But I am not sure Stephanie Meyer, as a writer, has a purpose for positively-written women or men who do not love.
I don't mean that she sees them only as hangers-on to male protagonists, but I've read these, and I've read her The Host, and all the time it seems to me that - amongst other things that make me wonder if I am a feminazi after all - the greatest passion she is able to characters with (male or female) is love. Romantic love especially.
Bella may have been a good character. but she was never allowed to have her very own plot. If you get what I mean? All of her plot was provided to her by other people, usually male, or male-accessed. These males were usually in love with her. This is a girl who has never really been alone, or sought something entirely for herself as an end that stands independently of other relationships not despite or inspite them but just of itself.
I don't mean that she sees them only as hangers-on to male protagonists, but I've read these, and I've read her The Host, and all the time it seems to me that - amongst other things that make me wonder if I am a feminazi after all - the greatest passion she is able to characters with (male or female) is love. Romantic love especially.
Bella may have been a good character. but she was never allowed to have her very own plot. If you get what I mean? All of her plot was provided to her by other people, usually male, or male-accessed. These males were usually in love with her. This is a girl who has never really been alone, or sought something entirely for herself as an end that stands independently of other relationships not despite or inspite them but just of itself.
At one point in Breaking Dawn, I was thinking Jacob and Leah would end up together - both had been hurting themselves for months or years moping over someone they knew they couldn't have (thanks to that other person being in True Love with someone else), and they seemed to be getting closer fast. But no, that would've been too... prosaic for Meyer. Not True Love enough, or something. So she does that insane thing with Jacob.
And by the end of the series, pretty much everyone has been partnered off somehow, and they all have fantastic True Love relationships with the person of their dreams, etc. I don't mind books that glorify love - Rowling does it a lot, though she has a broader view of love - but Meyer's fairy-tale kind is annoying.
You're also right about those two powerful men both falling in love with the average girl that Bella is... it does read more like a fantasy, some romantic girly fantasy of having two men fight over you, with the men all "perfect" and the girl just perfectly ordinary. But it's true that the way she doesn't know what she wants to do with her life - in itself a normal enough thing for someone in the final year of high school - and then decides to let her whole life turn around that man she's crazy in love with... yeah, ick. I still maintain it's not truly anti-feminist, though, because Meyer does the same thing with her male characters, and among the supposedly perfect Cullens, more often than not the women take the lead.
As I don't believe we've actually had a review of this yet... Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series. 
- 14/02/2010 04:08:51 PM
1606 Views
- 14/02/2010 04:08:51 PM
1606 Views
I think the series is codswallop...and that it DID have potential
- 14/02/2010 04:59:56 PM
958 Views
As I said, the second book is better in some regards thanks to that.
- 14/02/2010 05:06:29 PM
1048 Views
I normally would agree with you
- 14/02/2010 06:05:36 PM
894 Views
Well, there are a few books she explicitly references and cites as inspiration.
- 14/02/2010 07:15:36 PM
1019 Views
Re: I'm going to be very unkind and possibly factually wrong here, since it has been a while.
- 14/02/2010 05:52:52 PM
979 Views
Yeah, absolutely true (spoilers).
- 14/02/2010 06:14:58 PM
949 Views
Re: I think it gets labelled antifeminist because, well, it's Bella, the heroine, and she's so young
- 14/02/2010 06:26:37 PM
1138 Views
I love your point about the other "Strong women"
- 14/02/2010 06:43:05 PM
959 Views
Re: What is LDS? *NM*
- 14/02/2010 06:44:36 PM
373 Views
Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints (i.e. Mormons). *NM*
- 14/02/2010 06:46:15 PM
379 Views
They lost me with twinkly vampires *NM*
- 14/02/2010 09:22:01 PM
491 Views
I think it could have been sold better
- 14/02/2010 09:35:07 PM
850 Views
- 14/02/2010 09:35:07 PM
850 Views
Vampires should be tragic at best monsters at worst
- 15/02/2010 04:58:15 PM
883 Views
I thought that was strange too
- 15/02/2010 09:19:26 PM
848 Views
I think I would rather just eat people then be stuck in high school forever
- 16/02/2010 09:22:07 PM
937 Views
You just had to do it, didn't you? *possible spoiler*
- 15/02/2010 01:57:29 AM
1215 Views
*possible spoiler*
- 15/02/2010 01:57:29 AM
1215 Views
yes *spoilers*
- 15/02/2010 02:02:27 AM
963 Views
Yeah. It's one of those things that sound worse out of context than they are in the book itself...
- 15/02/2010 10:57:47 AM
925 Views
Great way to label this series...
- 26/02/2010 07:40:47 PM
1013 Views
Yes, it's amazing how shocking stuff she can get away with while still making it fluff. *NM*
- 26/02/2010 08:22:13 PM
368 Views
I read a lot of PNR (paranormal romance for you book snobs out there) and thus have read these too.
- 15/02/2010 09:55:54 PM
925 Views
Mormon fantasy...haha
- 15/02/2010 10:06:58 PM
1338 Views