Guest Post: A Psychological Look at Twilight

A Psychological Look at Bella and Edward in Twilight and New Moon

By Deborah M. Chan

When I read Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga, I found that the more I contemplated her characters’ emotional and psychological makeup, the more I understood them, their motivations and behavior.

I confine my thoughts to Twilight and New Moon, with some citations from Eclipse, Breaking Dawn, Midnight Sun (MS online page references) and Meyer’s backstory comments at The Twilight Lexicon (TL).

Critics complain that Bella is uninteresting and flat in Twilight. But why would the narrator of her own story seemingly give us so little and be as unapproachable to readers as she is to the novel’s characters? This is partly due to a first-time author feeling her way. However, Bella herself gives us many clues about her reticence, beginning in the first chapter of Twilight. (She becomes more vibrant and three-dimensional in the subsequent books, reflecting both authorial and character growth.)

To understand Bella, we must first consider her upbringing. So we’ll first examine her parents, Charlie and Renée, acknowledging that we don’t know what shaped and formed them.

Charlie:

Bella has never had a father. She has “Charlie,” an emotionally awkward, taciturn and rather passive man outside his job of sheriff.

Charlie, 21, married Renée, 17, when she graduated high school in Forks. According to Meyer’s backstory (PERSONAL CORRESPONDENCE #10, TL), Charlie was caring for and felt responsible to his sick parents. Renee, depressed and feeling trapped in gloomy Forks, stormed out one night with their infant daughter. Says Meyer, “His choice was to follow after her, but he couldn’t leave his parents, he was very dutiful about his job, and his pride was injured. …by the time [his parents] died, Renee had moved on so far it didn’t seem like there was a point to following them.” What does this tell Bella about her importance to her father?

Instead, Charlie gave up, stayed in Forks and stoically mourned, or as he says, “handled it” (NM 96). He has never gotten over Renée or remarried (T 11). During her formative years, Bella spends only one month a year with her father in Forks, a place she detests. When she turns fourteen, their visits shrink to two weeks in California at her insistence (T 3-4). As Bella’s brief time with Charlie diminishes, so does his already minimal influence in her life. Bella has affection for her father, but only a fair amount of respect. She’s likely learned some of her stoicism from him.

A father is a girl’s foundational male relationship. Critical to her development, he helps shape her feminine view of herself and her future relationships with men. All girls want to be precious to their fathers.

In Rewriting the Family Script (Revell Books), P. Roger Hillerstrom writes, “Many children grow up with phantom fathers. For them, Dad was either physically absent or emotionally unavailable. Whatever the cause of his ineffectiveness as a father, if you grew up with a passive, unavailable dad, you learned some things about this man. You learned that you could not be important enough to become the focus of his attention, at least not for long. You learned that your needs, desires, or emotions were too much for him, so he avoided them and you.

“[He] leaves an emotional void within his children—a void that can result in a chasm of distrust and insecurity that can prevent them from developing closeness in other relationships. Feelings of unworthiness and fears of abandonment or rejection can paralyze or sabotage other relationships.”

Therapist/author Norman Wright (quoted in the above book) says: “This father is often called a bystander. He is a father in word, but not often in deed. He might be in physical proximity to his daughter, but he isn’t close to her. There is…not an emotional nearness. Some daughters feel like they’re invisible to their phantom fathers. Because dad is unaware of his daughter’s inner struggles and desire for closeness, his daughter ends up feeling like an ignored shadow.”

Charlie is not demonstrative of his feelings, unless he’s upset or excited. He greets his daughter at the Seattle airport merely with “an awkward, one-armed hug” and “It’s good to see you, Bells” (T 5).

“Charlie wasn’t comfortable with expressing his emotions out loud,” notes Bella. “I inherited that from him” (T 7). This is her perception.

In Charlie’s house, Bella is roommate, housekeeper for, and caretaker of her father, who has never learned even rudimentary cooking skills (E 5-7, 70). Absorbed in his job, friends, sports and fishing, he’s uneasy with his teen daughter and never seems to desire father/daughter intimacy with her (T 213). Bella doesn’t press for more because she doesn’t expect it; she even prefers it. “One of the best things about Charlie is he doesn’t hover” (T 9). She doesn’t need him.

Bella calls Charlie by his given name and has to remember to call him Dad to his face (T 6).

Renée:

If Charlie intrudes in Bella’s life too little, Renée intrudes too much. With her dependent nature, she lacks any sense of healthy boundaries with her daughter.

First, she inappropriately triangulates Bella into her dissatisfaction with Charlie and Forks (T 1, 3, 7), to the extent that Bella knows her mother’s cruel goodbye speech to Charlie by heart, later using it on him herself so she can escape to Phoenix to protect him (T 394).

Renée, flighty, irresponsible and incompetent, zips from fad to fad, while Bella is the little adult who supervises and cares for her mother; she even makes her mother’s wedding arrangements (NM 421). When visiting Renée in Florida, Bella believes she cares for her mother better than Phil. Then she voices the rueful parent, “You have to let them go their own way eventually. You have to let them have their own life” (E 45).

Renée, concerned over Bella’s absorption with Edward, says, “You orient yourself around him without thinking about it. You’re like a…satellite, or something. I’ve never seen anything like it” (E 68). Bella has shifted orbits, not behavior; Renée is oblivious to her own relationship with her daughter.

Leaving for Forks in Twilight, Bella says, “I felt a spasm of panic as I stared at her wide, childlike eyes. How could I leave my loving, erratic, hare-brained mother to fend for herself? Of course she had Phil now, so the bills would probably get paid, there would be food in the refrigerator, gas in her car, and someone to call when she got lost, but still . . . ” (T 4). Renée half-heartedly protests Bella’s move, saying, “‘You can come home whenever you want—I’ll come right back as soon as you need me.’ But I could see the sacrifice in her eyes behind the promise” (T 4).

Renée is what Drs. Henry Cloud and John Townsend, in The Mom Factor (Zondervan), call “The China Doll Mom…unable to deal with unpleasant or stressful situations in life…or [control] herself and her environment. She is unprepared to handle the adult world, especially the mothering parts of her life. China Doll Moms often insulate themselves from conflictual feelings by getting anxious and upset.” Bella says, “Most of the time Renee was so bewildered by her own life that she didn’t notice much else” (E 66).

In Breaking Dawn, Bella mentions their reversed mother-daughter roles (BD 571); her early dream of an older brother—“Someone to take care of me, rather than the other way around” (BD 132), and Renée calling her “My little middle-aged child” (BD 18).

Children suffer the following problems with such negligent “fragile mothering.” The child pushes away needed closeness, becoming caretaker and rescuer to feel in control over inner unmanageable feelings, and to feel connected and less isolated. Cloud and Townsend write, “The problem is that caretakers usually end up giving much and receiving little of the love they really need.” The child suppresses and withdraws emotions, disconnecting from “anger, fear or sadness” inside. Depression and anxiety result from emotional isolation and fear of being unknown “for who you really are.” The child is constantly careful not to hurt others with their own intense feelings; they don’t trust feelings, operating instead “in the sphere of thought.”

Bella easily calls her mother “Mom” to her face, but refers to her as Renée when speaking of her.

Bella’s parents do love their daughter; their neglect is benign. They married and had Bella before further growth would have revealed their incompatibility. They failed to put their marriage and child first, and working to find a solution that would keep their family intact and allow them to care for Charlie’s parents. Both stayed emotionally immature and stuck in self-absorption—in their lives, jobs, and pursuits—never becoming true adults. Their hapless parenting has produced a damaged child whose emotional and relational needs elude them and harm her. They don’t truly know or understand their own daughter.

Bella is an Invisible.

Bella

Those who criticize what they consider Bella’s “passivity,” should understand Bella as Charlie and Renée’s child.

Bella has never lived in a healthy, intact two-parent family, and lacks siblings for support and companionship (she never mentions other family relations). She’s an “old soul” caretaker of parents whom she loves, but who are oblivious to the inner life and needs of their child. Only when Bella gets in trouble does she get their full attention. Otherwise, she’s on her own.

Bella must be always be strong, competent, and self-sufficient, and meet her parents’ physical and emotional needs. She knows she can rely only on herself. This “very good girl,” does what’s expected of her, and admirably so.

Although an AP student in Phoenix, shy misfit Bella sees herself as a plain and dull mediocrity (stated frequently in Twilight; BD 523). She feels deep shame over her humiliating physical clumsiness. (And might Bella’s clumsiness and consequent hurting of herself be an outward somatic manifestation of her inner life?)

She makes no mention of friends and has never been in lover or had a boyfriend. She says wryly (wistfully?), “I didn’t relate well to people my age. Maybe the truth was that I didn’t relate well to people, period. …Maybe there was a glitch in my brain” (T 11).

Raised with little religious exposure—“My own life was fairly devoid of belief” (NM 36)—Bella finds no comfort in God or a faith community that would provide connection and make her feel valued.

She is fatalistic, stoic, depressed and pessimistic. “No need to add that my being happy in Forks is an impossibility,” she says darkly; she believes she will, as usual, fail to fit in (T 7, 9).

In order to function as she must, Bella rigidly represses her feelings, unable to allow herself the luxury of freely and fully experiencing her emotional world. She dissociates from painful and negative emotions, often for another’s sake. Her few tears come only when she’s angry and she’s angry at those tears. She lies about her reactions, to protect others’ feelings and maintain privacy she needs for strength and self-control. Though intellectually mature beyond her years, she is emotionally underdeveloped and vulnerable.

Bella is driven to understand Edward’s baffling behavior in Twilight because, by necessity and habit, she is highly attuned to others moods. Mystery or withheld information threatens and deeply unsettles her. She needs to make sense of people to know how to adjust, soothe, or resolve ambiguous situations, to feel in control and therefore safe.

It shouldn’t be surprising that her “enhanced gifts” as a vampire are super self-control and powerful mental shielding which protect both her and those she loves or feels responsible for; these enhancements are merely exaggerated extensions of her lifelong role (T 307).

The idea of being precious, beautiful or lovable is foreign to Bella. Instead, as we see in both Twilight and New Moon, she’s an anxious people-pleaser who constantly apologizes, blames herself, and suffers crushing guilt when something goes wrong or people are upset, even when these things are outside her initiation or control. A “fixer,” she feels responsible for everyone and their happiness or unhappiness. Viewing herself as a burden, she tries to fly under the radar and never be a bother to anyone.

Is it any wonder Bella demonstrates a complete lack of self-worth? That, like her Phoenix landscape, her emotional life is a desert?

Bella’s isolation and loneliness are profound.

Edward

We learn in Twilight and Midnight Sun that Edward, born in 1901, grew up an only child of loving parents he barely remembers, having only vague memories of his human years [T 287, MS 141]). With his parents and then the Cullen family, he has always known supportive family love. Although he later tells Bella that he still felt a lack (M 514), he is mostly content with a congenial, fulfilling family life he prizes.

Edward and his parents were victims of the 1918 Spanish Influenza pandemic (T 341). Though Carlisle transformed the dying Edward into an involuntary vampire, Edward loves and reveres him (T 288, MS Ch. 1), perhaps because Carlisle’s act was Edward’s mother’s seeming last request (NM 39-40). After an early “typical bout of rebellious adolescence” in which Edward left and preyed on the vilest human criminals, he became depressed, despising himself as completely monstrous. He returned and remained loyal to the Cullen “vegetarian way of life” in which they try to retain “whatever essential humanity” they can (T 307, 278, 342-343).

Transformed at age seventeen, Edward was developmentally an adult. He has gained a century’s history and perspective, yet is still a teen in other ways, locked in physically and in personality, moods and preferences (MS 109). He tends to be overly analytical, overreactive, determined and stubborn, with a strong sense of moral values and justice. He believes in God yet, unlike Carlisle, considers himself a soulless monster, eternally damned, with no hope of heaven (MS Ch.1, NM 37). Despite his bleak views and struggle with self-loathing, he clings to his dreams of being something better and works hard to be so (MS 13-14).

With immortality, no mate, and endless time on his hands, Edward is brilliant, highly accomplished (MS 9, BD 485), knowledgeable, wealthy, sophisticated, intuitive, confident, wise, often arrogant, and accustomed to having most of what he wants within the limitations of his life. He tends to be dismissive toward humans, due to his mind-reading abilities, though he has studied human interaction and romantic relationships extensively through observation, books and films.

Human Edward focused on “the glory of war” and expected to be a soldier in WW I (E 277, MS 141). As human or vampire, he has never been in love. With Bella, however, he meets his romantic Waterloo. Because when it comes to love, Edward is a very prolonged case of arrested development.

Suddenly, Bella upends his peaceful and predictable existence. Unable to read her mind, and in turmoil over his growing love for her, his confidence deteriorates. He becomes insecure, obsessed, depressed and anxious (BD 26, MS 118), as he tries to repress his attraction.

Edward’s love and concern for Bella lead to some overprotective, sometimes domineering and paternalistic behavior toward her. Despite this overreaction, Edward provides Bella the emotional anchors she has missed and unknowingly yearned for all her life.

Twilight

Phoenix is colorful, hot, and dry, and Bella is a prickly cactus comfortable in her natural habitat, with her moist and tender emotions protectively hidden deep within a thick dry shell. However, once transplanted to the hostile environment of gray, cold and wet Forks, this cactus softens and blooms under the “midnight sun” of Edward’s love (MS 109). In a region where cacti must be indoor plants, she thrives.

It is difficult for Bella and Edward to be each other’s first love. Bella’s lack of self-worth would be painful and challenging with mortal love, let alone a “godlike” person of unnatural perfect beauty whom she believes can’t possibly love her (T 210). Edward, a predator held in self-check, falls for a girl he craves for dinner, with whom he must constantly control his bloodlust, yet from whom he can’t stay away. They both carry into the relationship hindering flaws and emotional baggage, and both are the type to be thoroughly committed when they meet their soul mate (T 139, E 276-277).

And, with their unique vampire/human romance, they have no script whatsoever to go by.

Though her impenetrable mental shield stymies Edward, he is, ironically, the first person to truly, intuitively see and care about the inner Bella (MS 43-44, 70). He sees behind her stoic facade a lonely, shame-filled, insecure girl starved for affection, kindness, and protection, who sacrificially carries the weight of others’ expectations. In addition to her physical safety, Edward is troubled about Bella’s unmet emotional needs. He discerns her fragility inside and out.

Edward’s care and concern unnerve the self-sufficient Bella, as this is contrary to the way she’s grown up. She struggles with feelings of inferiority, constantly comparing herself unfavorably with the Cullen beauty. (Think of Lois Lane in the 1977 film Superman, musing, “Here I am, like a kid out of school; holding hands with a god—I’m a fool.”)

Edward is the catalyst who plunges Bella into chaos and conflict regarding what she knows to be “true” about herself. Her perplexity over contradictory, mysterious Edward, with his cold/kind demeanor, dire (yet alluring) warnings, and withheld explanations provokes her need for control. She pursues answers, challenging him repeatedly and aggressively over his denials and deflections.

Edward struggles with his own chaos and conflict as, agonized, he wrestles with his base nature and a love that could endanger both them and his family (T 365-366). Bella’s interest unnerves him. Failing to overcome his attraction or drive her away, he is brought to his knees by a human girl whose persistent love forces him to question what he believes to be true about himself—he can’t overcome what he is. Their push/pull relationship gradually awakens a hope they have never allowed themselves, or believed could find fulfillment.

When Bella learns Edward is a vampire, her acceptance seems passively unreal. But she’s accustomed to accommodating major flaws and weaknesses in those she loves and can’t conceive a life without him. In each, Edward and Bella find a maturity that meets their needs. Two “old souls” click.

(Much is made of Bella’s cardiac antics during close moments with Edward. While this is a typical romance genre convention, perhaps it also symbolizes her “coming to life” after a mechanically emotionless existence.)

Edward is the complete opposite of Bella’s passive father and flighty mother—strong, certain, tender, self-sacrificial and not dependent upon her care. Watching protectively over her, he’s a comforting refuge she can rely on. No wonder Bella is utterly intrigued and smitten with him.

He respects her choices, wanting them for her, even more than he desires her, or wants her to desire him.

Bella is something Edward has never encountered—a human who isn’t repulsed by the “monster” beneath his physical beauty. Bella loves Edward lavishly and fearlessly for himself. She entrusts him with her fragility, yet equals his inner strength and determination. Easing his alienation and self-loathing, she is an unparalleled treasure for him.

Bella blooms under Edward’s love. She’s no longer an unworthy Invisible.

Edward also blooms; he finds new meaning to his life, a renewed artistic creativity, and a freer, happier spirit, which delights his family (T 326-7, 344).

In addition to romantic love, Bella finds a loving, intact family in the Cullens. Hillerstrom writes, “Many children begin a search for a replacement for the emotional closeness and trust that was lacking in Mom and Dad….”

Compared to Bella’s anemic human family, the bloodless Cullens are full of emotive, life-giving sustenance. Instead of living selfishly, they have transcended their vampiric impulses to live safely with humans, allowing Carlisle to contribute his superb medical skills to society. To enable this, Edward and his siblings have endured decades posing as high school students (T 289 MS 9) and Edward has gotten two medical degrees to keep Carlisle current (PERSONAL CORRESPONDENCE #6, TL).

Through the Cullens’ affection, kindness, and concern for each other and for Bella, she observes a happy marriage and nurturing father and mother in Carlisle and Esme, and finds friends in Edward’s siblings, especially Alice. Although the Cullens don’t understand Edward and Bella’s love, with the exception of Rosalie, they accept it and warmly welcome Bella into their fold.

Twilight is a story of transcendent, mutually sacrificial love, and restoration. Bella triumphs by allowing herself to be loved and cared for, and in choosing a future with no guarantee of control. Edward triumphs by gaining self-mastery over his bestial nature, first in allowing himself tender physical affection with Bella, and then, after she’s bitten, sucking out her venom-poisoned blood without drinking further. Bella’s love restores to Edward some of his lost humanity (T 304); Edward’s love restores to Bella feelings of worth. This transcendence reflects the human/divine triumph of death and resurrection.

Bella’s decision to become a Cullen vampire is predictable, despite Edward’s opposition and the sacrifices it will require. For the first time in her life, she is truly happy. She has the hope of wholeness, and the ability to feel loved for herself alone (NM 6).

New Moon

To understand what happens to Bella in the Romeo and Juliet-based New Moon, we must first take into account what Stephenie Meyer writes on her website, www.stepheniemeyer.com, (in the New Moon section):

“What if true love left you? Not some ordinary high school romance, not some random jock boyfriend, not anyone at all replaceable. True love. The real deal. Your other half, your true soul’s match… So what happens when True Love in the form of Edward Cullen leaves Bella? I can only say that we all handle grief in our own way. Bella’s way is no less valid than any other to my mind….this is the blackest period of Bella’s life.”

The book begins with Bella’s nightmare of being an old woman standing next to seventeen-year old Edward. After a joyous summer emerging from her protective cocoon, she has become increasingly anxious about turning eighteen and being older than Edward. Edward, in contrast, wants her to enjoy a long human life with him at her side, knowing he will choose not to exist once she has died (NM 19, 418).

But after her disastrous birthday party, tormented and believing he is endangering Bella’s life and soul, Edward decides she’s better off without vampires in her life (NM 512-513).

As Meyer writes, he makes “a hideous mistake in judgment.”

He leaves her.

First Edward withdraws emotionally, increasing Bella’s anxiety. Then he unexpectedly delivers an abrupt, aloof and cruel speech, targeted with razor precision to every tender, insecure area of Bella’s psyche. He coldly says he doesn’t want her and that she’s not good for him; human memories fade, so she’ll forget him. He makes her promise to avoid risks, saying, “’I’m thinking of Charlie, of course. He needs you.’” Then he disappears; the other Cullens are already gone (NM 68-71).

In a shocking, bewildering moment, Bella has lost her love, her family and her future. The butterfly with still-damp wings lies crushed in the forest.

Edward later expresses astonishment that Bella would so quickly accept this lie-filled speech without argument (NM 509-510). The reader wonders how he, who knew her so well, could be so clueless. Why wouldn’t she absolutely believe him? This is the girl who constantly apologizes for living. With very few words, he tears down her fragile new belief in herself, denigrates her sacrificial love for him, and reinforces her most deep-seated beliefs—she is not worthy of his love and her value lies in being a caretaker. In her mind, if Edward, the only person who really sees her, feels this way, she has no inner worth at all. What’s there to argue about?

(What the reader, but not Bella, discerns is that Edward’s icy speech and demeanor cloak unbearable pain, and we’re left to wonder through most of the book how he’s handling this separation.)

With Edward gone, Bella is an Invisible again. In her profound shock, loss, and grief, she experiences symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder throughout most of New Moon.

Unable to bear her agony, Bella detaches and stuffs her pain in a mental oubliette, just as she wrenches out the car stereo gift from her truck and stuffs it in a garbage bag in her closet. Her torn, bloody fingers are nothing compared to her torn, bloody spirit. Then she goes into emotional lockdown, a defensive psychological place into which she allows no one—herself, her parents, or the reader (thus the empty month chapters). She subsequently proceeds to exist in a numb zombie-like state for several months.

She carefully manages her life as a high-functioning robot—making excellent grades and being a “good girl”/perfect housekeeper (“to keep Charlie from suffering,” NM 95). She believes this will allay his concerns, but she doesn’t fool him; worried, he tells her she’s “too good.”

Every night, insomnia plagues her, along with horrific nightmares in which she relives her loss and from which she screams herself awake (NM 122). With her pain somatized, she suffers anxiety attacks and breathing problems; she feels she has a physical, gaping heart-ripped hole in her chest and wraps her arms protectively around herself at the threat of any feeling. Surprisingly, she never considers suicide.

Bella’s emotional lockdown is completely logical, a protective mechanism to tide her through a time of profound loss. For those like Bella, it’s not “better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” It’s better to have been “safe” than emotionally ravaged.

Adding to her trauma, Bella must struggle through it alone; she can confide in no one, including her father. Charlie offers psychiatric help, which she must refuse because she can’t tell the truth about the Cullens. To cope, she forbids herself her memories, and avoids romantic books and films.

Upon first hearing Edward’s warning voice in her head, when she approaches strangers at night in Port Angeles, Bella begins to wake up (NM 111). Cautiously emerging from her numb cocoon, Bella can no longer tightly control her painful emotions; instead, her emotions begin to rule her.

Adrift, and now angry with Edward, Bella finally begins to act like the teenager she is and has never been allowed to be. She engages in reckless behavior (NM 125) and sneaks around; she has exhilarating, forbidden fun with a motorbike; she releases her anguish through floods of tears. And she indulges in adrenaline-laced behavior, including jumping off a high cliff into the ocean, so she can hear Edward’s warning voice, even though she knows it’s only in her head (NM 112). A “real girl” replaces the “good girl.”

When Quileute acquaintance Jacob Black reaches out in simple friendship, with no dramatic shadings, Bella opens up to his sunny presence. With Jake, her only human friend, Bella can be herself, because Jacob knows about the Cullens and he doesn’t need caretaking. Jake also sees her (although differently from Edward) because “I pay attention” (NM 321). With Jake, Bella allows herself to be needy to the point of selfishness, using Jake like a healing drug to assuage her loneliness (NM 219). She becomes more dependent on him, though she knows he has growing feelings for her she can’t return.

Then Jake morphs into a conflicted werewolf, shattering their uncomplicated relationship. Bella typically wonders, “What did this say about me? It said that there was something deeply wrong with me. Why else would my life be filled with characters from horror movies? Why else would I care so much about them that it would tear big chunks right out of my chest when they went off along their mythical ways?” (NM 294).

“’We’re a pretty messed-up pair, aren’t we?’” asks Jake. “’Pathetic,’” agrees Bella. These “ruined” young people find comfort, though, in having one another (NM 349).

But Jake begins pressing Bella subtly, and then openly, for a romantic relationship. This begins another internal push/pull for Bella.

Even though she loves Jake, Bella comes very close to making her “hideous mistake” by settling for a “weak echo of what I was capable of” (NM 375). Like the “forbidden apple” in Twilight, Jake too offers her an apple—of compensatory love—which she is deeply tempted to accept because of her loneliness. But Bella has always known the truth– “[Jacob] was my best friend. I would always love him and it would never, ever be enough” (NM 219).

Meanwhile, Edward has been suffering his own misery after what was to him a painfully sacrificial breakup, and has been isolating himself from his family (NM 528). He eventually realizes he was wrong and plans to return to Bella, when he erroneously learns that she is dead by suicide (NM 514). He quickly embarks upon self-destruction in Volturra.

When Bella learns of Edward’s plan, she rushes to save him, knowing she will likely die. Back in caretaking mode, she believes Edward is acting out of guilt for motivating her death, not because he can’t live without her (NM 508); she thinks there would be “no new reason for him to want me now“(NM 432). Even when he clings to her in Volterra, and his love for her is obvious to the reader, Bella is oblivious because she still believes Edward’s parting words.

Yet when she first finds Edward, “in that instant, I felt well,” she says. “Whole. It was like there had never been any hole in my chest. I was perfect—not healed, but as if there had been no wound in the first place” (NM 452). To be with her beloved is enough.

Safely back in Forks, though, the wound’s effects still linger. Bella heartbreakingly persists in believing she is dead, or asleep and dreaming when Edward insists that he loves her, always has, and is staying; she’s convinced he’ll go away again (NM 511).

She tells Edward that death is nothing; the worst thing that can happen is that “you can leave me.” Edward, filled with anguish, begins to realize the harm he’s done her and how much he’s underestimated her human capability of love (NM 524). (Later, Jake spitefully “shows” mind-reader Edward the magnitude of Bella’s suffering, which Edward acknowledges he deserved to see [E 81-82]).

Filled with guilt and shame (NM 508), Edward vows to earn back Bella’s trust and she responds, “I don’t trust myself to be…enough. To deserve you. There’s nothing about me that could hold you” (NM 523).

Ah, the power of that breakup speech.

Bella insists that Edward not promise her anything. “If I let myself hope, and it came to nothing…that would kill me,” she tells the reader. “Where all those merciless vampires had not been able to finish me off, hope would do the job” NM 513).

People like Bella have difficulty with the idea of hope. It flies in the face of their experience, and they find indulging in it too painful, fraught as it is with disillusionment. Instead, they tread their days warily, just waiting for an ax to fall. Their low self-esteem breeds a soul-killing pessimism, making it hard for them to believe that hope and love are real, and can be theirs. And hasn’t Bella’s ax fallen? Why stick her neck out for more? Why relive her agony? Better not to hope.

Only when Bella has a stunning epiphany, realizing that she’d heard Edward’s voice in her head because she subconsciously knew he loved her, does she grasp that “He really did want me the way I wanted him—forever.” This allows her to fully believe in Edward’s love, with all doubts gone (NM 527).

Because Edward can’t bear for her to give up her humanity and refuses to transform her himself, the now-assured Bella takes charge and demands a Cullen family vote, which she wins. Edward and Bella then negotiate a pact: Edward will transform her himself (her desire) if Bella will marry him first (his desire).

With amusing irony, Bella—who has no problem with sacrificial death, eternal commitment to Edward, and becoming a vampire—understandably quails at the idea of marriage, which she has no good reason to trust. It was “the kiss of death” for her parents, and Renée has poisoned her mind about marrying young (NM 540). Nevertheless, they make a beginning toward this tenuous commitment, with which they will both struggle until they fulfill their promises.

Because of Bella’s suffering and loving sacrifices, Edward matures in important ways, with his arrogance replaced by a new humility. At the end of New Moon, after having disastrously tried to deny it to her, he accepts Bella’s choice to transform and to be one with him in every way.

And Bella joyfully knows that Edward is hers. As Meyer writes, “No matter how perfect she thinks he is, or how imperfect she thinks she is, he belongs to her. Words can’t quite capture the life-changing nature of this knowledge for Bella.”

Bella and Edward’s love, tested in the purifying fire of separation, choice, and reunion has proven pure gold.

Bella’s vampiric transformation in Breaking Dawn is no less powerful than her inner transformation throughout Twilight and New Moon. She is a confident young woman who finally believes she is worthy of love.