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Maybe you, like me, have been troubled by the relentless parallels between Jacob's behavior and domestic abuse. Sometimes, for the past few weeks, I've wondered why exactly it was bothering me so much. Novels are allowed to have dark themes, after all. I realized that I felt uneasy because these moments somehow felt simultaneously deliberate and accidental, the way they kept piling up but were never addressed. There was a tension there I couldn't put my finger on; it was almost as if S. Meyer was drawing parallels to abusive relationships without actually condemning them, as if she didn't think they were a bad thing. But I put that thought out of my head, because it seemed crazy. And then, holy shit. This fucking chapter. WHAT THE FUCK?Get ready for this, you guys. I recommend strapping your copy of New Moon to your hands with a bungee cord or something, because at some point you, like me, will probably be seized with the urge to throw your book across the room. Previous entries can be found in the directory.
Chapter 14: Family
Jacob and Bella meet the wolf pack on the back road where they used to ride bikes. Bella is underwhelmed when they all emerge from the woods. "These were just four really big half-naked boys," she says dismissively.
"Just think of the possibilities, Bella!"-Alice Cullen
Bella has difficulty telling them apart; they all look the same to her. It's okay Bella, my grandfather says the same thing about black people. One time we were watching a movie and he asked me why Barack Obama was in it. We were watching Slumdog Millionaire, and he was looking at Dev Patel.
Only Sam stands out; he's the biggest and he still has that inner-peace about him that Bella hates so much. But when the pack sees her, they all flip the fuck out, even Sam "Namaste" Uley. This wolf pack is apparently a boys' club.
Paul is not someone we've heard much about, but I hate this prick already. He's clearly one of those friends who can't deal with one of his bros spending time with a girl. Men can be so needy! Jacob steps protectively in front of Bella when the boys start howling in protest, and that simple little gesture sends Paul over the edge.
He threw his head back, a real growl tearing from between his teeth.
A "real growl?" Why am I thinking of Max from Where The Wild Things Are all of a sudden? Paul immediately transforms into a wolf and lunges at Jacob and Bella. There was no build-up to that scene at all; it just... happened. We're going to skip the foreplay, S. Meyer? You just want us to lie there?
There's a Transformers quality to the wolfication: "Dark silver blew out from the boy, coalescing into a shape more than five-times his size." Five times his size? Where do you keep all of that wolf, Paul? I know, I know, it's injun magic, I shouldn't question it. Jacob runs toward Paul, jumps into the air, and transforms before he touches the ground. Showoff.
The two wolves violently rip at each other and eventually tumble into the woods, at which point Sam chases after them and the two remaining boys burst out laughing. Bella is shocked and terrified and appalled at their callousness, which should probably be the first sign she's got nothing to worry about. Didn't this same misunderstanding just happen? Didn't I just complain about it? Does Bella ever get tired of being wrong? We get the sense that fighting amongst werewolves is N.B.D., as the kids say (if you do the old-school periods in your abbreviations like the N.Y.T. it classes it up a bit) and the two boys (who are Jared and Embry, if it matters, which it doesn't) nonchalantly start picking up shredded bits of clothing and sneakers. They collect Sam's (still intact) shoes and mention throwing out the rest. At least they are environmentally conscious werewolves. Do you think they recycled Laurent?
"Kids, a dirty Mother Earth free of vampires is worse than a clean Mother Earth infested with them. So do your part, and pack out what you pack in. Knowing is half the battle."-Sam Uley
Embry even runs into the woods to get Sam's pants. Pro-tip: Expert werewolves remember to take off their pants before they morph. I'm glad S. Meyer thought this through enough to avoid Hulk-style wardrobe questions.
"Yes, the wolves are all naked boys on the inside. That is very important for this story." -S. Meyer
And to answer your question: Yes, Sam Uley does wear cut-off jeans. How did you guess? Because Edward has the market cornered on mock-turtlenecks and pleated pants? I bet Sam's are the kind where the pockets hang out the bottom. Get that look!
Sam Uley (Artist Rendition)
Before he left, Sam had ordered Embry and Jared to take Bella "to Emily's," so they commandeer Bella's truck (she's kind of shocked and dizzy after watching Jacob explode into a giant wolf, which is understandable, but seriously, is Bella ever not collapsing and vomiting these days?) and proceed to banter like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern or something.
"Well, the wolf's out of the bag now." Embry sighed. "Way to go, Jake."
Do the wolves always use wolf-themed variations on popular expressions? He stuck out like a sore wolf. A wolf in the hand is worth two in the wolf. If you don't have anything wolf to say, don't say anything at all. Wolf means never having to say you're sorry.
There's some talk in the truck about the treaty between the Cullens and the Quileutes - Embry was afraid Laurent was a relative, which apparently would have aversely affected vampire-wolf diplomatic relations, which are apparently a thing. Did these guys not get the memo that the Cullens are no longer in the picture? Or the Cullens will be back soon anyway and this is just a plot seed for Eclipse that needed to be planted somewhere.
Emily turns out to be Sam's fiancée, and on the way over, Embry tells Bella not to stare at her.
I frowned at him. "Why would I stare?"
Embry looked uncomfortable. "Like you saw just now, hanging out with werewolves has its risks."
Uh-oh. Are you ready for what happens next? There is no way that you are. They reach "a tiny house that had once been gray" (what color is it now?) and the boys walk right in. Bella follows, and there's "a young woman with satiny copper skin" (S. Meyer loves to exoticize the minorities, huh?) standing at the stove, facing away. "For one second I thought the reason Embry had told me not to stare was because the girl was so beautiful," Bella says. So we know Bella is an ass man. But then we all stop smiling because Emily turns around.
The right side of her face was scarred from hairline to chin by three thick, red lines, livid in color though they were long healed. One line pulled down the corner of her dark, almond-shaped right eye, another twisted the right side of her mouth into a permanent grimace.
Hey, did you guys not get all the domestic violence parallels yet? Do you maybe need them SHOVED DOWN YOUR FUCKING THROAT? SAM LOST CONTROL AND RIPPED EMILY'S FACE OFF! DO YOU GET THE METAPHOR YET? DO YOU!? ARE YOU UNCOMFORTABLE ENOUGH YET OR HAS SOME OF YOUR SKIN NOT COMPLETELY CRAWLED OFF OF YOUR BODY? DO YOU STILL HAVE SOME BLOOD LEFT TO BE CURDLED?
As if the mother of all thematic sledgehammers wasn't bad enough, S. Meyer is determined to make this whole situation even worse. Emily feeds them muffins, and there's a weird beat where she asks Bella if she's the "vampire girl" and it seems kind of hostile and Bella replies "Yes. Are you the wolf girl?" and everyone laughs. Okay. Then Sam comes home.
"Emily," he said, and so much love saturated his voice that I felt embarrassed, intrusive, as I watched him cross the room in one stride and take her face in his wide hands.
Am I the only one who flinched instinctively on Emily's behalf?
He leaned down and kissed the dark scars on her right cheek before he kissed her lips.
ISN'T IT WONDERFUL THAT THIS ABUSIVE FIANCÉ LOVES HIS VICTIM SO MUCH? IT'S SO GREAT THAT HE STILL LOVES HER AFTER HE DISFIGURED HER! WHAT A GUY! THEY ARE SUCH A MODEL COUPLE! PERFECT AND WONDERFUL LOVE!
This was worse than any romantic movie; this was so real that it sang out loud with joy and life and true love.
Are you sure that's what you meant to say, Bella? Are you sure you didn't mean "this was worse than anything; this was so bleak and misguided and exploitive and cheap that it sang out with ugh and gross and FUCK YOU S. MEYER" or something?
"Hey, none of that," Jared complained. "I'm eating."
"Then shut up and eat," Sam suggested, kissing Emily's ruined mouth again.
"Ugh," Embry groaned.
AMEN, EMBRY! What kind of person conceives of this? All along, S. Meyer has been drawing these comparisons for seemingly no particular reason, except perhaps to mirror the threat formerly posed by the Cullens, which itself mirrored abusive relationships to a lesser extent. I guess it is okay to be thematically condescending in YA fiction, to do something like create a character whose seeming sole purpose is to embody a theme you've already established. But what is the point of this particular theme? To show Bella beset on all sides with danger? Bella's already in so much danger all the time, we've reached a level of danger saturation. And nothing is ever really made of the fact that the things Bella loves pose as great a threat to her as everything else, except that Edward occasionally points it out when he's in a particularly self-loathing mood. The whole thread seems unnecessary, like S. Meyer is keeping it around and not doing anything with it. And to then make Sam and Emily this Great Romance, to have Bella be overwhelmed by their love - what the hell kind of message is that sending? It's misguided to an insane degree, but it doesn't even seem to be aware of its own perversion, does it? Twilight compulsively avoids sex and bad words. If it felt like this series was knowingly inverting our ideas about abusive relationships, that would be one thing. It would be morally reprehensible in a way we could respect. I'm not against being transgressive, but to be unaware of one's own moral reprehensibility is to be a sociopath. This chapter is sociopathic.
Jacob tells the pack that Victoria is after Bella, and they all argue as to what extent they will use Bella as bait. They plan on splitting up on their patrols or something (it's hard to read closely when you're too busy punching this book repeatedly). They want to keep Bella on the reservation as often as possible, and Bella insists on finding excuses to get Charlie down there too.
Sam tells Bella if she sticks around he can't "make any guarantees" about her safety. OBVIOUSLY! The guys are psyched that they'll get a chance to kill Victoria, and Bella and Emily get to be nail-biting, worried female stereotypes for a good long while. Bella watches Emily watching the boys eat breakfast and notes that she clearly sees them as her family.
All in all, it wasn't what I'd been expecting from a pack of werewolves.
You said it, Bella. Jacob spends the rest of the day on patrols, and Bella hangs out with Billy. Charlie comes over for dinner, and that night he asks Bella what the deal is now. She shrugs off all the problems with Jacob as a misunderstanding, and tells him about how great Sam and Emily are.
His face changed. "I hadn't heard that he and Emily had made it official. That's nice. Poor girl."
Bella asks Charlie if he knows what happened, and he tells her Emily was mauled by a bear. Oh good, I'm glad there's an official story. I wonder whose idea it was? Bella takes a minute before she goes to bed to reckon with her amoral self. Earlier Jacob had called her a hypocrite for being worried that he was killing people, since she used to date a vampire and all.
I curled into a tight ball. No, Edward wasn't a killer. Even in his darker past, he'd never been a murderer of innocents at least.
AT LEAST? Does Bella not realize that killing non-innocents is still bad? Does S. Meyer?
I shook my head sadly. Love is irrational, I reminded myself.
I know how you feel, Bella. I'm shaking my head so hard and so sadly it feels like it's going to fall off of my body!
12 comments:
Yay! My TWSS for this chapter is sort of stretching the sphere of TWSS-
"I hope Paul gets a mouthful of him"
You have to imagine it being said by Boy George.
Also, I feel like you are reaching a bit with the domestic violence analogies. Abuse is a pattern. In the case of the wolves, it is described as more of a self-control issue that they learn to deal with as they mature. Sam doesn't lash out at Emily in anger, he transforms and she was there.
I don't know. I mean, I see your point, but I think that making the analogy like this kind of trivializes the cycle of abuse that really perpetuates domestic violence.
Do you realize how many abusive men say "they couldn't control themselves"? They just "raged and she was there" sort of thing?
This is why this book was so hard for me to read. I really wish it stopped here, but of course, it doesn't.
There is a pattern, dude. A pattern of no one ever shutting the fuck up about how dangerous they are: Edward, Jacob, etc. And I agree, it TOTALLY trivializes domestic abuse, because there is no real consequence except for the ancillary characters. We know Bella is never going to get mauled by Jacob, but that threat will be hinted at forever. I'm not saying S. Meyer has a very good grasp of the idea of domestic abuse, I'm saying she is uselessly, cheaply, and probably unconsciously exploiting and inverting it for no real reason at all. I don't think I am reaching, either. The characters who could or do lose control and kill or hurt someone are all male, and their victims are almost always female.
@thetrace360 Yes, fair enough. I don't think it's the same here, but you are absolutely right.
@zac Okay, I think your further explanation helped me understand your point better. Thanks.
I like to think of the wolf pack as like the smurfs. You know, just randomly replacing words with "wolf" in a totally nonsensical and awesome way.
A lot of YA fantasy fiction focuses on the theme of the good girl being attracted to the dangerous boy (who, underneath it all has a good heart and is really just wounded and needs love and she can totally fix him, etc. etc.) only taken to the extreme in that the boy is usually some crazy mythical creature, which I *think* is partly what Meyer is trying to go for with these books. I don't really think she's trying to draw a parallel to domestic abuse, at least I hope not because if she is that's pretty horrifying, but she's also not really pulling off the bad boy with a heart storyline, either. She has the good girl and the dangerous boy, but the rest of the plot line falls short. It's like she didn't follow through with the rest of the moral lesson. Bella's love doesn't help anyone, it just complicates things. Guilt and attempted self-control aren't really that redeeming. The fact that they fight the evil vampires (or in Edward's case, kill the killers) isn't, either. Instead, you just have a really uncomfortable situation where a defenseless girl is surrounded by a bunch of guys who could easily kill her if they lost control - control which is usually painted as being in her hands (her being too close makes it harder on Edward, her making Jacob angry triggers his potential change) - and none of it is really addressed in anyway, nor do we get the release of the dangerous boy being "saved" by her love. It's like half a plot. You get the scary build up, but not the redemptive release.
I think one serious deficiency I have in looking at Twilight is being unfamiliar with the rest of the YA Fantasy cannon. I mean, I read The Giver, and Harry Potter, but I think my elementary school teachers overestimated my reading-comprehension abilities and subsequently I read a lot of highbrow shit in elementary school that I didn't fully understand. Which is probably the rosetta stone to my entire personality in a way. The point being that maybe this whole thing that I just freaked out about is possibly S. Meyer misappropriating genre conventions (as Kim explains) and not generally being a monster. We'll see what other people have to say.
i can understand stephie adding in maybe a LITTLE injury, to drive home that when they transform, they have no control over themselves. like, a deep scar on emily's arm or something. but she lays it on SO thick with how freakish and gross the scarred side of emily's face is, and then how enduring and epic sam and emily's love is. it's like she feels like the two have to be equally big or something. which is false. their love can be epic without emily looking like two-face. we get it, meyers, her face is messed up. "ruined mouth"? referring to it as a deformity? why is she so intent on us knowing how gross emily looks?
rosanne, i disagree slightly with your assessment of the situation surrounding her injury. no spoilers, but we learn that it's totally not a problem for wolves to be around humans and not rip their faces off. the danger is them getting mad AS HUMANS, triggering them to become werewolves, where they then rip loved ones' faces off. so, if your face gets ripped off, it's because you made the man angry and forced him to become a wolf. and that does smack of abuser justification. the whole "i don't know what came over me, i just got so angry" cop out. it's a way to excuse away inexcusable behavior, which stephie seems like she goes to serious lengths to do.
lemme tell you something. if my best friend was a serial killer, i wouldn't warn her that the cops were coming. i would still definitely love her, because she is an amazing friend, and i am able to love that part of her. but i would also be like, "whoa, she's a monster somewhere inside of her and she needs to be stopped NOW."
so when bella decides she'll go warn jacob about the wolf hunt, that shit is not morally sound. yeah, if she hadn't and he got shot based on her wildly mistaken idea of what werewolves were like, that would be a bummer, but that doesn't make it right for her to put her friend's well-being over the well-being off all his potential victims, even if they don't actually exist.
if my DAD was a serial killer, i would accept that he was a monster, and neither my love for him, nor his skill as a dad, could excuse his behavior.
at the end of the chapter, as bella is boggling over this cray-cray turn of events, she has the conversation with herself that zac quoted, where she acknowledges that even if edward had been a murderer, she would still stay with him because "love is irrational...[t]he more you loved someone, the less sense anything made."
um...what? no. nope. bullshit. that isn't love, that's something else entirely and stephenie meyers is an asshole for perpetuating that idea.
love isn't a force greater than yourself that forces you to do morally reprehensible things. we are people with free will (thanks, god!) and we can choose to say, "i really love you, but you're a murder/face-ripper-offer, and i refuse to allow myself to be associated with you anymore. i will maybe miss you so much that it feels like i have a hole in my chest, but i'm gonna power through it because turning you in to the FBI/letting local hunters shoot you is the RIGHT THING TO DO."
even the scene where jacob throws a fucking can opener at jared's head (when jared suggests they use bella as bait) was upsetting. what? don't throw hard metal things at people's heads! what are you doing? what is wrong with you guys?
this book. UGH, this book. i hate bella so much in this book. i'm so tired of bella losing her shit, or having to sit down because she's hyperventilating, or curling into a ball and crying. get it together, bella. jeez. i was trying to think back to traumatic experiences, to see whether there has ever been a time where i responded like that and i drew a blank. maybe i am a cold-hearted automaton, or maybe bella is just an over dramatic nut bar who needs to develop some more solid coping skills.
I think that S.Meyer has a weird habit of putting so many cliche, stereotypical traits in her characters. She makes all of the werewolf boys seem really dangerous, and strong and almost brutish, which immediately makes me think of a bunch of stereotypical jock meatheads while All the girls are all delicate and soft. You can totally see this when the boys start planning on attacking Victoria all excited, while bella and emily just sit to the side and worry alot.
Now I dont know if she actually did make parallels to domestic violence on purpose and just has a really nonchalant opinion towards it or if she just wanted to show how fragile the girls were compared to the "big strong men". Personally, I think she was just trying to make the girls seem really human and weak next to the werewolves and vampires, because domestic violence does have cases where females abuse males, and they do talk alot about how Sam couldnt live with himself afterwards. Also we do find out that Emily was not the one that he lost his temper with and that she was just in the way (which was her way of showing how unpredictable werewolves are i guess)
What i hate about it so much is that so many people over look it because it is YA fiction. They don't think what they're doing to young people who read these books. Young people have too many problems understanding what love is in the first place. To have this as an example isn't doing them any good there.
i recognize that stephenie meyers is an intelligent, adult woman, and she has completed many novels, which is more than i can say, but i think it is giving her too much credit to assume she is doing almost anything clever or interesting in these books on purpose.
i think that the stuff that she's doing is obvious. the romeo and juliet shit. the wuthering heights shit. the things she does, she does with no finesse whatsoever. it's fine! this is a book for teensy baby people who wouldn't pick up the subtle stuff anyway! but it's not skillful.
i think any subverting of the YA fiction genre itself is totally accidental. doesn't she say she didn't initially write it for a YA market?
likewise, i STRONGLY doubt she is in any way commenting on anything ever, really. i would be willing to bet she had no idea that her characters were involved in borderline-abusive relationships, from the perspective of most people. i think she just wrote the books, cashed the checks and that's that.
what that says about her ideas of what is desirable in romantic relationships is surely a fruitful topic for further discussion.
don't you think? has she ever been proven to have done something super clever and impressive with her writing? you know i love me some twilight, so i'm not judging at all. i'm just saying that the writing itself isn't what we're here for, you know?
Kira - I half agree that she wrote the books without thinking. She has websites and interviews full of background info on her characters, sides stories, her own mythology, a whole weird little world for her books. It's actually more impressive than the books themselves. I think she really has put a lot of thought into the characters and the story, but the actual writing maybe not so much, which is actually one of the things that bothers me about the series. She studied English at a pretty well-rated university and she has said that studied quite a bit of lit from a feminist perspective (though she also said that was "easy" and it shouldn't be, so who knows...). She didn't just jump into this writing thing without any exposure to it. So, she *should* be aware of what she's doing and she *should* know better. Though, really, a lot of the subtext in her writing is probably unintentional.
Going on what you said about her view of relationships, I found this in an EW interview with her:
"There aren't very many bad guys in my novels. Even the bad guys usually have a pretty good reason for the way they are, and some of them come around in the end. I don't see the world as full of negatives."
http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20049578,00.html
Now I'm curious exactly what she considers a bad guy.
Zach - I actually didn't read much YA fiction when I was younger, either, aside from the few typical English class studies. As a teen I was pretty contemptuous of YA books and, looking back, was probably pretty annoying about that. I didn't really get into them until a few years ago. Now I'm studying to be a youth librarian and I actually get to read things like this for class. It's pretty sweet.
Here is my biggest criticism about this series and Stephenie Meyer: These books are marketed to teens and therefore are teaching teens lessons. I'm not trying to say that teens are idiots who will see that a guy hitting his girlfriend one time and them having a sickeningly (to the other people in the room) kind of relationship to be something to seek out.
With that said, aren't teens using everything around them to figure out the world and their role in it? The teenage years are when we figure out our sexuality, among other roles given to us, from biology or that are social constructs. Teens are finally given the freedom to figure out for themselves what their families, schools, religion, and medi-freakin-a are telling them! Teenage years are when we learn to sort through the conflicting messages.
This might seem like it comes from nowhere, but I think it is generally accepted that the media plays a role in girls developing eating disorders. Don't you think they might internalize other things the media throws at them? Especially since it's a freakin theme in the whole series! This ridiculously popular series! Therefore, whether Stephenie Meyers did this intentionally or not (seriously, SOME of that has to be intentional or she is just really, really messed up) is not the point. The point is, the message is already there and it's aimed at teens.
I don't understand how this chapter could NOT make someone uncomfortable, because honestly I've been uncomfortable since the first time Edward pushed Bella into her truck.
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