Twilight: Collecting 'Em All

Twilight Recap: Bella has returned home with Charlie after her incident at the hospital and turned in early for the night. She tells us that this is the first night she dreams of Edward Cullen.

Twilight, Chapter 4: Invitations

    IN MY DREAM IT WAS VERY DARK, AND WHAT DIM LIGHT there was seemed to be radiating from Edward's skin. I couldn't see his face, just his back as he walked away from me, leaving me in the blackness. No matter how fast I ran, I couldn't catch up to him; no matter how loud I called, he never turned. Troubled, I woke in the middle of the night and couldn't sleep again for what seemed like a very long time. After that, he was in my dreams nearly every night, but always on the periphery, never within reach.

@ www.gameinformer.com
From left: Eric, Mike, Tyler, and Jacob
Now, it's never a good idea to criticize dreams for being unrealistic. Dreams, by their very nature, are frequently incredibly unrealistic and paradoxical, while seeming all the while perfectly reasonable within the context of the dream. So I'm not going to make a fool of myself picking apart Bella's dream too much.

Having said that, I have a hard time envisioning this scene: everything is shrouded in darkness, Edward's back is turned to Bella, and she can't see his face. And yet... there's light radiating from his skin. Does she mean his hands or is Edward in a state of undress? It's hard for me to envision a clothed Edward in a dark environment radiating very much light when viewed from the back. Maybe some of his neck is showing?

   To my dismay, I found myself the center of attention for the rest of that week. Tyler Crowley was impossible, following me around, obsessed with making amends to me somehow. I tried to convince him what I wanted more than anything else was for him to forget all about it -- especially since nothing had actually happened to me -- but he remained insistent. He followed me between classes and sat at our now-crowded lunch table. Mike and Eric were even less friendly toward him than they were to each other, which made me worry that I'd gained another unwelcome fan.

We've remarked before that the constant attention that Bella receives from Mike and Eric is used as a short-hand way to reaffirm to the reader that Bella is beautiful and desirable and worthwhile, but it's interesting to me here how the third suitor in our Suitor Collector Set is described. Tyler isn't introduced to us as another suitor for Bella's affections based on her observations of his behavior, but rather based on her observations of other people's reactions to his behavior.

Is this a roundabout way of making Bella seem humble and possibly less authoritarian a narrator? If Bella simply asserted that Tyler was pursuing her romantically, we would be free to decide that perhaps she is misinterpreting Tyler's earnest desire to apologize to her -- that she is spinning romantic fantasies out of a traumatic reaction by a young man faced with the prospect of accidentally killing someone. Or we could simply assume that Bella is perhaps a little hung-up on herself to continue to insist that any and all male attention paid to her is an attempt to get into her good romantic graces. So instead, we learn that Bella fears Tyler is becoming a little too interested in her because her existing suitors are unfriendly to him.

On the one hand, there is some reasonableness to this chain of logic. If Mike and Eric can be assumed to be suitors, they can also be assumed to be on the lookout for competition. If they respond aggressively to Tyler, it's possible that they recognize Tyler's true motives more clearly than Bella would. On the other hand, however, Mike has been relatively hostile to Edward, simply because Edward is Bella's lab partner and excruciatingly attractive, and Bella hasn't taken Mike's hostility as proof of Edward's interest, but rather simply as more proof of Mike's. So it would seem that this logical chain (If Mike | Eric = rude to X, then X = suitor) is not something that Bella follows as a hard and fast rule.

Tyler's introduction as Suitor #3 also brings up an interesting pattern to the suitor accrual going on: they seem to be appearing at crucial life events in order to reaffirm at key moments that Bella is awesomely desirabe. Eric was summoned into romantic existence upon Bella's arrival at the school as The New Girl; Mike turned on the charm immediately after Edward was rude to Bella in Biology. Now Tyler has turned up in the wake of Edward's flight from Bella in the hospital. If we continue at this rate, then Bella and Edward have to hook up soon or our suitors will reach critical mass. 

   No one seemed concerned about Edward, though I explained over and over that he was the hero -- how he had pulled me out of the way and had nearly been crushed, too. I tried to be convincing. Jessica, Mike, Eric, and everyone else always commented that they hadn't even seen him there till the van was pulled away.
   I wondered to myself why no one else had seen him standing so far away, before he was suddenly, impossibly saving my life. With chagrin, I realized the probable cause -- no one else was as aware of Edward as I always was. No one else watched him the way I did. How pitiful.
   Edward was never surrounded by crowds of curious bystanders eager for his firsthand account. People avoided him as usual. The Cullens and the Hales sat at the same table as always, not eating, talking only among themselves. None of them, especially Edward, glanced my way anymore.

Once again, I find the extraordinary incuriousness of the Forks natives to be so seemingly forced as to be instantly suspicious. It's impossible for me to read this and not imagine "always been a bad liar" Bella insisting conspicuously that EDWARD IS A HERO while her friends casually remark that huh, didn't even see him so HOW ABOUT THAT WEATHER THEN? and forcibly changing the subject.

Especially odd is Bella's "revelation" that only she is focused single-mindedly on the position of Edward Cullen, as well as her insistence that Edward is universally avoided by the other students. Why is this? The Cullens are, of course, incredibly insular and unwilling to socialize with their peers, but Bella is walking proof that some people are going to be drawn in enough by their superficial beauty to overlook their absolutely terrible personalities.

It seems impossible that dazzling Edward doesn't have a few admirers from afar, nor does it seem likely that in their single year undercover in Forks he would be able to so thoroughly alienate all the other students such that no one would want his heroic account of the accident. If the Forksian students can studiously overlook Bella's obvious distaste and contempt of them because of her irresistible beauty, then it seems odd that the Cullens would not have similar numbers of hanger-ons.

I will also take a moment here to register my distaste with the use of the word "pitiful" here as well as Bella's "stupid, stupid, stupid" at the end of last chapter in reference to her obsession with Edward Cullen. I'm not much of a fan of Bella putting herself down like this, not the least of which because I'm torn on the question of whether or not she actually means it. Is there a term for something who simultaneously exhibits low self-esteem whilst also feeling inherently superior to almost everyone around them? Wikipedia claims this is a common subset of superiority complexes, but this seems to be crying out for a better name.

   I wanted very much to talk to him, and the day after the accident I tried. The last time I'd seen him, outside the ER, we'd both been so furious. I still was angry that he wouldn't trust me with the truth, even though I was keeping my part of the bargain flawlessly. But he had in fact saved my life, no matter how he'd done it. And, overnight, the heat of my anger faded into awed gratitude.

What's interesting to me here is the assertion that Bella is keeping her part of the bargain "flawlessly" -- now "always a bad liar" Bella is lying to us again. Bella is not keeping her part of the bargain. She's playing up Edward as the hero of the accident, in part because she wants to use him to deflect attention from herself and in part because she likes to keep hearing her audience reassure her that they saw Edward nowhere near her before the accident.

The facts are these: Edward performed an impossible feat, and he and Bella know it. Edward saved Bella's life, and everyone in school knows it. It is possible that someone else noticed Edward's starting position and just hasn't thought too closely about the physics of the situation.

If Bella were really trying to keep Edward's secret, the answer would not be to keep insisting that EDWARD IS A HERO. No, the best way to keep Edward's secret would be for her to grin-and-bear all the attention, gamely elaborate on the unimportant events in the day (how cold she was lying on the parking lot, how much the head wound hurt, what the ride to the hospital was like, and so forth), and avoid dwelling any more than possible on that Edward guy who happened to be right next to her in time to save her life.

And the thing is, Bella should know this. I can tell you from personal experience that when you know you're a bad liar, you become very skilled at avoiding situations where flat-out lying is necessary. It's usually pretty easy to manipulate a conversation away from a key point that you need to avoid, and given that the students are apparently not even remotely interested in Edward, it should be easy for Bella to stay off the subject entirely.

This is especially interesting to me in light of Edward's telepathy. Obviously Edward can't read Bella's mind to see that she's "flawlessly" keeping her part of the bargain; all he can hear is that every time anyone asks Bella about the accident, she immediately starts gushing to them how Edward -- who they didn't even see standing next to her -- pushed her out of the way and saved her life and he's a gorram hero. Edward should be spending the entire week grinding his teeth down to nubs in frustration -- given Bella's passive-aggressive thank god Edward was right there, right? statement to Carlisle, he should think she's trying to expose him with all this "hero" business.

   He was already seated when I got to Biology, looking straight ahead. I sat down, expecting him to turn toward me. He showed no sign that he realized I was there.
   "Hello, Edward," I said pleasantly, to show him I was going to behave myself.

Sweeping past the "behave myself" line, I will give credit where credit is due: Bella has finally noticed that Edward saved her life. I should be gratified by this, and yet unpleasable cranky person that I am... I'm not. I have to ask myself why that is.

Maybe it's because it seems like this is the worst possible time for the gratitude to sink in. I felt like Bella owed Edward a bit of respect and gratitude at the hospital, but that was before he smirked incessantly about her being in pain, clearly enlisted his father in some kind of bizarre cover-up, openly broke his promise without a trace of remorse, and then gloated about Bella being disappointed in her search for an answer and a recommendation that she enjoy her big dose of disappointment.

It seems to me that for Bella to be snarky to Edward before all that (back when she still thought he might hold to his promise) and then grateful to Edward after he's basically told her Where She Can Go (so to speak), that everything is dreadfully back-to-front. We talked last week about events not seeming to faze Bella in a realistic, expected manner and this would be one of those times: as much as the guy just saved your life, he was also incredibly rude immediately afterwards (in a variety of ways, even!) and it stands to reason that most people would feel something a little more conflicted than just awed gratitude and meek submission.

   He turned his head a fraction toward me without meeting my gaze, nodded once, and then looked the other way.
   And that was the last contact I'd had with him, though he was there, a foot away from me, every day. I watched him sometimes, unable to stop myself -- from a distance, though, in the cafeteria or parking lot. I watched as his golden eyes grew perceptibly darker day by day. But in class I gave no more notice that he existed than he showed toward me. I was miserable. And the dreams continued.

Thank god Mr. Banner got the memo that this was the Romantic Tension Building portion of the novel and he stopped requiring the students to work with their lab partners during their Biology lab hour.

92 comments:

Nathaniel said...

"Is there a term for something who simultaneously exhibits low self-esteem whilst also feeling inherently superior to almost everyone around them?"

Oh god. THIS. SO. MUCH. I got to the point that I practically yelled at the book every time there was a juxtaposition of Bella having a snide thought and self belittling within the same page. Which just further confirmed my internal conclusion that Bella is a thoroughly unpleasant person.

You know, for someone who hates lying so much, so does it a whole bunch. More unreliable author/narrator for the win!

"Thank god Mr. Banner got the memo that this was the Romantic Tension Building portion of the novel and he stopped requiring the students to work with their lab partners during their Biology lab hour. "

You know, I didn't even notice this. But this is further evidence of Meyer having her book filled with plot puppets rather than genuine characters. One gets the distinct impression that only Bella and smug sparkle people matter.

hf said...

Well If you are superior, it makes sense to hold yourself to a higher standard than you'd expect of others. ^_^

chris the cynic said...

Is there a term for something who simultaneously exhibits low self-esteem whilst also feeling inherently superior to almost everyone around them?

I think ordinary depression can pull that one off.

It would be something like:
I suck. Life sucks. Everything around me sucks. *notices person* You really suck.

Seeing the worst in everything could certainly leave you convinced that you're worthless but no one else is any better. I think.

At the very least when I'm at my worst in terms of depression I'm very impatient with other people and less than charitable in how I judge them. I don't know if I've ever felt Bella levels of superiority, in fact I'm pretty sure I haven't, but I do know there have been times when all I could see was what was wrong with everyone around me and it definitely made me have very low opinions of, basically, everyone and everything.

vega said...

Agreed with Chris. I often find myself thinking the worst of people while knowing intellectually that I'm being unfair. Bella doesn't seem to notice, but I think she still feels the need to see herself as A Good Person, so she talks herself down after the fact to balance out the scales, even if she herself doesn't believe it. Good Girls are Humble, after all.

Coming from the depression angle, I think her fixation on Edward can be seen as an effort at self-medication. He's the only thing here that doesn't hurt to look at, look at him some more! And I don't see her actions in biology class as reflecting gratitude so much as submission- he's been punishing her all week by denying her attention, so she's going to show him how extra good she's going to be by talking nice to him and not calling him on being a surly asshole and not talking to her for the entire class. Then he'll have to admit she's in the right! Or at least, she can know she's in the right, and that's the second most important thing in the world next to his glowing praise, which is unattainable at the moment.

Oh goodness, I do believe this is my first time posting here. Hello!

chris the cynic said...

Hello. Welcome here. Stay a while.

Ana Mardoll said...

Hi, Vega! I'm so glad you commented. :D
I can definitely see what you mean about the "submission" thing, especially with that "behave myself" reference.

Bethany said...

Is there a term for something who simultaneously exhibits low self-esteem whilst also feeling inherently superior to almost everyone around them?

Pretty much describes me in high school. The superiority was a defense mechanism, I think. "Well, I suck at this ("this" could be as specific as basketball or as general as life), but you know what? I don't care. It's not important! And what's more, people who think it is important are petty fools!"

Ana Mardoll said...

I'm heartened that Bella's condition may not be permanent. ;)

Would counseling or hugs work best to help her self-esteem? In all seriousness, I'm sad that Renee and Charlie aren't providing affirmation already. :(

redcrow said...

>>>And that was the last contact I'd had with him, though he was there, a foot away from me, every day. I watched him sometimes, unable to stop myself -- from a distance, though, in the cafeteria or parking lot. I watched as his golden eyes grew perceptibly darker day by day. But in class I gave no more notice that he existed than he showed toward me. I was miserable. And the dreams continued.

Imagine if that was the last paragraph of the last chapter. They don't talk any more, he ignores her, she keeps having dreams about him walking away, but that's all. No explanation for his mood swings, colour-changing eyes, Bella's miraculous rescue from the van - for anything. Readers are left to imagine for themselves what was that all about...

(Okay, maybe I'd add that one day Cullens mysteriously disappeared from Forks and no one but Bella remembered them ever being here at all - but it seems too cliche. Maybe they disappeared non-mysteriously, but no one but Bella seemed to miss them after they left the town...)

Kit Whitfield said...

I watched him sometimes, unable to stop myself -- from a distance, though, in the cafeteria or parking lot. I watched as his golden eyes grew perceptibly darker day by day. But in class I gave no more notice that he existed than he showed toward me. I was miserable. And the dreams continued.

There's something interesting in this chapter, which is an absence. Reading the book, the romance struck me as oddly sudden - one minute they're having a conversation about biology class and the next they're decaring absolute eternal love, and the in-between stage of actually falling in love appeared to be missing.

Reading that paragraph, I suspect the reason is that the falling in love happens when Bella and Edward are apart, and this is it. It's pretty short in terms of verbiage - days, or perhaps weeks, are skated over in a few sentences - which made it easy to miss first read around, but perhaps that was because I was anticipating ... well, a romance from an adult perspective, in which it's time in the other person's company that reveals the love as true.

Twilight, though, is a teenage book, and perhaps this is part of it: the 'falling in love' is basically crushing and speculating and fantasising from a distance - only without the bump back down into reality that time spent in the other's company is unfortunately prone to provide in such cases. Edward never takes on enough specific, mundane, personal qualities to bring him down from that plane of fantasy: pretty much everything he says is some variant of 'I love you' or 'I'm going to protect you' - which are simple declarations with no complicating details. Bella falls in love with Edward as a fantasy and he remains so, and the fact that we hear very little of their everyday conversations is part of that. It's a kind of empty bracket the reader can fill with whatever she likes.

That quotation does, at least, answer my original question of, 'Wait, what? When do they actually fall in love?' It's in that paragraph. We hear Bella's side of it, and Edward is presumably doing something similar off-stage, and it happens in a few short sentences, but it does happen.

Ana Mardoll said...

Kit, I'm really glad you pointed that out, because the immediacy of "we're in love now" bothered (as in 'confused' not 'rawr angry') me, too. I think that makes perfect sense... I just wish it were called out more because, as you say, that's super-easy to gloss over.

Amaryllis said...

Is there a term for something who simultaneously exhibits low self-esteem whilst also feeling inherently superior to almost everyone around them?
Borderline personality disorder? Which could, in fact, explain a few things about Bella...
Diminished or unstable sense of self-identity: what does Bella like or hope for or plan for-- we don't know, does she?
Self-disgust: "Stupid...pitiful..."
Risky or self-harming behavior: what's with all those accidents, anyway?
Habit of lying: Bella is lying to us again, says Ana.
Idealizing other people: Bella on Edward and the Cullens.
Disdain or anger for anybody not in the "ideal" category: Bella on everybody else.
Often associated with (although not necessarily caused by) a stressful childhood, and parents who are, quote, simultaneously over-involved and under-involved: Sounds like Renee and Charlie, as Bella sees them.

People with this disorder have a great deal of trouble with romantic relationships; no merely human partner is ever quite good enough to fill that hole in the heart. Maybe an immortal being with centuries to say nothing but "I love you" and "I will protect you" can manage it.

...or maybe Bella is just an adolescent with the standard adolescent worries. End unqualified armchair psychoanalyzing.

---
If Bella is only watching Edward from a parking-lot or cafeteria-width distance, how can she see the exact shade of his eyes to even notice that they're changing? You can't see people's eye color from that distance! Well, I can't, and I know I've got bad eyes, but could anyone?

Silver Adept said...

Re: Bella being a Good Girl and Behaving Herself -

Well, I'll just say that I can't be the only person who's seen the movie The Secretary and wonders whether this is Isabella offering herself up into a relationship more like the one in that movie. It would certainly fit in with the other structures in place, although they probably would call it something else.

Here's an additional wrinkle to consider: While we haven't seen any evidence of it, perhaps Edward's ability is read/write, instead of read only. (Edward: sudo rm Truck_Incident.avi Forks: Complete, with one error.) Perhaps the reason Forks is so blissfully unaware of everything is because Edward has learned the art of removing anything suspicious from the minds around him.

Since that hasn't worked, Ed is now trying to "ignore it and hope it goes away".

As for Bella falling in love with Ed because she keeps dreaming about him, he's been the hero, and because he's giving her the cold shoulder...

...the only way that works at all is in Twilight, in horror movies about stalkers, or in anything that could be characterized as PWP.

Alicia said...

I've always subscribed to the belief that all authors should be restricted to one hallucinatory dream sequence per book. And, at the end, they should go back and get rid of that one too. Most dream sequences are just lazy ways for the author to work in as much heavy-handed symbolism and unearned character/plot development as possible. If Bella is in love with Edward, we should see it in real life first and then in a dream (if only absolutely necessary).

That being said, I actually like this one. It's short, to the point, and relatively easy to visualize. Meyer handles it well by simply mentioning future dreams rather than forcing us to watch every. single. one.

Great post!

Bella's other suitors are, by her account, a pretty unattractive bunch, so believing she's being pursued by them doesn't count as being too arrogant, especially when they're making their interest pretty obvious, but Edward's not being that obvious and he's also attractive, so Bella would have to have a higher estimation of her own looks to believe he was interested.

That's a good point. Seeing the movie complicated this for me in my head since the actors who play Eric and the other students are all pretty much as good-looking as Edward/Robert Pattinson, but going by the book you're absolutely right!

Imagine if that was the last paragraph of the last chapter. They don't talk any more, he ignores her, she keeps having dreams about him walking away, but that's all. No explanation for his mood swings, colour-changing eyes, Bella's miraculous rescue from the van - for anything. Readers are left to imagine for themselves what was that all about...

I'd probably be frustrated. If this is your first time reading the book and the story wasn't so famous that even non-readers are roughly familiar with it, you would probably think that there was simply not enough substance and depth to any of the characters to sustain an entire book at this point. Apart from Bella, all of the other characters so far are either mysterious (if they're important) or hastily-sketched filler people (if they're not). If the book just stopped here, there wouldn't be much to mull over (at least from my POV) and I doubt the book itself would have been popular (or published, for that matter).

Talton said...

Test comment.

BrokenBell said...

Now you've said that, I can't see it any other way. I don't understand how a featureless metal ball can have a contemplative expression, but good heavens, that is exactly what it looks like.

Gelliebean said...

Wow, Chris.....

Everything wrong with Twilight, fixed in that one post. Thank you so much for putting it out there!

Silver Adept said...

@Chris the Cynic -

So you're saying the Cullens are wearing fedoras and mysteriously moving through doors that don't lead to the place they should be?

chris the cynic said...

I never actually saw that movie but, based on what little I know of it, quite possibly.

Ana Mardoll said...

@BrokenBell, yay! You can't un-see it now! :D

chris the cynic said...

Tyler does indeed look contemplative. The more you look at the picture, the more convinced you are that he does.

Ben E. Hexapodiaasthekeyinsigh said...

Chess Club Eric is, of course, depressed because he is the least favored of the suitors.

chris the cynic said...

That explains why he's looking down, but I still haven't figured out where Mike is looking. Maybe he's walking away with Bella's books in hand? I don't know.

Amarie said...

Warning: Not Going To Make Sense At All


*sigh* Honestly…I think a lot of Bella’s paradoxical inferiority and superiority complex has to do with how magnificently shallow that she is. From page one, she compartmentalizes *everything* and *everyone*. Charlie and Renee: children to take control of. Mike, Jessica, Eric, etc.: imbeciles that cannot be taken control of and therefore must be ignored at all costs. Herself: shouldn’t even be in existence. Edward and the Cullens: perfection incarnate. In essence, everyone and everything is either good or bad.

What’s more is that the standards that she abides by to tell what’s good or bad are incredibly simplistic and naive. Her mindset is at that point where she objectifies people and personifies goals. For example, Edward is an *object*; she repeatedly describes what he *looks* like rather than what he *is* like. His golden eyes. His alabaster skin. His velvet voice. Meanwhile, the eternal and perfect life of a vampire is *personified*; her beautiful white skin gives her worth. Her roomy mind allows for higher intelligence. Her endless supply of money lets her do almost whatever she wants to do. Her goals have an *action* and the people in her life merely have *features*. What I’m saying is that Bella doesn’t so much love-or even like-the people around her because she’s much too concentrated on achieving goals that unfortunately involve said people. I believe that this is the same for Edward; if you look closely at their interactions with him, you’d laugh at the idea that this is ‘love’. She doesn’t so much love Edward himself as she loves the *idea* of him; he embodies all that she isn’t and doesn’t have yet. Edward is merely the vehicle for which she’ll achieve shedding the ugliness that’s essentially her humanity. It’s an incredibly backwards and self-benefiting way of looking at life.

Well of course, that leaves one with quite a lonely, isolated and (some would argue) slightly sociopathic life. You may achieve your goals…but you’re going to climb and ascend that mountain all by yourself.

Ultimately, we come to yet another reason why Bella is such a fascinatingly destructive paradox. She thinks that the ‘beautiful people’ rightfully get to have all the wonderful things in life (even more, she thinks that those things *matter* and actually make one truly happy). At the same time, she believes herself to be even less than subpar. She’s not smart enough, not pretty enough, and overall not ‘worthy’ enough. Essentially, what I think we’re looking at here is a protagonist that has ludicrously high and unrealistic standards for how life and people should be, and predictably she that she can’t meet those standards herself. So for Bella Swan, everyday is a failure. Everything she does, says, and *is* is just one big, ultimate failure. As a result, *everyone*, save for the Cullen’s, is worthy only of criticism and disdain because-like her-they are human and imperfect.

I think it ties into what Kit said a while ago; Bella tends to emit her own self hatred onto others. Frankly, I agree with Kit. Human beings often hate in others what they hate in themselves. It’s simply the *degree* of that hatred that tips the scale of healthy or unhealthy. And Bella Swan certainly tips over to unhealthy more than once.

Ana Mardoll said...

I can't help but feel that Jacob's pokeball looks moderately peeved.

chris the cynic said...

He does!

But that still leaves Mike, the enigma. He has no face. What are we to make of him?

Ana Mardoll said...

I like your idea that he's carrying Bella's books. Either that, or being the shrewdest and most hyper-focused of the suitors (Tyler is dealing with the aftermath of the accident, Eric knows he has no chance, and Jacob is stewing over his impending werewolfism), he's keeping a close eye on Edward as the most plausible threat to Bella's affections.

Silver Adept said...

@Chris - Said movie is based on a P.K. Dick story, "Adjustment Team". Being that it's P.K. Dick, it pretty much comes recommended, even sight unseen.

@Amarie - Makes sense. Charitably, one would call that Bella "ambitious". Uncharitably, one might refer to her as a "gold-digger" or worse and take schadenfreude when all of her relationships collapsed into flaming remains.

Kit Whitfield said...

I'm looking with interest at the 'awed gratitude' claim.

Feminist commentary on the approval Twilight gets from certain conservative religious groups has pointed out that Bella is extremely submissive, to the point of self-abnegation, towards Edward. 'Awed gratitude' seems to be the start of it, along with 'behave myself' ... but at the same time, it's tonally rather jarring.

Anyone who's attended a writing class will be familiar with the 'show don't tell' rule - the example my teacher gave was, 'Don't say "Jane was obsessive about hygiene", say "Jane flossed her teeth until her gums bled."' Examples are more convincing than statements. Now, I may be missing some quotes here, but it seems that Bella simply states that she feels awed gratitude; we don't hear her thinking grateful thoughts, or see her wondering (Tyler-like) if there's anything she could do to repay Edward, or marvelling at what a great thing he did. We just get told, not shown. What we're shown is a narrative voice that's negative, hyper-sensitive and hyper-aware of Edward's appearance - none of which comes across as especially grateful or awed.

I wasn't raised in a religious background. It may be that girls who are raised in a patriarchal faith do often feel negative and hyper-vigilant under their compliant facades; in that case, Bella's 'awed gratitude' feels like a tension between what she's supposed to feel and what she actually does. What she seems to be feeling is burning curiosity and equally burning sexual attraction. Gratitude is an emotion that tends to elevate the other person: you owe them, and they get to decide how you should act on that. Bella, on the contrary, is feeling an intense and fundamentally aggressive desire (albeit aggression that she doesn't act on) to get into Edward's space, to get past his decisions about how she should act. The fact that she accepts his apparent rejection might be a sign of her gratitude, but as far as what we hear her say goes, she's far less preoccupied with what she owes him than she is with what she wants from him.

Twilight has tensions on every page, and this is probably another one: what Bella says she feels towards Edward and what she tells us she's feeling are two different things. Does anyone from a religious background have a perspective on this?

chris the cynic said...

Now that Kit has me thinking about this more, I feel like if Bella were feeling awed gratitude she should be confused. As near as I can tell she has never experienced a feeling of awe or a feeling of gratitude before. She should be groping around for the words to describe this strange and unfamiliar feeling.

It should take up more space than it does because the heat of her anger is something that's familiar and mundane enough for her that she can feel she's adequately described it in five words, but awed gratitude should be something new and different and strange that requires more than two words.

Will Wildman said...

The awe jarred me the most in reading this; gratitude makes sense, and it even makes sense as a delayed reaction - in the incident and aftermath, she has to leap from 'I'm going to die' to 'I'm miraculously alive' to 'I have been saved by an impossibility' to 'the impossibility is being a jerk to me' to 'I must know his secret', and that's tiring enough without stopping to start feeling gracious to your mysterious rescuer. Once she cools down, the gratitude could rise up as Bella realises that he saved her and is asking for absolutely nothing in return; he doesn't want her approval or validation or servitude, he doesn't want to date or bed her, he just saved her and moved on. I could see how Bella would think that was new and strange, and need a couple of days to process it.

The awe, though; does that make sense to anyone else? It's not working for me. She was already in awe of his 'aching beauty', and she's clearly not in awe of his wonderful people skills or his empathy. 'Awed gratitude' feels to me like a thing that is not just the sum of 'awe' and 'gratitude'; it's a quiet disbelief at the magnificence of one's benefactor. That isn't something she's displayed at any point up to now - she's been rightly suspicious about the obvious conspiracy. I have a hard time imagining the transition from 'Why are you laughing at my agony and lying to my face' to 'You are everything good in the world', over the course of several days in which he actives shuns her.

The gratitude makes sense to me - a grudging gratitude that she doesn't want to feel but can't get rid of. Awed gratitude, appearing only days or weeks after the incident, seems like it could only come from someone who already knows where this is going.

I'm increasingly leaning towards that theory that despite the immediacy of the narration, Bella is actually writing this down after the end of the story, and letting her current views of people colour her supposed first impressions.

chris the cynic said...

I stand corrected, she has been in awe before.

The delayed reaction awed gratitude doesn't make a lot of sense to me given the circumstances surrounding it. It does seem like she hasn't seen, learned or thought anything that could change her feelings so completely. Gratitude yes, awed gratitude not so much.

-

I think there is an argument to be made that the entire book so far has been told in flashback. The book opens not with Bella coming to Forks but with Bella facing down death. (Which is told in a simple past tense style with a present feeling.) The problem with that is that, as far as I know, when Bella brings us up to the time of the preface (and beyond) there won't be any indication that we've moved out of flashback.

Now I'm thinking of Fight Club.

In the opening:
Narrator: I can't think of anything.

In the exact same scene when the movie catches up to it:
Narrator: I still can't think of anything.
Tyler Durden: Ah... flashback humor.

Anyway, Fight Club aside, the opening of Twilight seems to imply that Bella has had at least "the last few months" to reflect on all of this.

Ana Mardoll said...

Obviously, she meant to say that she was feeling an ODD gratitude.

That makes much more sense.

Now I'm thinking of "George of the Jungle" (live action) where the narrator says they viewed the mountain with "awe" and the cast stands around saying "awwwwwwww...." as in cute. Heh.

I can't tell you how tickled I am that the Google Ads have finally worked out that this is a Twilight thread and now we're getting the "fill in the blank" Twilight book ads. I got those on the Slactiverse site during a Twilight Very Special Post, iirc, and they were a blast. I think someone pointed out that they wouldn't be able to sink into a "fill in the blank" book because eventually their character would use the word "irregardless" and it would just hurl them from the narrative forever. Ha.

Amarie said...

O.U.C.H, Silver. Just…OUCH. I literally burst out laughing! You’re the first person that I know that’s ever referred to Bella as a gold digger, haha!!!! You are amazing!!!!!


Hmmm…honestly, I’m not too bothered by the ‘awe’. In my mind, I just think of the ‘awe’ as in ‘Oh my goodness, this jerk just saved me…and under impossible circumstances, too!’ Plus, Bella Swan isn’t used to anyone taking care of her, much less make the effort to acknowledge and keep her in existence.

So, what stands out to me is exactly one of the things that stood out to Kit: internal conflict over what you’re *supposed* to feel vs. what you *do* feel. Honestly, I don’t have any personal experience with such difficulty. My sister and I were blessed (hah) to have religion *introduced* to us, but not *forced* on us. My mother took us to church when my sister and I were much, much younger. But when neither of us could do more than watch the time and/or fall asleep-nor have any inclination to worship outside of church-she backed off. To this day, she loves us all the same.

If anyone is interested, I *did*, however, go to a school with a *lot* of girls like Bella Swan. But I’ll only talk if someone wants to hear. I’d really like to refrain from being offensive.

Brin Bellway said...

If anyone is interested, I *did*, however, go to a school with a *lot* of girls like Bella Swan. But I’ll only talk if someone wants to hear. I’d really like to refrain from being offensive.

I'm not sure what you mean. Like Bella Swan in what way, and what potential for offense do you see?

Brin Bellway said...

I don’t think I’ll ever forget when a friend of mine who was Wiccan (sp?) came up in our AP English class to explain and introduce to us her religion. I make *no* exaggeration that all of those girls did little more than bash and attempt to humiliate her. Over and over again they asked questions with increasingly snide tones. ‘How can a god be a god if *he* didn’t make the world all by himself?’ ‘So…what do you guys do with regular soap again? Doesn’t that make your hands dry out?’ ‘Are you *sure* you guys don’t use spells to hex people? Because I really have a phobia of that!’

Eek.
Soap?
Wiccan is spelled correctly. I'm not surprised it's getting red-squiggled: my Firefox didn't even know "velociraptor" until I taught it. (Although, it does show Wicca under "what you might have meant".)

What I’m getting at here is that I saw-and still see-these girls and Bella Swan being compressed and confined into a certain role. For them, it was practically a given that they should get married, have children (one of them actually stared at me for several seconds when I announced in Freshman year that child-bearing isn’t really a necessity to me and spread a rumor around that I was a lesbian.) and build a white picket fence. Don’t forget Lassie.

Also eek.

Silver Adept said...

While not having direct experience with the types of high schoolers Amarie is talking about, she's squarely on the mark about how the teenage experience is (in general, and with the extra pressure that comes from being told from the beginning that God Has A Plan For You, If You're Good.). Those girls lash out with the only kind of rebellion they can, at school and away from their parents and church groups. They'd prefer to have their own lives, but they're also not willing to abandon the obvious privileges that come with the plan. So they'll spend their time making other girls suffer because they can't figure out how to get the inches of control they need to feel independent, and because they feel bullied by the people that are controlling them, their form of control turns to bullying. (Watch the cycle perpetuate, before your very eyes.)

If you're a Glee fan (spoilers for the current season!) : Dhvaa vf gur cresrpg rknzcyr bs ubj guvf rkcrevrapr unf tbar qbja - ernfbanoyl cevivyrtrq yvsr, eryvtvbhf hcoevatvat naq rkcrpgngvbaf, naq n cyna sbe ure yvsr. Fb jung qbrf fur qb? Bfpvyyngrf orgjrra Svaa, gur fgenvtug-ynprq fgne dhnegreonpx (Gur Cyna) naq Chpxrezna (gur pyrneyl eroryyvbhf chax jubfr frys-fgngrq tbny vf gb orq nyy gur jbzra ur pna), naq fur trgf certanag ol uvz. Naq nsgre fur tvirf gur puvyq hc sbe nqbcgvba (gb Enpury'f zbgure, jub qvq gur fnzr gb ure), fur tbrf shyy-ba qlrq-unve, yvc-evat snxr-tbgu fzbxre "fxnax" jub vf qryvorengryl gelvat ure orfg gb fubj ubj zhpu fur qbrfa'g pner.

Kit Whitfield said...

Amarie, I don't think mentioning race should be considered offensive. Saying racist things is offensive, but pointing out that a white person has white privilege is just stating a fact, and if people object to that it's usually because they're enjoying white privilege themselves and want to believe it's a right. And if making a personal observation is verboten, we should all switch off our computers right now. Personally I'm wary of speculating about Stephenie Meyer - I prefer to assume people are nice until proven otherwise, and I know from experience that the 'self' you reveal in your writing is not necessarily the 'self' that anybody who knows you would recognise - but it looked to me like you were speculating more about Bella than about Meyer...


So I think they come to resent where they come from. They resent their roles. They resent their lack of choice. They resent their predictability in life. Yet they’ve been taught that this is *ideal* and so why should they feel anything other than happiness?

I think, too, we tend to resent other people for not affirming something we've paid dearly for. Being a perfect girl is pretty much impossible, and it sounds as if the girls you describe had to work hard to be who they were. If someone didn't seem to be working equally hard, I can imagine that the probably felt a buried sense of 'Who do you think you are, not making an effort? We all have to! What makes you think you're so above it all? Don't you see that it makes you worse than us, not better? Don't you see? Don't you see?' And I suspect that quite a lot of bullying comes from the compulsion to make someone understand that the rules they've sacrificed so much for are important by attaching a punishment for failing to comply with them.

Because if the rules aren't sensible, reality won't do the punishing for you. If someone fails to comply with a rule that's reasonable, then they're probably going to suffer the consequence without too much intervention. Don't brush your teeth and you get cavities. Eat your ice cream too fast and you'll get a headache. Turn up late to the show and you won't be allowed in. And people watching a bad brusher can shrug and say, 'Well, be it on your own head when you get a toothache.'

If someone breaks a rule and they don't suffer for it, though, we tend to get annoyed. Nobody likes the idea of a thief who never gets caught. It's unjust.

So if you've paid dearly to conform with the standard of femaleness impressed upon you, and somebody else doesn't conform with it, and they don't suffer for it, it feels terribly unfair. The only way to right the scales of justice is to do some punishing yourself.

Bella, of course, has another out. To the books' credit, they don't seem very vindictive: Bella thinks spiteful thoughts, but people don't tend to get punished by the narrative very much. Rather than other characters getting punished, Bella gets rewarded - magically, supernaturally, divinely rewarded. And that's the other way for justice to work: either the bad people get less than you, or you get more than them. Bella goes the latter way.

So while the narrative can have a tendency to carp, I think we might give Bella some kudos for not reacting to the pressure by becoming a bully. Whatever the faults of her ideal life, living well is a better revenge than actual revenge.

Ana Mardoll said...

Kit, I love the theory of human nature here, probably in part because I tend to sympathize with the "Good Girls" as victims even when they're doing the bullying. I wasn't an overt bully in school back when I was raised to be a Good Girl, but I was intolerant in thought if not word and deed. I'm not proud of that, but I was also very young, so there's that.

I do think that when you're following painful and arbitrary rules, there's a strong need to push other people to follow those same rules, as you say. Perhaps Bella's seemingly series-long disdain for, say, Jessica is as easily traced back to Day 1 when Jessica (supposedly) let on that she'd been snubbed by Edward... which obviously conveyed a dangerous flaunting of rules for Jessica to initiate contact with a male who was several magnitudes hotter than she... and it's vitally important to Bella that everyone follow the same rule that she is following, i.e., to not speak unless spoken to by a Cullen.

It would explain a lot.

There are so many dangers to this philosophy. Once we condition ourselves to accept karmic cause and effect, we start seeing causes where there may be none. You got cavities? You must not be brushing your teeth properly. You got a headache? You must have eaten your ice cream too fast. You're poor? You must not be trying hard enough. And down that road is the unfortunate destination of victim blaming.

Kit Whitfield said...

Perhaps Bella's seemingly series-long disdain for, say, Jessica is as easily traced back to Day 1 when Jessica (supposedly) let on that she'd been snubbed by Edward... which obviously conveyed a dangerous flaunting of rules for Jessica to initiate contact with a male who was several magnitudes hotter than she

Yes, that would make sense. (Though I think you mean 'flouting'; 'flaunting' means showing something off.) Of course, Bella's only guessing because Jessica is, like Bella, trying to hide her attraction to him - and indeed, if I remember right, Bella pesters Edward quite a bit. But Twilight often features miraculous escape from the rules.

Ana Mardoll said...

Ah, good catch there. I tend to conflate the two. (One can't flout without a flaunt, can they??)

Kit Whitfield said...

I tend to conflate the two.

It's just about my least favourite linguistic mess-up. I used to be completely clear on which was which. Now I've heard them mixed up so often that every time I hear either, I know it's possibly they're being used wrong.

So now I'm confused too.

Ana Mardoll said...

Clearly we need a helpful rhyme. :P

"Bella flaunts her beauty,
but Jessica flouts the rules."

I can't rhyme. :(

Kit Whitfield said...

How about this:

You flaunt on a jaunt.
You pout when you flout.

Ana Mardoll said...

Ooh, I like it. :D

Except I'm not sure that I pout when I flout. Maybe "you flout the rules out"? Or -- ooh! -- "you flout when you pout", which would be a flouting of the Good Girl convention that no dissatisfaction must ever be shown. :P

Kit Whitfield said...

Because there's nothing I love more (in fiction) than a clever thief.

You probably wouldn't enjoy it in real life, though, and I was thinking about peers rather than fictional protagonists.

Ana Mardoll said...

That's true, but I didn't like that Ariadne was the Heart of the team and responsible for pointing out that the leader was not competent to lead as well as for coming up with the Trust Me! final plan. It *could* fall under the category of The New Guy on the team (who in this case, is the Gal), but it's tricky to say.

I did love the movie, though. :D

Amarie said...

*Whew* Glad that I wasn’t offensive to anyone and I thank you all for understanding. Even more, thank you for explaining what I was trying to say more eloquently, haha.

To Brin:

Oh dear…not soap. My memory is a little vague, but I think my friend said that Wiccans put some kind of oil, cream, etc. on their hands when they pray? Is someone a Wiccan here? Help me out, please! D:

I’m agreeing with all of you and I can’t tell you how glad I am that someone else sees where I’m coming from.

That being said, I can see that resentment with more clarity. Remembering the look one of the girls gave me when I said I don’t really plan to get married, have children, etc…I can see how they saw me. For them, they’re bending over backwards every single day to conform to and believe in something that ultimately subjugates them. They get up every single morning and, with their five pounds of makeup, don the Curse of the Good Girl and smile the entire time. Every single thing they say and do has a rule and a consequence that if that rule isn’t followed. Stay within your clique and make sure to not allow outsiders in it. Don’t read inappropriate romance novels because sexuality is all but non-existent until you get married. Even then, sex is only allowed when your husband wants it. You’re hungry during breakfast and dinner, but *never* during lunch; you have a cheerleader’s outfit to fit in. And so on and so forth. If they *didn’t* follow those rules, then it was heavily implied that their families would become ashamed of them and/or possibly even disown them. Their close knit of friends would abandon and alienate them. The outside world wouldn’t accept them because they were no longer on the moral high ground. If those rules weren’t followed and those roles weren’t filled, then god help them, but the very world would crumble down. The rules *had* to be followed and the roles *had* to be filled.

Now enter Amarie. Amarie is so wrong that she’d be an alien with brown skin if she didn’t have the same physical features as a human being. I mean, seriously? She has several homo/bisexual friends…the males of which, she openly flirts with. She likes romance novels and bursts out laughing at perverted jokes. She neither wants nor has a boyfriend/husband. She never goes to church and openly admits that she would fall asleep if she did. She’s plus-sized and still eats lunch.

I’m adhering to *all* of the rules and fulfilling *every* aspect of my role, and Amarie is as unorthodox as the devil. *She* should be consistently punished and *I* should be consistently rewarded. After all, I’m a Good Girl and she’s a Bad Girl. But…why isn’t she? It doesn’t make sense how she can break all of the roles and fulfill an unorthodox role and *still* be loved by her friends and family. Why does her future look more interesting than mine? How in the world did she get and enjoy a larger circle of friends if she’s so wrong? I don’t understand how she’s being a Bad Girl with a reasonably better outlook on life! Where’s the justice in this?! I’m bending over backwards, sideways and forwards to be worthy of God’s Plan and *Bad Amarie* actually smiles with sincerity?

You know what? Forget it. I’m resentful and angry and I’m not even sure why. So I’m just going to go over here with my wonderfully moral clique, stop asking so many questions, and just take out my confusion on Amarie. To the devil with all this cognitive dissonance. Ugh.

JohnKnl said...

And there's considerable Real Life admiration for the rule-breaker, at least in USian culture. The rebel, the hacker, the cowboy, the snake-oil salesman, the cocky Young Turk who shows up up the stuffy rule-abiding establishment -- that's practically our National Myth, George Washington crossed with John Galt with more than a dollop of Gordon Gecko.

Is that really America's alone? That sounds a lot like Prometheus, Anansi the Spider, Brer Rabbit and other trickster figures. That is, they are cunning and they are daring, but they do what they do to benefit those who are weaker. Prometheus stole fire to mortals; Anansi won stories from Nyame so that everyone could share them (and dealt with three very powerful, dangerous creatures at the same time). It's not just about sticking it to the stuffy rule-abiders; it's about tossing aside oppression, bring succor to the abused and marginalized.

Did these characters get a thrill out of what they were doing? Sure. But they weren't self-absorbed sociopaths like Gordon Gekko or (ugh) John Galt.

(In fact, I can't actually think of a caper movie where the protagonist isn't given a 'higher' motive -- justice, revenge, helping the poor, protecting a village, freeing slaves, whatever -- than 'money and thrills'. They may start out that way but I personally would find it grating to read about someone who goes around hurting people for the fun and profit? Don't we get enough of that from the news?)

JohnKnl said...

I guess the "make the victims so unlikeable that you'll support the heroes, pretty much by default" can be pulled off too. I didn't think of that one! But generally, when you have a movie, it's difficult for the writers to resist the temptation to give the protagonist some sort of 'higher' motive, even if it's just revenge or amassing enough money to do something specific.

Anna said...

I agree with you there (and in a few episodes of the program I mentioned, the team are also trying to do something specific with the money and/or take revenge on someone, so...). But I think another important aspect of the "make the victims' traits unusual, rather than the heroes'" is the othering of the victims. It's a lot less uncomfortable to watch people being swindled if the victims are Never People Like Us.

Will Wildman said...

I've enjoyed for a while the idea of a culture in which thievery is 'the noble sport'; i.e. the very rich use their wealth to try to steal wealth from the other very rich. Stealing from the poor would be shameful, like an Olympic sports team playing against junior high varsity - if you're going to put your considerable resources to such a purpose, then you should pick a target with a comparable amount of wealth to defend their treasures.

I feel like once the less-rich started finding ways of getting in on it through gambling and loaning it would kind of snowball into a satire of stock markets.

Amarie said...

Silver, thank you *so* much for educating me! I had no idea that so many different religions were comparable (*gave up Comparing Religions Class in high school to focus on Economics and Government…neh* :( )

At Brin…

Well, these girls-or rather, their families/parents-didn’t like either one. Both real and fantasy sex apparently festered upon each other until you had a full blown nymph (to avoid using an inappropriate word in Ana’s blog). If they were going to read a book, then they were going to read a) the bible, b) a religion-based high school drama or c) a classic assigned by a teacher. In my junior year, I found out that one of the girls-who, despite our differences, was my friend-*literally* did not know the mechanics of sex. Yes, I’m talking about how x goes into y and creates z. To directly quote, she stared and said, “Oh my god! It can *fit* in there?!!”

Now, the difficult thing was that I actually liked my friend. And I liked her parents and her younger siblings. Yet I couldn’t get over being disturbed that they hadn’t yet taught their sixteen-seventeen year old daughter just the basic mechanics, nor had they clearly allowed the school(s) to teach her. To this day, long after we’ve graduated high school, it still disturbs me and I worry for her sometimes.

“You have a cheerleader’s outfit to fit in.”

Oh, wow! Now that I think about it too, I didn’t know that it could be taken in two ways. Haha. But yes…I recall that a *lot* of those girls were athletes that made sure not to eat lunch.

Ana Mardoll said...

Amarie, ha, this made me laugh so much.

If it's sharing time, I might as well admit that I was raised in a sheltered religious environment. The first sexual experience I had with another person was also the first time I'd ever seen male genitalia, period, and I didn't know anything about the process whatsoever.

My "sex ex" was a Dr. Dobson book, for whom obscuring the facts was a feature, not a bug.

Anna said...

Oh my goodness, that is disturbing. I had a religious friend at university who was almost as sheltered - we never discussed the mechanics of sex (so I don't know how much of those he actually understood), but I recall him - at the age of 20 - having no idea how HIV was transmitted. After we had taught him about STIs and asked why he didn't already know this stuff, his reply was "Well, I don't need to know about sex yet. When I get married, I'll learn about it on the internet." Which contained... many levels of fail.

Amarie said...

Oh, WOW…this…this is just disturbing to me.

Now, I think I should clarify: Ana’s situation was/is *not* disturbing to me. She actually took the necessary and rightful steps to educate herself. And thank GOD. However, Anna’s friend…he’s just…oh dear. And he was in his twenties? In college? Did/does he have any idea about the innuendos, euphemisms, pick up lines, etc. that sound incredibly innocent? See, that’s what I was worried about with my own friend; she was a dear, intelligent girl…but the rest of the world doesn’t sit down and wait for those that are so sheltered.

But then again, I’m biased. My own mother is a nurse (RN). As such, her mentality (and mine) is, “It is what it is and it works how it works. Parents and teachers don’t have to be comfortable talking about it…but your child is going to find out one way or the other. And that other way isn’t always filled with sunshine. So you have a choice: put your comfort zone first or your child’s safety and education first.”

As a result of that, I’m blessed to say that my mother and I have always talked frankly about sex. She didn’t know everything, of course. But she certainly didn’t mind filling in what blanks she could. Meanwhile, I had a *lot* of friends in high school that were openly [bi/homo]sexual. Hence, that’s where I started borrowing and reading dirty, sweet, trashy, what-ever-you-want romance novels. So in high school (and late in middle school), I had pretty broad access to sexual education, speculation and unashamed humor about the subject. At the same time, when I or someone else piped up and said, “Oh, I’m a virgin…I’ve never done that before”, there usually wasn’t a social backlash. What you usually got was, “Oh honey, give it time; you’re still young”, or “GOOD. All of these boys are *** and you deserve so much better than that”. I was really lucky to have a group of friends that talked to me and the other virgins even while they knew that I hadn’t done the deed, haha.

Randy Owens said...

Dr. Dobson? That Dr. Dobson?!? I'm so sorry.

Ana Mardoll said...

*hugs @ Cupcakedoll*

I can attest that it's amazing what you don't know when you don't have television in the household and your parents don't let you watch movies.

Add to that the cultural pressure to be innocent, and... well... It's hard to explain. I would hear jokes from people at school that I knew were dirty, but I didn't immediately know why, and my mind wouldn't dwell on the joke long enough to figure it out. It becomes almost an instinctive twitch -- if sexually immoral thoughts are as sinful as sexually immoral actions, well, you get really good at thought control. It's a very strange thing to describe, and it's like looking back on a past I don't really understand having, and yet I know I did. How odd.

Brin Bellway said...

I can attest that it's amazing what you don't know when you don't have television in the household and your parents don't let you watch movies.

*Internet whistles* (It's like whistling, only you don't actually have to know how to whistle. I've never been able to get the hang of it.)

Though I must admit, watching Roseanne got Brother* both the straight and gay Talks at a distinctly-single-digit age.

I would hear jokes from people at school that I knew were dirty, but I didn't immediately know why, and my mind wouldn't dwell on the joke long enough to figure it out.

Even before the Cardboard Cutout Incident, I generally treated dirty jokes I didn't immediately understand as a game of Spot the Innuendo. It's like they're saying "There is a sexual meaning hidden somewhere in this sentence/paragraph, and I challenge you to find it." I had no problem accepting the challenge.

(But as I said, I had a lot less cultural pressure than the usual I Was Repressed stories one hears.)


*He's always had a fondness for 90's sitcoms. Roseanne, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, lately Home Improvement... (I'm a little worried about that one. I don't think he really listens when I try to explain how Tim Taylor (hell, Wilson) is horribly sexist and gender-essentialist and these are not things to role-model.)

Kit Whitfield said...

Glad to hear you're out of it, Ana! :-)

Anna said...

Also, what Amarie said: Did/does he have any idea about the innuendos, euphemisms, pick up lines, etc. that sound incredibly innocent? How can you talk to anyone without knowing the basic... uh... euphemism vocabulary? That a good phrase for it? Without knowing what words in combination will cause people around you to at best snicker, at worst go, "That's what she said, hur hur."

Well, a lot of my more sheltered Christian friends tended to socialise mainly with people from their church groups, who were similarly sheltered. So nobody involved in the conversation would have been able to notice and snicker at innuendos.

In fact, I can say the same of myself. I used to be a good little Christian girl who mainly socialised with other good little Christians, and while I knew how sex worked (I learned the basic mechanics of where babies come from at the age of 2, when my mum told me I was having a little brother and I asked how he got into her tummy), there were a lot of terms I wasn't aware of. Most memorably, in my early teens I used to go fencing with some friends of mine. There was an older guy at the fencing club named Roger, and any attempt to fence Roger ended in humiliating defeat and him lecturing you on fencing tactics. We innocently referred to this experience as "being Rogered" until one of the older teens at the club told us what that phrase generally meant...

Amarie said...

On the contrary Ana, you make perfect sense. Your experience with dirty jokes reminds me of my sheltered/religious friend. You could see by her face that the gears were clicking in her head. Heck, you could even see the apt curiosity. What was more was that a part of her wanted in on the joke; very few people want to feel ‘out of the loop’. Yet, like Ana, she quickly put the stopper on her thoughts and just laughed it off. Even when we offered to explain it to her, she just shook her head and said she was fine. It was…cute and slightly disparaging at the same time. Eventually, I started editing myself for her sake; religion or not, not everyone is going to be comfortable around sexual jokes. Not even people who *aren’t* virgins.


And WOW…Ana, Roger doesn’t seem very nice to play that kind of trick on you. Ick. I remember that I would avoid those guys in middle school and sometimes in high school (there was a difference between the perverted guy that joked and played with you and the perverted guy that *touched* you).

Cupcakedoll…you read my mind. It was *so* difficult to talk to my religious friend sometimes, oh my GOD. Haha.

Anna said...

What? No, Roger didn't do anything wrong. He was just an older (read: proper grown-up) guy who happened to go fencing at the same place my friends and I went fencing. There were lots of proper grown-ups at said fencing club, but Roger was very good AND left-handed (it's always harder to fence against a left-hander, because your reflexes are trained for right-handed opponents), so that when we did fence against him we lost badly. But he wanted to help us improve at fencing, he just had a slightly annoying way of going about it (stopping the match every time he won a point to explain, in detail, the tactics he used to win that point before saying "you too can do that"). We came up with the term "being Rogered" by ourselves, merely because his name was Roger - which was hardly his fault.

Gelliebean said...

Ana - very, very glad to hear that was in your past, because I was also entertaining violent thoughts on your behalf (although if you did need backup, I've done it for other friends before and can usually get from Austin to Ft. Worth in a few hours.... :-p )

I wasn't sheltered as far as understanding how sex works, but I definitely wasn't familiar with related slang terms... to the point where I was embarassed to tears two years ago at work, when I named an Etsy seller who sold some wonderful soaps only to find out that the nickname was a very, very dirty euphemism. :-( I considered that a pretty mean trick on the seller's part, especially since I was so enthusiastically endorsing them.

Ana Mardoll said...

*hugs* back at you Gelliebean. :)

And now I'm worried: *I* have an Etsy seller who sells soaps. *runs off to check name*

Amarie said...

Ahhh...my apologies, Ana!! I stand corrected and thank god! :D

Roger seemed like a pretty good teacher overall, haha. Plus, that man had to have some talent to fence left-handed, if what I know of fencing is correct. @___@

Anna said...

that man had to have some talent to fence left-handed, if what I know of fencing is correct.

Again, not quite. As with anything, it's easier to fence using your dominant hand, which for most people means the right hand. If you're in the 10% of so or people who are left handed - which Roger was - you automatically gain Leftie Fencing Powers (and in this case it would be harder for you to fence right-handed)

Silver Adept said...

Well, Amarie, it's not that sex isn't talked about in religious households. It's that sex is talked about in the home in very specific ways. Like Anna mentions, those very Nice Girls and Boys are finding out, ideally, on their wedding nights that they're all fantastic lovers because they've been taught that man-on-top, penetrative sex to make children is the sole expression of sexuality and the fulfillment of their intended roles.

However, that miracle doesn't happen all that often. So, truthfully, the information gets in there somehow. Sometimes it's the corrupting influence of "secular" friends, media, movies, etc. that manages to teach them something through anecdote or through looking at something. There's also a little bit more leeway, culturally, given to the men than to the women. Virginal, pure, and unspoiled daughters fetch the best bride pr....err, are the most pleasing to God. Men, on the other hand, have enough wiggle where they could learn the mechanics, possibly through sneaking some porn somewhere (I believe there's a study floating about that says highly conservative areas tend to be the biggest consumers of porn - at least paid-for porn...) or through the highly uncomfortable Birds and Bees talk from Dad to Son.

Or, if you look at the statistics, more often than not, they learn how it's done by fooling around with each other, figuring out what works by having sex with each other. Sometimes consensually. Sometimes not. Suffice to say, those teens are tempting the RNG to smack them upside the head.

Ana, I remember when Slacktivist did that, and we've fallen out of the practice. Mostly because the wife-beating apologist James Dobson hasn't been in the news enough for everyone to be reminded that he's a wife-beating apologist. We're assuming you're much happier and healthier now that you've ignored his advice. And glad that you don't have to whistle a particular Dixie Chicks tune to get through your day.

Ana Mardoll said...

those very Nice Girls and Boys are finding out, ideally, on their wedding nights that they're all fantastic lovers because they've been taught

My anecdotal evidence from a Christian college was that the girls (myself included) tending to run the gamut of sexual appetites but were still (a) virgins and (b) involved in the church because the cultural and familial pressure to conform was incredibly strong on us girls.

The boys, on the other hand, tended to fall into two groups. The ones who wanted to be sexually active left the church (or at least didn't go to a Christian college with restrictive rules about sexual behavior) while still maintaining familial ties and social approval -- the "Easter only" boys, so to speak. The ones who weren't interested in being sexually active stayed in the church and maintained a high level of family and social approval with no real drawback (since they didn't want to be sexually active anyway).

This led to at least a few very unhappy marriages where the girl had a high libido and her husband didn't (or at least, didn't with her, which is not quite the same thing). Very unfortunate for both parties, and really could have been avoided if communication ABOUT sex was allowed.

The other problem, of course, was that the girls invariably got pregnant almost immediately despite our denomination being tolerant of birth control. If you don't know how to use it...

(One of my professors claimed she knew a boy who had a no-joke nervous breakdown when he found out that his wife peed. Supposedly he thought women were majestic angels who didn't have bodily functions. I don't know how this can be true, but I was very fond of this professor and I don't think she was given to exaggeration.)

And thank you for the well wishes, Silver Adept. :)

Silver Adept said...

We could probably have quite a nice discussion about the dual standards for men and women, especially in those kinds of religious upbringings we're using as our examples. And that's without even leaving the realm of Twilight into the Real World.

The lack of "here's how you have safer sex" information probably makes mismatched relationships even worse once there's strong social pressure to stay together for the kid(s). Ick.

The story your professor relates to me sounds like an exaggeration...but then again, with the profession I'm in, I have no reason to believe that it isn't the unvarnished truth.

Kat said...

I think all the guys in Forks are hitting on her not because she is pretty, but because she was in heat.

Ana Mardoll said...

Thank you, Randy! I like that Tyler's pokeball is gazing introspectively at the sky. "Do I really love Bella or am I just caught in the grip of a major life event coupled with guilt and adrenaline?

Randy Owens said...

Seeing the movie complicated this for me in my head since the actors who play Eric and the other students are all pretty much as good-looking as Edward/Robert Pattinson, but going by the book you're absolutely right!
Having not seen any of the movies, or even pictures of anyone not on the posters (or in the meme-mashup pictures of them with Wesley Snipes, et al.), I've completely been picturing Eric & Mike as the two nerds from Heathers, the ones who get chased & beaten up after the funeral. They would definitely be in the not-Robert-Pattinson category.

@Ana, I love the Pokemon caption!

Brin Bellway said...

Don’t read inappropriate romance novels because sexuality is all but non-existent until you get married.

My experience as a formerly-repressed* asexual says that everyone should try a bit of such things, in case it turns out you don't need repression in order to not do sexual stuff. They say teenage sexuality is a baby monster that shouldn't be fed lest it grow, but it wasn't until I tried to feed the monster that I noticed it was just a cardboard cutout: a shell of a sexuality built of fears and expectations, with little to no actual substance.

The unpleasant aspects of repressing real sexuality are of questionable value, but the unpleasantness of repressing false sexuality is utterly useless. I am better off in every way for letting go of that.

*Which was of course influenced by the culture at large, but my particular subculture did not encourage it.

[/semi-tangent]

Brin Bellway said...

Hmm. Thanks for pointing that out: without prompting, I only noticed the fitting in socially interpretation and not the physically fitting into the outfit one.

Randy Owens said...

[Y]ou have a cheerleader’s outfit to fit in.
Amusingly, that sentence can be taken two rather different ways, but both are about equally true. I noticed because I think the way I read it first wasn't the way you meant it to be read, once I placed it back into context.

Silver Adept said...

@Amarie:

Ablution, or the ritual washing of the self, whether with water, oil, or something else, is certainly not limited to Wiccans - Muslims are supposed to wash their hands before they pray. Christians have a story of their leader washing the feet of his disciples, with a lesson implied about how leaders should behave toward followers, and there are a lot of anointings with oil (although those are on the forehead, usually) in all three of the Abrahamic traditions.

So, perhaps some pagans and Wiccans use oil, water, or some other blessed and purified substance for ritual cleansing, but I'm sure many of them use soap for cleaning regularly, too.

Anna said...

In fact, I can't actually think of a caper movie where the protagonist isn't given a 'higher' motive -- justice, revenge, helping the poor, protecting a village, freeing slaves, whatever -- than 'money and thrills'. They may start out that way but I personally would find it grating to read about someone who goes around hurting people for the fun and profit? Don't we get enough of that from the news?

I don't watch many caper movies, but I can provide a counterexample in the form of a TV series - "Hustle"; a fairly long-running BBC series here in the UK. It's based around a group of confidence tricksters, and their motivation is pretty much just money and fun. Of course, you're right that this motivation alone would tend to make an unlikeable character - the way it's handled in this series is by showing a form of honour among thieves, with the team's main rule being "you can't cheat an honest man". You root for the tricksters not because they have particularly noble motives, but because their victims are sufficiently unlikeable that you enjoy seeing them swindled.

Ana Mardoll said...

@hapax,

1. Feathers??

2. I hadn't seen that from Fred, but I wholeheartedly approve. I quite literally blame Dr. Dobson for my staying in an abusive marriage. I suppose to should write a post on that, but... spoons. *sigh* Plus, it would involve re-buying his odious books so that I can quote them.

3. The Current Comments widget looks at the site comments feed which is the BLOGGER feed. The DISQUS comments are supposed to be consumed by the Blogger site, so that if -- theoretically -- I turned off Disqus, we wouldn't lose old comments. For some reason, the last time Blogger nommed the Disqus comments was 10/5. I have a ticket out with Disqus, but I suspect the culprit is Blogger. *sad face*

Brin Bellway said...

Feathers??

From tearing apart feather-stuffed pillows, I gather.

Ana Mardoll said...

Oh. *phew*

Amarie said...

ANA ARE YOU ALRIGHT?! D:

*read abusive marriage comment and is unashamedly freaking out on my side of the world*

Ana Mardoll said...

Whoops! I should know better than to drop stuff like that into causal conversation. *sheepish*

Yes, I'm fine, thank you. *hugs* It was years and years ago, and I never got anything worse out of it than an almost-broken nose and a few pushes and falls.

The thing that kept me from filing for divorce for the longest time was years of Dr. Dobson's stories about women being nice and kind and submissive to their abusive husbands and then magically the husbands learn to appreciate them and stop being abusive. It's such a seductive fantasy. The wake-up call for me was the day I suddenly realized that even if my husband DID get better, I couldn't love him anymore -- at that point, I was DONE. I filed for divorce, and that was that. :)

But I would have preferred knowing that Dr. Dobson's scenario is... highly unlikely to happen.

But thank you. *hugs*

Amarie said...

Oh, thank GOD!!!! I was about to contemplate violence for someone, Ana!!! And you don’t need to apologize; I talk about my single mother and our struggles all the time. So please don’t feel embarrassed, sheepish, etc. That Dr. Dobson should be sued, jailed, get his license taken away or…something. I don’t know. And I know that I’m younger and *much* less experienced than you. As such, it’s not really my place to say, but…I’m proud of you. Very, very, very proud of you. You realized (possibly before it was too late) that the best thing to do for yourself is get out of such a toxic environment with a dangerous man. I can’t even count how many women-and men-wouldn’t do that for fear of the outside world. You are brave, intelligent and just Blessed With Awesomeness and I have more respect for you than ever.

I’m just glad that you’re alright and that I won’t go to jail for murder. :D

*hugs back tightly and snuggles*

Ana Mardoll said...

Ha, thank you. I'm very fortunate in that I come from a relatively wealthy and emotionally supportive family, so leaving was easier for me than it unfortunately is for most people. In many ways, I think I'm one of the luckiest people on earth, but I do appreciate it. Thank you. :)

Amarie said...

Oh, you're very welcome, Ana! And you're right; you *are* lucky. So many abused girlfriends/wife can't leave because the man is the breadwinner, controls the account(s), has effectively isolated them, etc.

I'm so happy for you, Ana!!! :D

Cupcakedoll said...

Me = +1 potential murderer for Ana's sake. My Lord of the Rings prop replica sword thirsts for the blood of anyone who hurts to my favorite blogger! *waves sword around, causing mother to duck out of the way* Sadly, I think Twilight eventually goes places that would inspire a post about abusive husbands. The boys get quite creepy from time to time.

These stories about people's ignorance of sex are fascinating like a train wreck, and I'm also wondering about people who hit the marriage bed without knowing what to do there. It's called "doing what comes naturally" but would it come naturally if you didn't know what to do? Though I'm doubtful that ignorance quite THAT complete could exist in modern times.

Also, what Amarie said: Did/does he have any idea about the innuendos, euphemisms, pick up lines, etc. that sound incredibly innocent? How can you talk to anyone without knowing the basic... uh... euphemism vocabulary? That a good phrase for it? Without knowing what words in combination will cause people around you to at best snicker, at worst go, "That's what she said, hur hur."

hapax said...

If you're in the 10% of so or people who are left handed - which Roger was - you automatically gain Leftie Fencing Powers

Although far too many Leftie Fencers rely upon the LFP to win bouts. If you're lucky enough to have lefthanders in your salle, you quickly learn a few basic tricks to neutralize those Powers, which often leave your opponents suddenly flatfooted (or, more precisely, getting yellow cards for careening off the strip)

hapax said...

If someone breaks a rule and they don't suffer for it, though, we tend to get annoyed. Nobody likes the idea of a thief who never gets caught, for instance. It's unjust.

Really? Because there's nothing I love more (in fiction) than a clever thief. I'll read practically any caper novel that crosses my desk, no matter how badly written.

And there's considerable Real Life admiration for the rule-breaker, at least in USian culture. The rebel, the hacker, the cowboy, the snake-oil salesman, the cocky Young Turk who shows up up the stuffy rule-abiding establishment -- that's practically our National Myth, George Washington crossed with John Galt with more than a dollop of Gordon Gecko.

Of course, those are all male archetypes. And now that I think about it, there are plenty of fictional female thieves and con artists, but they all have to be doing it "for a Good Cause" -- to get their dear old daddy out of jail, or medical treatment for their baby brother, or to find the secret plans and avert a war, or to avoid the Fate Worse than Death -- never for the sheer love of the game.

Because if they're just in it for the cash and the thrills, then they're Bad Girls, serving only as titillation fodder and doomed to end up like poor old Milady de Winter. Or even worse, what Judd Winick did to Catwoman...

/Darn it. Now I wanna read about the female Dortmunder. Or write her...

hapax said...

The gratitude makes sense to me - a grudging gratitude that she doesn't want to feel but can't get rid of. Awed gratitude, appearing only days or weeks after the incident, seems like it could only come from someone who already knows where this is going.

Or, more simply, Bella suffers (like the rest of us) from Homonym Disgraphy.

Obviously, she meant to say that she was feeling an ODD gratitude.

hapax said...

I'm still not entirely sure what the Nice Girls and Boys are meant to do when they get married and suddenly are expected to procreate

Well, as we learned from the Twilight books -- pass out, then wake up covered with bruises and feathers?

Seriously, I think the reason most "religious" homes (as well as plenty of non-religious families) don't talk frankly about sex is that it comes far too close to many incest taboos. I mean, I talked with my children about the specific mechanics, and about birth control ("USE IT -- even if your partner says you don't need to") and generally about ethics (basically boiling down to "take your own desires seriously but not absolutely" and "don't treat people like things") but I would feel very uncomfortable (and I'm sure that THEY would) talking about some really important aspects, like How Stuff Feels, and What Do I Do When This Happens, because that gets awfully close to forcing your kids to look at Mama and Daddy as sexual beings, and that's all kinds of No.

What I *did* do was buy a whole bunch of positive books -- everything from HAIR IN FUNNY PLACES to THE JOY OF GAY SEX -- and put them on a shelf in the office. I showed my kids where they were, and told them they were free to consult them on any question they had, and I'd try to answer anything they wanted to know more about. I said I didn't agree with everything in those books, but I didn't think any of their advice was harmful, just not for me; and if anything made them feel uncomfortable or anxious, they probably shouldn't read about it just yet, and for heaven's sake, don't try it.

Daughter asked me a few questions (along the lines of "Is this normal?" "Yep, pretty much"), but son never has. I do know that the books have been consulted from time to time, though.

P.S. I agree with Fred Clark, that the name of the head of Focus on the Family should never be mentioned without prefixing it with "wife-beating apologist." As in, "I did not include the manuals offered by wife-beating apologist Dr. Dobson on that shelf.")

P.P.S. Ana, is the "current comments" widget borked? I haven't seen it update for a while.

AnnaLK said...

I think it's due to the idea that ignorance = innocence, and that if you keep your children from learning anything about sex, they won't be tempted to have sex themselves. Because sex is sinful, so Nice Girls (and indeed Nice Boys) shouldn't ever think about it.

(I'm still not entirely sure what the Nice Girls and Boys are meant to do when they get married and suddenly are expected to procreate. Perhaps on their wedding night, God is meant to reveal to them - in a vision - the Secret of How Sex Happens.)

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