BLOGGING TWILIGHT, pt. 15: There is Nothing Weird About The Cullen Family At All

I’ve been reading The Twilight Saga, by Stephenie Meyer, as a sort of cultural experiment. If you want to read along, we’re only about 300 pages into the first book, Twilight. It sounds like a lot, but believe me, it isn’t. I’ve never read a book as closely as I have been reading this one, which is maybe kind of sad for me. Or maybe kind of sad for my Shakespeare II professor, who would probably like me to put this much effort into King Lear. But does King Lear have any vampires in it? Unless they come out of nowhere in Act V, the answer is no.

Previous entries can be found in the directory.

Chapter 15: The Cullens

Bella falls asleep in Edward’s arms, and in the morning he’s in a chair in the corner of the room, watching her. Not weird at all. Bella doesn’t think so, anyway—she literally jumps into his lap. She says she was sure the previous night had been a dream. “You’re not that creative,” Edward scoffs (pg. 313). I see what you did there, S. Meyer.

Charlie is gone—Edward observed him re-attaching Bella’s battery cables in the early in the morning. Another nice detail—I like Charlie. But do you ever notice on TV shows when major characters have a baby, that baby is almost never present and explained away for weeks at a time? Weeds is a recent example this phenomenon, and Friends is the standard-bearer (Six Feet Under is a notable exception). I feel like Bella’s father is Ross and Rachel’s baby.

After this pleasant little closed-form scene, Rachel will hand off the baby to her mother and we will never see her again. I mean, how are you going to have light comedy with a baby around, fucking everything up?

Bella notices that Edward is in new clothes, smooth hair, etc.—he ducked out in the middle of the night. “I could hardly leave in the clothes I came in—what would the neighbors think?” he explains (pg. 315). God forbid anybody thinks anybody else is having sex in this town! They’d never recover from the scandal! Teenagers fucking! Jesus!

In case you haven’t been weirded out by the whole hundred-year age gap thing, S. Meyer provides some wonderfully terrifying moments early in this chapter. For one thing, Bella sits in Edward’s arms for a while and he rocks her. Like a baby. Which is what she is, relative to him. She’s a blastocyst. Later, he’s pushing Bella to tell Charlie about him.

“Are you going to tell Charlie I’m you’re boyfriend or not?” he demanded.
“Is that what you are?”
“It’s a loose interpretation of the word ‘boy,’ I’ll admit.” (pg. 317)

Thanks for reminding us, you fucking creep. Bella bites her lip on this page, too, if you’re keeping track.

Bella scores a great joke—Edward says it’s breakfast time and she clutches her neck in mock-terror. Bella eats some cereal and Edward informs her that he wants her to meet his family today. Bella gulps (you saw that coming, didn’t you?). They leave and drive through the woods for a while until they come up on the Cullen compound. “The house was timeless, graceful, and probably a hundred years old,” she says (pg. 321). I thought you just said it was timeless, idiot! The house is deliberately shaded by “six primordial cedars,” which have the capacity to darken an entire acre according to Bella, but then later she comments on how well lit the house is—Edward says something about this being a place they don’t have to hide. But what about the primordial cedars? This house is full of contradictions.

The whole back wall of the house is glass, which is fitting for a voyeur like Edward. The rest of the place, carpets, drapes and all is “varying shades of white” (pg. 321). Luckily for the reader, Bella does not list all the shades of white like she did with rocks a few chapters back (off-white, paper-white, enamel, white-out, oak-tag…). Edward’s parents are waiting for them, positioned on a raised platform near the door, next to a grand piano. Not weird at all. Dr. Cullen we know, but Bella is once again struck by his youth and dashing good looks. Esme has a “heart-shaped” face, and is described as “less angular, more rounded” than the others. They greet Bella warmly and weirdly. Carlisle says “You’re very welcome, Bella,” which is supposed to be like “you’re welcome in my home” but sounds more like something a waitress says to you when she gives you the check. Esme says “it’s very nice to know you,” which I guess is a nice thing to say—she doesn’t talk about the weather or anything—but she doesn’t really know her, you know? I guess the Cullens don’t get out much (it’s not like they go to dinner parties) so I shouldn’t be asking for much, socialization-wise.

There is nothing weird about any of these people.

Alice and Jasper come down the stairs, Alice first, running in “a streak of black hair and white skin (but I'm assuming she's wearing more than that, I suppose you never know), coming to a sudden and graceful stop,” and then going so far as to kiss Bella on the cheek. Naturally everyone is taken aback by this; it’s the Forks equivalent of Alice running over and reaching into Bella’s pants. “I was startled to feel Edward stiffen at my side,” Bella says (pg. 323). Heh. “You do smell nice, I never noticed before,” Alice tells Bella. Not weird at all.

They start talking about the piano; Bella starts thinking about her childhood fantasy that were she ever to win the lottery she planned on buying her mother a grand piano. Bella didn’t have particularly ambitious childhood fantasies, huh? Why not buy your mother a grand piano when you become a famous astronaut or fireman or something? Dream a little bigger, Bella!

Turns out Edward is musical, so it’s nice he’s been doing something with his time, and when Bella seems unsurprised Esme mentions something about hoping Edward hasn’t been showing off.

“Just a bit,” he laughed freely. Her face softened at the sound, and they shared a brief look I didn’t understand, although Esme’s face seemed almost smug. (pg. 325)

Bella is always mentioning something about the internal-dynamics of the Cullen family she doesn’t understand—this coupled with Edward’s constant cryptic allusions to what Alice sees in the future leaves a lot of minor plot threads dangling. I’m wondering if I should care about any of these or if it’s like LOST and I should just let them go. A page earlier Carlisle and Edward share a weird glance and Edward nods, but it’s a least semi-clear then and explained in short order that they are communicating telepathically—at least in one direction. Edward can read minds so Carlisle doesn’t bother speaking to him out loud, which is kind of an interesting analogy for the relationship between fathers and sons. I also realize it must be hell to live with Edward, to know he can always hear you, which itself could make for an interesting analogy for kids hearing their parents have sex. I doubt S. Meyer will go there, but I’d be impressed.

So Edward plays the piano, apparently making use of his very fast hands, performing a composition described as “complex,” “luxuriant,” and “surging,” which we learn is an original composition (326). The family disappears while our heroes sit at the piano, which again, is not weird at all. Edward reassures her that his family likes her—Esme is apparently happy that Edward is in love, she’s been worried that there was something wrong with him (another unintentional parallel to the gay community, S. Meyer!). Bella notes Alice’s enthusiastic, finger-banging hello, and Edward grimaces some shit about Alice having her own way of seeing things. Enough with this, Edward. Rosalie, who has yet to appear, is still uneasy about Bella, and apparently Emmett is off “trying to reason” with her. I’m assuming this is code for “having sex with,” but with S. Meyer you never really know.

I’d rather be driving a wedge between you and my brother- the bumper sticker on Rosalie’s bed

Plot point alert: the telepathic communiqué between Dr. C and Edward had to do with that fact that apparently another gang of vampires is headed to town, and Edward is going to be extra-protective of Bella for the next few days. For once, this doesn’t turn Bella on—she gets freaked out.

Atheist themes alert: Edward notes that Bella must be disappointed that they don’t have any coffins or piles of skulls in their house, but when they go on a house tour, she stops at the sight of a large wooden cross at the top of the stairs. “It is sort of ironic,” Edward says (330). Bella asks why they keep it there—and for a second I thought Edward was going to be all like, “Haven’t you heard the good news? He is risen!” But he says it’s for nostalgic purposes, it belonged to Carlisle’s father. We find out that Carlisle’s dad was a preacher in the 17th century, which makes Dr. C 362 years old. Shit, son. The Reverend Cullen was an enthusiastic Anglican hate-machine persecutor who enjoyed hunting and burning Catholics, witches, werewolves, and vampires. He was basically Pat Robertson.

The Rev. Cullen, circa 1650

Edward says he burned a lot of innocent people—which I am glad S. Meyer actually notes. In a world in which vampires are real, it doesn’t go without saying that witches and werewolves are not, so the uncomfortable idea that suggests itself is that these old religious-zealot-murder-gangs were on to something. But Rev. Cullen, it is suggested, did not catch any actual monsters.

But eventually Carlisle was put in charge of leading the demon-hunts, and though his heart wasn’t really in it, he was smarter than his father and found an actual gang of sewer-dwelling vampires. He led a pitchfork-wielding mob after them, and because he was (and uh, still is) a young athletic man, he ended up way ahead of the rest of the ordinary citizens (much like the Tea Party gatherings of today, you get the feeling that your average mob of religious fantasists were not the most physically fit people around town). One vampire-creature (Edward describes them as creatures for some reason—they were a little more Gollumesque when they lived in the sewers I guess) attacked, but the mob arrived before Carlisle was finished off. The vampire killed two other guys and made off with a third, in what must have been a scene of Beowulf-worthy gore and destruction.

So isn’t this whole Carlisle backstory kind of awesome? I want to see a graphic novel about this. Get in touch with Allan Moore, S. Meyer! Bella mentions that Edward pauses here, editing something out of the story. I know I just finished complaining about dangling plot threads, but this works. Here, Edward has essentially taken over the narration of the book, and Bella only reappears every five or six paragraphs. So there’s a "Heart of Darkness"-style one-step removal from the narrator which is kind of interesting.

Carlisle apparently feared his father would kill him if he heard he’d been bitten, so he crawled away from the scene to save himself. “He hid in the cellar,” Edward says and “then he’d turned to the wilderness really, not to Mr. Kurtz, who he was ready to admit was as good as buried.” And for a moment it seemed to them both as if they were also buried in a vast grave full of unspeakable secrets.