This year marks the 20th anniversary of Stephenie Meyer’s novel, Twilight. The book series of the same name has sold over 160 million copies, been translated into 38 languages and adapted into five blockbuster films.
Vampires are perennially popular, largely because we make and remake them to help us address our social concerns and fears. As author Nina Auerbach argues in her 1995 book Our Vampires, Ourselves: “We make the vampires we need for the times we live in.”
The vampires of Twilight captured the spirit of 2005. Fantasy fiction and film with a central struggle between good and evil abounded: think Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings. The melancholy of Twilight’s characters also chimed with chart-topping emo music (which formed some of the soundtrack for the film adaptations).
The novel follows the relationship between teenage human Bella Swan and vampire Edward Cullen, a centenarian soul in an immortal late-teenage boy’s body. The book appealed to the millennial feminism of 2005: it was told from Bella’s point of view, and Edward’s aesthetic (preppy minimalism) and pastimes (reading and playing piano) offered an alternative to machismo. But does Twilight offer the vampires we need in 2025?
This article is part of a mini series marking 20 years since the publication of Stephenie Meyer’s first Twilight novel.
Criticism of the Twilight saga has gained momentum in recent years. Much attention has focused on the series’ representations of abstinence. Some of the abstinence has been widely celebrated, including the way that Edward eschews human blood and has converted his family to “vegetarian” vampirism. They feed off animals rather than humans. Other instances are more divisive, such as his refusal to “turn” Bella into a vampire – despite her repeated requests – and insistence on abstaining from sex until they are married in the fourth novel, Breaking Dawn (2008). He only relents and turns her into a vampire when she nearly dies during childbirth.
Edward’s leading role in determining the couple’s physical relationship, and their subsequent dominant-submissive dynamic, has attracted much feminist critique. Especially about the suitability of a Bella as role model for young women.
Critics and those who “love to hate” Twilight alike have also explored a prominent moment where Edward gaslights Bella. Gaslighting refers to consciously manipulating someone into thinking their perception of reality is untrue.
Meyer describes him racing across a carpark in time to stop an out-of-control car from crushing Bella using only his bare hands. Fearing his supernatural nature will become public, he repeatedly tells Bella that she’s deluded because of her injuries – he claims he was stood next to her at the time of the accident. He makes Bella and other characters question her true version of events and persuades them to believe his lie.
Another behaviour that has met with debate is Edward repeatedly breaking into Bella’s bedroom to watch her sleep – is it romantic, creepy or criminal?
Meyer’s response
Partly in response to these accusations of anti-feminism, Meyer published the novel, Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined in 2015 to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Twilight’s release.
Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA
The novel is a gender-swapped version of Twilight with vampire Edythe and human Beau. The debate around turning Beau into a human takes up far less space than in Twilight. He is turned after being attacked by a vampire from another coven, a marked departure from Bella’s slower trajectory. Meyer’s claims in the book’s introduction that it is possible to invert the protagonists’ genders and have the same story were therefore undercut.
Meyer has retold the saga from the perspective of other characters too. There’s The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner (2010) based on the third book in the saga, Eclipse (2007), and Midnight Sun (2020), which recounts Twilight from Edward’s point of view.
There has been much speculation that Meyer has a tricky relationship with Twilight fan fiction, such as the Fifty Shades of Grey series by E.L. James – best-selling sado-masochistic erotica novels and blockbuster films that began life as Twilight fan fiction.
Creating alternative versions of her novels seems to be Meyer’s way of regaining control over them in the face of the abundant, unauthorised, creative responses made by fans.
Twilight’s lack of diversity
In addition to its debated feminist credentials, shortfalls in the diversity of the series may also influence Twilight’s longevity.
Where the Me Too movement has made a significant impression on attitudes towards sexual assault, movements such as Black Lives Matter and We Need Diverse Books have shifted them in relation to race, sexuality and other marginalised identities since the saga was first published.
A scene showing adult werewolf Jacob Black “imprinting” on baby Renesmee in Breaking Dawn has been decried not only in relation to consent and age inappropriateness, but also racist stereotyping.
Imprinting in the saga is depicted as an involuntary phenomenon wherein Quileute shape-shifters (an Indigenous community to which Jacob belongs) are bound for life to someone instinctively perceived to be their soulmate. It works a little like love at first sight, except that it immediately entails the imprinter’s utter dedication to and responsibility for their imprintee.
Openly queer characters aren’t a feature of Twilight but, as with gaps in its racial and gender representation, fans have filled the voids they identify with their own interpretations and creations.
Meyer is currently collaborating with Netflix to adapt Midnight Sun as an animation. This may add impetus to the “Twilight renaissance” exemplified by user-generated content in recent years, but the truly powerful reincarnations that will enable Twilight to navigate the challenges thrown at it in recent years, and in years to come, will continue to come from the Twihards (as fans of the series are known) themselves.
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