and their own family and turn them instead toward loving and serving God. Sexuality is God’s good gift, but it is not finally about self-satisfaction. Sexuality is for the glory of God.
THINK ABOUT IT/TALK ABOUT IT
Do you have someone you can talk with honestly about the way “waiting” for sex does or doesn’thappen for you and your friends? How can we find ways to wait that don’t increase temptation?
Describe God’s faithful love. How is sexual purity a witness to God’s faithfulness?
Reflect on Bella’s feelings about the connections between vulnerable intimacy and lifelong commitment. How can intimacy without commitment cause pain?
Do you agree that faithfulness is rare in our culture? Who has been an example of faithfulness in your life?
What are your expectations, whether you’re married or not, for sex within marriage? Do you expect perfection? Do you see sex as fearful or shameful? What are the good things about married life that look different from the picture of endless and intense sex we get from movies or married vampires?
What messages about sexuality have you gotten from church, family, friends, and society? Is sex seen as something good? as something shameful?
1. Stephenie Meyer,
New Moon
(New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2006), 52.
2. Stephenie Meyer,
Twilight
(New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2005), 282.
3.
New Moon
, 512.
4. Twilight, 306.
5. Stephenie Meyer, Eclipse (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2007), 454.
6. Stephenie Meyer,
Breaking Dawn
(New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2008), 83.
7.
Breaking Dawn
, 81.
8.
Breaking Dawn
, 92.
9.
Breaking Dawn
, 483.
10. Ellen F. Davis,
Getting Involved with God: Rediscovering the Old Testament
(Cambridge, MA: Cowley Publications, 2001), 68.
Chapter 4
The Superhero and the
Girl Next Door
Gender Roles in Twilight
T HE T WILIGHT S AGA CONTAINS interesting assumptions about what it means to be masculine and feminine. It’s full of characters who represent ideal and not-so-ideal males and females, and it challenges some of our assumptions about what is masculine and what is feminine. It also reinforces some stereotypes about those same assumptions.
The questions we’ve already discussed—questions about romance, love, and sexuality—are intimately tied to our ideas about what it means to be male and female. Many of the problems that come from certain beliefs about romance, love, and sexuality are connected to ideas about what it means to be male and female that are themselves troublesome. Both male andfemale readers may see themselves in the characters of the saga, and it’s all too easy to measure ourselves or other people by the standards portrayed in the novels.
Bella is a girl-next-door heroine. She’s competent but also full of self-doubt. Edward is Bella’s indestructible protector. What do their characters have to say about what it means to be created male or female?
A N O RDINARY G IRL
Readers identify with Bella because she’s an everygirl. “I’m absolutely ordinary,” Bella insists, “well, except for bad things like all the near-death experiences and being so clumsy that I’m almost disabled.” 1 Many of us can relate to Bella’s feelings. She is ordinary, normal, nothing outside the box. At the same time, she regrets her deficiencies. She’s incredibly awkward and gets into accident after accident.
There are two sides to Bella—she is both strong and weak. On one hand, she’s unusually competent. She can run a household better than most adults I know, and she’s extraordinarily self-reliant. At the same time, her clumsiness and poor judgment come together to create conditions in which she often needs to be rescued. In general, Bella is much more aware of her weakness than she is of her strength. The mostobvious feature of her character is that she puts herself down at every turn.
Her self-consciousness about her clumsiness means she won’t dance—she’s horrified at the thought of the prom.
THINK ABOUT IT/TALK ABOUT IT
Do you have someone you can talk with honestly about the way “waiting” for sex does or doesn’thappen for you and your friends? How can we find ways to wait that don’t increase temptation?
Describe God’s faithful love. How is sexual purity a witness to God’s faithfulness?
Reflect on Bella’s feelings about the connections between vulnerable intimacy and lifelong commitment. How can intimacy without commitment cause pain?
Do you agree that faithfulness is rare in our culture? Who has been an example of faithfulness in your life?
What are your expectations, whether you’re married or not, for sex within marriage? Do you expect perfection? Do you see sex as fearful or shameful? What are the good things about married life that look different from the picture of endless and intense sex we get from movies or married vampires?
What messages about sexuality have you gotten from church, family, friends, and society? Is sex seen as something good? as something shameful?
1. Stephenie Meyer,
New Moon
(New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2006), 52.
2. Stephenie Meyer,
Twilight
(New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2005), 282.
3.
New Moon
, 512.
4. Twilight, 306.
5. Stephenie Meyer, Eclipse (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2007), 454.
6. Stephenie Meyer,
Breaking Dawn
(New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2008), 83.
7.
Breaking Dawn
, 81.
8.
Breaking Dawn
, 92.
9.
Breaking Dawn
, 483.
10. Ellen F. Davis,
Getting Involved with God: Rediscovering the Old Testament
(Cambridge, MA: Cowley Publications, 2001), 68.
Chapter 4
The Superhero and the
Girl Next Door
Gender Roles in Twilight
T HE T WILIGHT S AGA CONTAINS interesting assumptions about what it means to be masculine and feminine. It’s full of characters who represent ideal and not-so-ideal males and females, and it challenges some of our assumptions about what is masculine and what is feminine. It also reinforces some stereotypes about those same assumptions.
The questions we’ve already discussed—questions about romance, love, and sexuality—are intimately tied to our ideas about what it means to be male and female. Many of the problems that come from certain beliefs about romance, love, and sexuality are connected to ideas about what it means to be male and female that are themselves troublesome. Both male andfemale readers may see themselves in the characters of the saga, and it’s all too easy to measure ourselves or other people by the standards portrayed in the novels.
Bella is a girl-next-door heroine. She’s competent but also full of self-doubt. Edward is Bella’s indestructible protector. What do their characters have to say about what it means to be created male or female?
A N O RDINARY G IRL
Readers identify with Bella because she’s an everygirl. “I’m absolutely ordinary,” Bella insists, “well, except for bad things like all the near-death experiences and being so clumsy that I’m almost disabled.” 1 Many of us can relate to Bella’s feelings. She is ordinary, normal, nothing outside the box. At the same time, she regrets her deficiencies. She’s incredibly awkward and gets into accident after accident.
There are two sides to Bella—she is both strong and weak. On one hand, she’s unusually competent. She can run a household better than most adults I know, and she’s extraordinarily self-reliant. At the same time, her clumsiness and poor judgment come together to create conditions in which she often needs to be rescued. In general, Bella is much more aware of her weakness than she is of her strength. The mostobvious feature of her character is that she puts herself down at every turn.
Her self-consciousness about her clumsiness means she won’t dance—she’s horrified at the thought of the prom.
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