Monday, January 31, 2011

BLOGGING BREAKING DAWN, pt. 13: Rosalie V. Wade

When we last left our, uh, Jacob, he was rolling up to the Cullen house ready to fuck up some shit. But Carlisle opens the door and already the kid is diffused. Carlisle tells Jacob it's not the best time, and could they do this later? Carlisle presumably knows, thanks to Edward, exactly what Jacob is coming here to do. So he's saying, "Can you come back and kill all of us later?" which is kind of funny, and a useful thematic sign post. I mean, as much as Breaking Dawn has already gone off the rails, it's about to go even more off the rails, which I sense is just a prelude to something even off-the-railsier, like this metaphorical train we're on jumped the tracks and plowed through a busy city street Inception-style, and now it's about to plunge into the ocean and then launch into outer space. There's no graceful way to transition into something like that, and this is one of the rare occasions where it seems like S. Meyer even tried to a little bit.


Chapter 8 (cont'd): Waiting For The Damn Fight To Start Already

Jacob hears Bella's “cracked and rough” voice coming from in the house, telling Carlisle to let Jacob in. All of the Cullens are standing by the couch in standard Calvin Klein ad formation.
You're welcome, ladies. And for the gents:

ANYWAY, Jacob spots Edward and is shocked by his tortured expression-- if you're shocked by tortured expressions you haven't hung around Edward enough, man. But seriously, this is a next-level tortured expression, I guess. His eyes are “half-crazed” and he looks “like someone had lit him on fire.” Before Jacob can use a few more “on fire” similes (he'll come back to them later) he catches Bella's scent and realizes she's still human. He gets excited and his heart beats in “a strange, broken meter” like trochaic hexameter or something.

But then I really saw her.

She's really gross looking! There are dark circles under her eyes, her face is "haggard" and her cheekbones are poking out, she's covered in a sheen of sweat. While Jacob stares, her skin turns green and Rosalie lifts a trash can or something for Bella's forthcoming vomit (forthcoming vomit is a great band name if anybody needs one, I've got plenty). Jacob mentions the sense he used to have that Bella disliked Rosalie and wonders what the deal is. Edward drops to his knees by Bella (this is the first of several times he drops to his knees in this chapter, by the way) and she touches his face, comforting him. It's been a while since we've had a confusingly “blocked” scene, where the angles and distances between characters are unclear. That's mostly because S. Meyer rarely gives us that much detail. Pretty much every time she does, it's vague and/or physically impossible. I assumed Jacob was facing the Cullens on the couch, given what he has been able to see (including that Bella is on the couch in the “fetal position” HINT HINT) but now it seems he's been behind them the whole time. He describes himself as on his knees, “leaning over the back of the couch” from Edward. What? And somehow Jacob doesn't seem able to see Bella's pregnant stomach until she stands up, a fact that becomes all the more unbelievable when she, you know, stands up.

Bella's body was swollen, her torso ballooning out in a strange, sick way. It strained against the faded gray sweatshirt that was way too big for her shoulders and arms. The rest of her seemed thinner, like the big bulge had grown out of what it had sucked from her.

Awesome. I didn't see the body-horror aspect of this coming, but I'm all for it. Black Swan totally whetted my appetite for some weird shit. Bring it, S. Meyer! Going down this road doesn't really fit with the previous three books, but the previous three books weren't very good! Let's do this instead!

Two words: nail file

Realizing Edward got Bella pregnant, Jacob says he doesn't want to imagine “him inside her,” which is the first of several rather explicit lines in Jacob's narration. Explicit relative to Bella, I mean. If Jacob was a normal teenage boy, his stream-of-consciousness would involve the phrase “titty-fucking” way more than it does now (that phrase has yet to appear in this book even once). But within S. Meyer's forcibly PG world, “inside her” is downright transgressive.

AND she does a cool variation on the post-modern-ish pack mind thing here-- because Edward can hear Jacob's thoughts, he reacts to the narration like Leah did before him. It's like Edward is reading the book along with us.

Because it was a monster. Just like its father.
I always knew he would kill her.
His head snapped up as he heard the words inside mine.


Edward wants Jacob to step outside, and Jacob notices Jasper and Emmett standing at attention. Then he spots Alice and Esme hanging out in the back of the room. He calls them “small and distractingly feminine.” Here's where a normal boy might think about titty-fucking. Instead Jacob resolves to try not to kill them. Bella cautions them to behave as they leave the house.

(Weird digression: So my wife is watching Friends while she works, and earlier today an episode was on where Rachel told Ross she was pregnant with his baby. His reaction is the same as Edward's was; he freezes comically still and doesn't react as Rachel tries to talk to him. Now an episode is playing where Rachel's father comes to Ross's apartment and threatens to kill him. “Now's really not the best time for me,” Ross says. I'm not saying S. Meyer is basing the plot of Breaking Dawn on the 8th season of Friends, but yes I am.)

So Edward tells Jacob he isn't ready to be killed yet-- he wants to talk. Jacob observes Edward's manic behavior:

His black eyes burned in their sockets, out of focus, or seeing things that weren't there. His mouth opened like he was going to scream, but nothing came out.
This was the face a man would have if he were burning at the stake.


We get it. He's burning.

“It's killing her, right?” Jacob asks. He mentions (in narration) that he hasn't wrapped his head around everything yet. He hasn't reached Edward's level of anguish, and part of the reason is that he knows it isn't his fault.

“My fault,” Edward whispered, and his knees gave out.

This interplay between the narration and the dialog keeps getting better and more interesting. I mean that! I'm not being sarcastic for once! I mean, the rest of it sucks-- Edward is dropping to his knees again?-- but the way it's being written is cool. Jacob tells Edward to just “get it out of her,” (note again the casually harsh language abortion proponents use in this book). When Jacob hears that Bella won't let them, he's not very surprised: “Jeez, she was running true to form. Of course, die for the monster spawn. It was so Bella.” Jacob's got more of a read on Bella's persecution complex than I thought; how up to speed is he on his own? Again, Edward reacts to the narration, pointing out how well Jacob knows Bella. He explains that on the plane ride home, Bella wouldn't talk to him. He thought she was angry at him for knocking her up, but when they landed she ran into Rosalie's arms.

“What the fuck?” -Alice Cullen

Jacob advocates they hold Bella down and/or drug her and then terminate the pregnancy. Weirdly, Edward seems to have already considered this. “Her bodyguard complicated things,” he says.

Jacob only speaks out loud every third line or so. The rest of the time, Edward responds to the text. It's very cool. I promise to stop saying that soon.

So that's what Blondie was up to. What was in it for her, though? Did the beauty queen [Jacob is THE WORST at nicknames] want Bella to die so bad?
“Maybe,” he said. “Rosalie doesn't look at it quite that way.”
“So take the blonde out first. Your kind can be put back together, right? Turn her into a jigsaw and take care of Bella.”


That would be pretty cool, too. But Edward says Emmett and Esme are backing Rosalie up, which basically neutralizes Carlisle. You guys know what that means: Alice and Jasper are on Team Abortion! Yes! Anyway, Edward gets around to the point: he has a plan to save Bella. The dumbest plan ever. “You can offer her what she wants,” Edward says. Jacob realizes that “what she wants” according to Edward is “viable sperm.”

“If it's a child she wants, she can have it. She can have half a dozen babies. Anything she wants.” He paused for one beat. “She can have puppies, if that's what it takes.”

There was definitely a more delicate way to put that, Edward. When I read that last sentence I can hear the echoes of the groans of everyone who has ever been forced to read it. I mean, I get that S. Meyer is trying to show us that Edward is desperate, but this is pretty extreme. Personally, I'd consider a sperm bank before polyamory/bestiality, you know?

Edward mentions Rosalie's fervent protection of Bella's demon spawn (can we start calling it Rosalie's Baby?) and the fact that Bella's life “means nothing to her.” This is fairly common among pro-life folks-- they care about the sanctity of life unless you're talking about the mother. Especially if the mother is black. That's one thing you don't hear enough about shit like the Hyde Amendment: white people will always be able to afford abortions anyway. But I digress. When you're dealing with such blunt, exploitative handling of an issue like this one it's hard to resist the temptation to write counter-arguments into the margins. In every copy at the book store.

Jacob contemplates “borrowing Bella for weekend and then returning her Monday morning like a rental movie,” which is “messed up,” but also “so tempting.” Involuntarily, images flood into his mind. He says he's fantasized about Bella a lot in the past, “back when there was still a possibility of us, and then long after it was clear that the fantasies would only leave festering sores.” Hold on, what? How HOT is Jacob's hand that he's leaving sores? Buy some lotion, dude!

Jacob gets relatively explicit again, mentioning thoughts of “Bella in my arms, Bella sighing my name.” But from there he moves quickly to “Bella healthy and glowing,” pregnant “with my child.” Why are you rushing past the sex fantasies, Jacob? Stop and smell the roses! Or you know, a similar saying that doesn't sound so weird in this context.

Jacob tells Edward he's crazy, and that she'll never go along with it. I'm glad Jacob said that, because a page or two ago there was an uncomfortable sense that nobody cared what Bella thought about it. That Edward really was going to just rent her out whether she liked it or not. You know things are bad when Jacob is your strongest counteracting force against misogyny. Where the fuck is Alice?

If you were thinking this chapter needed one last gross, hokey animal metaphor, here you are:

“Help me stop it,” he whispered. “Help me stop this from happening.”
“How? By offering my stud services?” He didn't flinch when I said that, but I did.


Me too, but for a different reason. Jacob is worried about rejection, Edward tells him to stop being a wimp. Oh, we were talking about misogyny a minute ago, right? Dig it: Jacob again insists it won't work. “Maybe it will confuse her, though,” Edward says. “Maybe she'll falter in her resolve. One moment of doubt is all I need.” I don't think you are going to get a moment of doubt, Edward. I think everyone is going to do a spit-take and then Alice will kick you in the balls. But whatever, I guess we're going to do this.

2 comments:

Kim said...

It's like SM just said, fuck it, lets make this as crazy as possible (or rather, as crazy as she thinks is possible). Edward asking Jacob to knock up Bella? That is ridiculous! Besides, if she wants a baby so bad they could adopt. Even with the complications two teenage vampires would have, you can't tell me that the Cullens don't have enough money to buy a baby from somewhere.

Great parallel between Rosalie's attitude and the attitude of anti-choicers. If it was any other author, I'd think that was an intentional move making the bitchy vampire the representative of that facet, but I'm guessing it's yet another unconscious choice considering it plays against the point SM is trying to make.

This is one area where I feel there there is a very noticeable difference between the author and the narrator. Jacob doesn't sound like a 16 year old boy, he sounds like an adult woman. Even accounting for editing for age appropriateness, I'm just not buying it.

Stephanie_DAnn said...

I feel like I need to comment on how disgusting the idea of a man (well teenager) asking another teenager to have sex with his wife to get her to abort their baby is. I don't have anything to say besides "ew" because I ran out of moral outrage somewhere in New Moon and have really been faking it since then.

Can I make the argument that Bella is a feminist because she is disobeying her husband? Just kidding! But really does Meyer mean she says she writes with a feminist slant?