Download This all needs to be flushed out and clearly stated

***This all needs to be flushed out and clearly stated***
Proposal for Nat. Women’s Studies Association Conference in Denver -Due March 1
Genetic Dead End:
Male Procreation and Female Barrenness in Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight Saga
Feminism has long been a lens through which scholars and students alike read and
examine literature. Feminist criticism, or reading texts with a feminist lens, looks at the
construction of gender and the portrayal of the sexes as a part of a message, implicit or explicit,
sent by an author, advertiser, director, etc, dictating or portraying sex and gender roles.
“Feminist literary criticism has always had as one of its central tasks the interrogation of
representations of women within texts” (Plain and Sellers 34), looking at how women are
portrayed in advertisements, literature and society. Those portrayals then have implications for
how we as a society form, acknowledge, address and perpetuate power structures. By looking at
Stephanie Meyer’s vampire pop culture hit Twilight series through a feminist lens, power
structures and gender roles are not only determined by the rights or norms of the characters in the
novels, but also by sheer biology and how Meyer presents sex and biological structures within
her novels.
In writing her series, Meyer harkens back to the original vampire novel, Dracula. In
Dracula, “vampires are socially subservient to the masculine – the father Dracula” (Hendershot
377). Meyer creates this subservience to the father figure, in part, through a subtle killing off of
Harpster 2
the idea of female reproduction and the female as mother or creator by repeatedly bringing
attention to the death, inability or failure of women who have tried to, or wish to reproduce. This
eliminates the idea of Meyer merely feminizing the males in the novels because she is first
removing any indication of motherhood or mothering - one of the most feminine acts or positions
a woman can encompass. This is very similar to what Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein did. The
novel was arguably the first of its kind in that Dr. Frankenstein, a male, creates or fathers a living
being without any female participation. One of the most prevalent types of analysis done on
Shelley’s classic work is psychoanalysis of Dr. Frankenstein and his creation of the monster.
This relationship of male creator and creature or created is often called womb envy. Womb envy
is the thought that it is a “possibility that [males] might experience…envy of female equipment
and of the capacity to give birth (Lehman 50). Essentially a reversal or a mirror image of
Freud’s theory of penis envy, womb envy is the idea that men, at one point or another, envy or
are jealous of a woman’s ability to reproduce or to create a living, breathing human being.
The idea of womb envy, the male sex wanting to create or “birth” a being, is employed in
literature through the use of a male as the creator or a father who “births” a being without the aid
of any woman or mother figure. Helene Cixous and feminist theory? As one critic suggests, “In
Victor Frankenstein, Mary Shelly created a male character who yearned for the existential
security of elemental procreative power” (Lehman 50). But Shelley is not the only author to
incorporate this idea of male creation and reproduction. Stephanie Meyer emulates Shelley’s
classic in her pop culture phenomenon, the Twilight series by giving males the power of
reproduction. Arguably, “it is only in the act of birth that [woman] perhaps has potentialities
pleasure which are denied the man” and Meyer strips the women in her novels of that pleasure of
reproduction (Saguaro 38). [Legend quote?]
Harpster 3
In Meyer’s series, there are no prominent successful biological human mothers. Renee,
Bella’s mother, is described as scatterbrained and impractical. Meyer makes a point of
suggesting that Bella, the child, was always caring for her mother, rather than the other way
around (New Moon 421). Esme, the head female of the Cullen vampire clan, explains why she
became a vampire to Bella by first introducing Bella to the fact that she had become a mother at
one point in time. She told Bella the child was her “first and only baby. He died just a few days
after he was born…It broke [her] heart – that’s why [she] jumped off the cliff” (Twilight 368). It
is the death of Esme’s child and the removal of her role as mother that serves as the catalyst for
her transformation or Carlisle’s creating her as a vampire. Carlisle himself, “the father figure”
(Twilight 288) and founder of the Cullen clan, was the “only son of an Anglican pastor. His
mother died giving birth to him” (Twilight 331). Again, Meyer introduces the inability of
women to safely and successfully reproduce. As she renders her female characters incapable of
reproducing, it reasonably follows that the reproduction and creation of beings within the novels
must occur is some other way.
Although women cannot reproduce in the Twilight saga, men are not only able to
reproduce biologically, but also to create vampires venomously. Through this reversal of
reproductive abilities, Meyer suggests that creation, the ability to create, is enviable and powerful
by creating a world in which men have the power to create, reproduce, generate offspring
biologically and venomously, while women can only envy them this ability. Speaking in terms
of vampiric procreation, Edward suggests to Bella that “not many [vampires] have the restraint
necessary to accomplish it. But Carlisle has always been the most” able (Twilight 288). Looking
at the text not only from a perspective of womb envy, but as a critique of gender and gender
roles, it is indicative not only of ability to reproduce, but also ability to restrain oneself. Meyer,
Harpster 4
through this account, is perhaps suggesting that females are both physically and emotionally
incapable of reproducing and bearing children. However, the division between male and female
vampiric procreation is perhaps best put in the words of Carlisle and Alice when they respond
separately to Bella, who wishes to be turned into a vampire. Alice replies that she’s “not sure
[she] can. [She]’ll probably just end up killing [Bella]” (New Moon 437). Carlisle, however,
replies that he is “able to do it” (New Moon 536). In fact, all human beings turned successfully
into vampires are turned by males. Edward gives Bella a detailed description of Esme, Emmett,
Rosalie, and himself being “born…created” as vampires by Carlisle (Twilight 342). Even Alice’s
creator, who is unknown, is referred to as a male through the use of the pronoun “he” (Twilight
291). The assumption is, however explicit or implicit, that only a male vampire would be
capable of successfully and safely turning a human into a vampire.
(Include section on females creating vampires as “evil”???)
Beyond the ability to create vampires venomously, vampiric biological creation is also
addressed in the series. When Bella and Edward tell Charlie of their engagement, Charlie
assumes that Bella is pregnant. Edward later tells Bella that he wishes “there was some way
[Charlie] could have been [right]. That [he and Bella] had that kind of potential” (Breaking
Dawn 28). But, as Bella directly states, “Vampires couldn’t have children” (Breaking Dawn
126). This element of vampire life in Meyer’s novels is brought to attention earlier, when
Rosalie tells Bella in Eclipse that she “yearned for [her] own little baby” (156) and that “having
children is what [she]’d really wanted, all along” (162). Rosalie then explains to Bella that
“there will never be more than the two of [them],” referring to herself and Emmett, her
significant other (167). In this discussion, Rosalie makes it clear to Bella that wishing to become
Harpster 5
a vampire is the equivalent of wishing away the ability to biologically reproduce. Rosalie’s only
interaction with a child is a “moment of stolen motherhood” in Breaking Dawn (357), which
reemphasizes through the language used that the motherhood, the act of creating another being,
is not hers.
Even in the werewolves in Meyer’s series, the sole female werewolf Leah, like her
vampire counterparts, doesn’t “have the ability to pass on the gene” (Breaking Dawn 318).
She’s “a freak – a girlie-wolf – good for nothing else. [She’s] a genetic dead end” (Breaking
Dawn 318). Leah reveals the overall frustration felt by the females in the novels and their
inability to reproduce and take on the role of mother. At this moment in the book, Leah is
drawing a parallel between herself and Rosalie, a vampire she sees as an enemy. Yet, the
inability to reproduce bonds these two females, especially when Leah suggests that the males are
meant “[t]o carry on the line…make a bunch of new little werewolves. Survival of the species,
genetic override. [The male werewolves] are drawn to the person who gives [them] the best
chance to pass on the wolf gene” (Breaking Dawn 318). Rosalie and Leah not only share an
incapability to reproduce, but a species in which males are the basis of reproduction.
Meyer puts a twist on the reproductive limitations in the final book of the series. Bella
becomes pregnant on her honeymoon with Edward. When Bella is trying to make sense of the
recent turn of events, she mentally recalls that
Rosalie could not conceive a child, because she was frozen in the state in which
she passed from human to inhuman. Totally unchanging. And human women’s
bodies had to change to bear children. The constant change of a monthly cycle
for one thing, and then the bigger changes needed to accommodate a growing
child (Breaking Dawn 126).
Harpster 6
In the removal of Rosalie’s and the rest of the female vampires’ “menstruation,
conception, pregnancy and parturition,” Meyer has taken from them “even the most
feminine manifestations of their [lives]” (Saguaro 48). Meyer thus leaves them
effeminized, barren and childless.
However, even as Bella is able to become pregnant, Meyer’s description of her
pregnancy is less than glowing. Although it is stated that Bella’s pregnancy is comparable
to that of a normal human gestation with a growth of 40 centimeters, she is described as
“swollen, her torso ballooning out in a strange, sick way” (Breaking Dawn 174). At one
point, Carlisle, a doctor by trade, suggests that “the fetus isn’t compatible with [Bella’s]
body” (Breaking Dawn 235). Everything about Bella’s pregnancy suggests that she isn’t
supposed to be a mother even while “[t]he female body is a chthonian machine,
indifferent to the spirit who inhabits it. Organically, it has one mission, pregnancy”
(Saguaro 306). Further, Bella will not survive the pregnancy - “not [as a] human”
(Breaking Dawn 300). After Bella’s child takes her human life, Edward must “saves her
once again – this time by turning her into a vampire” (Siering 52). Meyer communicates
through Bella’s heart-stopping labor that Bella is not successful in producing a child; she
dies in child birth. Rather it is Edward that births the child and gives it life – actually
biting into the womb to retrieve the baby. He then creates Bella as a vampire, saving her
from earthly death and womanhood. Also, the child that was a product of Bella’s womb
is the size of a child “weeks, if not months, old” by the time Bella awakens from her
transformation (Breaking Dawn 438). This child was not really even a child - more “like
[an] adult, aware and intelligent” (Breaking Dawn 438). Renesmee would be “full
grown” after only seven years (Breaking Dawn 736). Even when Meyer shows the
Harpster 7
reader a woman who is producing a being, although only with the help of a male, that
being doesn’t need a mother.
As Edward demonstrates through the conception of Renesmee, male vampires are
able to reproduce biologically within the world Stephanie Meyer has created in her
novels. Edward obviously biologically impregnates Bella while he is a vampire and she
is a human, the explanation being that vampires stay in whatever biological state they
were in when they were created and “human men – well, they pretty much stayed the
same from puberty to death” (Breaking Dawn 126). Similarly, male werewolves can
reproduce “to carry on the line” and “make a bunch of new little werewolves,” as
previously stated (Breaking Dawn 318). Again, it is reinforced that the males pass on the
genetics and females are, if anything, the vessel for the male creation or reproduction.
[Tease this out]
Meyer makes a final statement about male and female creation and reproduction when the
Volturi, the Italian vampire royal family, come to investigate the existence of Renessme,
Edward’s biological offspring. Renessme and the witness brought to testify on her behalf,
Nahuel, are both products of vampire fathers who impregnate human women. When Nahuel
asked is asked if he was “able to create an immortal” venomously, Nahuel answered “Yes, but
none of the rest can” (Breaking Dawn 737). Nahuel then explains who “the rest” are by
following up his statement by revealing that his “sisters are not venomous” (Breaking Dawn
737). Bella then confirms the sex difference in ability to create vampirically by telling the
Volturi that Renesme is also not venomous (Breaking Dawn 738). Even in the last moments of
Harpster 8
the series, Meyer is restating and reemphasizing who is able to create and reproduce and who is
not.
What are the implications of Meyer’s gender constructions through reproduction?
Reading the books from this perspective allows readers to delve into and think about the
importance of how gender is portrayed and constructed in literature, and in society. In this case,
gender is constructed through the power or lack of power to procreate or reproduce. Throughout
these books and the barren female womb that Meyer presents juxtaposed with the stolen womb
or ability of males to procreate, Meyer is suggesting two things: 1) The ability to create and birth
a being is enviable. 2) There is power in creation and the ability to create. By giving this ability
to males in her novels, Meyer is suggesting that males should have power over the act of
procreation as the head or leader of the family. Given Meyer presents creating a being in a way
that suggests it is an act needing strength and restraint, traits her female characters to not possess,
she goes as far as to suggest that women do not possess the strength to produce beings without a
man’s physical, mental and emotional support.
By learning to read and analyze both literature and society with a feminist lens…
[Maybe abandon current ending and reemphasize how Meyer and other science fiction
authors who employ this kind of reproduction in their novels construct gender and what the
implications of those constructions are?]
Harpster 9
Works Cited and Consulted
Aram, Sepideh, S., Kristin S. Russel and Mona P. Potter. “Twilight Saga Book Review.” Journal
of American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychology. July 2009. Print
Calchi Novati, Gabriella. “Who We Might Be: Performing the Potentialities of Otherness and
Selfhood in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga”. Monsters & the Monstrous: Myths and
Metaphors of Enduring Evil, 7th Global Conference. Mansfield College, Oxford,
England. 15 Sept. 2009. Guest lecturer.
Hendershot, Cyndy. “Vampire and Replicant: The One-Sex Body in a Two-Sex World.” Science
Fiction Studies, 2.3 (1995): 373-398. Print.
Lehman, Steven. “The Motherless Child in Science Fiction: ‘Frankenstein’ and ‘Moreau’
(L'Orphelin de mère dans la science fiction: ‘Frankenstein’ et ‘Moreau’).” Science Fiction
Studies, 19.1 (1992): 49-58. Print.
Meyer, Stephanie. Breaking Dawn. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2008. Print.
---. Eclipse. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2007. Print.
---. New Moon. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2006. Print.
---. Twilight. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2005. Print.
Plain, Gill and Susan Sellers, ed. A History of Feminist Literary Criticism. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2007. Print.
Saguaro, Shelley. Ed. Psychoanalysis and Woman: a reader. New York: New York University
Press, 2000. Print.
Siering, Carmen D. “Taking a bite out of Twilight.” Ms. Magazine. Spring 2009: 50-52. Print.