A Vampire Romance

Because I'm going to teach high school English at a girls' school next year, I thought it was about time I read "what the kids are reading": Twilight. The books aren't literary or well-written, so I'd like to blame my week-long voracious reading marathon on my interest in my future students' reading habits. But I just can't. I'm hooked on a story that, for all its lack of literary nuance, presents a powerful metaphor for the dynamics of a serious relationship and the draw of physical intimacy.

The Twilight novels, Stephanie Meyer's contribution to the over-crowded world of melodramatic teenage fiction, are the chronicle of the romance between human girl Bella Swan and her vampire lover/fiance/husband Edward Cullen. Cullen is a member of a vampire coven which has decided to abstain from human blood. His physical self-control is put to the limit when he meets Bella, whose blood proves an almost irresistible temptation for him. He craves her and that draws Bella to him. When she figures out his secret they work to make a tenuous and impossible relationship work, together.

The closer the two get, the more intense the physical demands of their relationship become. The normal teenaged struggle between hormones and virtue gets dramatically amplified into an intense, visceral struggle between their physical needs and Edward's desire not to kill the woman he loves. The author slowly, and in pain-staking detail, describes every instance of the tension between the lovers.

At the risk of being crass, I have to hand it to Ms. Meyer: she got it exactly right. The deep, difficult, often impossible-seeming task of controlling oneself in a physical relationship with the love of ones life. To read her novels, for all of their flaws, is a visceral experience. She knows... everything. The way my pulse quickens when Adam comes into the room. How my body shivers when he rubs my back. It's all just, well, right.

And, for me, the analogy between beautiful, perfect Edward Cullen and self-conscious, clumsy Bella Swan and the two of us seems refreshingly close to reality. While Adam has no deep secrets, he does share with the vampiric lover an impressive ability to do just about anything he tries. And I, like Bella, sometimes look at Adam and wonder, "How can someone that wonderful, that perfect, really be in love with me?" That's a question Bella spends the better part of the third novel learning how to answer: he just does. As impossible as it seems, love with a perfect vampire--or with an almost-perfect human fiance--can, and is reciprocated. And I suppose it is a healthy reminder for me that, in the novel, Edward constantly wonders the same thing. Adam's look of wonder into my eyes reminds me sometimes that he considers himself as lucky as I do.

All in all, the Twilight series has been a delightful diversion from the heavy reading I normally seek out. Sure, I could never suggest to a teenaged girl that she read the novels without some serious explanations of the physical and emotional metaphors in the novel. But for me, a twenty-three-year-old engaged woman, the novels have proved an escapist foray into some of the ideas I ought to have spent more time thinking about. Maybe fiction for teens isn't quite as dreadful as I'd always imagined.