kais last blog post..bye bye baby, bye bye!

thanks kai!

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I love Flylady! Hello hello!

You’re welcome.

i stumbled onto ur blog from a friend’s blog roll, and noticed that you are a fan of twilight. i’ve been reading this interesting salon article http://www.salon.com/books/review/2008/07/30/Twilight/index.html

which doesn’t paint a particularly positive assessment of bella, who lives for edward (so the article says).

so as a fan, and a young progressive (i assume) woman, why the attraction to this book, if in fact its female protagonist has this obsessive love? or was that the point? i thought girls wouldn’t be attracted to this kind of female lead anymore…

thanks!

Hi Gabby! Thanks for the link. You raise a very interesting point. There may seem to be a conflict between a woman’s progressiveness and her fascination with Bella’s obsessive personality. True. I can’t answer for other women, so here are my thoughts.

Bella, while she is terribly obsessed with Edward, is an “every girl”. In the beginning of the series, she’s just an ordinary girl prone to clumsiness, solitude (only child, divorced parents), quite mature for her age too as she has to take care of her father and mother in some ways. I liked Bella because she was a regular teenager. It makes her very relatable. All of us women at one point or another, had gone through this stage in our lives. This awkward, dark, quiet stage in our teenage years. I sure could relate to her feeling of uneasiness.

And then this hot guy falls for her. Bella can be seen as clingy, whiny, obsessed. True. But I remember the first time I fell in love as well, and those feelings were present. While they weren’t as obsessive as Bella’s, Bella’s experience of falling in love and wanting to be with her first boyfriend every hour, every minute, was relatable. Perhaps that’s why some of my friends and I describe the book as “very high school.” It reminded us of our first loves and how stupid/sad it can be.

Twilight is also told from Bella’s point of view, so you can imagine how she’d think of Edward almost 24/7. I’m most certain first loves can have that effect on one.

She and Edward consider each other soulmates. While they may seem too young to latch on to that concept of forever, as a reader and one who’s found her soulmate herself, I can understand how much they hold on to each other.

This is why I’m forgiving of Bella. She is not an epitome of a strong, progressive woman, she is what she is. A young teenager in love. : ) I would have loved for her to be so much stronger, to realize that she can’t define her life by associating herself with one man. But that’s not the route the author took and I respect that. There will be other authors who’ll take that road.

For the Twilight series, Bella is simply a young teenager in love. The throes of first love don’t always make us the smartest people, but it makes us very passionate. And that’s what the book is about. The passion, the thrill of first love. And that’s why it holds such fascination with a lot of women, progressive or not. Love knows no progressiveness. It is what it is.

Thanks for the comment, Gabby. This was refreshing. I haven’t written about Twilight in ages. I hope this answers your question. Let me know!

bems last blog post..somewhere over the rainbow

Hmmm, pwede rin siguro!

kais last blog post..bye bye baby, bye bye!

Oops. What’s a green alternative?

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Oh that’s not my sink! Please see the image credit at the end of the blog entry But my sink at home is shiny too!

Hi AC Doc! That’s a good practice to clean up the dishes right after eating. I should do that too.

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It’s tough when the dishes pile up. Procrastinating really doesn’t lead to any good.