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).
Rosalie Hale--Why She’s a Feminist & Queer Icon. [CW: SA]
In this Twilight Renaissance we have, many women and queer people (many of them and frequently, white and not absolutely all) love Rosalie Hale. And I think it’s because to many of them, Rosalie presents an opportunity for them to see the struggle with one’s identity in a patriarchal society when one isn’t a man and/or doesn’t conform well enough to gender ideals, even when it seems like that is all she is -> the ideal woman.
(This is essay-like. You have been warned.)
Why Women/Queer People Love Rosalie
From a young age, she’s learned to base her value and womanhood on her appearance. Like all women and girls.
Others have used her for their own ends, including the Cullens without her consent.
She takes an assertive and violent measure against the men who have denied and hurt her. She chooses to do in a very “unlady-like” manner, expressing the pain Edward seems to prefer she’d suppress and ignore rather than actively express. She chose an independent, active doling out of justice over the self-restrictive, passive “peace” that we learn women should do to have respect, approval and support from their peers.
She was, at one point, compelled to conform to others’ expectations and desires.
As a vampire, she’s vilified in the books for not going along with others’ demands despite the fact no one seems to try to ask what she wants.
She’s appears to be have some deep self-doubt. Edward, Carlisle, and Emmett have all have her feel as if her looks were what made her important. And yet, Edward and Emmett , at one point, both made her fear that her looks don’t hold any meaning for her anymore. And she depends on her looks for everything. Because in sinister, silent ways she was partially compelled so.
Meyer seems to use Rosalie as an tool herself when she punishes Rosalie for being shallow because she got everything she needed practically and nothing substantial/long-term emotionally.
Despite all this, Edward does have a tendency to think of her as more spoilt than she is just a spoiled girl. I would say she defintely is spoiled, but she is not simple.
Rosalie’s Human Past & Her Self Worth
A)
We learn two things about pre-Royce, human Rosalie:
1. From the get-go, Rosalie learned to evaluate a person’s worth shallowly:
a person’s worth is their social status/place in the social hierarchy
her worth comes from others’ estimation of her
her social status comes from her looks
her looks determine her worth
2. She didn’t seem to pay that much attention to how others lived in abject poverty outside of her very fortunate, white, “middle-classed” family and insular middle-classed community during the Great Depression.
She didn’t have to think about others, and she wasn’t encouraged to so do, so she didn’t.
Which wouldn’t make me or any non white person like her, but I can contextualize her and adjust without giving self-serving, ignorant white people an out.
B)
So, talking now about human Rosalie’s Royce King-era, her social-climbing parents have it made! Here’s a man that will connect them to the upper classes and give them prestige, and they didn’t even have to verbally hint at him to consider Rosalie to him--he asked for her hand. (Though they did indirectly encouraged her to “pretty” herself up by exposing her hair when she went out and could be noticed by Royce and other wealthy men...but mostly Royce. Yes, they metaphorically used her as bait, folks.)
Though it doesn’t seem like anyone asked for her thoughts about Royce, Rosalie isn’t disappointed or defiant either because:
she was 18....18 year olds (and the rest of us) love hotties
he supposedly is considered handsome and that is what she considered/learned is important
she doesn’t have to clean or cook in the house she wants (I suspect because that’s work for the servants)
she already feels she’s entitled to such a “fortune”-- because she’s a beautiful (white) woman who’s been told that her beauty makes her the GOAT (I exaggerate a little, but I have to find fun when I can, loves.)
I have considered that I’m am making her seem like a basic, boring, maybe even unappealing without giving her credit or diminishing her own choice in all of this.
But I think that Rosalie did not feel the need to protest against an arranged marriage with a man she only glancingly knew because she saw this particular marriage as something good for her, as well as marriage being in of itself inevitable. _Because that was what happened in the 30s.for people in her class.) She might as well look to have the “best” marriage possible. Similar to how people look to obtain the best job/position/deal possible.
She also saw the marriage prospect with Royce as beneficial and unproblematic because:
this is the middle and upper classes of the 30s--marriages like this weren’t how the entire U.S. population got married--but amongst the classes, it occurred more often than not in the middle and upper classes
in her meager 18 years as a human she has learned to value the 3 points above
she was so young and sheltered-->as a person who is part of a larger society that doesn’t encourages, rather discourages her from the world apart form this smaller community (b/c they’re racist snobs), she’d likely not understand her own worth and self outside of privileged domesticity the community promises its denizens--->attitude: if it’s not (clearly) broken, don’t fix it
also, even though she doesn’t have to work for her economic security now either as a newlywed 18 year old/a young unmarried girl, I think she also would have known that as a wife she would adopt the duties that come with being an upper middle classed, white wife and have done some sort of labor that was valuable to her husband: directing the servants; looking presentable at all times; entertaining guests at parties and any other social gathering--casual or otherwise; making sure the children were always healthy and presentable; and generally not acting against her husband’s image/professional/public interests (which is vaguely & generally understood to be stay quiet and busy out of official business)
Finally, Rosalie said in Eclipse that she was in love with the idea of love.
Love to her was/is within the domestic and that particular domestic vision she is familiar with is the one that her white, middle-to-upper-classed community has realized.
Rosalie’s Vampire Past (Before Bella and Forks) & Her Self Worth
Carlisle stumbles on her, raped.
He decides to bring her back to the Cullen cave and to turn her, knowing about her life from the Cullens’ mild engagement and proximity to her community, feeling sorry for her, and deciding to give her a second chance at life.
But, as both Eclipse and Midnight Sun reveal, he also had a tiny, miniscule idea that she’d could be a possible romantic partner for Edward. A small, errant thought rather than a devoted hope.
But Edward says, “Nooo-Ooh Ma’am!, fuck this noise” and flat out rejects her and the very idea of being intimate with her.
This is very offensive to Rosalie because:
a.
Here is another arrangement that-- while more romance-inclined--is still an arrangement that considers, prioritizes, and centers around the man’s satisfaction (Edward’s) over the woman’s (Rosalie’s) needs or desires and without asking for her input. Similar to the Royce situation. Vampire Rosalie is the result of Carlisle’s good heart, BUT I can see Rosalie feeling that he also saw her as something Edward can “enjoy” or find solace and emotional satisfaction with.
But it’s still complicated because even though Rosalie could have been annoyed or frustrated with this unconsciously, she would consciously feel both surprised and grateful that Carlisle thought to change her at all, saved her, arranged a love match for her, and try to assure her happiness even if she wasn’t the primary person he was doing it for.
It was the 30s, Rosalie has just been made a vampire, and her background/past community has made her understand that arranged love/marriage matches are the norm--even perhaps the best way to get people together.
It would be familiar and comforting to her enough for her to maybe ignore or forgo the annoyance she feels and Carlisle’s semi-non-Rosalie-centric reasoning even though she may have unconsciously felt it being a bit unfair.
In her newborn-30s perspective, the arrangement might have been a way of compensation and security (maybe Carlisle might have noticed something like this about her and wanted her vamp life to be as comfortable as possible......maybe?), similar to the sense of security that the arranged marriage with Royce/men was socially a way for her/women to gain economic and emotional security for the rest of her/their lives.
If she was unconsciously feeling like she was a means to another’s happiness more than her own, I think that she wouldn’t have seen it as someone taking away her independence or autonomy.
Instead, she might have seen it as an authority figure giving her direction that she needs for this disorienting time of her vamp life: having a throat that won’t stop hurting, instincts going haywire, and seeing herself look both like herself yet drastically not even though she says she was satisfied with them. There might have been some disconcertion with her looks then, as well as some comfort.
I am not sure what her relationship with Esme is like, but I suspect that they didn’t hit it off immediately and that Esme--very satisfied and settled in her vamp life and though the only other woman--wouldn’t have looked reassuring to Rosalie who had a lot of difficulty. And the way Meyer handles the story (what was that dynamic like, we’ll never get to see it it seems, smh) that emotional distance continued into the present.
b.
If Edward (the person who she was made for by the leader of the new social group she finds herself in) doesn’t like her looks or isn’t attracted to her (even seemingly disgusted by her) WHILE being very physically attractive himself, then Rosalie’s sense of her worth is shot further and her very identity and self worth is in doubt. Because her sheltered privileged human life set her up to see her “self” as predominantly desirable to most if not all. An object of desire the makes others wish to be closer to her or make them want to make her happy/pleased/satisfied.
At this point I’m repeating myself but I found that this is necessary for memory and resisting against sexists’ validation, so....
c.
Rosalie doesn’t really come first to dislike Edward personally until he denies her worth by rejecting her status/being as an irrefutably, universally recognized object of desire.
Her sense of worth is shot even further or it gets worse. Whatever attraction to his looks she may have had goes away like lint in the wind.
And it matters because she becomes lonelier after this, which is definitely not what she needs or wants.
d.
Rosalie didn’t even...
like
the Cullens when she was human.
She was fine with them being outsiders because she didn’t like that “even” (quoted from Eclipse) the men were more beautiful than her.
Because their ultra vampiric beauty made them winners of/competitors for the general public’s favor/attention/approval.
For one of the beautiful outsiders to reject her is a bit too surreal and intimidating for her--she’s confronted with the reality where she isn’t universally, sexually desired (not even a little) and thus not valued at all.
Rosalie is totally alone without Emmett and she would have been completely alone before she turned him if she left the Cullens. I imagine that after going through an ordeal like rape PLUS the fact that as a vampire she wouldn’t be able to totally let go of her trauma, she’d not want to leave the Cullens to become a nomad.
The Cullens are her new, “insulated” social group that replaces her old one, a buffer against the rest of the world....but part of the hope Carlisle has for her and Edward doesn’t set Rose up to completely feel assured that she’s there for more than her looks.
e.
Going back to Carlisle and the value of the proposed Rosalie x Edward to Rosalie....
If vampires in Twilight derive a lot of their emotional satisfaction and happiness from their romantic partners in the face of the dreary, never-ending immortal monotony of vampire life, especially with Rosalie losing a life she treasured and also never really got to live.......
and you are then compensated by being set up with a person who dislikes you....
and the one means toward happiness or contentment has been denied to you before you could even reject it (cuz I truly think she would have rejected Edward)....
Aren’t you then at risk of facing a gradually horrible, wide-reaching loneliness coupled with the invalidation of identity which make you just feel that more hopeless in the hopelessness of vampire monotony?
Rosalie--as an 18 year old who hadn’t been married yet--was used to her beauty giving her benefits from others without real effort on her part.
She was and is emotionally dependent on it and her identity is tied to it. So was her happiness in a way, but as a human, there was potential for change, as she may have saw it later as a vampire.
Here’s what @panlight had to say about the way the books showed Vampire Rosalie:
Her beauty is written about in a way that it makes other people feel bad about themselves, and Edward calls her shallow and SM makes little jokes about Rosalie fussing over her hair all the time and it's like, maybe it's not shallow vanity? Maybe it's the trauma? She was beautiful as a human and she's still beautiful now, maybe she clings to it because it IS a part of her human idenitity in a way. Maybe she fusses over her hair because unlike her skin and eyes and facial features, it's basically the same as when she was human.
So, the vampire life didn’t start out well for her.
And what does Emmett mean to Rosalie? What is the integrity of their relationship?
Well, it’s complicated:
Rosalie finds Emmett while she’s hunting not long after her newborn year, and she had to go through the trial of resisting the urge to drain his bloody body. (Really, a trial that any vegetarian/”moral” vampire will eventually struggle to do.)
Emmett is a part of her support system, as well as part of her emotional compensation for her hurt and all that she has lost: a human future with a family of her own.
However, he could be said to also be a hook that will forever keep her within her own unhappiness with being a vampire. Very much like how someone might interpret how children are for many women who become mothers. Which seems unfair to both Emmett and Rose to me.
Explanation
a.
When Rosalie found and ran with Emmett so Carlisle could save him, she was able to control herself by ignoring her own still-overwhelming instincts. With how difficult it is for the ordinary human-feeding vampire, much less an older animal-drinker, her self control was maintained despite bloody Emmett being tat close to her face for that long. She was also in some emotional turbulence--with Edward avoiding her, Esme focusing more on Carlisle and Edward, and Carlisle doing his best and having saved her (making her grateful) but also being the person who made it possible for her to experience her loss with the part-hope (no matter how small) of seeing her partnered up with someone who doesn’t like her (Edward). A lot of inner confliction (but not about her killing Royce, that I imagine she’s very satisfied with.)
With all that inner turmoil, it’d be even harder for her concentrate on restraining herself.
But she won against her instincts--a triumph. Emmett’s existence thus gave her a positive, self-sufficient sense of self, which she probably unconsciously needed at that time.
b.
Rosalie feels as if she chose Emmett, which gives her another sense of control. Her parents chose Royce for her AND that didn’t work towards her favor, so I imagine that Rosalie is more insistent on doing things her way when it’s about her emotional security and comfort...because duh.
Also, she, a woman, chose a man to be close to her, instead of her father, Royce, and all other male external parties deciding things for her just in general.
c.
However, with Emmett--her forever-lover as vampires don’t change--we find that her worth and happiness is still wound up with her looks. And there’s two ways this can go.
A) Emmett’s attraction to her seems to stem mostly from her beauty, as she and Meyer tells us. Emmett would most likely not have paid her any attention aside from the gratitude for saving his life if she hadn’t been beautiful. If 100% true or proven without a doubt, I imagine that it would open up more doubt that doesn’t go away, even though/especially because they’re together forever: is it real, this love?
If it’s not a conscious concern, I doubt that someone wouldn’t have this at the back of their mind. And with Rosalie’s need for more control
B) Rosalie has learned to appreciate her looks apart from how others define them or pigeonhole them into being something that works for their own interests. It also helps to resist the sense that she somehow “deserved” her rape or somehow “invited“ it just by being beautiful.
Nor is it that Rosalie is somehow stupid or philosophically in error for relying on the same principles of white female beauty that has “obviously” made it so that she, as a woman, always loses. Because sometimes we place fault on a woman for focusing even more on her appearance after being sexually attacked-- “don’t you know that you getting attention made you a victim, why would you continue putting makeup on and dressing like a slut?”
Even though a patriarchal society does place a woman’s inherent value on her appearance, it appears that Rosalie has found some happiness by styling and paying even more attention to her hair, clothes, etc.-- her looks and appearance are now more within her own standards and control.
Though her looks have changed to be paler and sharper, her cheekbones, jawline, weight, etc. all resemble her human self’s. It serves to make her feel more connected to her human life/self/past, comforting her and making her feel whole-r. Her human past--before the rape and before Emmett--was her happiest and the most fulfilled despite the things she didn’t know heavily made her the shallow princess she was.
And after a short but happier lifetime like hers where she generated self-worth through her looks, is it not her looks where she would fall back on? We find happiness in the places that is most familiar.
She may also look at Emmett loving her looks as him appreciating that what she remembers to be a part of herself, or helping her to.
She also has a determination to not let her rape deter her from loving sex and intimacy, as we see her consistently sexing Emmett up--pretty quickly after he was turned.
@panlight writes:
There's so much about Rosalie that could be framed as strength and resilience and taking power back that is instead always framed in the most negative way to make her a vain brat.
Her sex life with Emmett is the butt of jokes rather than being a testament to the work she must have done and what a supportive partner Emmett must be for her to be so comfortable after her horrific experiences.
Her frequent weddings are written off as her being showy and vain rather than her wanting to celebrate the one thing she genuinely likes about the vampire life she never wanted: her love story with Emmett.
Rosalie loving Emmett and wanting to marry him several times and her consistently taking care of her hair or styling it don’t have to necessarily be signs of her superficial vanity or wanting everyone to feel lesser than her.
Rosalie could also look to Emmett as her way of loving romance again, loving herself, or just hating herself less than if she did without him.
d.
Rosalie was a sexual assault victim. Having loads of sex with the very eager Emmett seems to be her way of silently defying the sense that she is spoiled goods.
SA victims can have trouble with:
having sexual pleasure
having their communities perceive and treat them as “damaged goods” or delicate and weak
or be treated as if their assault was entirely their fault for being “too available”
or have people treat them as a person who has too much “baggage” to deal with and thus be not worth deep communication or emotional support
Oftentimes, people and institutions treat rape and sexual assault victims as if they lost their attractiveness or value because the ideas are that:
they have been “taken”
they aren’t considered virgins anymore
and their bodies have been “trespassed”--thus their value/attractiveness depreciates.
A) Virginity as a social concept, in several patriarchal and hierarchal societies was a means of assuring that the woman hasn’t given birth to a child that is not the offspring of her male partner and thus could “steal” the family property. Or their actual father has access to the woman’s male partner/property holder and is thus another competitor of his authority.
Men were the legal and universally known inheritors of property and sociopolitical leadership in places like England, pretty much from medieval era to at least the late 1800s. The woman as the object of desire was so desired by the inheritor and those under their authority because she/her womb was the means to getting children that could inherit and continue the family legacy/property claim.
Thus the “illicitly” devirginized sex assault victim’s value plummets to nothing, even when they obviously didn’t consent to it.
B) And today in the 2000s, though virginity may not be about literal property and money since women can get property for themselves and by themselves, enough social groups and individuals do still find virginity to be a good or necessary thing.
Considered “good” even today for:
the personal sense of ownership/claim over their partner’s experiences/body
to claim to be “clean”, “pure” and “untouched”--appeal to others who may desire the virgin in question--declaim the still demonized “slut” whose body has been places (virgins can’t be sluts)
So virginity takes a away agency and a possible sense of a women/queer person’s value apart from their more from-birth/“natural” bodies.
Such ideas and prejudices disproportionately affect women and queer people.
They do affect cis straight men in that some women will like that their male partners are virgins, but:
those men don’t get the virginity pressure as much since they also are the takers of virginity--the active ones, the go-getters of our capitalist patriarchal society. Men/masc people ideologically still have the saving grace of being the directors of others, or being the default authority.
some women desire male virgins in order to feel less vulnerable to the dynamic of virginity as sexual objects--when men are virgins, ironically, they become the object of desire/sexual object/the object that is judged by another, which is the reverse of the usual woman-is-sexual-object dynamic
There is also the inheritance from ancient Roman ideas/practices of sexuality where the ones penetrating their partners were defined as citizens (not just men, I mean political citizens) and were legally designated to be the political leaders/participants. The ones penetrated were male slaves and male sex workers and all/any women--those with no legal political power. If a noble Roman man were sexually penetrated by another man of any position, it generally diminished his own political valence.
Women and queer folks who may femininely present are seen as the affected ones--the ones that others’ actions are done to and aren’t encouraged to take leadership positions. If the gender-bias and homophobia against women and queer people in the workplace has anything to say about it.
C) Virginity, though it is attached to men’s bodies today, also still retains the idea of the body’s purity/attractiveness. Men’s attractiveness hasn’t stemmed from their body’s sexual purity as long as the way women has always have in many Western societies.
The longer something exists the more normal it is and becomes.
Cis, straight male/masculine-presenting sexual assault victims also get the “But you’re a dude/so masculine, so how couldn’t you stop it?” or “It wasn’t rape, you’re a guy/masc. it doesn’t count!” dismissiveness. This is clearly problematic because it both makes men/masc. persons unable to have easily access healing resources or sympathy since they are seen as undeserving of those things. It also encourages them to perceive themselves as failures; they feel like they didn’t perform their socially-contrived masculinities as being the active aggressor.
It is another way to victim blame, but that sort of blaming is subtly different from the victim blaming a woman/queer/feminine-presenting person gets.
Virginity is a concept that is supposed to be an appeal for the designated inheritor of privilege/authority differently than it would be for the virgin in question. Though the virgin will likely learn to value their virginity for the access it gives them to those want ownership over their bodies, it doesn’t discount that those who want their bodies for their own political authority perceive that virgin as a means for political authority and will continue to believe and treat that virgin as an object geared towards their benefit alone.
Who does the cis, straight man’s virginity appeal to (other than the women who feel more empowered by sleeping with virgin men)? Other cis, straight men, the claimed “takers” who aren’t supposed to value other men’s untouchedness?
When I mentioned male/masc. assault victims’ victim-blaming above, those who said those things to those people will likely not consider the integrity of their virginity as much as the integrity of their masculinity and authority.
Masculinity, as its own concept as the more authoritative thing, isn’t as tied to virginity as femininity is.
e.
Rosalie thought Emmett was attractive when she saved him because, as she told Edward and Bella, she saw “innocence” and “honesty” (Midnight Sun) in him, AND something she saw reflected in her human friend’s baby (Eclipse). Rosalie needs such things because she may be plagued with self doubt, but also because Emmett reminds her of her human life and doesn't judge her, so she wo't have to take on anymore shame.
Emmett, in this view, would be her kind of saving grace and haven. He doesn’t demand she do or be anything other than what she wants to give or be, which is both a reprieve from Edward’s/society’s censure and presents itself a fault in the story Meyer creates since Emmett likes her looks a lot more that he seems to like her personality.
Emmett could also be a kind of “innocent”, similar to the situation I brought up about male virgins and their female partners: that some women may feel more empowered when they encounter a male virgin because the roles are reversed and they can act out the “active” position. Human Emmett may or may not have been a virgin, but he does take on that “innocent” role--at least how how he doesn’t have a complex or demanding personality.
By personality, he is very straightforward, upfront, and “honest”: he doesn’t pretend to have ulterior motives or hypocritical notions of protecting or looking out for her for her own interest but is really looking to control her and thus looking to make excuses for his behavior.
f.
[*See below about Rosalie and Motherhood.]
Essentially, Rosalie can be read to be empowered by, forced to be content with, or has her life wrapped around Emmett’s existence.
Like a baby or a small child (and with her higher social status), Emmett provides her with the sense that she’s more than “herself” and that her prior notion and love for the idea of love has continued into her unfulfilling vampire life.
Rosalie and Jasper
If we are to argue that Rosalie still seems like she’s too emotionally dependent on Emmett for it to be a case of her actually healthily recovering or winning over her rape, then I must bring up Jasper’s reliance on Alice.
Rosalie and Jasper are similar in that Jasper also looks to Alice as a kind of emotional support system and to counteract how vampire life has either treated them. However, Jasper’s bond with Alice comes to his inability to keep feeding on humans--due to his unswitchable gift that makes him feel everything that people feel as they’re feeling it--and simultaneously not feel...depressed. Which means that he literally felt the pain/fear of his victims as he hunted them. Like other vampires, the thought of hunting animals never crossed his mind (and apparently he can’t feel animals’ emotions.)
Alice provided him access to the Cullens (veggie lifestyle) as well as the means of self control as she can predict if/when he’ll lose control before he actually does so he can either prepare or leave ASAP.
But neither of these reasons don’t really explain how he truly fell in love with her or how she fell in love with him. They are more about Alice being the person monitoring Jasper, unlike Rosalie doing things her way and looking to Emmett for romance and love. Jasper seems way more emotionally dependent on Alice than Rose is on Emmett.
Meyer/Edward tells us that Jasper and Alice fell in love in a “mystical” sort of way, as opposed to Rosalie and Emmett’s more “physical” love. As if the two got together due to the universe’s non-understandable powers (and Alice’s future-telling power) brought the unlikeliest of partners together because they needed to be brought together. As if the two are soulmates....
This just seems like an excuse to have the two together in a romantic relationship. Alice doesn’t need to be romantically tied to Jasper for her to help him out. Plus the set-up makes Alice the authority and keeper of Jasper in a way that is more parental than partner.
I assume that since Meyer set up vampires as generally not being friendly and sometimes getting violent in first-time encounters (and Jasper was already made worse by being in a newborn army) that she felt that her lore only allowed vampires who are romantically/sexually attracted to each other have a chance at actually wanting to “help” each other out emotionally.
Rosalie and Motherhood/Children
A)
Before she becomes a vampire, Rosalie realized that she wanted children. And after she becomes a vampire, the desire turns into a painful yearning that makes her value her looks even more.
As a human, Rosalie felt a deep envy (as opposed to just jealousy) for the first time when she saw how happy her less attractive friend was with her lower- classed husband and baby son. Specifically the child. Rosalie felt that her life was missing something afterwards, something that she felt would give her own life new meaning. And that was a child.
Why?
Because children love/need/want you for you, not because you’re pretty.
You have a lot of authority over a child more than a child has over you.
Maybe both; in different circumstances and emotional/psychological states/periods of life and development. and even then it varies in which way the feelings lean.
(Check out Section C below for explanation.)
Rosalie thought that she can get this with Royce, because she had no reason to think Royce wouldn’t at least let their children be near her for her to love and take care of.
Besides, what else would she do to get children? She hasn’t learned of any other possible avenue where she would get what she wants without marriage, and if she did, she’d:
have to have a more ingenious (out-of-the-box, inventive) mindset to pair with her “tenacity” and admiratively stubborn determination
not care about her status and determine her self worth on her own
have lived in a society that had a strong hand in guiding her to believe in looks-are-everything, which discouraged her from thinking outside the box
Which, looking at what she’s up against (her own learning and lack of personal resources), would discourage a lot of folks and could have done to her, which in turn makes her not think outside of the box (in a real-life scenario).
If you got a comfy life, you’d take the road more traveled.
B)
Meyer seems to want us to see Rosalie wanting children as her one redeeming quality, or at least the only thing that will give her true happiness. But those are two different things trying to be the same or yielding the same ends.
If we posit that Rosalie wanting kids redeems her shallowness, we ignore that she hasn’t had much control over what happened to her all her life and that that shallowness isn’t completely self-generated but was encouraged.
She isn’t different from most people from any era in that she just goes along with the rest of society to live comfortably. People be people, and women aren’t different from that aspect.
Though some would say that also makes her a boring person and a flat character, I’d say:
not every character has be a sort of hero that strives to be “the best” by being “different”--Emmett and Esme aren’t remarkable except for physical strength or being able to love without conditions--sometimes having a “normal” person is refreshing...I personally don’t go for that most of the time, but I also appreciate “real” people because that is real and something I can relate to, which itself is valuable
take that up with society and Meyer instead of Rosalie and either real-life or fictional women
people do this a lot in some capacity and in many circumstances. The world is filled of shallow people and people, shallow or not, make the easier choice often. No one is exempt from that. Rosalie isn’t particularly distinct in that, so how could she be evil for it?
why wouldn’t there be at least one vain and shallow, or very basic person who’d nonetheless celebrated from being a pretty white girl in a drama like Twilight? Our society eats that shit up.
If we posit that having children is how she can gain authentic happiness and is the means of which she can find solace in her meaningless life, then we must look at how reproduction and woman’s worth were and are considered as one and the same for millennia in Western European societies.
Family planning was a complicated business for everyone involved, but for women it easily became a heavier burden and a need, which turns it into even more of a load rather than a possible blessing. Or a confliction of both where a mother doesn’t really know what to consider her children--a gift or a burden? Both?
And with the fact that Western EU standards of femininity/womanhood and its unequivocal ties to a woman’s social and individual worth have informed and shaped how many of us see women, I don’t think anyone could logically claim that the U.S. and other past-colonized/”imperialized”/gender/class/race-based hierarchical societies aren’t living with the consequences of such ideologies.
C)
I do think that canon poses Rosalie’s desire for children to ultimately come down to her needing to feel like someone loves/values her for just anything else but her looks. With kids, she’d have a non appearance-based & authoritative (but not purely autonomous) avenue of self worth.
I do also believe that canon Rosalie sincerely wanted to have children for themselves/her personal happiness. The ability to have kids was taken from her, so she now covets and desires something that she should have had but she would have never been able to get without a great personal cost.
Emmett sure does act childish and he is a good stand in, but he isn’t Rosalie’s own physical child that she could have an undeniable/permanent sort of bond she could have as a mother does to her child. As she’s learned to see the parent-child bond.
A child that she is responsible for making sure they grow happy, healthy, safe, and self-sufficient.
A paradox.
D)
Part of how a person estimates their own worth is how they’re legally/politically/economically positioned in society and how others treat them early on in their childhood and further on in their lives.
Rosalie didn’t have the personal means to support herself--short of running away with thousands of her family’s cash and to even do so she’d have to conceive and believe that there was a better life for her outside of the one she already has.
So ironically and tragically, I think that, for Rosalie the character at least, and as Meyer wrote her story in the context of the larger story, children would have been seen as more of a burden on both Rosalie and her children.
Not the children as babies, but maybe when they’re older and need to get married and build lives for themselves. Mothers were/are routinely held responsible for their children’s actions.
Those kids would most likely resent her for what I imagine could turn into invasive and slightly controlling behavior (keeping in mind that she’d be so focused on having kids that I don’t know what she’d do with a child she wouldn’t understand--what would sheltered-Rosalie do if she had a kid that thought like Bella, or Leah?) towards them to the point where there’d be emotional distances between them.
Rosalie would still love them, but it could have turned into a strained sort of parent-child relationship.
...but maybe she also could have been a mother who knew she had to understand the need for boundaries? We will never know for certain or with evidence of her future self since she was turned at the baby age of 18 and would have died if she hadn’t been turned.
The chance is gone, poof, disappeared and never to return--again under the perspective of Stephenie Meyer/present post-modern society. All thoughts about her being either the “worst” kind mother or the “best” sort of mother are headcanons and theories that will never be tested in canon.
Thus people have fan-fiction Rosalie is a myriad of ways.
Rosalie, Race, and So-Called “Beauty”
Vampire venom (possibly) forces its victim to forever retain the last feelings and attitudes they had moments before they turned, or dying in Rosalie’s case. Again, as a vampire, Rosalie’s beauty still gives her a sense of autonomy she feels was denied because it allowed Emmett in her life so she could really start trying to live it.
But when she was human, the main source of Rosalie’s content were material comforts, which wouldn’t be a morally gray area or particularly evil. She was a white girl who lived comfortably in a luckier, sheltered, and wealthier environment.
Race & It’s Historical/Present Implications of Beauty/Worth
A)
Blonde with blue eyes (even though they’re darker than the baby blues people historically praised or envied), Rosalie also had the added privilege of being the model realization of the white superior. For the successful, white family and society she grew up in, Rosalie’s beauty helps her get the attention of her father and mother, who make sure to subtly present her everywhere, fishing for a wealthy man. Then, because of this and because of those ideals living in the minds of everyone around her, Royce notices her. For all Rosalie knows, this is her getting everything she wanted. (Motherhood will “obviously” come later, therefore she may feel she has everything.)
Heidi is reportedly as gorgeous as Rosalie, which means her human self was as attractive as human Rosalie. She has brown, “mahogany” hair, so she’s not as “special” visually (I’m discounting her psychological gift of attraction).
Kebi is apparently also as gorgeous as Heidi and Rose (the fandom site here), but she’s not white nor did it seem like she was paler than other native Egyptians as a human. (Though some people may come at me and say that North Africans or Egyptians are not African or Black but white....I can’t make this up.)
Tanya and Rosalie both have the perfect “white girl” beauty. They are all are blonde (even though Tanya has some red in her hair, but this might make her that much more “attractive, since she’s a little “different”) and they all happen to have symmetrically smaller bodies.
I don’t make the “rules”, I just know them.
More on Kebi
Kebi is Egyptian, darker-skinned, and darker-haired. Too non-white and non-Christian. From a 2005 perspective, even though Kebi came from ancient Egypt, where Islam didn’t even exist for thousands of years, some readers (sheltered and/or racist/xenophobic/Islamophobic, but it’s many) would feel Kebi to be undesirable because of Egypt’s history and having of Islamic traditions and peoples. AND of Arabic or North African peoples not being considered “white” or white “enough” in many eugenist writings and claims that have informed minds today.
Yes she is an ancient person, but does race or racists distinguish between an ancient Egyptian and a modern one?
B)
I didn’t include Edward or Carlisle--two of the extraordinarily attractive white, male vampires--in my list. Jasper and Emmett are reportedly not as hot as either of the mentioned men. Carlisle’s human blue eyes and blonde hair upholds that Aryan race agenda (AND he’s the leader). Edward doesn’t completely fit, with his human green eyes and his reddish hair. However, these men still are both suggested to be as universally considered attractive as Rosalie--not just in Bella’s fandom-posited bisexual/polysexual POV. Other people fawn or have jealousies over Edward like they do Rosalie. We have siobhan explicitly state that Edward is prettier than most people (vampires, who venom already "perfects") she has ever seen. And she's lived a while, but she also doesn't necessarily want to sleep with him either (more below with soem repetitions).
These two men don’t find conflict with their attractiveness; at most it brings them some discomfort but not tragedy.
Edward keeps getting proffered by Tanya and hears teen girls sigh over how hot he is all the time. Nothing about it determining his autonomy or agency like with Rosalie. Same with Carlisle.
C)
Twilight has a system of beauty that is very simplistic and reductionist (fandom website and suggested in the novels):
ugly humans turn into average-looking vamps (in a human’s POV); are still ugly to other vampires
average-looking humans turn into pretty vampires (in the human POV); still average to other vampires
pretty humans turn into god-like creatures to (the human POV); still just “pretty” or lovely to other vampires
Edward and Rosalie aren’t just considered extra hot to Bella. Many people throughout the series show how their looks are nearly universally considered attractive.
Mike reluctantly acknowledges Edward’s attractiveness by calling him a pretty boy in the first book when he complained to Bella how Edward was “freaky”, further implying that Bella shouldn’t be attracted to Edward.
Jacob at one point showed discomfort with how attractive he found Rosalie when he recounted to Bella how the pack and the Cullens tried to capture and kill Victoria in Eclipse. Not Alice, not Esme, Rosalie. All three women already have lovers/mates, and Alicen and Rosalie were turned around the same age, too, so we can't use that excuse.
Laurent payed a lot more attention to Rosalie than he did Esme or Alice when James’ coven entered the faux-baseball field in Midnight Sun. And he never even looked at Esme or Alice. Rosalie, as the book showed the scene to Edward, seemed to take all of Laurent’s attention. (Though it is also possible he just likes blondes, going by how he eventually mates Irina, but with the other evidence, eh.)
In the flashback of MS, Siobhan calls Edward "pretty". Generally, when humans call someone that or any complimentary physical descriptor, they mean to say that they find that person’s features more attractive than others’. Vampires are not different from humans in that they also pay attention/value beauty or physical attractiveness in other vampires and humans. Siobhan's own creator chose to change her and add her to his vampire harem specifically because he saw, what the Guide says, was her distinctive beauty and pretty features as well as her (characterized as ) “semi-feminine” build.
(More on vampire attractiveness and where Meyer may have gotten the inspiration from in another post.)
Extra (not someone else’s quote)
Nothing against Bella being possibly bisexual or pan. It’s that I don’t think she is bi/pan in the actual books and or the canon universe because of the reasons listed above about Meyer’s making pretty humans turn into extra-pretty vampires that nearly every vampire and human perceive as ultra-ultra hot. Both men and women who seem straight in the canon universe can see how beautiful Edward, Rosalie, and even Carlisle are without being sexually attracted to them.
There are also different types of attraction, link here:
Sexual attraction: attraction that makes people desire sexual contact or shows sexual interest in another person(s)
Romantic attraction: attraction that makes people desire romantic contact or interaction with another person or persons
Aesthetic attraction: occurs when someone appreciates the appearance or beauty of another person(s), disconnected from sexual or romantic attraction
Sensual attraction: the desire to interact with others in a tactile, non-sexual way, such as through hugging or cuddling
Emotional attraction: the desire to get to know someone, often as a result of their personality instead of their physicality. This type of attraction is present in most relationships from platonic friendships to romantic and sexual relationships
Intellectual attraction: the desire to engage with another in an intellectual manner, such as engaging in conversation with them, “picking their brain,” and it has more to do with what or how a person thinks instead of the person themselves
So Bella might just have an aesthetic attraction for Rosalie and a romantic-emotional-sensual-aesthetic-sexual attraction towards Edward. It is possible for Bella may not have a personal attraction to Rosalie as much as acknowledge that Rosalie is just beautiful the way that straight women can see another random woman as attractive but feel no sexual attraction.
If people wish to make revisionist literature that fixes Twilight, pursue different storylines that interest them or makes them happy, or even makes it more palatable to fit current ideas of sexuality/gender/class/racial values--especially if they have faced discriminatory acts against them--by all means--write. I mentioned fanfic earlier. Some have also headcannoned Edward to have only aesthetic attraction for Bella and more sexual or romantic attraction towards Carlsile or Rosalie.
Vampire venom canonically makes a human more physically attractive/the more physically attractive versions of themselves, which may mean that vampire faces are more symmetrical.
Vampire venom thus acts like a biological, corrective plastic surgery, but only half way and just enough to fool the prey that vampires don’t even need to fool. (They’re already so strong and fast to never experience losing their prey by mistake...unless that human is protected by shapeshifters, werewolves, or other vampires.)
Humans in Twilight also canonically have have vision inferior to vampires’, who’d be able to see all subtler physical “imperfections”.
James was reportedly “ugly” as a human, so he’s ugly to other vampires, but average-looking to humans.
Bella is supposed to be average or “plain” as a human and so turns “pretty” as a vampire.
But Bella, Esme, Emmett, Jasper, and Alice as vampires are still not as pretty as Rosalie.
Rosalie was gorgeous as a human so she’s "god-like" as a vampire.
Apparently, Rosalie and Edward are just that hot.
To sum it up, the series--outside of Bella’s perspective--makes it a point to say that Rosalie was a person who was considered gorgeous as a human so venom made her extra-extra beautiful as a vampire.
It still strikes me as clever since it ties back into venom enhancing the former human’s features and abilities. And there’s the implication that pale=beautiful and that you can absolutely and universally measure and recognize attractiveness.
It was also nice to have such a simple view of the world, where everything about how humans perceive each other can be just explained away with no rebuttals or conflicts, especially at a time where I questioned my own attractiveness constantly and under external (mostly racist) pressures. I metaphorically paled when I noticed that venom made people paler even when I was first reading the series as a teen. But I was, and still am, so entranced with the idea of a corrective, biological substance. (But, what does this mean for labioplasty?!!!)
Final Thoughts
A)
Rosalie’s human upbringing and her youth and level of maturity -at-turned set her up to “obsess” over needing the assurance of both security and agency.
B)
Rosalie’s narrative role in Twilight is self-contradictory.
The series considers Rosalie morally irredeemable and stupidly stuck in a unjustifiably angsty. As if it is just her fault that she is unhappy.
Meanwhile Meyer also uses very attractive women like Rosalie to make the point that very attractive women are more likely targets of physical and emotional mistreatment as a consequence of the patriarchy that conflates a woman’s character to their appearance.
But by doing this Meyer still shifts the responsibility or root cause or mistreatment to the victim/receiver of others’ actions: Rosalie’s extreme beauty was the reason why a man saw fit to hurt her.
Similar to man to how people victim-blame when they attribute the hurt’s cause to the woman’s actions of not acting within the behavioral/visual restrictions of a woman (whether true or not).
If Rosalie, one of the most beautiful women and more importantly more so than most other woman, could be “destroyed” specifically for being the higher “grade” of woman then women themselves can never be safe from male sexual aggression. Someone less pretty (by white, 20000s society/Meyer’s system, average<pretty<beautiful) but still “pretty” are more likely to be sexually assualted than those who are just “average”. Only “average” and “ugly” women are either completely “safe” or be the least likely recieve the least assualts---> which is not true b/c:
If we define ugly/average to be not very expressive in visual stuff (makeup and clothing) and even with those that do not fit into the current beauty ideals, there is evidence that some men will try to go for wo they perceive as the least assuming or visually distinct woman because they think they won’t have trouble assaulting them, even in public. and that goes for most rape and SAs
So, Meyer conveys that male aggression is inherent and inescapable. That it is directly tied to how attractive rather than how vulnerable you are.
Also she by doing so, she conveys that their beauty disallows them from being having access to the contentment and peace that is having a family or just having kids.
Because, you know every woman should have kids or look to get authority over others (Alice, too, here) to be happy, right? Because child-rearing and domesticity that may have a familial hierarchy is the definition of happiness, yes?
Or that it’s one’s looks that cause their abuse and not the abuser’s sense of entitlement buttressed by opportunity or sociopolitical privilege.
Or that because a woman happens to physically conform to a society’s beauty ideals and receives a lot of privilege for it, she must be written out of the very restrictive domestic happiness pushed onto most women either directly or through allowed “glitches” in liberalizing infrastructure.
Meyer wrote Rosalie’s desire for children and her love for Emmett in a way that confines her to being a semi-laughable failure. (Poor woman, she can’t let go of her past even though she will never have anything like what she wants. Silly, poor woman.)
C)
I like Rosalie as a character because she gives me the opportunity to think about the paradoxes that we live in and create to respond to the struggles that come from us trying to “conquer” them. If we ignore that Meyer boxed Rosalie in a corner for the sake of supporting her vision of domesticity.
For me, it seems Rosalie , as a vampire, craves and values agency that was denied to her as a human.
Rosalie’s wish to have a child seems to be an earnest desire to have a child and realize her own vision of domesticity--which is fine because that was her true desire while being in a position where that would have been pushed on her anyway. However that vision is Meyer’s, who has denied Rosalie that and making it seem like it was her fault when she set up Rosalie to be so narrowly characterized.
Rosalie makes me think: How do we become more obsessed with getting power/authority over autonomy? What does each look/feel like, especially when you’re trapped in perceiving things a certain way? Or would we just try to avoid being under a power we don’t approve of for ourselves? Where and how do the lines get so blurred?
Rosalie, to me, also is somewhat like Othello since her problems as a woman share that “How do I stay relevant to people who would treat me like an object based on things I can never change and should I change them” conundrum. And it's ironically not unlike Edward's insecurity but with him/a male, it's more about failure of ability than the supposed validation form one's looks and thus a lot of Edward's problems are more self-inflicted bc he expects a lot from himself that isn't that necessary. From a lack of contextaulism of what "human" is.
Both characters do still tragically consume self-defeating ideologies at some point in their lives that limits them from perceiving exactly how others’ specific actions against them (real and theoretically) set against them until it’s too late.
I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again. Why did Jasper Hale have to be a Confederate? What point was Meyer trying to do with such information, especially when she refused to go into how Jasper might have related to the goals of the Southern states entering the Civil War?
In my mind, I have an image of Jasper that contrasts the Jasper Meyer presents. I worry how easy it is to admire the character and forget his narrative purpose as we also rewrite the original.
I could have waved my Jasper crush loud and proud, but was first forced to hide under shifty eyes and a troubled soul, then just acknowledge that Jasper was both a racist creation and a racist with no redemption arc.
This is my lament. And the beginning of why/how I think Jasper’s existence in the series as a character and as a product/device for creative narration is racist in of itself.
After dropping such a bomb, Meyer proceeds to never address it ever again. Bad for several reasons:
From a narrative, story-building standpoint, you only add certain details to a character if we’re going to use that to add some sort of layer to their personality and actions. Jasper being a soldier is fine. Necessary for him to be swept up in Maria’s newborn wars and be chosen by her specifically for those wars. Jasper being an American, fine, cause the Cullens are in that country for most of their development and he had to easily meet Alice. (Even vampires usually keep close to their national origins). Jasper having run away from home to join the army? Fine. Edward was about to do the same and it was a thing young adult men did when wars were expected and more common.
However, out of all the historical options (Union soldier, Mexican American war, any other South of U.S./post 18th century war), Meyer chooses one of the most unequivocally morally bankrupt positions to have in the course of human history). And after its revelation, we don’t get to know how even if Jasper believed in the subjugation of Black people under white men. Why did he join the Confederacy? If it was to allude to the brainwashing of poor whites by rich planters to get them to be more sympathetic to them instead of the Black folk-- who they practically had much more in common with--and Jasper was one of those very impressionable persons (young and wanting to prove himself. Was his family even poor? The lack of consideration?!!), then why not just show that instead of leaving such pertinent information? It could have made Jasper irredeemable even then...unless you also show how and if he ever changed his sentiments.
Why are we given so much guesswork?! A fiction/fantasy writer tickles their readers’ fancies, not leave all the psychological and deep historical analyses to them to the point where they’re writing the story!!!
I shouldn’t be making your character for you. And you shouldn’t be pretending to give me something whole when only giving me half. There’s a difference between mystery, suggestiveness and just pretending that the things that everyone already knows exists (racism) don’t exist or don’t have a great weight in influencing people’s decisions and motivations. In Twilight and with the presence of Jasper, all it does is:
create a nonperson (who is Jasper other than an accessory/narrative tool for Edward and Bella’s relationship to survive the newborn invasion? And for Bella to finally get to “know” all the Cullens to prepare her entry?)
create a space for unconfronted or questioned feelings and ideas (Some readers’ first thought reading Jasper’s story--at least those not thinking enough about race: “I know something’s wrong here, but I can’t think of what and but now Jasper seems to have reformed, so I don’t care because I know he’s supposed to bad!”)
diminish the evil, extent, and dominance of white supremacy: ”ooh, look it’s possible that Jasper is to be a better person so I shouldn’t look at his position in racism too closely. Maybe racism isn’t all that bad, or it’s over [Jasper got over it], or maybe racism has an easy solution.”
Maybe one will argue that Meyer really wants us to dislike Jasper (because it’s so obvious that racism and the slave system was bad, stop being so dramatic) just so he provides a foil against Edward, Carlisle, and Emmett. Which is so boring and flat. And misguided. If we imagined Jasper as literally anything apart from the the Confederacy or any “cause“ that was less directly anti-black, then I wouldn’t be so hostile towards the guy.
Literally, I think that Jasper would have been, if not a “perfect”, morally good person, then a cool mofo. Guy can take three vampires at once apparently, and he has got the scars to prove it! He also has a tormented but determined constancy that I can’t personally help myself swooning from. You could get all of that with any other war, because war is grisly and reveals how far people will go to have power over others, feel powerful, and/or defend themselves. The concessions they make, the sins they commit, and the psychological toll that comes with it all.
So the Confederacy? Why? Why!?
For the cheap shock value and black-and-white thinking that will get us to think more about Edward x Bella, that’s why. And to avoid any more work/responsibility that comes with showing the repercussions of racism.
And it’s disgusting, because what’s left is racism unaddressed. And of looking deeper into Jasper’s personality and of how Jasper might still be racist and most likely still is.
You can’t have consensual sex without any and all knowledge of the risk of doing so.
If there is a possibility that one or both or all partners could get seriously hurt or killed, it has to be shared for it to be meaningful and consensual sex.
The Denali sisters accidently but frequently killed their human male lovers before switching to the animal diet.
You’d think they’d stop and acknowledge that them going after vulnerable humans for their own sexual pleasure and psychological comfort/grief is predatory behavior--because they know that they could kill their lovers.
But we see no evidence that they tell their lovers that they could accidentally kill them.
Even after they follow the veggie diet, we know learn through Edward and Bella that vampire-human sex is dangerous and could result in serious to fatal injuries on the human’s part.
Joham killed many of his human victims before and between the mothers of his hybrid children.
I don’t think the Denali sisters are the type of people to just full-out try to physically overpower those who they detect don’t want to sleep with them.
But it isn’t because I believe that the sisters are good people who want consensual sex (because untrue--above).
B)
Not every single man they slept with would have been that into them, even with their supreme vampire beauty and Tanya being the most beautiful of the sisters.
Apparently, humans aren’t just attracted to vampires like Bella is. Even when Jessica asked Edward out, she like other students at Forks and most humans who meet the Cullens are put off by their paleness, sharp features, inhuman grace, and the occasional glimpse of their teeth. For some, humans, I imagine that vampires are either just too scary or just too strange to be sexually or aesthetically attracted to. Some humans would have a mixture of genuine attraction, fear, or a little repulsion and the combinations and presences of such could all fluctuate depending on the actions and moods of the vamp/human and the noticed movements at the right moment.
In other words, in all the years since the sisters started sleeping with human men, it is statistically improbable that every single man they slept with didn’t have have some misgivings about sleeping with them even after saying yes. (I estimate that it wasn’t that long after they were created and then lost their “mother. They were all turned around the 1000s A.D.)
C)
As @therealvinelle said, that “yes” the men said to the woman could have been more to avoid injury/death in a situation where they sensed that the sisters had them in a dangerous corner where they felt they had to go along with their wishes. Because of reasons above about vampire’s effect on humans.
Yes, some men might look at these women and try to act as if they don’t have anything to worry about (because we find that men do not have the similar general fear of being SAd as women). However, instincts can trump social conditioning and experience, and I don’t think that even the most self-assured human or man with such lack of expectation can look at a vampire woman and not feel some sort of wariness. If we are to believe that a vampire is that inhumanely frightening.
As another note, you will find @therealvinelle argue most, if not all, the same things. I was inspired to write more about it, though.
Also, can’t find their posts where they talked about this.
Why the Denalis Sleep with Humans More Often than They Do Vampires Anyway
What if they prefer human men so that they don’t have to deal with risk some clingy male vampires who are more likely to be possessive and aggressive after the eventual rejection (excluding Garrett)? Availability and Variety.
If Meyer rules that most male vampires wouldn’t go crazy, possessive, obsessive (risking their own safety to hurt the Denalis as vampire strength is nearly equal across all genders/sexes), how often is there a male vampire who tries to be possessive over the female vampires they’re interested in when they’re rejected? In comparison to those human men one hears stories of or has experienced or has seen the news of who hurt or kill their object of desire for similar reasons?
And with the fewer amount of male vampires compared to male humans that the Denali women sleep with, the number of crazy ex-lovers who could potentially hurt them dwindles to near-nonexistence. So why, again, why would the vampire women go out of their way to have more human men when it might be easier to sleep with vampire men, especially when they won’t be able to accidentally kill those men?
(Provided by Edward/Meyer)
Vampires don’t really try to socialize outside of their coven. They tend to be wary even of each other when covens/loners do interact.
Human men are larger in number, so the sisters would have more humans as lovers to choose from.
(Me)
Humans have lifespans, thus the “relationships“ have guaranteed expiration dates. So the sisters won’t have to deal with possibly dealing with a still salty ex 300 years down the road nor do they ever get too bored. As they continue to exist for hundreds of years, they get to enjoy the variety and frequency of lovers that the human pool generates for their interests.
Remember:
There’s no evidence of any of them trying to turn one of their lovers for the continuation of the relationship, so one can assume they aren’t looking for semi-permanent/long-lasting connections. Turning a lover may not be the only way to find out whether there is lasting love b/t partners, but the lack of evidence of the sisters never bothering to consider it or staying with one partner until their death seems fishy. It could be that Meyer just didn’t want to get into it or Edward didn’t want to expose the Denalis with info that’s not his to share. However, with the possibility of frequent change in male human partners (relative to how a vampire counts time), I assume that the sisters aren’t looking for a long-lasting bond. Though it’s only one other example other than Edward/Bella, Makenna turned Charles after she gave herself a year of vampirism to be with him forever. The Denalis’ men are more for aesthetic, sexual, and superficial emotional pleasure to wile away the eternal boredom and grief of losing their mother.
The fact of their human lovers’ short lifespans could (but not evidenced explicitly) also add a sort of thrill that distracts them from the pain of their “mother’s” death--the relationship won’t last forever, so they make the most of their time with them, which induces or allows a sense of carpe diem and perpetual freshness to sex and romance.
But since the human men won’t last “forever”, it could be that they also won’t have to feel like they should develop mutual, emotional intimacy that has an element of caring about the humans’ well-being apart from how long they could have sex with them.
I could be prejudiced against the Denalis about whether or not they fell in love with their human partners at any given moment with any of them. There are events where humans claim to love the people they mistreat. but I don’t think it’s possible to sincerely love someone you are willfully using for personal gain and not warning the consequences of interacting with them.
Again, Makenna told Charles everything despite Luca not liking it or the risk of the Volturi and was willing to give him time to consider.
And I assume that Aro told Human Suplicia about vampires as he courted her because a) he would want a mate that was all in for vampirism, and as Aro is charismatic, he’d only gain to tell her with his own charismatic words how it would benefit her to become a vampire---aside from being his mate, though he’d defintly tell her that. b) though they may not have fallen in love spontaneously, it’s clear that Suplicia was taken with whatever Aro told her about vampirism + the Volturi plan/power. If Human Suplicia was taken in with Aro’s goal of vampires keeping mum and leaving most of humanity to their own devices with fearing subjugation, I think those two would inevitably bond and grow as close as couples in arranged marriages are.
Kate and Sexual Sadism (Against the Argument that the Denalis are Sadists/Sexual Sadists)
If we were to argue that the sisters find sexual pleasure in coerced sex by referring to Kate’s maybe-sadistic pleasure in using her gift, does that enjoyment extend to sexual abuse?
I can take pleasure in seeing a person struggle and cry uncle if I get them in a chokehold, but am I a rapist for that? And sexual abuse may be abuse like nonsexual abuse, but we understand the two to be different in that sexual abuse there is a sharp sense of violation taking place--since sex makes one already more vulnerable.
It’s not a guarantee or evident that a sadistic person will seek sexual abuse, nor would every sexual abuser seek nonsexual sadism. Therefore, we need substantial evidence to say that Kate, if not the entire sister group, takes pleasure in nonconsensual sex for the violation and not necessarily for the physical pain, or for both.
Even though the Cullens are suspect already for hanging around the Denalis knowing that they sleep with human men and non-consensually do so, I don’t think Carlisle would tolerate them any longer if he ever found that the women/Kate liked to cause these men actual pain or liked hurting them psychologically through sex without their consent. And through Edward/Jasper, the Cullens would easily find out and they wouldn’t have had a relationship as long as they have had.
Meyer doesn’t really give enough canon evidence that the Denali women find pleasure in sexual sadism itself or if they find more pleasure in being desired by men who are, at first, 100% ready and eager to sleep with them and continue to do so.
Kate:
was canonically a warrior as a human
enjoys causing physical pain with her gift as an accessory pleasure in being able to have an edge over others (chokehold example above)
is still affected by “mother”, Sasha’s, death
like Tanya and Irina, slept with several people for the distraction from that death--through that death, I imagine Kate and the others felt themselves to be victims of loss and to be emotionally vulnerable
like Tanya, believed that the Cullens didn’t deserve the sisters’ help without the Cullens allowing them to decimate the shapeshifter/werewolves for Laurent’s death and Irina’s grief
Thus how she enjoys her gift and sadistic actions are more signs of her:
offensive/protective instinct enhanced
prioritizing her family and self over all others
To me, Kate appears to like causing physical pain with her gift because she gets to display her ability/power, feel in control, and show others she is not someone to mess with without putting in that much physical effort as her non-gifted sisters theoretically would.
She can fight, but she has the advantage of not having to put as much effort as others.
It is said that once she stops touching her victim, the pain immediately goes away and the vampire could get back up in a few seconds. However, to any vampire--and more so to those who are especially battle-honed like Kate and Jasper--seconds matter a lot because they also can do a lot/more in those seconds.
Counterarguments to Sexual Sadism (Because I Can’t Give Myself a Break)
We may have an argument for the vampire sisters liking human men specifically because they like/are compelled to having an emotional and physical edge over others, even if they never decide to actually use it.
This could be another reason why they don’t tell their human male lovers that they are vampires. I imagine that the thrill of their own double-edged sword secret and the power it gives them over the humans still allows them to accept that they are using these men in such a heinous way--
Oh, they have to keep this secret, that’s unequivocal. But they also have to deal with grief and they may unconciously think of human men as their only safe option
...a couple of Denalis groan..
Well, it looks like their lovers have to be able to quietly die.
Honestly, I think this fits well with most vampires’ dismissive attitude toward human value separate from their own physical pleasure that they get from feeding on them, having them worship them, or, in the case of the Denalis, sleeping with them. Or in Joham’s case, using them as test tubes and incubators to create a new super race of beings.
Circling Back
What convinces me the most that they have violated and raped, at least a few of their lovers is that the human men don’t know who/what they’re sleeping with.
Let’s say that every single man did find the women attractive and they all were very willing to sleep with them despite their instincts finding them frightening (different strokes for different folks). The sisters wouldn’t have told the men they were vampires because they already have the Volturi eyeing them for Sasha’s crime & their resulting anxiety and "respect" they have for the law. AND I already pointed out how they wouldn’t even try to turn them--why would they invite risk to themselves for lovers they don’t necessarily see a long future with by telling them that they are vampires?
So even if the human men all found these women attractive and were 100% willing and eager from start to finish, they could never have known that they’re sleeping with vampires! They don’t have all or enough of the relevant information to fully consent to vampire-human sex, not knowing the risks involved.
And there are so many risks, given that vegetarian vampires like Esme can still very easily lose control when around humans non-sexually. Edward still manages to bruise Bella when they first have sex on Isle Esme.
And despite knowing this, the sisters still choose to sleep with humans.
They could just wait for the next vampire to sleep with and then live with the pain of their mother’s death by themselves and with each other by sister companionship, but they choose to find human men that they put into danger (and have sometimes killed).
There is no real care here, for their lovers’ lives. (If not because there was no romantic/general love for them. Just for the fact that these human men also have have their independent value for being.) The sisters had no right deciding if their lovers should risk their lives for their sexual release with no full permission.
So again, they did rape and take advantage of these men.
The Succubus Myths
Meyer wrote that, canonically, the sisters had a heavy hand in inspiring or enhancing the tales of female seductive demons, specifically succubi, who mythologically prey on helpless younger men for their own sustenance--whether it be for blood or the men’s soul/vitality.
I find it interesting that Meyer has used the existence of the myths to highlight the sisters’ predatory behavior.
The Cullens
I wondered how the Cullens could ever associate with the Denali coven if the women are like this. It’s not like Edward wouldn’t catch a random, revealing thought/memory from the women and not have told Carlisle. Even then, I doubt the sisters would go out of their way to hide their how they snag/seduce their lovers if it ever came up accidentally.
Do they see it as rape? Do they believe it to be consensual? Why or why not? Did they continue correspondence with the Denali coven just to keep their vegetarian lifestyle less lonely? Do Esme and the others know? (Very likely, since even with Edward and Carlisle keeping it to themselves, the Denalis aren’t hiding anything.)
If the Cullens do know...well the Cullens are all bystanders by continuing to be “close” to these sisters. Or maybe Meyer, writing out the histories of the Denali and the entire Twilight series back in the early 2000s-2010s where we as humans didn’t collectively pay mind enough to the parameters of human sexual abuse.....well. Could also be that vampires dont really pay attention to what other vampires are doing with humans even if it's weird because humans just dont seem like real people that matter or threats. What would matter more between the Cullens and Denalis would be their veggie solidarity--safety in numbers with a specific vow that binds them together, which is not feeding on humans. Which is very ironic, since the Denalis didn't stop feeding on humans because they believed they deserved to live but so they could keep their current human lover around for longer.
As part response/explanation to @vegavoiddestroy, who commented this on one of my earlier Twilght psuedo-essays:
Maybe she wanted to make a flawed character i just don’t get why he had to be a confederate soldier like why not make jasper have anger issues or something
This thought piece goes more into Jasper Hale.
Making a Flawed Vampire Character if They are a Cullen. Racism’s Part in It
I agree with Meyer wanting a flawed character. I also think she had to give Jasper some kind of purpose and meaningful role in both the story as a whole and in the Cullen coven and their ideals, which supports their existence.
However I also think that there’s even more sinister than that.
The Southern Vampire Wars as a Narrative Device
There’s not much to Jasper before Eclipse.
We understand him to be an outsider, even being in the coven and with/“mated” to Alice. Meyer reveals the “why” of his fringe existence through his past of abuse, extreme violence (even for the average non Southern U.S.A. vampire), and emotional manipulation.
If one were to make a flawed character and you wanted one in the context of ruthlessness of many territorial vampires (because vampires in general are very territorial and fight first before asking questions even aside from the Southern vampires) who have no regard for human life and little more for other vampires', you find that you need emotional AND extreme physical violence to make such a character. You need to up that stakes. You need to show victimization and abuse and manipulation. Organized war, as opposed to smaller conflicts between individuals and smaller groups, is a great device for that upping in the Twilight context.
And we could have had just a personal dispute, yes, but:
We want and needed to see what vampires are like outside of the small stage of Forks. Meyer did fight to have a 4-book series instead of a twofer.
It would have left Jasper as a fringe member without explaining the why of it.
It’s not enough for the stakes Meyer wants to raise regarding Bella’s choice. What does being a vampire mean? (Retroactive maybe)
As a writer/storyteller, we (Meyer) want to have a solution for the challenge the newborn army that Victoria raises is.
We got that the world was bigger with the Volturi’s mention in Twilight and their direct presence through New Moon. But when the books came out, we didn’t have knowledge of some members of the Cullen family that would explain why they are the way they are: Jasper, Rosalie, and even Emmett a little bit.
Anger issues wouldn't have satisfied the "why" of Jasper, his and they "why" of him and Alice. It would have made him just a moody bitch with no depth, and for no reason. Just because. Knowing that, Meyer decides to make him mean something in the context of Bella x Edward and Bella's entry into vampirism. And vampirism has to be something more than single nomadic vampires fighting each other, like in Twilight. Bella has to make her decision with the knowledge that vampires can be cruel not just to humans, as James showed, but how they can be to each other to the point where they make tools of them. something that Meyer hoped to do by hinting at the Volturi and Edward expressing his fear and disdain for the Aro “collecting” gifted vampires like objects.
Jasper provides the entry of more background of vampire culture/society. Because Edward, who doesn’t ever want Bella as a vampire, didn’t seem to like to even discuss vampire history and stuff without being prompted by Bella’s questions or big event like the incoming Seattle newborns. RIP Bree and Diego.
Jasper the Redeemed
Jasper tried to kill Bell, our protagonist and narrator, in New Moon. Yes it was an accident and Bella immediately forgave him, but it was the catalyst for Edward to leave Bella earlier and for her to go deeper into a depressive state of self-abandon.
Jasper has already been cast as the one vampire of the Cullen coven that can’t fully count himself as a Cullen because of his lack of self-control. Yes it was because of his past, but we don’t get to know that until Eclipse.
Jasper has also been cast as the scariest Cullen and the most emotionally distant from Bella herself because of his lack of control. In the entire series, we know that the goal is for Bella to be attached to her choice of lover and family forever. Jasper is a huge concern to keeping her alive until she can by herself by becoming a vampire because she smells delicious to all vampires. Any danger or hostility towards the survival of “BellaxEdward Forever” is cast as “bad” or not treated with as much sympathy as BellaxEdward--as we see with Rosalie and Leah and the entire Quileuete werewolf pack.
But there’s a problem still. As long as Alice, Bella’s best vampire friend and the Cullen’s second darling, stays with the Cullens, Jasper is a permanent fixture that Bella will inevitably have to live with for the foreseeable future. So there has to be a reconciliation of Bella’s interests and Jasper’s presence. It was an issue Meyer had to resolve soon and she chose to do it by making him the spearhead of the Cullen defense in Eclipse.
Race and Slavery (Historical Context)
I can see what Meyer was trying to do with Jasper by making him a soldier in his past life at least, before we think of which war.
It appears that she was trying to validate him by showing us how useful he is to the Cullens and imply that he has his own trauma, which is supposed to tie the Cullens together.
But why a Confederate soldier? Why the American Civil War at all? She could have could have had the War of 1812, the Mexican war, etc. if we wanted that war device and/or one that involved U.S. citizens.
So how does the Confederacy figure into that, as she makes it?
This is the support to my headcanon:
A)
Part of why rich white plantation owners were so successful was that they spread the idea to white poor people that they are better than Black people because they are white. This was so that the poor whites wouldn’t perceive themselves as being in the same boat/having similar experiences as Black people when we’re talking about the economics of the South.
And poor whites were in a similar position, as rich white people sought out laws to use poor white labor with little legal compunction. There was a concern for the two groups to form together in various ways to resist planters’ political actions against them. (Like the traditional indentured servitude, but worse because little money was put into the infrastructure that poor white used to support themselves.)
B)
Now like Edward, Jasper lived during the time of war (character in war used again because reasons above). He was 18--young, and a young man/older boy at that.
As a rule and no matter the time period, young adults and teens are more impressionable than their older counterparts in various aspects. Young men/older boys--as N.American various, official, face-to-face, organized wars were waged more more frequently and simultaneously before the 1950s and men held all the average and higher positions of legitimate power--were eager to prove that they could, should, and did have a say in politics to their peers and authority figures.
To show they have the ability to be a part of their affiliated group’s maintainence and development but also be a part of something that will decided the course of the entire social group and/or a particular group’s political position.
But also do it in a during an event/doing certain actions that has/will have a lot of attention for the potential of wide acclaim/admiration/approval. Young people were/are more compelled to want to be “heroes” or be seen as distinctive persons who embody their society’s values. In the case of wartime young men/older boys, society shifts focus to the defense of the society’s ideology/values or existence. In come in the eager young men.
And sometimes the kid doesn’t have to believe in the ideology/values wholeheartedly, though of course many would.
Even now, this same pool of people [including more women] are seen to be the most eager to be part of something that will get them the most public attention and test their physical, if not survivalist, capabilities.
(Take a look at earlier reality TV shows. Do not these people, most actually including older people acting like teenagers, seek a sort of attention or fame through consenting to put themselves through challenges for everyone to see and judge, disapprove or approve and stew in the visual enactment of their social values?)
Aside from that, many young men wanted/want to participate in their society’s politics, and the way to do that during wartime is to join the war on the side of their particular sociopolitical group, which also happens to house their individual/everyday life. Or on the side they believe the cause of.
C)
So I can imagine Jasper being that poor, white, young man who wants to prove his worth AND prove/gain political power. I can imagine Jasper being convinced by the propaganda because it suggests power that previously wasn’t available for poor whites. If human Jasper was even a poor white. And if he wasn’t and was a planter’s son or some rich man’s son, then he’d still want to ensure his own economic and political inheritance and uphold Southern “nationalism”. Which all involves owning people and forcing them to work to death.
But one major problem is that if I am right and Meyer intended this, then Jasper is even more problematic and needs a moment of clarification of whether his stance is either wholeheartedly racist, apologetic (defensive), guilty but still subtly racist, indifferent and still subtly racist, or anti-racist. [Below]
HOWEVER, any answer wouldn’t even be satisfactory enough because she still put a maybe-racist in a position of power or authority in Eclipse as if redeeming him before we see him going over his own wrongdoings.
Plus, this headcanon/imagining is coming from me and not th e original writer. Meyer simply either can’t or won’t clarify/make up for it properly.
What This Means for Jasper as a Redeemed Flawed Character
A)
Say that Meyer did know of this one crucial phenomenon of U.S. history. I think if Meyer knew about rich-white-planter propaganda, she wanted to make him not just a victim of personal abuse, but a victim of political greed--thus creating a stronger sense of his being a VICTIM. So that he has a place in the Cullens and their lifestyle. In twisted way, that would make Jasper even more a !VICTIM! of other authorities’ (Maria specifically) abuse and manipulations.
Poor, white youth wanting agency + power-hungry agent = TRAUMA and ABUSE.
Meanwhile, what about those Black persons I definitely believe him believing he was superior to on the basis of his race? Those he literally fought to keep enslaved to other white men similar to himself?
Why should Jasper get so much of the sympathy and forgiveness when we don’t even know how he made up for his wrongs?
It’s like we’re pushed into focusing on how his decision to be a knight for slavery got him into trouble rather than how he should journey to repair wrongs or do something that will heal the descendants of those he helped to be wronged.
And Jasper’s not feeding on animals because he believes in the importance of human life. He’s doing it so that he can have a little more inner peace. And because Alice wants it all--a family and a mate. And he’d do anything for Alice, she’s his emotional anchor.
So even though Jasper’s truly an abuse victim (but Maria, a POC woman, rme) and benefits from the veg lifestyle, his human past still makes us suspect his matching with the Cullens by ideals. And I can’t help but think that part of why he can’t heal is because there is a guilt present that he hides himself from and refuses to inspect and question....can you see where I am going with this?
B)
Jasper is also a means to emphasize how good the Cullen lifestyle. Eclipse also sets his background to show how his ruthlessness establishes him as a comparison/foil to Edward, Carlisle, and the entire Cullen humans-are-not-objects lifestyle.
Like Rosalie, he’s emotionally dependent on the lifestyle, so yes I think that it’s good for him for him to find some sort of stability. No one is going to try to jump him to kill him if they are also worried about posing as humans, shopping, saving lives even.
But for both characters that’s because of TRAUMA, not due to having a moral compass. His and Rosalie’s self-oriented contradictory interests and values to Carlisle’s selfless moral compass makes him repulsive to the reader in the context of human-are-people-too--or is supposed to. And Carlisle is the moral compass as well as originator, support, and director of the coven’s lifestyle.
But again, Eclipse also leaves us with the impression that Jasper, at one point, believed in slavery and the white man’s supremacy over the entire human population, esp. Black people. You could argue that it was mainly to just prove himself, but the South’s social/economic/political structure was built upon slavery. Specifically that Black people needed and deserved to be the perpetual subjects of white people. Even if it is the case of a young man led wrong, why are we ignoring that he has obviously done wrong and to know that he did we had to think deeper about his past? Why didn’t Meyer just come out and provide his racist-status?!
Answer: the event is one of the most, if not the most, provocative, contentious and familiar of American history.
A Confederate as a hero? With how they are trying to claim that Confederates weren’t fighting for slavery and that slavery “wasn’t that bad?” No, too dangerous a concept, which tries to minimize the egregiousness of slavery itself.
Jasper couldn’t have participated in the politics/looked for heroism without acknowledging slavery/white supremacy as the means to get that feeling of being a hero/amazing citizen. The fact that he did run away from home to join the Confederate side of the two main sides suggests what he thought was more important or/and true.
But Meyer skips all that, never showing how (if) he had changed his priorities and racial views. It’s up in the air, as if it’s not important by principle, if not by narration.
As if race doesn’t matter.
Which tells me that Meyer doesn’t know or care about knowing the deeper motivations of the poor whites of the South and its affect on young white boys’ attitudes. about racism. Or she agrees with some or most of them consciously and/or subconciously with little compunction.
Which tells me that this suggestion/theory I have of Jasper never entered her consciousness as she wrote Jasper’s character.
Which means that she also couldn’t do her job of characterization nor did she truly realize her goal of making Jasper more real as a person when she herself decided to fit him in a specific, ugliest, bloodier period in American history.
I had to be the one putting possible instrumental depth into her character and address the obvious, yet silent question: who is Jasper Cullen and is he racist? It’s looks cowardly because she stepped forward with and provocative background only to ignore its more immediate implications and possible questions. And older children who aren’t necessarily applying history in a meaningful way are reading the books or have read them. Processing the dynamics and characterizations and developing values based on what they find attractive. Still learning how to critically think and do research and understand the value of doing both.
Ugh.
What this Means for Twilight as a “What-Could-Have-Been”
Again, we’re discouraged from looking at Jasper apart from his role as savior of the Cullens, their eternal foil, savior of Bella x Edward, and as a possible racist shit even though he’s critical to the Cullens surviving Eclipse and saving Bella in Midnight Sun. While his past seems to humanize him as a person, it shuts down critical consideration of how racism, sexism, etc. plays a role in determining his character. How the Cullens themselves are made from sexist/racist/etc. principles.
And it’s a missed opportunity to explore how racism, sexism, etc., when added to the sheer indestructability of Twilight vampires, can be a recipe for disaster. What is a racist vampire determined to further the “Southern cause” like? Or the fundamentalist Christian bent on subjugating women once and for all? Would the Volturi stop them from doing anything, since that would be a breach in the no-telling-humans rule? Or would they be fine with a vampire doing this privately, like the sexual violence that was part of the “harem” situation with Siobhan and her creator?
But Jasper’s Just a Fictional Person! And Twilight’s just a Fantasy or Wish Fulfillment Project. It’s Not That Serious. And Why are you Ruining my Twilight-Fantasy?!
While I certainly believe that writers should be able to write whatever they want however they wish as long as they do it well, I also know that what we consume has the power to introduce and/or validate feelings, ideologies, beliefs...based on the angle in which we’ve observed and interpreted what was given.
For now, in our current late 2010s to 2022 political climate and education system, critical thinking is....on a critical low amongst the internet population, let’s say.
Both antis and pro-shippers have a point, at least to me. (At least the non racist persons of each, or those who don’t present racist arguments.)
I’m not exempt from buying into some of Twilight’s dangerous nonsense or being swept away with its action. However, I still like Twilight for its crazy vampires, I find the composition of the romance fascinating and I think that liking the lore is fine as long as you like or approve or advocate for the things that aren’t elemental to promoting degrading dynamics.
Creative projects, be they “trash”, classics, or so-so, still have psychological influence--thus political power. Books, TV, movies, games, they all have a hand in inspiring their users to look at their world a certain way because they also have their power by being creations inspired by real-world motivations and events. There is no such thing as a creative work that doesn’t draw from the real world, even when it comes to fantasy (the literature genre).
And there’s a difference between a primary genre, subgenres, and the motivations/chosen elements behind such categories. Wish fulfillment as a kind of psychological fantasy can mean, “I want to create a world where I win” rather than a legitimate genre, “This is what I see is wrong and/or interesting with the world and there are the consequences due to those wrongs/interesting things/struggles/paradoxes and I may or may not produce a happy ending but I sure am going to make thrill while also respecting the gravity/significance of those wrongs/struggles by telling as much truth and giving as much clarity as possible”. Whether it’s by actual real life scenes, like the fictionalized lives of geisha, or how the writer personally feels about them.
You cannot separate the two into two independent, autonomous and exclusive entities.
Conclusions
To me, Meyer is using racism/a Confederate past to create troubling sympathy for Jasper that should be focused on a long-ignored group of people.
Despite the fact that Meyer is devotedly Mormon and Mormons have a rabid history with the Catholic Church, there are still some shared ideological principles her writing reveals.
Here is the medieval Catholic/martyr-inspired idea of what a “hero” is: where a knight/man fights for God, a supreme deity, in the face of annihilation and hostility from nonbelievers to protect the Word of Christ/the Church. While Jasper fought for white supremacy’s dominance and not Christianity’s “survival”, I don’t doubt that Confederates felt that their racial dominance was sacrosanct enough to believe it made their entire personality and their inherent value as humans. Just as the Church/Christianity was primary, white supremacy was/is primary. Plus, the Christian martyr-knight convention of a “hero” appears to inspire the idea that one has to sacrifice themselves for the well being of a political-ideological cause in order to be considered a real “hero”. A hero uses their body as a sort of shield; this specificity doesn’t truly apply to Jasper since he’s more offensive than defensive (human and vampire) and more to Bella (human and vampire), BUT it does cast Jasper as the protector of something. I wager it was first white supremacy, then it was Maria, then it became the Cullens and Bella x Edward.
Jasper, a young, impressionable man looking to prove himself is manipulated by a Mexican (gasp! a non-white?!) woman into becoming one of the most violent vampire against his own mental health. Aside from the sexist/racist connotations of Maria’s character, our victim is a Confederate?! Yuck! What are we supposed to do with this? We (often, but not always, passive racists or unknowledgeable nonBlack folk) can’t hate him that much because he was clearly taken advantage of. But we can’t root for him without restraint because he also clearly doesn’t see much point in humanizing humans just because they are beings with value of their own, nor is his thoughts about race clear. Meyer uses suggested racism to both reduce Jasper in order to make him the essential protective function of Bella x Edward, the supreme storyline of the series.
We live in a logically limbo state with his character because we’re not given the nuance we need to see how who Jasper is NOW (living with the Cullens) because living as a Cullen is supposed to be the best version of living for anyone, including Bella. Amongst a coven of relatively good-at-self-control vampires (Carlisle, Alice, Edward, Rosalie) there’s the implication that Jasper is a failure who makes the Cullens look that much better. Though Breaking Dawn has Edward musing that Jasper has begun to feel it’s possible to do better and that he is not a total slave to his impulses, Meyer clearly made Jasper Edward’s/Carlisle’s opposite, or foil. And to make these two/the Cullens the “best”, Jasper can’t be too complicated; just enough to explain why he matters. Eclipse gives us why, but it still doesn’t show us the present Jasper; rather Jasper’s past is what creates his role and justifies his presence. And he’s not the only one. We’re not given enough of present Rosalie, Esme, Carlsile, Emmett, etc. until Midnight Sun, a full 12 years after BD’s publication! And even then, some of the coven members’ interactions with each other are minimal in the event where Meyer puts so much attention on just Bella nd Edward. Which wouldn’t be a bad thing (narrative-wise) if there weren’t 6 other people to get to know!
Meyer already established that Jasper’s lack of self control emphasizes the Cullens’ nonveggie supremacy. In Eclipse, it seems she sought to make his presence less...repulsive when he showed himself to be a danger to Bella x Edward in New Moon. He “redeems” himself in Eclipse--& retroactively in Midnight Sun--when his experience and everlasting trauma becomes a tool for the Bella x Edward fantasy to persevere.
What she ends up doing--by sacrificing a better and a more nuanced and necessarily nuanced characterization--is diminish how racism makes a person and how that person affects others by their racist principles. She makes as if racism is a cheap and insubstantial influence when she uses a complicated collective, inherited, social trauma (of Black people) to create a single person’s trauma (a white man’s) in order to make him both a
Black people--the victims who have their legal, economic, social, political trauma-- have their struggles swept under the rug for his personal trauma! Not a peep about that, nada, zilch, zero! Meanwhile, we got at least 3 pages of Jasper’s past--not even his present! Who is Jasper NOW! And where, oh, where, are the Black vampires in this fucking series?!!! Laurent’s dead, we need fucking Nigerian people fucking up this here story, I mean c’mon!
As a storyteller, trauma is a great tool to create motivation and drama; however, Meyer also used discrimination to make Jasper the victim-hero, when he himself was the perpetrator of violence against those who continue to be legally victimized to the point of poverty and desolation by their race. And Meyer fails to acknowledge that discrimination a she treats it like some air pump for her drama.
Jasper could still be racist. Likely still believes the nonsense. And then what does that say about Alice? About the rest of the Cullens?.....
Not that vegavoiddestroy said anything about that part of pop culture. Thought this would be something necessary to add to my answer to their thoughts.
To keep the ball rolling and provide more to consider.
So, I made two separate versions of Laurent, one of the important characters of color in the Twilight series (Twilight and New Moon). One of the versions I made from the description I’ve read from the guide and the first book, while the other version comes from what I’ve seen in the movies where Edi Mūe Gathegi plays Laurent.
A. (Books) Turned in his 40s; spoke French Creole yet lived in France as a human; Was very likely biracial
In CAS
In Game, With My Twilight Vampire Mod
*the chalkiness is no my doing, that was the lighting’s fault*
B. (Movies) Gagethi looked like he was in late 20s; Kenyan (East African); dark-sinned black person
I am not good at making likenesses of real people...at all.
In CAS
In Game, With My Twilight Vampire Mod
A Long Winded Explanation for “Why”
Not happy with the movie versions of the Twilight series at all, but not because Laurent is darker-skinned.
I’ve tied the entire movie Laurent character with the smh-ness of the movies themselves. And I am one of those people who will always believe that the books’ narrative is better than the movies’, especially with the number of lazy cash-grabs that continue to soar in number and frequency over time that flanderize personalities.
Not that Twilight is an artistic masterpiece nor was it trying to be. The movies just weren’t as gripping as the books’ horror-tinged, thrilling melodrama because they didn’t bother to actually display the despairing image of vampirism that Twilight vampirism presented. The director of the first movie, Catherine Howard seemed to at least try.
Then they just phoned it in after Twilight and made vampires too human-like.
All in seeming laziness or lack of care AND to better appeal to a wider audience who may or may not know about Mormonism, gender, sex, and race in America plus British literature’s influence on Meyer's vision, specifically the gothic genre’s influence. (This is not an excuse for many canon characters’ behavior nor the series’ treatment of certain characters--more of a contextual explanation for why these movies were weak sauce and tried too hard. And I do agree with the decision to make the darker vampires not pale like how Meyer did. The only thing I agree on.)
Still, I didn’t want to erase Gathegi and his performance. Gagethi’s prescence inserted color and shade into a series that seriously needed it.
The invisibility and degradation of POCs is not for me, so when a POC person succeeds and/or is allowed to, it should be recognized, appreciated/celebrated, talked about, and used as context for a bigger conversation for why it was done. Why didn’t the books do this?
What do you think and how’d I do? Wanted to provide both versions for however you experience the series and for you to think about why whichever respective sim appeals to you.
The two Sims 4 versions of Laurent (inside “James’ Coven”) is out!
