Twilight: Bella's Choice

Stretching across the entire series of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series is the theme of choices, and of sacrifice. Breaking Dawn is somewhat of a break from this pattern, and that is a shame, because despite her less than amazing writing style, Meyer had set her characters up for some interesting and potentially heartbreaking choices. She cheapened the story she was trying to tell, along with the potential growth of her characters by finding magical solutions where no one had to give up anything at all. But that is a conversation to be continued in a different article, although pointing out that fault in the end of the story is important.

There are big and small choices through out the series, some so small it's not even worth mentioning them here. But other than the fan base dividing choice in Eclipse of Jacob or Edward, the one choice that looms over all four books is the choice involving Bella's mortality. A choice that is, to Bella, something as simple as being young, beautiful, and by Edward's side forever, and a choice that is to Edward almost equal to Bella dying. The opposing views on this can only really be taken in the context of the vampires of Meyer's world, where they are considered a different race rather than the Undead or demons of a sort, but it's still an interesting conundrum for the characters.

In a series that was an enjoyable read that consisted of mainly fluff for me, Bella's obsession with becoming a vampire and her steadfast refusal of considering anything else touched something in me, more than I expected anything to in the series. It was not because it was well written or even particularly well plotted out, but because I saw myself in Bella. I saw pieces of the person I was when I was seventeen, and connected it to choices I had made around that time, and in the couple of years after that age. Bella, who for all purposes is a Mary Sue character who is so different from me, and full of so many traits that I can hardly stand, had latched onto the choice of becoming a vampire like I had latched onto the choices I made what wasn't really all that long ago.

I will explain a little more, and I want to make it clear that even with what I describe, I don't really regret what I chose, or even how I came to it, although sometimes when I think back on it I can't even figure out anymore what brought me to the choice I made. My family, which had slowly been spiraling out of control, finally flew apart from the seams in my final years of high school. I was obsessed with leaving the city, of finding somewhere new to start again, and when I was 19, I got married to someone older than me and moved away, to a brand-new shiny house with my name on it, a house that I had insisted on having. In reading Edward's questions to Bella, asking why it mattered so much that she become a vampire so soon, why she couldn't live parts of her life as a human since she had the choice, I saw the words of my husband from that time period in my life, saying that marriage could wait, we didn't have to have the house to start off in, that we had plenty of time and we could wait. And like Bella, these questions, these arguments just rolled off of me. Everything was centered more around the house and my determination to be a good wife, in every stereotypical way you could possibly think of, more than the decision to get married. We had been together for a long time, we were going to get married, so why did it matter whether it was then or whether it was later? I don't think I made the wrong choice when it comes to the marriage, but I'm pretty sure that I did when it came to the house. And now when I think about it, I cannot for the life of me figure out what was so important about doing either of those things when I did it. At the time, I wouldn't even consider or listen to anyone else's suggestions on the matter - just like Bella - and now I don't even know why it was such a big deal. Maybe part of it was born out of the desperation to escape, to start over, or to be grown up and fixed, where I couldn't be touched by the things that had bothered me in my youth. Or maybe it's just part of being a teenager turning into an adult, at a point in your life where you're finally old enough to make your own choices, so you pick whatever choices that are in front of you, just to be able to exercise your new power? I would like to point out that neither my choices nor Bella's were spur of the moment choices. However debatable Bella's intelligence is, she spent a great deal of time thinking about the choice she had to make. Most of it was focused how exactly it would happen and when, but it wasn't a choice she made just because the fancy struck her. And unfortunately, due to Meyer's plot, when Bella starts to reconsider her choice, she is not given a choice anymore. Where she might have stayed mortal and gone to college for a couple of semesters, she becomes a mother of a half-human baby, and she dies. Meyer cuts off any personal growth Bella might have experienced by taking that choice away from her. What will she do, with the one big choice of her life made? How much can anything she does matter? What would she have done? Although it's played off as Bella getting what she wants, how does she really know what she wants when she has experienced so little? It's not just a question that pertains to Bella, so looking at Breaking Dawn and the other Twilight books in this light can lead to some interesting discussions. How did I know what I wanted, when I had experienced so little of adult life? But does that mean that someone should take the ability to take that choice away from me? It's part of growing up, part of becoming a person that is grown up inside as well as outside.

The biggest problem about Bella's choice, this life defining choice, is it not a choice at all. It is thinly disguised as one, because it is the choice she would have made, but it's not made under her own power. Bella rarely gets to decide what happens to herself, from when she becomes an immortal to whether or not she goes to the prom. Someone else - usually a man - decides what is best for her. I'm not going to argue that this is a poor example for young girls, but I'm also not going to go overboard with how much influence Bella really has or how dangerous it is. Ironically enough, I think the impact on young men from Twilight is far more dangerous than the impact on young women. Weak, submissive girl characters are really nothing new in fiction. But just think how different Twilight would have been, how different Bella would be, with just the difference of her having the ability to choose for herself? Or if Bella had to face consequences other than being grounded (but still getting to see Edward because of his super-Dad avoiding skills) for her choices? This idea is more dangerous than her submission to the male figures in her life. So in the end, while it is an uncomfortable reminder of my own version of Bella's "choice of mortality", I had more control over what was happening to me than Bella ever did, and while I might be experiencing the negative results of my choice when Bella did not, I'd take that any day over having someone else make the choice for me. Because at least I got to make the choice, and at least I'll learn from my mistakes and from making decisions that seem very urgent even when I can't find a reason for them to be urgent. Bella, in all her superpowers, beauty, and immortality, won't have learned that lesson, and she's got a lot longer to deal with the consequences.