Call Me A Heretic . . .

I hadn't even heard of the Twilight books until the third one came out. At first I avoided them because I didn't need yet another literary addiction. As I learned more about the series, I started avoiding it because a whiny heroine and teenage sexual tension didn't sound like my cup of tea. However, as more of my friends, acquaintances, and neighbors' third cousins became Stephanie Meyer disciples I became curious in spite of myself. Actually, it was the Twilight movie trailer that finally pushed me over the edge. I just had to know what these stories were about.

So I cheated. I went to Wikipedia and read the plot summaries for all three books. The summaries both satisfied my curiosity and confirmed my suspicions, but they also left me with two burning thoughts.

First, of the three main characters the vampire is the only one who isn't a monster. Edward cares about others more than himself, isn't self-indulgent to the point of endangering himself and those he claims to care about, and both considers and cares that decisions have consequences. By contrast, Jacob's heavy-handed attempts to manipulate Bella make him more monstrous than his transformation to a werewolf ever could, and Bella (in addition to being a head case in the second book) is so recklessly absorbed with her own self-gratification that I don't think I could endure four whole books about her.

Which brings me to my Second thought: Why does someone of Edward's intelligence, character, and sense like a person like Bella in the first place? Is it because she treats him like a man instead of a monster? Or because he finds it fulfilling to constantly save her from the peril she gets herself into? Perhaps it is simply because that's what the Male Lead does in a romance novel: love the Female Lead unconditionally, brave all hazards to protect her, and utter sensitive, well-crafted, romantic lines to make all the female readers swoon.

The whole business reminds me of "An American in Paris," another story where I found most of the characters more annoying than endearing. The Male Lead essentially says, "She's a selfish, unpredictable girl with serious character flaws and little regard for the feelings of others, but by golly, we're MEANT for each other. I'd marry her in a heartbeat." Right. Because that's exactly the type of person you want to spend decades with in the trenches of marriage. And those words could as easily have been uttered by Edward as by Jerry Mulligan.

Perhaps all of this wouldn't bother me so much if it didn't reflect a broader societal assumption that successful relationships have everything to do with attraction and nothing to do with character. While the epidemic of American divorces doesn't stem entirely from that misalignment of priorities, I suspect it's a major factor and many of the stories we tell ourselves in print and on film reinforce it. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a good romance as much as the next female, but we've wandered pretty far from Jane Austen whose protagonists loved each other because of good character traits, not despite bad ones.