In this series, I am constantly asking myself: Why is it that most of the good/true messages come from Edward who represents the perversion of human nature, the monster? I don’t know that I can answer this, but this is the reality of Stephanie Meyer’s characters, the vampires, at least the Cullen family of vampires seem to care more about not going against their conscience than the humans do. Human nature is flawed, we are drawn to sin but we long for what is good, because we have a soul, God’s law, natural law is written on our hearts. Even people, who may not have a strong faith, will generally be people of good will.
Edward is the unnatural creature with the desire to kill, but he exercises his intellect and will by not giving into his temptation to kill humans. While, Bella who is human, fails to exercise intellect and will and responds immaturely and superficially; she is attracted to his physical attributes, his mystery and the danger their relationship represents. She makes it seem like her carelessness and disregard for the value of her life “doesn’t matter” since it is merely out of “love” for him that she places her life in danger. Still her conscience is trying to warn her as she shares a thought, “a tiny voice in the back of my mind, worried, wondering if it would hurt very much…if it ended badly.” She doesn’t listen to this small voice, in fact she continually justifies her poor decisions, like taking cold medication to help her sleep, even though she was not ill.
Edward’s supernatural abilities are limited around Bella as he can’t read her thoughts, like he can read everyone else’s so he has to listen to her words and body language. Edward’s nature, traditionally would be devoid of a soul, therefore would be without a conscience, yet Edward shows signs that this may not be so, because he longs to do what is good. He doesn’t want to be a monster. Though by his very nature, his existence relies on the death of another living thing, human or animal. He chooses the lesser evil, surviving on the blood of animals, thus placing more value on the human life. Edward says to Bella, “even if we’ve been dealt a certain hand…it doesn’t mean we can’t choose to rise above…to try and retain whatever essential humanity we can.”
In a certain sense Edward appears to be more human than some and because of his supernatural abilities, he also appears to fill a superhuman need all women have. Edward is genuinely interested in getting to know Bella to the very tiniest details of her life, he loves her, despite her weaknesses, flaws and awkwardness; he wants to protect her and continually fight the temptation to hurt her. Bella and Edward’s relationship includes a level of intimacy that many married couples lack. Edward’s protective nature meets a need that all women have to feel protected, yet somehow we do not feel that our honour, our dignity are protected by our husbands because they will in most cases, quite easily exploit women and treat them as objects for pleasure.
Edward in a sense raises the bar for our merely human husbands. Is this fair? No. Then what is it we are really looking for? If only a supernatural being could truly fulfill our desire to be treated with dignity what are we missing?
Many other Catholic moms have shared, that they don’t understand the appeal of this series; I think this is the key. If you already have a friendship with Christ, then you don’t see the draw to a character like Edward. I am not comparing Edward to Christ in any way. My theory is the cult following that has come from Twilight moms, stems from this supernatural desire that our human spouse’s cannot fulfill. We need to cultivate a relationship with Christ. He is a person, who cares about our tiniest details, who seeks to protect us and treat us with dignity.
Living Water 