In Defense of Twilight
I am a huge Harry Potter fan. I know a lot of people say it, but most of them are not 32 year old women with several thousand dollars worth of Harry Potter memorabilia, several costumes, and a pornographic collection of Harry/Draco fanfiction. So I am, indeed, a huge fan. And I understand what it's like to put your heart and soul in defense of something that other people might otherwise enjoy, if you didn't make it look kind of lame.
This goes out to all you Twilight fans. I know you are out there. I don't mean the movies only people--don't play a player. You are in it for the incredibly well defined barely legal boys, and the comforting editing that makes it look more like an actual monster movie, and feel less like the incredibly horrific message that teenage girls do in fact know their own hearts, and are capable of making life altering permanent decisions about their lives based solely on what their boyfriends want to do at the time. Obviously, this is for the readers. The ones who picked up this book and then picked up the next, and the next, and were drawn so far down that by the time the main characters were silently nibbling baby out of Mommy it felt right and normal and completely justified because it was just so damned romantic.
I mention this, because I want you to know, this is not going to be about Twilight, or Harry Potter. Nor is it going to be a remonstration of grown adults who fall in love with children's literature, or fantasy novels, or barely legal boys. It's just a way of saying, I understand, and I think I can help. You are headed down a path I understand, even if the trail you took to get here wasn't one I could have ever followed myself.
I too know what it is to know the love of a book. A love so deep and real that you re-read it, not once, but whenever you feel lonely for the type of heartfelt romance and desperate yearning that never quite seems to happen in the adult dating world. (Or worse, it does, but just for someone else--someone that would make you feel that way, and not for the well dressed but non-enthusiastic guy from data processing that you finally agreed to have drinks with, who couldn't think of a single thing to say that wasn't about work or his tie.) I know what it's like to love the male lead more than you loved your last boyfriend, and both love and hate the female lead--love her for doing what you would surely do if you were her, hate her for being so completely not you.
When I was a child, my Dad gave me a box of books from his basement. He said he hadn't read a book since he got out of high school, but people were always bringing him things they thought he would enjoy, and he knew I liked to read, so they could be mine now. And it had some classics--like The Hobbit, and Lord of the Rings. It had some middle of the series Pern novels, and some pretty awful John Carter and Gor stuff. Almost all of it was sci-fi, or fantasy. I was an avid reader, and I couldn't have said no to them if they had all been self help or child rearing books--I had a need to escape, and books were always there.
Aongst this ragtag collection though, was a book, The Mirror of Her Dreams, and it's companion sequel A Man Rides Through, by Stephen R. Donaldson. It's the story of a modern woman, Teresa, from a wealthy family that raised a daughter for decoration, not love, and who was called to another world through a mirror by the fumble-footed but sweet Geraden. She struggles with her own inner turmoil from being basically abused by neglect, and he is the seventh son of a great man, called to work for an aging King and struggling with his lifelong failure.
As a child, I related to the empty lonely feelings she had, the dream of being called off to a life with purpose and to a man who could only shine if I helped him see that he was really special and courageous and could be more than he ever dreamed he could be, now that he loved me.
I re-read this book every five or so years. No kidding. I have re-read this book into tatters. I absolutely refuse to buy new copies, so the covers are held together with sheets of clear tape, and the pages are brittle and fluffy. When times got tough, or I needed to anchor myself, I would go back to this book, looking for that sense of escape, believing that there was some to be had in these pages, the way there always had been.
Of course, time has an effect on more than just the aging pages of a dogeared novel. An 11 year old sees the world differently than a 16 year old does--and a 21 year old, even more so, and a 26 year old still more. I am 32 now, as I said, and I am re-reading these novels now, through the eyes of a woman who dated half of the men in Indiana, and married a good one. I read it now, from the perspective of an adult close to the age my mother was when I first read it. I read it now from the point of view of a woman who's husband actually has a teenaged daughter, and can remember what it was like to be young and romantic, but can see the flaws in the plan the heart maps out at that age.
For instance, Teresa, She's so young, and so beautiful, and she has been given everything she ever craved--except love. When she is given the opportunity to escape her life, she doesn't even ask if there is ever going to be an opportunity to come back to it--she just throws herself into the fray, convinced no one would miss her, and that no one would care if they noticed she was gone. For a large part of my life, I also thought no one would miss me if I was gone--but that manifested itself in the fear that as a person who lives alone, if something were to happen to me, I might not be discovered for days. My jobs were of the "temp-to-hire" and "permanently entry level" variety, so if I don't show up, they hire someone to replace me without so much as calling my home number to ask if I am coming back. It could be days before someone in an apartment complex notices a smell, complains about it, management takes a report, and finally maintenance comes to write me up. My little dog could live on eyelids and lips for a minute before someone finally came to check on us.
And her beloved love interest, for whom all of my childhood dreams of love and romance were based? He's too old to keep the dead end job he's got--a 30 year old apprentice, who's been living the definition of insanity for more than a decade: do the same thing over and over again and expect different results. Pretty though--pretty, and sweet, and gentle and perfectly capable of seeing an incredibly beautiful woman when she doesn't herself know she is incredibly beautiful. (Thus reinforcing the dreams of every child since Disney first put pen to paper, that even though we feel ugly, and people treat us as if we are homely, and we don't look anything like the women in magazines, we are secretly hot and some man is just around the corner who can prove it not just to us, but to the whole world, simply by pointing it out a lot, in public.)
In other words, give him a big nose and glasses and call him "Brian" and I dated like, five of him.
As a grown adult, with a better education and a little perspective, I can see that Donaldson pretty much hates women. He often writes about alternate worlds, or a castle-and-knights version of this world where women are either Ladies or servants. But it's the classic Virgin or Whore scenario. In Mordant's Need (this series) the fate of the entire realm is constantly under mortal peril simply by the temptation of women--women who will lie, cheat, betray or collapse under the pressure of powerful, clever, and manipulative men. But the women, no matter how important to the story, are one dimensional. Teresa is a virgin for hundreds and hundreds of pages, though she is tempted by at least three beautiful men (and approached by half a dozen less attractive ones). Her heart is torn, but her morals are strong, so she survives to be both bride and victor. Saddith, her maid, is signified by her willingness to unbutton more buttons on her dress than anyone else in the realm--and therefore doomed to a savage life of harlotry and punishment for her betrayal of all mankind. The men in this book could have no more than a few pages appearance in the thousand or so provided--and yet have depth and character that both display their very human foibles, and forgive them with their very human needs.
But it's not the sensible, educated, literary minded Erica who picked up this series and began re-reading it once again just yesterday.
That is not the Erica who shouts at the pages, or makes faces when she thinks that Teresa should stand up for herself, or complains out loud that Geraden should just tell her he likes her, so she won't sleep with Master Ermise--even if that's what I would do, becasue the man is such an asshole. He is demanding and brash, and crude and overly willing to touch her in public without her permission. (Apparently, I like that in a man. I have dated my fair share of those too.)
When I picked this book up again (and by "picked up" I mean unpacked every book I had after a month of refusing to do so, crawled around on my hands and knees despite the aching and creaking and tears that welled up just getting down to them, and then searched every label until I uncovered it) it was the Erica who married a man who was neither Geraden nor Master Ermise. An Erica who was neither Teresa nor Saddith. It was an Erica who no longer romanticized the abuse of her childhood, nor the underachieving man-child.
These books are so captivating, so picturesque, so piquant, because they reflect the adults we would be if we had to make grown up decisions when we were children. That childlike quality--that fatalistic idea that everything is life or death, do or die, now or never--we don't have those feelings as grown-ups nearly so often. Perspective sucks all of the drama out of the prospect of dating, because we have dated before, adn we know-this one might or might not be the one, but if he's not, it doesn't mean we will be alone forever. Just for now. This job offer? We could take it. Or we could not. The interview might have gone well, but it might not have. If we have not starved to death yet, if we have been evicted and it sucked, but we didn't actually end up on the street homeless alone and tragic, we probably won't this time either.
If no pale man has draped us in a cape of glamor and intrigue and offered us the peace of eternal life and glory if only we are willing to forever give up the possibility of ever going back to the way we were . . . then he probably never will.
I am not saying we don't live lives of charm and intrigue. Or that amazing things aren't possible. The only part we outgrew was the idea that that one charming or intriguing or glamorous thing would be the Happily Ever After moment where we stopped being normal and started being special forever. By now we have figured out that even the beautiful people are still normal at home.
Reading these books though . . . we step back into those shoes, and watch someone prove us wrong. A well written book, a little privacy, a quiet space, and we can be sucked right back into those shoes. We can believe that she is different--and by extension perhaps we are different as well--and maybe one thing will be it. Maybe one turning point, one decision, one extra ordinary event and suddenly not only will we be different, we will be Special, and the rest of our lives will be Special, and it will be reflected in the eyes of those around us forever.
Once, we were young. And we believed we were destined for great things (terrible, oh yes, but great). And reading these books, no matter how horrible they sound out of context--they touch on that part of us that says what happened to me was horrible (or sad, or useless, or somehow not good enough), but that's because I needed that experience to get where I am today, and that will put me in the path to something extraordinary. Because I am Special. Just like this heroine, I will let my mistakes, my flaws, my years of failure to thrive become just the starting point for the next great adventure.
So yes, I think Twilight is stupid. I think the heroine is a victim, and damaged, and if I knew her I would want to shake her hard and ask her why on earth she would want to be with such a dick that can't ever love her or make her feel safe. And as I re-read The Mirror Of Her Dreams, I will shout at Teresa and demand that Geraden stop pouting, get a job he's better suited for and buy a nice house away from the drama of war and violence, so she can respect him as a man, not wait for life to happen to him.
But I will re-read it. And I hope that you will keep your copies of Twilight, and all it's following novels, and re-read them five years from now too. And before you let your daughters read them, I hope you will read them with the perspective of what it felt like to see those people at her age too. And I encourage you to pick up a copy of The Mirror of Her Dreams--it's just captivating, and romantic (and isn't in the Young Adult Readers section so the shame is less for reading it in public. )
It's okay that we aren't Virgins or Whores. It's okay that the fate of no one but ourselves rests on our shoulders. It's ok that no mirror will open up and reveal an entirely alternate reality--or no sexy man will glitter in your presence and reveal himself as a potential undead eternal lover. If those things happened in our everyday lives, we wouldn't want to read about them. And that's what makes reading them fun. Just remember--these books, they impact us. They impact their readers--good or bad. And when you see someone younger than you reading them, they will impact her in a different way.
You can be there, to show her what a real life woman, with real life experience has learned from those books--and what's best to leave to the fictional characters.
This goes out to all you Twilight fans. I know you are out there. I don't mean the movies only people--don't play a player. You are in it for the incredibly well defined barely legal boys, and the comforting editing that makes it look more like an actual monster movie, and feel less like the incredibly horrific message that teenage girls do in fact know their own hearts, and are capable of making life altering permanent decisions about their lives based solely on what their boyfriends want to do at the time. Obviously, this is for the readers. The ones who picked up this book and then picked up the next, and the next, and were drawn so far down that by the time the main characters were silently nibbling baby out of Mommy it felt right and normal and completely justified because it was just so damned romantic.
I mention this, because I want you to know, this is not going to be about Twilight, or Harry Potter. Nor is it going to be a remonstration of grown adults who fall in love with children's literature, or fantasy novels, or barely legal boys. It's just a way of saying, I understand, and I think I can help. You are headed down a path I understand, even if the trail you took to get here wasn't one I could have ever followed myself.
I too know what it is to know the love of a book. A love so deep and real that you re-read it, not once, but whenever you feel lonely for the type of heartfelt romance and desperate yearning that never quite seems to happen in the adult dating world. (Or worse, it does, but just for someone else--someone that would make you feel that way, and not for the well dressed but non-enthusiastic guy from data processing that you finally agreed to have drinks with, who couldn't think of a single thing to say that wasn't about work or his tie.) I know what it's like to love the male lead more than you loved your last boyfriend, and both love and hate the female lead--love her for doing what you would surely do if you were her, hate her for being so completely not you.
When I was a child, my Dad gave me a box of books from his basement. He said he hadn't read a book since he got out of high school, but people were always bringing him things they thought he would enjoy, and he knew I liked to read, so they could be mine now. And it had some classics--like The Hobbit, and Lord of the Rings. It had some middle of the series Pern novels, and some pretty awful John Carter and Gor stuff. Almost all of it was sci-fi, or fantasy. I was an avid reader, and I couldn't have said no to them if they had all been self help or child rearing books--I had a need to escape, and books were always there.
Aongst this ragtag collection though, was a book, The Mirror of Her Dreams, and it's companion sequel A Man Rides Through, by Stephen R. Donaldson. It's the story of a modern woman, Teresa, from a wealthy family that raised a daughter for decoration, not love, and who was called to another world through a mirror by the fumble-footed but sweet Geraden. She struggles with her own inner turmoil from being basically abused by neglect, and he is the seventh son of a great man, called to work for an aging King and struggling with his lifelong failure.
As a child, I related to the empty lonely feelings she had, the dream of being called off to a life with purpose and to a man who could only shine if I helped him see that he was really special and courageous and could be more than he ever dreamed he could be, now that he loved me.
I re-read this book every five or so years. No kidding. I have re-read this book into tatters. I absolutely refuse to buy new copies, so the covers are held together with sheets of clear tape, and the pages are brittle and fluffy. When times got tough, or I needed to anchor myself, I would go back to this book, looking for that sense of escape, believing that there was some to be had in these pages, the way there always had been.
Of course, time has an effect on more than just the aging pages of a dogeared novel. An 11 year old sees the world differently than a 16 year old does--and a 21 year old, even more so, and a 26 year old still more. I am 32 now, as I said, and I am re-reading these novels now, through the eyes of a woman who dated half of the men in Indiana, and married a good one. I read it now, from the perspective of an adult close to the age my mother was when I first read it. I read it now from the point of view of a woman who's husband actually has a teenaged daughter, and can remember what it was like to be young and romantic, but can see the flaws in the plan the heart maps out at that age.
For instance, Teresa, She's so young, and so beautiful, and she has been given everything she ever craved--except love. When she is given the opportunity to escape her life, she doesn't even ask if there is ever going to be an opportunity to come back to it--she just throws herself into the fray, convinced no one would miss her, and that no one would care if they noticed she was gone. For a large part of my life, I also thought no one would miss me if I was gone--but that manifested itself in the fear that as a person who lives alone, if something were to happen to me, I might not be discovered for days. My jobs were of the "temp-to-hire" and "permanently entry level" variety, so if I don't show up, they hire someone to replace me without so much as calling my home number to ask if I am coming back. It could be days before someone in an apartment complex notices a smell, complains about it, management takes a report, and finally maintenance comes to write me up. My little dog could live on eyelids and lips for a minute before someone finally came to check on us.
And her beloved love interest, for whom all of my childhood dreams of love and romance were based? He's too old to keep the dead end job he's got--a 30 year old apprentice, who's been living the definition of insanity for more than a decade: do the same thing over and over again and expect different results. Pretty though--pretty, and sweet, and gentle and perfectly capable of seeing an incredibly beautiful woman when she doesn't herself know she is incredibly beautiful. (Thus reinforcing the dreams of every child since Disney first put pen to paper, that even though we feel ugly, and people treat us as if we are homely, and we don't look anything like the women in magazines, we are secretly hot and some man is just around the corner who can prove it not just to us, but to the whole world, simply by pointing it out a lot, in public.)
In other words, give him a big nose and glasses and call him "Brian" and I dated like, five of him.
As a grown adult, with a better education and a little perspective, I can see that Donaldson pretty much hates women. He often writes about alternate worlds, or a castle-and-knights version of this world where women are either Ladies or servants. But it's the classic Virgin or Whore scenario. In Mordant's Need (this series) the fate of the entire realm is constantly under mortal peril simply by the temptation of women--women who will lie, cheat, betray or collapse under the pressure of powerful, clever, and manipulative men. But the women, no matter how important to the story, are one dimensional. Teresa is a virgin for hundreds and hundreds of pages, though she is tempted by at least three beautiful men (and approached by half a dozen less attractive ones). Her heart is torn, but her morals are strong, so she survives to be both bride and victor. Saddith, her maid, is signified by her willingness to unbutton more buttons on her dress than anyone else in the realm--and therefore doomed to a savage life of harlotry and punishment for her betrayal of all mankind. The men in this book could have no more than a few pages appearance in the thousand or so provided--and yet have depth and character that both display their very human foibles, and forgive them with their very human needs.
But it's not the sensible, educated, literary minded Erica who picked up this series and began re-reading it once again just yesterday.
That is not the Erica who shouts at the pages, or makes faces when she thinks that Teresa should stand up for herself, or complains out loud that Geraden should just tell her he likes her, so she won't sleep with Master Ermise--even if that's what I would do, becasue the man is such an asshole. He is demanding and brash, and crude and overly willing to touch her in public without her permission. (Apparently, I like that in a man. I have dated my fair share of those too.)
When I picked this book up again (and by "picked up" I mean unpacked every book I had after a month of refusing to do so, crawled around on my hands and knees despite the aching and creaking and tears that welled up just getting down to them, and then searched every label until I uncovered it) it was the Erica who married a man who was neither Geraden nor Master Ermise. An Erica who was neither Teresa nor Saddith. It was an Erica who no longer romanticized the abuse of her childhood, nor the underachieving man-child.
These books are so captivating, so picturesque, so piquant, because they reflect the adults we would be if we had to make grown up decisions when we were children. That childlike quality--that fatalistic idea that everything is life or death, do or die, now or never--we don't have those feelings as grown-ups nearly so often. Perspective sucks all of the drama out of the prospect of dating, because we have dated before, adn we know-this one might or might not be the one, but if he's not, it doesn't mean we will be alone forever. Just for now. This job offer? We could take it. Or we could not. The interview might have gone well, but it might not have. If we have not starved to death yet, if we have been evicted and it sucked, but we didn't actually end up on the street homeless alone and tragic, we probably won't this time either.
If no pale man has draped us in a cape of glamor and intrigue and offered us the peace of eternal life and glory if only we are willing to forever give up the possibility of ever going back to the way we were . . . then he probably never will.
I am not saying we don't live lives of charm and intrigue. Or that amazing things aren't possible. The only part we outgrew was the idea that that one charming or intriguing or glamorous thing would be the Happily Ever After moment where we stopped being normal and started being special forever. By now we have figured out that even the beautiful people are still normal at home.
Reading these books though . . . we step back into those shoes, and watch someone prove us wrong. A well written book, a little privacy, a quiet space, and we can be sucked right back into those shoes. We can believe that she is different--and by extension perhaps we are different as well--and maybe one thing will be it. Maybe one turning point, one decision, one extra ordinary event and suddenly not only will we be different, we will be Special, and the rest of our lives will be Special, and it will be reflected in the eyes of those around us forever.
Once, we were young. And we believed we were destined for great things (terrible, oh yes, but great). And reading these books, no matter how horrible they sound out of context--they touch on that part of us that says what happened to me was horrible (or sad, or useless, or somehow not good enough), but that's because I needed that experience to get where I am today, and that will put me in the path to something extraordinary. Because I am Special. Just like this heroine, I will let my mistakes, my flaws, my years of failure to thrive become just the starting point for the next great adventure.
So yes, I think Twilight is stupid. I think the heroine is a victim, and damaged, and if I knew her I would want to shake her hard and ask her why on earth she would want to be with such a dick that can't ever love her or make her feel safe. And as I re-read The Mirror Of Her Dreams, I will shout at Teresa and demand that Geraden stop pouting, get a job he's better suited for and buy a nice house away from the drama of war and violence, so she can respect him as a man, not wait for life to happen to him.
But I will re-read it. And I hope that you will keep your copies of Twilight, and all it's following novels, and re-read them five years from now too. And before you let your daughters read them, I hope you will read them with the perspective of what it felt like to see those people at her age too. And I encourage you to pick up a copy of The Mirror of Her Dreams--it's just captivating, and romantic (and isn't in the Young Adult Readers section so the shame is less for reading it in public. )
It's okay that we aren't Virgins or Whores. It's okay that the fate of no one but ourselves rests on our shoulders. It's ok that no mirror will open up and reveal an entirely alternate reality--or no sexy man will glitter in your presence and reveal himself as a potential undead eternal lover. If those things happened in our everyday lives, we wouldn't want to read about them. And that's what makes reading them fun. Just remember--these books, they impact us. They impact their readers--good or bad. And when you see someone younger than you reading them, they will impact her in a different way.
You can be there, to show her what a real life woman, with real life experience has learned from those books--and what's best to leave to the fictional characters.