An Impasse

I’ve thought some more about why Edward’s so attached to Bella, and the little Italy episode when Aro refers to Bella as Edward’s "singer" (“Because her blood sings for me,” Edward says later) reminded me of something else that I read not too long ago. In Sheridan LeFanu’s In a Glass Darkly, there’s a novella called Carmilla, about a female vampire who is so enraptured with the anticipation of draining her victim’s blood that she actually behaves as if she’s in love with that person. She spends every second with that person, never leaving her side. Of course, she’s faking the I-love-you because back when Carmilla was written (in 1872, the dim dark days of yore) portraying demons, monsters, witches, et cetera as having hearts and feelings was generally frowned upon. If you’ve read Dracula (1897), you may also recall the way Dracula hunted Mina and Lucy; he behaved a lot like an obsessive stalker. I haven’t come any closer to explaining Edward’s odd affinity, but I think both the parallels and the differences between the way vampires are portrayed in modern stories and old timey stories are interesting. So, a long time ago, vampirism was considered evil; now, it’s been romanticized and even has its own subculture, laced together with some gothic subcultures. How’d this happen?

Anyway, today’s subject is New Moon, the second installment in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series.

We begin with Bella’s birthday party at the Cullens’. Accident prone as she is, she gets a papercut while opening one of her gifts, and that tiny drop of blood sends Jasper into a snarling, blood-hungry frenzy. Luckily, Edward is there to defend her, and as far as she’s concerned, all’s well that ends well. Edward, the smart one, disagrees. He leaves her, because he doesn’t want to endanger her anymore. Bella is devastated. She spends the first part of the novel sniveling about the Edward-shaped hole in her chest. Then, she starts hanging out with Jacob Black again, and it emerges that his little crushy on her is stronger than ever.

I like Edward in this novel much more than I did in the first. I like Bella a lot less. The most obvious difference between them is not that he’s a vamp and she’s not; it’s just that that immediate conflict sheds light on a larger difference. Their ongoing debate on whether or not Bella should become a vampire emphasizes the contrast in the way they love each other. Edward is selfless in his love; Bella is utterly selfish in hers. He wants her to be happy and safe, even if it’s not with him. She wants to be with him forever, regardless of the consequences for herself or anyone else. Even though she seems to be afraid of getting older than Edward’s physical age, it’s really a toss-up as to whether she wants to be a vampire so she can have eternal youth or so she can have eternal Edward. He emphasizes that he’ll love her even when he’s pushing her around in her wheelchair, and his request that she wait five years before asking him to change her gives credence to that claim. Edward wants Bella to experience some of human life before he takes it away from her forever. He wants her to enjoy the world the way vampires can’t; he wants her to see sunshiny places and eat exotic fruits and fall in love with whomever and have baby Bellas. (Anne Rice fans out there may draw a parallel here with Marius and Armand. Marius allowed him time to experience life before he changed him into a vampire.) When she’s a little older and wiser and has seen more of the world than Forks, she may change her mind about the whole vampire thing; she may change her mind about Edward. He’s 100-something years old, and he knows Bella is too young and brash to make this monumental decision based on teenage love. At the end of the novel, he agrees that he will change her on the condition that she marries him first. Now, of course, she says she’s too young. But he points out that marriage is a relatively simple commitment compared to giving up her human life to live forever as a vampire. And, of course, marriage isn’t quite so permanent, either. She doesn’t give him a straight answer, and her hesitation makes him afraid that she anticipates growing tired of him. Though her greatest wish is for Edward to change her, she can still have Carlisle do the deed if she refuses to marry Edward. This will drive a rift between her and Edward, and possibly between Edward and Carlisle as well. At any rate, it gives her more food for thought before she takes the plunge, and Edward wants to stall her as long as possible in the hopes that her decision, whatever it is, will be well-considered for her own good.

Bella, on the other hand, operates under the assumption that she knows what’s good for her, but she obviously doesn’t. She treads a path that constantly brings her and people she claims to care about in harm’s way. However, she has a chance to redeem herself. At the end of the novel, we’re told the particulars of the treaty, one of which being that the treaty is instantly null if any of the Cullen family bites a human. Not just on Quileute land, but at all, ever. And, seeing as how the werewolves despise vampires, they’d instantly seek to destroy them all. The danger is amplified just a smidge when we consider that Jacob already hates the Cullens—especially Edward—for personal reasons. Edward’s confident that he can eat the wolves before they can eat him, so Bella’s more concerned for Jacob’s safety than the Cullens’. Whether or not she’s really concerned and actually takes this new problem seriously is left in the air. She knows she can’t convince Jacob and company not to uphold that last tenet of the treaty, and she can’t convince the Volturi not to throttle her and the Cullens, either. If she decides not to become a vampire, she endangers fewer people, and the ones who will be endangered are in a better position to defend themselves. If she does become a vampire, she starts a werewolf vs. vampire gang war that could very well expand to include the humans who are completely unaware of all the crap going on in their midst. So, we’re still at an impasse.

Next I’m reading Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow. I’ve only read one other piece of Pynchon’s writing: a short story called Entropy, in which he implies that human existence is dwindling into meaningless chaos. I liked it. Hopefully I’ll be able to wrap my head around Gravity's Rainbow, but I’ve heard it’s pretty difficult stuff.