that she doesn’t bounce out on him like Renee did. So there is an emotional gap b/t her and Charlie that does narrow a little during her time in Forks, but never really gets as intimate as a dad going to the mall with his teenage daughter. Bella also has lived like a ln adult for most of her life already by taking care of Renee, so she doesn't want to have what she calls a "helicopter parent". The two seem to prefer showing how much they care through actions, like how Charlie put the snow chains on Bella's truck and Bella feeding him.
That could also be because Bella herself is just a more indoors, homebody kind of gal and Renee clearly isn’t. However, the image we get is Bella doing more what Renee desires than vice versa because Renee is a lot more active and exploitative than Bella is without having in-depth conversations.
I can understand why canon Bella wasn’t so “free” or didn’t think to talk about herself without someone asking her directly to talk about her and her mom going antiquing with, say, Angela, if not someone like Jessica.
Bella, as a person who has largely taken care of her own emotions, disciplined herself in various ways that aren’t disclosed but suggested by her family history and has been doing more things for others with others more often than doing things that she may enjoy. As we hear more of her doing stuff her mom wants to do (or making sure she doesnt hurt herself) than her mom spontaneously doing things that Bella may want to do.
The love is certainly there, but not the compatibility.
And Renee seems ill-fated for the deep emotional investment that is parenthood and its many moments of intensive or persuasive emotional engagements with the mentally developing child. Renee's effort consisted of her doing fun stuff with Bella, but not enough of understanding Bella. And she didnt seem to want to expend the effort or energy to assess Bella's values and mindset apart for. Bella being a 30 year old in a teenage body (from her pserspective).
B)
Being alone like that might have allowed Bella to develop a dislike of most personal, casual interaction and unconsciously seek out more passionate, thrilling relationships through what she has learned are the meaningful ones–through literature. But that seeking out can be, and here, was also ultimately futile when she both doesn’t know how to and doesn’t really want to maintain human relationships– past or present.
It’s kind of a Catch-22.
C)
So Bella seemed to always have been emotionally isolated and leaning towards the melancholic. A lot of idealizations appealed to her because they showed her realities where there was more psychological mobility. I mean that she could witness "the freed spirit" through literature.
For us to know more about her outside of her, there needs to be more “shows” of:
current depression/extreme melancholy in a gradual progression in her past
flashbacks to her interactions with her mom and maybe Phil
past interactions with her Phoenix “friends”
But Bella/Meyer don’t deem Bella’s personal history as worth getting more in depth with as much as what it serves for the "meat" of the story: as her pursuit of loving Edward forever that will (to her) make up for that suggested lacking in her history.
Partially because Bella seems a more “look to the future” type of person that doesn’t want to dwell too much about uncomfortable things of the past. Partially because, frankly, the Twilight novels are YA novels that are supposed to also capture the attention of teens and younger adults and were created with a very simple but effective plotline.
It appears Meyer chose to just tell her story the way she herself enjoyed and envisioned it MUCH more than try to make it appealing ot others, wich is valid.
The Cullens’ Appeal
I think that Meyer uses a reframed archetype of the familiar non-biological family unit to generate more substance of significance for the main romance.
She allowed the Cullens to exist as a “family”, told us that they were a family, and uses their familial-ness as a huge part of Edward’s desirability as Bella’s love interest to Bella herself. With the context of Bella’s background, it makes sense to see why Bella would be so attracted to a life with Edward. Besides the fact that:
he is hot
has an grace and ease by which he walks through life even as he's constantly trying to prove himself worthy and independent
has very set ideas of what is good vs bad (even if they are arguable, the point it that he is sure about them and will only change them if he feels it is necessary)
his devotion to his family
he's (kinda superficially) reminiscent of the romantic heroes she read who, again, usually have these traits
Aside from all these traits providing Bella sense of safety just on Edward's part--it's that self-assuredness and devotion to the rules/values that will raise him up away from the feared state of bestiality and inhumaneness he has no matter others', self determination--Look Below:
A History/Cultural Overview (European)
A) Romantic Heroes and Edward as One
The Romantic heroes and brooding men in 18th century poetry and novels are particularly broody because they try to resist against growing urbanization and societal compulsion that moves to compress the human being–as they and their authors saw it–into just a creature that is a tool of that urbanization or a tool of class maintenance. Which then has some ties to animality, since animals were thought of as more like tools than friends, especially by the lower classes and laborers. The richer you were, the more likely you saw certain cats and dogs as more status symbols and/or friends. Having an animal is and has been a luxury item as well as a tool.
But more importantly, Romanticism as a cultural movement:
emphasized the individual, the subjective, the irrational, the imaginative, the personal, the spontaneous, the emotional, the visionary, and the transcendental” even as it also “can be seen as a rejection of the precepts of order, calm, harmony, balance, idealization, and rationality (Britannica).
Edward is an archetypal Romantic hero in that he struggles to not become so much a “slave” to his predatory instincts like other vampires who have embraced or accepted and became thus “weak” for not being able to control or resist their urges. Edward wants to see himself as a good person, and has a lot of inner conflicts and feelings about what a good person is without them being actually devoted to the goal himself, rather wanting to be good for someone he loves and looks up to---Carlisle. (Which then actually separates him from the typical Romantic hero, that he is doing and feeling this way not for humans or something compassionate towards humans but for his personal connection to his “savior”.) This struggle comes out as the angst we all know and love, esp Bella, who sees this as proof of him being innately good, because he doesn't take morality or anything he has that is material for granted--or very much tries not to. Specifically, though, in that he becomes a danger and monster towards humans, coming from Carlisle’s philosophy.
To continue to set oneself so high a standard[s] and not just assume your goodness or casually and mundanely, to continuously challenege oneself--esp out of love for smeone else not really of your blood--is what is attracting Bella to Edward the individual. Because this is a way one ties oneself to another person without conventional, familial ties of blood.
However, Edward, while having some regard for (what he deems good humans, b/c we all remember when he hunted down the perverse and evil, which tells us he thinks about who deserves death and who doesn’t) humans by not wanting to hunt them as if they were just food, doesn’t have the same kind of altruism towards humans as his adoptive father. In Midnight Sun, his first interaction with Bella’s scent shows that he is more concerned with proving his ability to control himself (strength) and protect his family from harm (Volturi) [sic]. He takes it very personally, seeing his need/strong instinct to kill Bella as weakness after years of good control/resistance.
Edward’s idea about what vampirism is a lot more repressive than Carlisle’s: vampirism completely takes away the soul and vampires are doomed to never be close to God because of it–but he still feels like he needs to make up for & justify his vampiric existence by controlling his vampiric actions. Which also comes out as him needing to feel in control of all his own actions as well as use his abilities to protect others whom he loves at all times in the bid of doing good with those abilities.
Making “use” of himself so that he “deserves” his family. It manifests amorally, ironically, like when he breaks Bella’s car in Eclipse.
B) The European Noblewoman, or Just Medieval/Renaissance Women
For centuries in medieval and early modern Europe, the new/marriage family (legally and socially conceived) became the only or main means of support for the new wife/lady since she is supposed to bear the next generation of that family, i.e. her husband’s heirs.
Her children--unless agreed by the parties before marriage and time/location-- were not her heirs necessarily. A woman didn’t inherit anything that was her own (that wasn’t able to become her husband’s) unless the laws were different depending on time/location or more likely the parties’ agreement before the marriage. (Said parties could be the parents of either/both, one of the to-be-wed, or their legal guardians/protectors).
Note that a man’s children, no matter the time/location/parties involved, were always his and his family’s heirs.
However, marriage was also the only available respectable/the least risky/most socially accepted/legally supported means a woman of any class used for social mobility, political power, and basic economic support.
If a noble lady, or really any woman, married into a more prominent family or a family that had higher status than her own (the latter not commonly happening), her own status rose and that of her birth family rise, too. If she married a richer family that also happened to be prominent, then she had both a higher status and even more wealth and power. If the new family were just rich (not nobles, but this didn’t happen often because status and lineage was more important) the finances are good, her status wouldn’t become higher…unless her husband had good connections. And she had more access to resources for herself or her children (connections to the Pope or an archbishop through bloodlines and shady deals for a more extreme example).
Even though it was understood that after marriage she didn’t legally “belong” to her birth family anymore, her birth family did benefit from her marrying up. They’d get a hefty dowry, an elevated social status, and a bloodline connection to the prominent family and/or future wealth through any and all the male heirs produced– for their own enterprises. History reports a lot of maternal uncles using their nephews and nieces to secure resources.
C) Bella is a Noblewoman, or Wants to Be One
A.
Unlike the medieval lady, Bella can choose for herself because she is part of the 2000s where women have a lot more legal personal freedoms and where more women don’t have to bank most of their power on their husband’s social/economic status.
However, while Bella did choose to be a vampire totally on her own–before the Volturi even knew she existed–to be with Edward and to have a "perfect" family, the story portrays the Cullens as “perfect” and impressive heavily through their wealth, material possessions, and their European features. We can say that the Cullens are very much a figurative noble family that Bella-the-seeking-woman wants to be a part of, impressed by their perfection.
In the face of her history with her taking care of her mom and the distance she has with her father, I think Bella very much wants the emotional security that comes from that feeling of becoming “perfect”:
that she won't have to worry anymore about not being able to care and protect her loved ones with her vampire abilities and Cullen resources/wealth
AND
them not being able to take care of themselves without her having to put so much of herself "away".
(All this is how I read how Bella subconsciously feels through her thoughts and actions towards Renee, Edward, sometimes Jacob, Carlie, and even random persons she dowsnt have an intimate bond with.)
B.
Whatever we might say of Bella and Edward, she enjoys the feelings of euphoria she has when she is with Edward over with pretty much anyone else, which translates into her wanting to feel that way forever by being with Edward forever as a vampire.
She also experiences a lot of doubt, because (by Twilight) she knows it won’t last without vampirism and (by Eclipse) Edward left her once before, even though he said that he loved her.
Edward leaving had left her in a state of emotional deprivation like that of a withdrawal state, which is the whole of New Moon.
C.
As a vampire, Bella also has the ability and option to protect herself and those she loves without being in the kind of danger that a normal human is in. Not just from vampires but from the entire world. Vampirism is a tempting state of being after all–all that power…
I tend to think of Bella’s mobility into a new family as more “noble lady”-like.
The Set Up:
The Cullens are figured as an elite group and “the best” examples of personhood through their money and their looks. Which is a very American, purity-model, white, middle class ideals type image.
They are an incredibly powerful group of vampires just by their strong personalities, their invulnerable skin, fast reflexes, etc.
Like DC superheroes, they are still practically invulnerable (from humans), but different in that they are supposed to recognize that their powers and comfort don’t allow them to consider others’ lives/selves as immaterial in comparison to their own. “Humans are people”. Even if it hurts them physically or majorally inconvenices them by hunting animals.
Each of the Cullens perceived themselves as missing something essential to their happiness/happier/innocent past, having lost it to a predatory reality/present: being a vampire that is capable of murdering people quite easily and only being capable of being/doing that. (Except Alice, but even then she goes on a trip to know more about her human past after James dies.)
Twilight Vampires, I think, generally tend to eat humans to enjoy the way the blood makes them physically stronger and the way human blood relieves their pain.
In the story, Bella also perceives the Cullens as this unit of people who choose to stay together for the relative peace that vegetarianism allows them (for different reasons).
One could read Bella as just seeing all of the Cullens as doing it the veggie way because she believes that they all respect human life like Carlisle…except for maybe Jasper.
I believe that Bella sees the Cullens as people finding ways to not feel shitty about their vampirism (killing people), be content with the aftermath of their tragic origins that have exiled them from humanity, and finally doing that while also being forever on the outskirts of human society. Their devotion to something that seems futile is admirative and strange to her because she obviously admires them for sticking to their choice despite the physical and emotional pain that comes with denying their urges.
Here is where Meyer’s Christianity/Mormonism comes in. Doing something that cause you great pain or putting in a lot of effort to be “better” without ever directly seeing or witnessing the whole reward or progression. You do it anyway because you do not want to be “bad” or be a lesser version of yourself that is a “slave” to your instincts. It is also definitely a call back to Mormonism’s “natural man” phenomenon/principle (LINK 1 and LINK 2), which is:
Simply stated, the natural man is the man who remains in his fallen condition; he has not experienced a rebirth. At the one end of the spectrum, the natural man may be a person bent on lasciviousness; he may be one who loves Satan more than God and thereby is carnal, sensual, and devilish.
AND
A person who chooses to be influenced by the passions, desires, appetites, and senses of the flesh rather than by the promptings of the Holy Spirit. Such a person can comprehend physical things but not spiritual things.
The events of Twilight happen and Bella sees the Cullens as a chance at something better and with less responsibility. Or a life that has a lot more passion and autonomy/power in store for her.
This doesn't mean that we would look at "regular" vampires as literally the people who will be burned in a heaven that defintely exists in the Twilight universe. Or that the existence of the inspiration from a specific religious principle must close us off from seeing the emotional value of what it means to be constantly trying not to be the worst and most dangerous of ourselves, to not let that consume you and turn into a "monster". We can acknowledge how religious institutions create unbalanced measures of worth, dependency, hierarchies, etc. AND also see where in the ideas presented appeals to a need we have while ALSO analyzing why it is the way it is, take what works and throw away what doesn't.
Though she might perceive that Jasper isn’t in it for respecting humans, Bella is willing to join the family/coven for the reasons listed above just for herself. Jasper, also, is still part of the unit, which is what is being sought out--the unit and its unity under this singular altruistic and self-beating goal.
And seeing as how she’s used to looking after herself, she’s got this determination to fulfill that desire and satisfy her emotional craving for security and power.
D.
The Cullens’ impressiveness/nobility also comes from their suffering to be as philosophically “human” as possible or retain whatever identity they chose to ground themselves in their vampire monotony/confusion.
The theme of suffering to be oneself or to overcome the suffering of "horrifying aspects" of oneself would be another reason why they are attractive to someone like Bella, the Romantic.
A Modern View (U.S.-Based)
“Found“ Family
While we can see some parallels to the noblewoman and a metaphorical aristocracy, there is also this sense of Bella finding a “true” identity in becoming a vampire and finding a family where she can finally be both her realest and her best self.
A)
Bella came from a household that, no matter how much Renee loved her, was seriously lacking in involved care to the point where she had to pick up most of the slack for herself. When you are tasked with that sort of self-maintainance and self disciplining from a very young age, you grow up a little too fast and faster than the rest of your peers.
So, I think Bella has had to dwell in a psychological, unmutual feedback-less or feedback loop all of her life before she met the Cullens/Edward.
She developed most of her values apart from Renee (other then the marriage thing) so that in itself creates even more emotional distance, which might unconsciously feel like you are creating your own isolation and you are wholly to blame for your own misery, when that might be an overestimation of your capabilities.
But she continues to define her boundaries and keep to her values despite what others might think and what she herself questioned in Eclipse–because she knows what she needs/wants. There is little to no hesitation from her when it comes to the validity of her desires.
So, Bella gets what she doesn’t have from her mom and the larger human populace–connection or purpose–and she finds that necessary ingredient of community in the Cullens. And it doesn’t have to be a bad thing, though it’s certainly not completely positive or purely wholesome.
B)
Bella is not just slightly or majorly depressed. She’s a semi-melancholy character. She is just emotionally detached from (not just the “other girls”, even if that is it as well) just about every single person around her, including Edward.
And that is because she, unlike other people, shows herself to be attracted to the strange, the uncanny, the supernatural–things that are not normal or human or familiar. Because she, being so emotionally isolated, is herself a kind an outcast. Kinda of her own volition but also not.
Bella also shows herself to be resilient, which debatedly comes from her being so on her own.
Now I know what many people say and have said: How is she strong or resilient, she went into full shut down mode after Edward left and has put herself in dangerous situations just to feel his prescence again?!
Let’s try to break it down.
Bella is in love with Edward in a way that has her feel the highest of emotional highs. When he leaves, she is in the lowest of lows. As a person who is used to taking care of their own emotions and inner dynamics, she would of course shut down when the source of her most intense feelings disappears.
Strength is not defined by not ever falling down when you’re hit, but by how and if you stick to getting up. Which if she really was totally weak, she would have offed herself long ago with how intense her connection and feelings are that lead to the intense effects of Edward leaving. (She does have suicidal thoughts, but I don't think Meyer would have let her actually try to kill herself.)
It’s also knowing what you can and cannot deal with and doing all you can to do the things that keep you afloat. Knowing your own limits (the strongest and defining ones) and knowing yourself. Despite what others say you should be doing. I’d define all of this as resilience. (She says as much to Edward as to why she eventually chose him and not Jacob, she knows herself too well)
And in New Moon, we witness Bella acknowledge that Edward was her “best”, try to keep him close as she reaches out to things that make her feel more alive (choosing to cling to the hallucinations, Jacob, and their bike), all the while knowing that this is what she needed in those moments to at least drag herself to that place where she might actually heal.
Strength is not a result, it is a process and an continuous decision/effort.
In other words, Bella is a type of psychological “survivor”, or a survivor resisting against those things that do not condone or accept the strange.....which is then manifested in her gift.
And the entire Twilight series is built up of characters who have gone through some sort or degree of emotional, physical, etc. turmoil, or have been victimized or suffocated and have gotten a new lease on life through vampirism.
Most of what I am saying is more eloquently stated by @volturialice in a reblog of a post by @ opinionatedtwihard:
you’re [@opinionatedtwihard] so right that the fantasy of twilight (and the cullen kids in particular) is about resilience, it’s about not letting pain and suffering define you, it’s about seeing teenagers get to experience that!
I can’t speak for everyone, but to me the power fantasy of twilight vampires, and the cullens especially, was always about second chances.
AND
to me as a reader growing up? it was really powerful to see people who should have been victims become survivors instead. it was a story about survival and hope.
and not only do the cullens survive, but they get new opportunities (this is where the fantasy of obscene wealth comes in.)
AND
now of course there’s a huge caveat here in that we only see a certain type of ~white anglo-american~ person get those second chances and opportunities. that’s where the fantasy falls through for a lot of people, and understandably so. but that I think is why some of us find it so powerful to reimagine/racebend the cullens and other vampire characters—it’s about opening that fantasy up to people who should have been included in the first place.
I also think it’s notable that the cullens get chosen at random, or near-random, or as a cinderelle-esque reward for intrinsic goodness—something their creator sees in them that no one else did (also a power fantasy—someone else seeing your inner worth when even you don’t see it!)
AND
not just the cullens, but so many of the vampire characters in twilight are all people who should have lived short, unremarkable lives and died tragic, brutal deaths. but instead they LIVE and become powerful immortal beings with every opportunity imaginable.
This is why Bella’s journey and the Twilight saga as a whole is so reminiscent of fairytales to some people! It’s not that they mimic the plot of any specific fairytale, but that there is the fear of losing a “self” by “outliving” oneself and all that you can be, because what you can be is also what you already are and what you are capable of becoming.
Part of self-development is acknowledging who you are at the moment as well as knowing the patterns of traits and desires you hold. Finding out what comes easy or difficult to you. And you may feel that some things are just impossible. Teenagers often feel that fear of missing out on themselves or being able to get through something oppressive, traumatic, etc.
Twilight offers you a fantasy where you have the chance to reinvent yourself after having suffered that tumultuous uncertainty. Like other vampire stories, Twilight offers a power & faith-of-self fantasy.
EDIT (5/30/25) However, we may depart in a myriad of ways of how this applies to Bella when we see her seemingly liking her humanity and how she feels about Jacob, hurting herself and Edward by the end of Eclipse.
How do we come to terms with Bella’s (not our own) self disdain and feeling of inadequacy? Twilight doesn't offer a "solution", you just get to experience it through the character and for many people that in itself is enjoyable bc it is an acknowledgement/exploration of present feelings you can't express in your mundane lives.
C)
So, we can definitely say that Bella has entered the high life in becoming a Cullen, but we may also say that she is supposed to have found a more freedom with people she can more easily identify with
Which in its most basic sense seems to mirror the phenomenon of queer persons finding their own “found” families outside of their original biological ones.
Where they can properly grow into better and realer versions of themselves, and leave behind those self limiting constructions they had to hide behind, or make more suffocating “masks” to pass through life without “exposed” as repulsive. For the sake of belonging, safety, and/or self-promotion (the last I mean by career growth or other sorts of ambition/purpose-finding).
.....EDIT (5/8/22) However, do we truly see Bella find self love when she is human or when she is a vampire?
Conclusion
To a lot of readers, Edward wasn’t/isn’t as desirable without his and the Cullens’ personal turmoils that invite the possibility of Bella’s metamorphosis into being someone “better” or “important” and powerful.
She was in love with him--the guy, bc he personifies sublime self-determination--but narratively she is also in love with having a “proper” family.
This turmoil comes from the contradictory natures of:
vampirism, just as a cultural/philosophical concept of taking this one thing for one’s strength and being powerful–>yet also becoming very dependent on it–>themes of helplessness and…..addiction which goes to Meyer
Twilight vampirism (against being so powerful, overly so maybe and yet because of that power being capable of losing complete control of self)
the contradictions between the veggie vamps’ belief about their motivations for vegetarianism versus what is suggestively shown to be their motivations (text vs subtext)—–>even the suspicion that that only Carlisle is truly behind vegetarianism for the morality for it. Are the Cullens really united, emotionally and spiritually?
Edward’s need to prove himself “good” in the face of his never believing so but trying anyway
So, the appeal of Bella and Edward’s story is that it is a romance where the girl goes through an emotional and psychological transformation that she “needed”/yearned for, devoting her self to those that have the means of changing her life. As she thinks and as Meyer makes it by BD.
.....EDIT (5/8/22) Because after reading New Moon and Eclipse, it gets clearer that Bella saw her actions against her, Edward’s and Jacob’s happiness as well as how, in BD, how she started to appreciate human living a little. Could she have appreciated how she had to leave Charlie and her entire human life, and thus, like sex with Edward, thought to stay human longer and simultaneously learn to love herself as a human first, a powerful being that could live with Edward forever second?
While we definitely draw characters and stories from real life dynamics and philosophies, we also have to understand that this is a narrative designed to be a very specific thing to a singular person’s discretion. Everything comes from Meyer’s way of observing the world around her since her childhood, so we can look at her, study her works, and see what we should “keep” and what deserves the bin, because we can literally see that it is from a fallible, faulty way of thinking. If anything, I felt it easier to confront Twilight’s bullshit setups and moments with it being so brazen to be shown as they were.
Like imprinting and that vampires-lose-all-their-skin-color stuff.
Personally, I’m fine “trolling”/defying Twilight and Meyer by making POC vampires who don’t lose their skin color and only letting white vampires become pale.
Like countless others have said before, this is an aspect that reflects more on a white middle aged of young mom aged woman than a teenage girl.
