It seems you are making something fit where it does not.

How about the secret meaning behind Arizona and Washington being the main two states talked about? Or the # and different kinds of wolves? Anything there?

It is easy to find some connections in the story and think “something deeper is going on!!” Yet if you go through and point out all of the places where no connections exist, such as in Twilight, you might reconsider the effort you are exerting to find hidden meanings where most likely non exist.

Mind you, I’d have loved to have seen it done the way you describe. Bella being a capable, confident young woman rather than a mouse would have made the series better all around. I say let’s give the whole thing a reboot and put it in the hands of JK Rowling. That would be awesome.

Your comment above, however, hasn’t convinced me! I suppose I want fantasy stories, particularly those that enjoy such a rabid young following as Twilight does, to feature characters that youngsters can aspire to, not necessarily a reflection of reality. Perhaps it’s true that Bella does indeed reflect a lot of women; still it would have been nice if the character had some personal aspirations beyond Edward. Had Meyer made Bella an aspiring author (not a stretch by any means), she could have easily deflected most of the criticism waged at her.

In the time since I’ve read the books, though, I have befriended online several fans of the series and am forced to report that even my own mother (sigh) has devoured the series. So I’m not as big a hater as I once was. Many fans I’ve talked to know it’s fluff. The setting-women-back-50-years accusation might be a bit hyperbolic. I’ve no doubt Buffy’s descendants will go on despite Bella Swan.

Now just don’t get me started on Twilight as an ex-gay allegory!

I’ve been reading a lot of urban fantasy,which Twilight certainly is, and every single heroine is exactly the same person. The wise-cracking hottie who ends up in some kind of sexual relationship with one or more weird monsters. She’s an independent woman! She’s a butt-kicker! She’s making it on her own! She’s different in exactly the same way as every other urban fantasy heroine. They are Buffy clones without Buffy’s charm.

Bella is none of those things. She’s a shy, awkward girl who is neither pithy nor butt-kicky. Her self-esteem and self-worth hover around zero and when the most beautiful boy in school looks at her, her common sense goes right out the window. She makes foolish, even dangerous, decisions based on that infatuation. In short, Bella is so much closer to a real teenage girl than people want to give her credit for. And I think that’s the heart of why a brazillion females have glommed onto this series.

I keep reading about how Bella sets us back 50 years, how real women’s lives don’t revolve around their men and their babies (except that for a lot of us, they actually do). I’ve decided that I kind of like it that Bella got a normal girl’s happily ever after, even if she got there in a roundabout way.

As for his claim that the Twilight books “act as criticisms of the LDS world in which she lives, especially the prevalent misogyny,” I have to wonder if he’s actually read the books! I have. They’re not critical at all, but more like a Mormon manual. The heroine aspires to do little more than cook and clean for the male characters (and later procreate even if it kills her), and at one point she hurls herself off a cliff because her high school boyfriend abandoned her. How could anyone see that as anything but misogyny?

I find it especially disheartening that the Twilight series now permeates pop culture given that just in the last 10 years we’d finally gotten away from damsel in distress archetypes. Buffy, The Spice Girls, Shrek, Harry Potter, even recent Disney princesses all featured empowered young women. But along comes Stephenie Meyer and her archaic Mormon beliefs to bring that momentum to a screeching halt.

One would have hoped that Granger’s analysis would be a bit more palpable.

Harry Potter was a layered, intricate tale with lots of influences. I feel like Granger is reaching to brand Twilight as the same. Twilight is sheer wish fulfillment, and it’s about as deep as a sheen of water over the road after a brief rain storm. The Cullen family as mythical and/or the Holy Trinity? Seriously?

The story Meyer is trying to tell is actually really amazing if you think about it. I mean, vampires, werewolves, supernatural love triangle, Native American myth, an undead gestapo that rules its subjects with an iron fist – what’s not to love? The only problem is that Meyer just can’t write well enough to get that great story out onto the page. And while I think it’s important to see beyond the words to the plot, I don’t think she should get marks for the story she almost told. The words got in the way, yes, but I think it’s irresponsible to almost completely disregard that when discussing Twilight. (He touched on this with the polite euphemism of ‘pedestrian prose’ but come on, dude. Let’s call it like it is – terribad.)