I read Twilight so you don't have to // CHAPTER 9: THEORY
More like "Chaos Theory" by Linkin Park, amirite? Also the 100+ year age gap :)
A Summary:
My Thoughts:
*The title of this chapter is “Theory”, and I have a theory myself, so stay tuned until the end…
Edward and Bella continue their chapters-long conversation as he drives her home from Port Angeles. Their lip-bitings, chucklings, flares in temper and sudden gentlenesses send me into whiplash. “Golly,” you must be thinking, “this must be a very important conversation chock-full of new ideas and discoveries if it goes on for the whole chapter, right?
…RIGHT?”
Edward asks Bella for more theories on what kind of person/creature/thing she thinks he is. We’ve already had this conversation in the cafeteria, I’m pretty sure, where Bella jokingly said it’s possible he was bitten by a radioactive spider. But that was before she did a search on vampires in “her favorite search engine” (pg. 133).
Edward flexes his greedy little hands. “More! MORE!!” he demands. “Tell me your theories AGAIN!!”
Bella also says “holy crow” on page 181.
At this point, she’s asking him questions that inevitably lead to him being a vampire. Take this iconic one (also used in the movie):
And I know the book ignores this,but there’s an elephant in the room and I think it’s name might be:
*~THE INNAPROPRIATE AGE GAP~*
Age gaps are prevalent in the gothic genre, if you want to call Twilight gothic. Gothic literature loves this trope: Dracula, Interview with the Vampire, even Jane Eyre has Rochester being significantly older than Jane. Large age gaps have been normalized throughout history in ways that are deeply uncomfortable when you actually examine them, especially with men being the older ones.
We know that Bella is seventeen, and Edward is most likely 100+ years old.
“It’s just a story.”
“Don’t take it so seeeriously.”
“It’s romantic that he picked her out of everyone else, it’s so special.”
Even though this, to me, is gross and bad for a variety of reasons, let me be a good blogger and play devil’s advocate to see where the line of thinking goes.
When I was a teenager, I probably didn't give much thought to this kind of age gap. When you're that age, you feel like an adult. You're basically a grownup, so why shouldn't you like and date who you like? And when an older man pays attention to you? You're special. You must be mature. That's how you feel, it's intoxicating to be seen as worthy by someone who seems so much more worldly and experienced.
We can assume Edward was turned into a vampire as a teenager and is “mentally frozen” at that age (this gets clarified more in Midnight Sun). He's pretending to be a high school student so his family can blend in.
But strip away the vampire fantasy for a second. Imagine if Edward was just a regular man in his 20s or 30s, and he was flirting with 17-year-old Bella, driving her to school, taking her to dinner. That's weird. That's an adult man taking advantage of a girl (who's not even of legal age, by the way) who doesn't have the life experience that he does. The power imbalance is massive. He has decades or centuries of knowledge about relationships, manipulation, and the world, while she's figuring out who she is.
The vampire element creates this convenient loophole where we're supposed to ignore the creepy implications because "he's technically a teenager too" and "it's fantasy." But Edward still has over a century of lived experience, memories, and emotional development that Bella just doesn't. He's watched the world change, lived through historical events, and observed human behavior for longer than most people are even alive.
The gothic genre has always used supernatural elements to explore taboo relationships, but that doesn't make the underlying dynamics any less problematic when we're marketing these stories to actual teenagers who might internalize these relationship models as romantic ideals.
Anyway, that's enough serious analysis for now :) Twilight keeps giving us plenty of other wild moments that are just plain silly rather than deeply concerning. Speaking of which, let's talk about Edward's, uh, interesting approach to courtship:
Eddie drops Beller off at home, and she gives “one last whiff” of his beige, leather jacket:
And she listens to his chuckle fade into the night.
As Bella gets ready for bed, she realizes she didn't notice how freezing cold she was while with Edward. Apparently being around him just numbs all her survival instincts.
And she comes to her final conclusion:
*My Chaos Theory*
Edward’s told us that he’s drawn to Bella because he can’t read her mind, right? Instead of behaving like a normal person and getting to know someone by, like, asking questions about them, Edward’s used to reading everyone’s minds all the time.
My (right) theory is that Edward likes Bella because he just wants what he can’t have.
That's the whole foundation of this "epic romance." Not her personality, not shared interests, not even genuine compatibility. Just good old-fashioned "I want it because I can't have it or eat it :(“
I could go analysis-mode about how toxic this is (because it absolutely is), but it's so tone-deaf and dumb that I just have to laugh. This grown-ass century-old vampire is having a tantrum because someone's thoughts are private. Big lol.
See you next week!
xoxo