How special it is, to get to return to the things you loved in childhood, to revisit them with a fresh perspective and new eyes. As a group reread with friends (both from pb and outside this app), this was an incredibly entertaining and compelling experience and I’m really excited to continue on with the series! While I know Twilight isn’t the highest standard of what fiction writing can (or should) be, I still think it manages to successfully draw in adult readers and tell us an engaging story, which is more than can be said with a lot of books even outside of the YA canon. I didn’t want to put it down at times, consumed by the story and my attachment to it. I also find a lot of value in big foundational YA series like it, as they become such important cultural cornerstones, something a part of the mainstream zeitgeist, and encourage younger readers to actually pick up books they might enjoy! I can never fault something that inspires kids to keep reading.

To preface any further criticism or analysis of these books (which I do hope to do in good faith), I find a lot of value in things that other people may consider ‘bad’ or of ‘terrible’ taste. Taste is subjective. I know I have terrible taste. I love cringe, I love camp, I love notoriously ‘bad’ films or raunchy, ‘stupid’ stoner comedies. My most rewatched movie is indisputably She’s the Man. I reread Vampire Academy and the Mercy Thomspon series every couple of years (and give them all 5⭐ without a second thought, because I enjoy them and like turning my brain off). Things don’t need to be exceptionally highbrow or particularly literary to have value, to be important works, to provide entertainment, or to be something people (particularly women, as women often get shit on for the things they like) enjoy.

That being said, I do think there’s a lot of important critiques to be made, many of which I know have been said before, by others far more articulate or knowledgeable on these subjects than I am. However, I will attempt to voice my thoughts on them anyway, because I truly couldn’t escape the LDS of it all throughout my reread.

The nostalgia of this book brought me back to the moment in time in which Twilight really meant a lot to me, and for that alone, these books will always have a special place in my heart. While acknowledging that, I’m not sure they’d be something I would read independently, if not for the sentimentality that I already have attached to them. If this hadn’t been a reread, would it feel as interesting to me as it did, or would I have been as compelled to finish it as I was? At times, the book almost carries notes of flatness from its predictability (which could also come from me already knowing what happens with the plot [though I am also a chronic rereader with a bad memory. Do with that what you will]). I also didn’t really understand how quickly Bella’s own emotions toward Edward developed. I’m someone who isn’t a huge, dedicated romance reader but prefers any romance to feel more drawn out, full of tension and a quiet, simmering yearning (slow burn gang wya - please give me recs lol), while Bella finds herself enamored with Edward almost immediately (while barely knowing him or anything about him) and in a sense, to me, unrealistically. Maybe this is because it is an accurate reflection of the Big Feelings™ that come from being a teenager and experiencing your first crush, and maybe I’m just too old and far removed from those emotions to relate to that.

It’s hard to divorce my own past fondness for this series from my feelings regarding it now. Because of this, I’m very curious to see how Midnight Sun (the only book of the series I haven’t read yet) will feel in comparison.

Granted, despite my own nostalgia, these are difficult books to assess. Sometimes, it is nice to just enjoy something for what it is. For that, I would have just given it 5⭐ just like I would Vampire Academy or any other Mercy Thompson installment and move on. But I find it impossible to fully separate Twilight as it stands, on its face, from the obvious and inescapable facets of LDS doctrine and morality Stephenie Meyer imbibed all up and down this thing, that it regurgitates to a mostly young, mostly secular audience. (Another aside, I know authors have been infusing their works with Christian ethics and morality systems for ages now, but as Twilight hinges on a heterosexual romance, and particularly the girl’s [as Bella is, in fact, a CHILD] place in that relationship, I find it quite deserving of attention and scrutiny, even 20+ years after its publication).

To temper myself, I’ll go point by point.

1. Vampirism as a sexual allegory

As articulated by my bestie and co-buddy reader @demon in her forum post 🔗linked here (that you all should read!) and through so much other established literature and analysis, vampirism has customarily existed as an allegory for sex / desire and the taboo that presents (especially for women). That taboo has always been part and parcel of the allure of vampire stories and supernatural tales like it (*see ContraPoint’s incredible deep dive on this topic 🔗here).

Stephenie Meyer’s particular (and certainly unique) brand of vampirism is no exception to this, but is very much couched in so many ideals that I found plainly and obviously Mormon-coded. Edward spends the duration of the novel fighting to temper his innate, carnal desire for Bella, one that he views as immoral but that is still functionally an immutable aspect of who he is (as men are often viewed as being similarly, inherently ‘lustful’ - that lust or desire is in their ‘nature’ - and women are not, but have to accept this desire in their own husbands in order to be dutiful, ‘Good’ Mormon wives). The Cullens are ‘vegetarian,’ choosing to abstain from their own bloodlust, and are thus morally pure and viewed as the ‘good vampires’ - like the faithful who adhere to strict moral principles of an LDS lifestyle, abstaining from premarital sex, alcohol, hell, even coffee. (All of which Bella herself avoids). Carlisle, as the leader and main proponent of this ‘vegetarian’ lifestyle, serves as a Joseph Smith-like figurehead, proselytizing to the vampires he turns or finds, leading them towards higher existence (i.e., the sanctity of Mormon priesthood for LDS men and the importance of missionary work for all Mormons, to spread the good word and produce more, faithful Mormons). I think this connection between vampirism and the morality of sex within Twilight only grows as the series progresses, but will save those notes for further reviews… (Breaking Dawn, I’m looking at you).

2. Bella as the ‘Good Mormon’ archetype OR, alternately the treatment of the women in Twilight

Bella is the quintessential archetype of the ‘Good Mormon Woman’™. She’s modest, while still being viewed as conventionally attractive and desirable by almost every other boy/vampire around her. Despite her desirability, she has no interest in boys (beyond Edward, her ‘Soulmate’) and has had no prior experience with them (i.e., is virginal and virtuous). She’s witty and smart, doing well academically, but she isn’t ‘too intelligent’, having no great desire or ambition to seek out a career, or really any life beyond the future she envisions with Edward. After all, a woman’s highest calling is her position in the home, as a wife and a mother.

Before arriving in Forks, she functionally has no personality, no friends, no interests outside of those formed under her mother’s influence (‘my mom is my best friend!’), and upon arriving in Forks, immediately begins undertaking all of the domestic labor in the household, catering to her grown ass dad who sits his ass at the table as soon as he comes home from work, watching sports, while Bella, once again, a CHILD, cooks and cleans for him. Not only is she almost parentified in a sense (as her parents do put her in a more ‘adult’ role/don’t really try to do much parenting towards her at all, letting her come and go from the house as she pleases), she compares herself to all the other girls/women around her and how she is -flips hair- so not anything like them and their ‘girly’, juvenile interests are just so beneath her.

At a smaller scale, I think her mother, Renee, exists as her foil, the ‘Bad Mormon.’ She left her incapable (and poor, pitiful) husband all alone for years (how dare she!!), isn’t a very hands on mother towards Bella (or even described as being particularly maternal at all), and further abandons Bella at the start of the book to follow her new husband, seemingly on a whim, leaving Bella just as she had Charlie.

It’s tough because on the one hand, I truly do not know whether to hold animosity towards Stephenie Meyer for perpetuating harmful, gendered stereotypes about women and their place in the home/as wives through her depictions of Bella (again, to a primarily child audience), or to be sad for her, that she has yet to deconstruct the rigidity of her own upbringing and the doctrine she’s been fed, and thus, is herself trapped in the cycle of a deeply misogynistic and oppressive religion and finds this all romantic and normal.

3. Eternal Marriage

I’ve hinted at this briefly already, but Edward is her ‘Soulmate’, her one true love, and Bella’s intense feelings for him develop fucking quickly, damn near out of nowhere. I think this is clearly analogous to the views the LDS church holds towards marriage/dating and its sanctity. Dating has to be done with purpose, maintaining strict abstention from sex and finding someone of a similar faith background to you, with the singular goal of the relationship resulting in marriage (and babies). When Mormons marry in an LDS temple, they are (and this is literal Mormon doctrine) ‘sealed’ in ceremony, ‘bound together for all eternity’ in a tie that will be upheld in heaven (or the afterlife - like the Cullens and their own Eternal family). Bella sees Edward’s vampirism and his family as something aspirational, something for her to achieve, and SPOILER thinks the big moment at the end of the book is going to be Edward ‘turning her’ (because why in the hell would he take her to something as pedestrian as prom 🙄). These themes only persist as the story does, especially, once again, as they relate to Breaking Dawn, but I’ll save it for later LMAO.

4. Resurrection

This is an obvious one (and not necessarily exclusive to Mormonism), but the ‘turning’ of one from human to vampire is so clearly analogous to the concept of resurrection. As articulated by the LDS church authority themselves, “Resurrection is the reuniting of the spirit with the body in an immortal state, no longer subject to disease or death. Because of the Fall of Adam and Eve, we are subject to physical death, which is the separation of the spirit from the body. Through the Atonement of Jesus Christ, all people will be resurrected and saved from physical death” (🔗). Not only does the book literally open with a quote about good and evil from the Book of Genesis, but I could’ve replaced ‘resurrection’ with ‘turning to a vampire’ and it still would fit Meyer’s conceptualization of vampirism. Through becoming vampires, humans can become ‘divine’ or ‘saintly,’ reaching a higher version of self, as Mormons aspire to do with their own resurrection in the afterlife. I also wonder if Mormon conceptualizations of angels (i.e., Moroni, who had a physical form, was described as being glorious and godlike, with ‘exquisite whiteness’ as symbolic of his divinity and purity) could also be compared to how Meyer views and describes the Cullens themselves.

There’s so many more comparisons to be made in the later books, with themes of consent/agency as it relates to women’s bodies and fertility in Breaking Dawn, and even the Volturi as a parallel to the governing body of the LDS and the strictness of their doctrine/moral code. I’m sure I’ll have more to say once our reread gets to the later installments, and as someone with a special interest in high control religions, I fear I will continue to be annoying about this.

All in all, I have very complicated feelings about Twilight. While I enjoy it and like the series (while acknowledging its technical faults in that it isn’t necessarily profound or well-written), I also am of the mind that it cannot be removed from Meyer’s Mormonism, due to how fluently Mormon doctrine is woven throughout the entire text.

She really said screw subtext! Here’s text!

If anyone actually read this entire thing, I’m giving you a big, fat kiss on the mouth rn (of course with no tongue, because we’re not married and that would be immoral /sarcasm)