The Twilight Saga: The Official Illustrated Guide by Stephenie Meyer

little presumptuous when I started working on writing
Twilight
from Edward’s perspective, because I’m not a boy. But Edward was so much a part of the story, and such a strong voice, that it didn’t seem to matter. So I’d kinda gotten that out of my system by the time I decided that I needed to write from Jacob’s point of view. But, again—I wasn’t writing a boy, I was writing Jacob. It was not like a universal male thing.
    I do think that I have a sense of boys, because I have three brothers; I have three sons; I have a husband and my father and my father-in-law. I’ve seen a lot of teenage boys in action, and they’re actually very fascinating, hilarious, and heartbreaking creatures. I mean, they can beat the crap out of each other, and then be laughing with their arms around each other with black eyes five minutes later. I do think that I’ve observed enough to be able to get the outside right, and that I knew Jacob enough that I could get the inside right.
Either one could have been the one that was wrong for her, and either one could have been the one that was right.
     
    SH: I love the Jacob chapters in
Breaking Dawn
. But I need to go back to
Eclipse
. You’ve talked about
Wuthering Heights
influencing
Eclipse
.
    SM: Yeah. You know, and that’s one of the ones that’s interesting to me, because
Wuthering Heights
is not a book that I like. There are characters in it that fascinate me, but, as a whole, I don’t enjoy reading that book. I enjoy reading the very end of it, and I enjoy reading a couple pieces in the middle, butmost of the time I just find it really depressing. When Edward speaks about it, he has my opinion being spoken through him: It’s a hate story—it’s not a love story.
    The pull between Edgar and Heathcliff is strong—and, you know, Cathy makes the wrong choice. Both of them had something to offer, and she chose the part that didn’t matter. Even though I don’t like to read
Wuthering Heights
, I think about that part a lot. It’s one of those things that stays with you.
    You could look at Edward and Jacob from one perspective and say: Okay, this one is Heathcliff and this one is Edgar. And someone else might say: No, wait a second. Because of this reason and that reason, that one is Heathcliff and the other one is Edgar. And I thought that was great, because either one could have been the one that was wrong for her, and either one could have been the one that was right. I like that confusion, because that’s how life is.
    SH: And when we’re reading
Wuthering Heights
, we’re reading it from an outsider’s perspective. From the future looking back. So, as a reader, we know who she should choose. And we see her choose the wrong one, and that’s why it’s a tragedy. But with
Eclipse
we don’t know who she will, or maybe even should, choose.
    SM: Well, in
Wuthering Heights
we see who Cathy should choose. But we also see the person that she should choose is a horrible person.
    SH: [Laughs] Right.
    SM: And so, maybe, she should choose the nice guy, but, youknow, Heathcliff was who she loved. But, at the same time, was he really healthy for her? What would have happened to them if they had gone off together?
And when I write stories, they’re very specific—it’s about this one situation, and one person who’s not like anybody else in the world. So that person’s decisions and choices are not a model for anyone else.
     
    SH: Now, this reminds me of something that I’m really interested in. We’re talking about who she should or shouldn’t choose. I think sometimes readers assign a moral to a story, and think that, from the outside, we’re writing the story in order to teach people how to live. [SM laughs] But I can’t think about a story’s moral when I’m writing—I can only think about whether this story is interesting to me.
    SM: And when I write stories, they’re very specific—it’s about this one situation, and one person who’s not like anybody else