Sunday, January 16, 2011

BLOGGING BREAKING DAWN, pt. 10: Mama, I'm Swollen

First of all: y'all KILLED IT in the comments last time. I laughed AND I learned. But we kind of got away from the events of the chapter, what with our discussion of S. Meyer's FAQ section on her website and whether or not it made her an asshole (I'm paraphrasing). So as we finish up chapter seven and book one of Breaking Dawn, I'll give you a straighter forward question. Bella getting pregnant: good or bad? I have made my distaste with this turn of events rather clear, and am about to continue to do so. But what do you think?

So at the end of chapter seven, Bella comes to the conclusion that having her baby is a no brainer. Edward has other ideas. The language is pretty heavily coded--this is some white supremacist literature-level subliminal shit. We start talking abortion for real here, and that is all well and good; choosing to have a baby or not is a tough decision, and the moral implications thereof ought to be explored in YA fiction. Too bad S. Meyer makes Bella's decision easier for her every step of the way. I'll be pointing out these deck-stacking moments as we go along.

Previous entries can now be found in the sidebar. Does it help to have a directory post too? Does it matter either way? I'm not entirely sure how people go about reading this blog.

Chapter 7 (cont'd): Unexpected

Edward's sitting on the floor of the bathroom, "frozen" with shock. That Bella continues to use adjectives like "icy" to describe his demeanor makes this all a little confusing. Is he actually encrusted with ice? In earlier Twilight books, I wouldn't have felt the need to ask. And yet now, I do. All bets are off, science-wise. Literally anything could happen. Bella considers other possibilities for her sudden baby bump: a strange disease that mimics the symptoms of pregnancy? Could be!

Then she has an odd and lengthy flashback to her night researching vampires online. Maybe I should have paid more attention to that scene instead of obsessing over the phrase "my favorite search engine"--this is the second time Bella has flashed back to it! Bella again goes over her pet theory that vampire myths were used back in the day to explain away infant mortality and infidelity--men could tell their wives that the beautiful women they were caught with were succubi, that (it is implied) the sex was involuntary. "Of course," Bella says, "with what I knew about Tanya and her sisters, I suspected that some of those excuses had been nothing but fact." Whoa now, Bella. I get that being single for hundreds of years would kind of be a drag, but we're calling Tanya a rapist now? Also: there should be a "people in glass houses" kind of saying for this situation. Like, "married pregnant ladies shouldn't pick on spinsters."

Bella starts thinking about Rosalie and Esme. If vampires could have children, "Rosalie would have found a way by now." Bella is on a roll betraying her gender today, huh? But our narrator is a human, and Edward is a male vampire. It seems like that distinction shouldn't matter, but Bella offers a convoluted explanation (more or less on her first try! A thing like that). Vampires are totally unchanging, and women need to be changing all the time to have a baby. "The constant change of a monthly cycle for one thing, and then the bigger changes needed to accomodate a growing child." Men, on the other hand, "pretty much stayed the same from puberty to death." Huh. Is that good enough for you all? Bella surmises that vampire males have always been able to father children, but no human female has ever made it as far as she has. This baby is like no other!

WAYS S. MEYER STACKS THE DECK OF HER OWN ABORTION PARABLE #1:
The baby they are going to have is the first of its kind, a miracle baby on the order of the immaculate conception, or at least Sarah finally having Isaac after that whole Ishmael thing.

And then the baby kicks. WHAT. Edward's phone starts ringing and they both stand there in shocked silence while it rings and rings. Bella starts crying silent tears she barely notices and doesn't understand. Taken alone, this little moment is a great, cinematic one. I can hear the phone ringing, you know? (Though S. Meyer blows it a few lines down by actually writing "Ring! Ring! Ring!" Ugh.) Bill Condon will really impress me if, in the film version of this scene, Edward has some kind of wacky ringtone. Like the chorus of "California Gurls" playing on loop. It would be so much darker, for me at least. "I was having a moment," Bella says. "Probably the biggest of my life." Well, at the very least this is one of the better moments of this book. That's ignoring every connotation around it, of course.

Alice is calling, of course, but Bella has to dig Edward's phone out of his pocket because he's still motionless. (What a little bitch he is, huh?) Bella asks for Carlisle, and Alice asks what's going on.

"I just saw--"
"What did you see?"
There was a silence. "Here's Carlisle," she finally said.
It felt like ice water had been injected into my veins. If Alice had seen a vision of me with a green-eyed, angel-faced child in my arms, she would have answered me, wouldn't she?

Sort of hilariously, just thinking about NOT getting a green-eyed angel-faced child makes Bella picture GETTING such a creature, which causes her to recover from her dread and feel better, all in the space of time it takes for Carlisle to start talking. That's some baby-crazy brain you've got (all of a sudden) there, Bella! She gives Carlisle the news that she's with child, or with demon spawn, or whatever. She starts going over the details with the good doctor, and when she mentions feeling something move inside her Edward finally wakes up and asks for the phone. The men talk for a minute, and when Edward hangs up this happens:

"What did Carlisle say?" I asked impatiently.
Edward answered in a lifeless voice. "He thinks you're pregnant."
The words sent a warm shiver down my spine. The little nudger fluttered inside me.

WAYS S. MEYER STACKS THE DECK OF HER OWN ABORTION PARABLE #2:
Bella immediately loves being pregnant. I get that mothers share an instant connection with their child when they see it for the first time, but she has no misgivings about this whatsoever from the outset. Later she talks about how she'd never wanted to be a mother, had never really considered it. But now that she's going to be one, she could not be more thrilled. Of course, her baby is already moving around inside her, which brings us to...

WAYS S. MEYER STACKS THE DECK OF HER OWN ABORTION PARABLE #3:
Her baby is already fully formed! The argument that life begins at conception is given a huge rhetorical baseball bat when your baby is already kicking before you even know you're having it. S. Meyer wants to get in on the abortion debate but she drives past the real battlefield. OF COURSE Bella is not going to want to abort a baby that seems to already be communicating with her (she starts talking to it on the next page and it responds with the "nudging"). It is obviously, non-negotiably "a life." You don't have to do the cognitive work of rationalizing the life or nonlife of a blastocyst if Bella's kid was basically talking by the time Edward rolled off of her!

Edward starts making a flurry of phone calls, scheduling a flight home and shouting in Portuguese at people. (It will be interesting to see if all of this polyglot stuff makes it into the film. Robert Pattinson just learned to do an American accident, now you're throwing this at him?) Bella follows him around wondering what could possibly be wrong.

Surprising, absolutely. Astonishing, even. But wrong?

It's bizarre that Bella has completely discounted the notion that this thing growing rapidly inside of her could be anything but a green-eyed loving angel baby. IT'S KICKING ALREADY DUDE. It's only ever so slightly hinted that she is in denial about that possibility, that she could be having Rosemary's baby, basically--the overwhelming thrust of this passage is: Bella's protective, motherly instinct is kicking in. It's like S. Meyer herself can't bear the possibility that it would be anything but a darling little creature, even if the hole she's written herself into doesn't plausibly permit that. (In any other book, just a slight indication of that denial would be fine. But in Twilight, slight literary touches come off as accidental. It it isn't a broad stroke, it's hard to believe S. Meyer is responsible for it.) Bella looks out the window and feels the baby "nudge" again. "I don't want to go either," she tells it. Yikes.

In typical S. Meyer fashion, Bella stops to consider how strange it is that she loves this baby so instantly. "From that first little touch, the whole world had shifted. Where before there was just one thing I could not live without, now there were two." It's a good thing that "first little touch" came about ten minutes after you realized you were pregnant, and not like, say, after TWENTY WEEKS. She says she wants this child "like I wanted air to breathe." Then the important part [emphasis added]:

Not a choice--a necessity.

Edward comes into the kitchen and finds Bella crying by the window. He asks if she is in pain and tells her, tellingly, that they will "take care of this." The language used to indicate termination of the pregnancy is universally cold and unfeeling, the language used with respect to the baby is, in a word, miraculous. Edward goes on to say they will "get that thing out" before it can hurt Bella. The man has a point, but according to Bella (and S. Meyer) he doesn't.

Did this explain Alice's strange silence on the phone? Is that what she'd seen? Edward and Carlisle killing that pale, perfect child before he could live?

I don't know, I kind of feel like Alice would have been laughing if that's what she'd seen. Also, how crazy is it that Bella is suddenly the morally righteous one with respect to EDWARD and CARLISLE of all people? She jumped pretty far across the political spectrum in a single bound. "I would not allow it," she says firmly, meaning an abortion. Then the cleaning crew shows up, and there is a long, weird scene where Kaure (the suspicious maid) comes in, figures out that Bella is pregnant (when Bella brings a hand to her "womb," in another telling word choice) almost instantly, and then gets into a multilingual fight with Edward (he seems to be able to speak her native tribal language, and explains to her that he is upset about the devil baby too). It builds to the woman simply walking up to Bella, putting her hand on her stomach, and saying "morte."

I knew enough Spanish for that one.

Bella earlier indicated (vaguely) that by knowing a little Spanish, she can suss out the meaning of a few Portuguese words, but it reads more like she just doesn't know the difference. Also, most of S. Meyer's readers probably don't know enough to conclude what "morte" means, right? I'm personally at a loss for the part of speech it's supposed to be--is "morte" a command? Is the woman telling the baby to die, or indicating that it will die, or indicating that Bella will die? Or, most likely: is S. Meyer just trying to do a little "foreign lady says something ominous that sounds sorta like death" foreshadowing?

Edward brings their bags to the boat, leaving his cell phone on the counter. Bella makes a desperate play: she picks up the phone and calls Rosalie. "You have to help me," she says. Hey, why didn't she call Alice?"

"Um, I've got a solution for you and it rhymes with 'shmashmortion.'"-Alice Cullen

Oh right, that's why.

16 comments:

Thetrace360 said...

I definitely use the directories. I'm terrible at finding time for everything so they really come in handy when I forget to come back each week!

I think the lady means that Bella will die if the pregnancy continues.

Xocolatl. said...

When I first started reading this you were in the middle of blogging Eclipse, so at that point I used the sidebars for the first two books. But since then I've been using the directories, or reading whatever post is there the day I check.

What really shows how poor a writer Smeyer is, is how she contradicts herself when it comes to the deeper meaning (can I call it that with this books? I'll just just call it mormon subliminal messaging) in the books: she wants her main heroine to have sex but hints it's a bad thing, and yet insists Bella is usually right? She forced the "no sex before marriage" thing on us/Bella and how sex in general should be talked about as little as possible, and yet completely advocates babies? And my MAIN complaint (not really I have thousands), Bella has sort-of reasonable arguments against early marriage and babies (when she describes them), yet when confronted with the two she suddenly realizes that she had been in the wrong the whole time and SAW THE LIGHT?!

There are more, and I could have written the above a little better, but I don't care enough to look too deeply into a book written solely for romance and the mormon version of sex, I'll leave that up to you instead :)

Also, what's that picture you used for the title of this blog?

Ally said...

I have a feeling that with every Breaking Dawn post, there will be slightly less humor and a lot more anger and "WTF WHY!?!?!?" moments... I'm totally looking forward to it. :D

Kim said...

I'm going to jump on the side of Bella's pregnancy = bad. I could be on board with the baby thing. I could be on board with the Bella suddenly and illogically loving it. I could even be on board with her teaming up with Rosalie, but that all would hinge on someone else writing the book. With SM's convoluted morals and bad writing, I just can't. The way she did it, this whole story line pissed me off. Even her calling Rosalie pisses me off because it makes the baby into such an obvious ploy to fix their relationship. Really, the baby is an obvious ploy to fix all the lingering unresolved issues.

Unknown said...

I know this has probably been discussed already but how can Bella bring the child/monster full term if Vampires stop developing once they become vampires?

Wouldn't that thing be stuck as a zygote for all eternity?

I'm just saying

ZL said...

TheTrace- Okay, I will put up a directory soon. There's a game called Balderdash where you get a strange (but real) word and everyone makes up definitions for-- and then you have to guess which is the real definition. Anyway, I have always found this game incredibly easy because two or three people will inevitably write their definition in the wrong part of speech. Let's say, for example, that the word is "definition." They'll write "To make a loud noise that deafens someone" or something like that. Most people understand enough intuitively about grammar to know that "definition" is a noun, not a verb. But some people just don't seem to have that gene. I feel like S. Meyer, despite being a published author, is the kind of person who would fuck up that game. She doesn't understand the problem created by just using the word "Morte"-- she looked it up and saw what it meant and the whole "what part of speech is it" question never crossed her mind, because she can't conceive that other people would conceive of it that way. Which is a problem!

Xocolatl-- I did an image search for "Succubus." And your point is well taken, I think you're on to something there.

Yomin-- I think the idea is the baby isn't a vampire, it's something else. And Bella isn't a vampire either, and I think we can assume that deadline (GET IT) has been pushed back.

Unknown said...

So the baby is like Blade? Have human half vampire, all their strengths and none of their weaknesses. Although in these books it seems their only weakness is they sparkle in the sunshine.

And since when isn't becoming a vampire an STD? I had a recurring dream when I was a kid that vampires were created through sex. Granted I was too young to know what sex was but the point is still valid. Vampirism is a retro-virus so Bella should be infected instead of just pregnant.

I'm probably reading too much into this.

Stephanie_DAnn said...

It's hard for me to answer if Bella getting pregnant is good or bad. I know some spoilers that I really wish wouldn't happen. And I think the whole idea that a male vampire can impregnate a human female but not a female vampire is utterly stupid. For now I'm more intrigued than outraged. I'm wondering if the baby will kill her. Given the pro-life message and health of the mother being a good pro-choice argument, I guess the question should be how CLOSE to dying will Bella get in this pregnancy. And wondering if the Bella will be a sweet angel-faced baby, a monster, or somehow both.

And btw the sidebar is my bff.

Dear said...

LITTLE NUDGER?

Thetrace360 said...

Not understanding grammar is one of my biggest pet peeves. A lot of people I know don't know a single thing about it. It gets really annoying especially when people interrupt me in the middle of a sentence to ask me what some word I said meant. It's like seriously? You can't use context to figure out what the hell I'm talking about?

Emma said...

The section where the portugese woman is talking to Bella and Edward must be really wierd for anyone who speaks Spanish/ Portugese.
Also, sidebars= good!

ZL said...

Agreed, dear.

LITTLE NUDGER?
LITTLE NUDGER!?!?
LITTLE NUDGER!!!!!!

Dear said...

If I ever find myself in a Kate Hudson in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days situation (I never will; no one ever will), I will start calling his penis his "little nudger."

What? I lost the guy in 10 seconds? WHAT UP.

Kira said...

I was always annoyed that Bella assumed, without a shadow of doubt, that the freakishly advanced creature growing inside her is the same creature that she dreamed about. WTF?! I dream about animals and babies that are so small that I am afraid of losing them in the folds of my comforter, or smooshing them, but that doesn't mean I think that *I* will have a palm-sized but otherwise normal baby because I am a normal person who understands how dreams and reality work.

Also, as wass mentioned, it could easily be a terrifying hell beast, like in Aliens or something.

I find the pregnancy equal parts sublime and awful. In some ways it does provide some of the most genuine conflict in all of the books. Like, this is a really sticky situation that will bring up a lot of heavy emotions in all the main characters and create a good deal of tension, so it's successful as a plot device. But it also takes the focus away from Edward and Bella and their relationship, which still remains troubling and ill-defined after 3 and a half books. This will create more conflict between them, but did they need more conflict between them? Finally, it's a stupid decision by Smeyer because really shines a big bright light on how shaky the moral and logical foundation on which she's building this entire universe really is.

Also, aren't human men constantly producing more semen? So if vampire bodies are unchanging, how can Edward still be producing viable sperm? Did we already discuss this?

ZL said...

Somewhere back there we talked about that Kira, but it was in the comments. These comments are becoming more and more essential by the way, y'all.

But anyway-- I AGREE that this kind of a cool development, but one that undercuts wherever it felt like we were heading. Like, this is some fan fiction shit, but it's cool fan fiction. I'm game, but clearly this book is not going to resolve jack shit!

Emily said...

I think she means that the baby IS dead. As in, vampirebaby.
Since S. Meyer is disregarding science, why can't Bella give birth to a cold one?