Of course, there's anti-feminist and anti-feminist, you know - without wanting to sound denigrating towards feminist theory, sometimes the "anti-feminism" they detect is really rather minimal and subjective, and really doesn't compare to what ordinary readers would find noticeably anti-feminist. I'm talking about the ordinary anti-feminism, the expression of ideas that women are inferior or at least that they are different and belong at home, that kind of thing. I'm not talking about some very subtle confirmation of gender roles that academics read between the lines in a given work.


Definitely true - my point is that the one character is not enough to claim that Meyer is anti-feminist or promotes those ideas, even if that character is the protagonist (and most other characters have little depth). Particularly since VampireBella, however lame she is as a character, rapidly asserts herself and has a far more balanced relationship with Edward.

I would argue that rather than being anti-feminist or old-fashioned, this is actually a very modern take on male-female relationships, with that typical combination of women sticking to old expectations about and requirements for men, while on the other hand fully embracing the 20th-century liberty and autonomy of the woman. When Meyer defends herself against these accusations of anti-feminism by pointing out that the large disparity and imbalance between Edward and Bella exists because of his being a vampire, not because of genders, that may sound like a lame argument (and highlight how bad an idea it is to make her vampires "perfect" as she did), but she's still right.


To be honest I'd already forgotten most of that - been a while since I read the other three, and it doesn't seem to influence what they do much. Carlisle is the "sire", to borrow Whedon terminology, of all of them except Jasper, I believe, the men as much as the women. Edward for instance was just as helpless as those women were, was also dying, when Carlisle turned him into a vampire. So really, I can't say that makes that much sense to me as an argument. Carlisle isn't much of a patriarch in terms of telling people what to do, and rather low on the testosterone. You could argue that Carlisle's and Esme's relationship is unbalanced because he gave her agency, and same for Edward and Bella, but not so for the other couples. And both Alice and Rosalie are clearly inclined to take the lead, with their respective partners happy enough to follow.

Heh. Yeah, I'm really, really hoping Meyer resists the temptation of writing sequels about the monster baby.