De-Feminizing Women In Twilight

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Recommended: The second gender by simone de beauvoir essay

Jajira John-Baptiste
4/15/14
Research paper
Ms. Proctor
Per.6

Twilight: De-feminizing women
The hit sensation “The Twilight Saga” is praised by many fans for its beautiful love story by two star crossed lovers. However, this series defeminizes women in every literature aspect to date. It’s filled with sexist, degrading, and absurd views on women that obliterates all for what a female stands for.
Stephanie Meyer, the author of the popular series didn’t think of women to highly in her series. The main character Bella didn’t get the strong appeal as any girl in books usually get, instead she got the left foot that kicked womanhood back to where they had to fight for their equal stance in the male dominated world. Critics that claimed Stephanie Meyer can’t write didn’t just bash on her writing capabilities but also her anti-feminist views of women. One bleakly stated “Simone De Beauvoir’s ground breaking theory The Second Sex carefully analyzed the milestone positions of women’s lives in Western society…. De Beauvoir consistently challenged traditional and unequal gender roles in The Second Sex- the same damaging gender roles that Stephanie Meyer blithely resuscitates in the Twilight saga… ignores the progress of feminism obtained in the past sixty years, and is instead framed in an almost archaic narrative.” Through the eyes of only Bella’s tragic “love story” are women degraded. (Reni Eddo Lodge) (Brown)
Ladies should be depicted as strong, gracious, beautiful beings that every man needs and respects, although Meyers portrayal of this strays away from other novels based on vampires such as Bram Stokers’ Dracula. Stoker’s women are Independent and describe the perfect picture of a heroine which is defined as “‘a woman distinguish...

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... story’s targeted audience is teenage girls that admires everything about this book. (Goodfriend)(Rice)
Despite all the attention on the main character, Stephanie Meyer makes all the females in her series inferior and powerless. All the males; jasper, Emmett, and Carlisle have higher power over their females counterpart. Carlisle is head of the coven that brings in the money and power while Esme is the stay at home peace maker. Rosalie is the beauty and Emmett is the strength, jasper is the informative one while Alice is his mirror. Bella isn’t the only one we see with feminist problems. All females in the series are apparently degrading, te only ting they hav in common with the males re that they are vampires who have just as much potential as their husbands. The baffling part here I why didn’t Meyer let them stand on the same level with what the dominant men have

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