Wednesday! It’s time for a look at our third answer from Mrs. Meyer that she posted her at her web site in response to fan questions.
Today: Imprinting. Mrs. Meyer gives a scientific answer to how she came up with this idea. I think there are two other possibilities tied to the “elephant in the room” that she neglects.
I am a 39-year-old member of the Older Women’s Group (OWG) on thetwilightsaga.com. My question is, what lead you to the concept of IMPRINTING — in reference to the Wolf Packs future mates? Thank you for pouring your heart and soul into this series! I can’t tell you how much happiness it has brought me! Sincerely, Stephanie R. – Atlanta, GA
Mrs. Meyer: Imprinting was inspired by two different sources: ducklings and dragons. Imprinting actually exists in nature, but usually between parents and their offspring. I saw a nature documentary about ducklings imprinting on their moms and it always stuck with me. The other inspiration is Anne McCaffrey’s dragon books (which, if you haven’t read them, do so now! Start with Dragonflight). In her mythology, humans and dragons bond so tightly that if one of them dies, the other either suicides or goes mad. They love each other with an absolute and unreasoning love that never falters or changes. I was always captivated by this concept, and I wanted to explore that kind of life-changing and compulsory relationship.
That’s all very interesting but, again, it raises as many questions as it answers. Imprinting in the natural world is a child-to-parent phenomenon. The dragon-rider relationship or bond is mutual. Neither of these things is true of Twilight imprinting, which, as it sometimes involves older men bonding in “life-changing and compulsory” fashion with child-brides, even infants has a high “ick” factor that transgresses human taboos. Where would Mrs. Meyer have come up with that kind of idea?
The obvious answer is from Latter-day Saint history, theology, and present day controversy. Mormonism informs and has shaped Mrs. Meyer’s world view and intellectual substance; it is the bank from which her imagination draws. And Man-child marriages are, sadly, a big part of LDS history and present day controversy (because of fundamentalist polygamy and the child-brides that are all but slaves to their elder husbands). Mormons explain the draw of man to woman and vice-versa in terms of something like the cosmic “compulsory” language of imprinting via their beliefs about our supposed pre-existent life as spirit-children to God the Father and God the Mother. Our love for our intended spouse is our recognition of our loved ones from that pre-existence — and there is no escaping this “destiny” once recognized.
Forgive me, but that seems like a much more obvious match than the bonds of fictional dragon riders and natural ducklings. It also serves as an apology or defense of man-child marriages embedded within the story, consciously or unconsciously. Jon Krakauer’s book Under the Banner of Heaven was published the month Mrs. Meyer had her dream and it is filled to the brim with nightmare stories about polygamist crimes against young women as well as the nightmare of the Mountain Meadows massacre. Twilight is, I suggest, on several levels a Mormon woman’s response to Krakauer’s attack on her faith.
Your comments and corrections, of course, are coveted.
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A Mormon has written an interesting essay delving into the LDS idea of a romance in the (supposed) pre-mortal existence and how that explains not only the werewolves imprinting behaviour, but also the otherwise inexplicable (without the aid of Midnight Sun) instant draw of Edward to Bella and vice versa. You can read it here.
~ Sharon -
This is a very interesting article that I enjoyed reading a while back, leading me to wonder if I might catch a performance of Saturday’s Warrior on the BYU cable channel we have! They often do broadcast their musical theatre productions, but usually more along the lines of The Music Man!
I did wonder about the Dragon Rider connection, as I had read that Meyer liked McCaffery, but the other fantasy link might be the ElfQuest comics and the “recognition” concept which, like werewolf imprinting, sometimes led to peculiar matches. If memory serves (it’s been a looooong time) the elves could only reproduce with a partner with whom they had this connection. Can anyone recall her mentioning them?
What about the Platonic connection which, as it’s described in the (otherwise completely unredeemable) movie The Butcher’s Wife, can make our lives the quest to find our “split apart” other half? -
HAH. I wondered if she’d gotten the imprinting idea from McCaffrey. The description is extremely close. I think you’re mistaken that it’s an adult-child or “mutual” thing in McCaffrey: the point is that it is *irresistible.* The dragon chooses its human and this cannot be altered, even if it’s socially unacceptable. The human can’t refuse or “give back” the bond. Humans also “have to” mate when their dragons mate, which gets McCaffrey into some awkward territory later on.
There’s a fairly strong motif of “werewolves mate for life” in modern werewolf fiction that isn’t from anything in actual early werewolf legend. However, it’s common enough in paranormal romance that “werewolves mating for life” is a persistent theme in HP fanfic, even though this is never a part of Rowling’s werewolf myth.
Critics of *Twilight*, especially young female critics, do cite imprinting as an “ik” factor. Over and over, when I hear from students who liked the series up to Book Four, what they object to is imprinting. I think this has less to do with anti-LDS sentiment than a culture that has become extremely sensitized to anything remotely reminiscent of pedophilia.
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Oh, oops, Elizabeth–the concept of finding the other half, while it’s IN Plato’s Symposion, is actually Aristophanes’ idea. Socrates’ idea is that Love looks for something unlike, and better than, itself.
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Thanks, Mooney! I was going on a very fuzzy memory of a very bad movie with one good line. I should have looked it up!
I think somewhere Meyer has mentioned that when she was
a teenager she would have given anything for a dragon egg! McCafferey obviously had an influence (I read all those books at about the same age, at least, until they started to be the same book.)Do actual wolves mate for life? I’ve heard that, but it may be a myth, especially considering that I think I got that idea from another movie, in this case, Ladyhawke (which really is a good movie, very alchemical!)
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It’s a myth, but a very persistent one, and is possibly the source of the “werewolves mate for life” trope. Wolf packs are generally a lot smaller than they were once thought to be. Generally, they’re an extended family: a breeding pair, their cubs, and their yearling cubs. The misconception probably comes from the fact that usually there’s only one breeding pair per pack. They can split: if one gets killed, the wolf will seek another mate.
But that, and Alpha-status, and a lot of other things that find their way into wolf and werewolf legend, are coming into question now.
I liked McCaffrey in my teens and early twenties, too. They were very popular right around the time that Meyer and I were teenagers (we’re around the same age and probably were exposed to some similar things.)
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Thanks for the great article, Sharon.
The whole thing of “the one,” the soul-mate, figured prominently in my early years as a Christian, in the SoCal Jesus Movement and beyond (in what I call fundagelical faith). There was only one person. The man had to find her; the woman had to be found. Choice was predominately for the man, recognition for the woman. It’s very passive. I saw a lot of quick, disastrous marriages with immature people who had found “the one.”
Yet, this concept prevailed throughout my single years (I didn’t marry until 30).
I was raised by mainline, non-Mormon nominal Christian parents who took us to church as young children and taught us that we had previously lived as souls in heaven. I don’t know whether they believed this to be true, or if it was kind of a fairy tale.
Bizarre, how Mormon concepts permeated my youth!
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And, slap head, why did I forget this part?
I had a “you’re the one” relationship. My first real one at 21, with a guy who was convinced I was It. Because “God had told him so,” I worked to love him as befitted a marked couple. I did come to love him and we were engaged. But his love died (without my knowledge) and he broke up with me two months before the wedding. It was very traumatic and caused me great suffering (not him, of course!).
So the One wasn’t the One.
To this day I have serious problems with the not-dating/covenant relationship thing. A young friend recently got snared into that and burned. Now she understands that she has choices and that choice changes with time and experience.
So I dislike the imprinting thing, too. But I accept it as part of the Twi-story world, and as Meyer’s influence/trope.
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Krakauer’s book so disturbed me that I couldn’t even finish it. I will refrain from any further comment.
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Twilight is, I suggest, on several levels a Mormon woman’s response to Krakauer’s attack on her faith.
How so? Unless you’re privy to more information about Meyer than I am (i.e., that she’s read or is even aware of Krakauer’s narrative, something, in my mind, she’d have to do/be aware of in order to so specifically respond), this seems like something of a jump to me, like you’ve already formed an opinion on the issue and are stretching to find evidence (however thin) to support that opinion. Sure, Meyer is aware of Mormonism’s polygamist past and I’m sure she’s struggled with it in one way or another, though I don’t know how that struggle has influenced her personal understanding of the faith or, more apropos to this post, her work as a novelist.
But Eric Jepson (in the essay Sharon mentions in comment one) makes what to me is a more compelling connection between Meyer, Mormon doctrine, and Mormon (literary) history: imprinting as a manifestation of the premortal romance. This narrative trope is based in the LDS doctrine that we existed as spirits in the presence of God prior to mortal birth, an official teaching that gave rise to the folk doctrine of premortal coupling (i.e., that male and female spirits promised to find one another on Earth and to marry for eternity), which is conveyed in a sampling of non-official LDS narrative art. Jepson takes up two of these—Nephi Anderson’s 1898 novel Added Upon and Douglas Stewart’s 1973 musical Saturday’s Warrior (the latter is still a popular cultural reference in Mormon circles)—though I’m aware of at least two more: Susa Young Gate’s 1909 novel John Stevens’ Courtship (which was serialized before Anderson’s Added Upon was published, which may have been a source for his own, more expansive treatment of the premortal romance, and which was a response to the LDS Church’s manifesto putting an official end to polygamy) and Carol Lynn Pearson’s 1977 musical My Turn on Earth.
This folk doctrine (which has been shot down by LDS Church leaders, most notably, as Jepson points out, by Spencer W. Kimball) seems a far more likely source for Meyer’s notion of imprinting than Krakauer’s discussion of Fundamentalist Mormon polygamy. (And though they share common roots, Fundamentalist Mormon does not equal Latter-day Saint.)
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