In Defense of Bella Swan

Bella Swan, of the Twilight Saga by Stephenie Meyer, has been on the receiving end of a lot of negativity. I’m not talking about the Twilight Saga books or movies; I’m talking specifically about the character Bella.

 While many teenage girls relate to her as a normal, average girl who quite literally stumbles into a stunning, threatening world of fantastic creatures and superhuman peril, a lot of others have given her a hard time for being ‘weak’.

People have analysed her relationship with Edward and declared it abusive, and say she just passively accepts the abuse. People have called her shallow, and poured scorn on her for fawning over her beautiful, sparkly man. People have even condemned her to literary purgatory for being clumsy. In this post, I would like to explain why I think that Bella Swan is a worthy heroine.

Is she ‘weak’? Only from a narrow definition of the word. Yes she is physically weaker than Edward and the other vampires, but that is realistic for a human female. Yes she is a klutz, a characteristic which Meyer included, no doubt, to emphasise her human frailty as well as to mirror her social awkwardness and the feelings she expresses of having never quite fit in.

However, being accident-prone is not the same as being weak. Any story about a human falling in love with a vampire will inevitably make contrasts between the fragility of human physicality versus the indestructible immortal physique. Part of the appeal of vampires in fiction is the element of wish fulfilment in their physical features – they are typically powerful and beautiful, representing ideals we can only dream about. Meyer deliberately emphasised Bella’s human condition to make her vampires more appealing.

Bella is not weak because she looks after her dad in a domestic role, either. If doing domestic chores and caring for others is weak, then half the world is weak, and if they weren’t the other half would be a lot hungrier and dirtier.

In fact, by showing Bella in the role of carer, effectively filling the void her mother left when she separated from her father, Meyer demonstrates that Bella is not only independent and capable but responsible and mature as well. She attends school, does reasonably well there, weathers a tumultuous relationship, and looks after her dad – we should admire her, not belittle her for this.

Within her relationship with Edward, it’s true that he exhibits controlling behaviour, which she tolerates. However, it’s Bella who urges Edward to cement it further by being intimate and by turning her into a vampire so that they can be together for eternity. Despite Edward’s feelings against Jacob, Bella does not submit to his preferences and continues to maintain her friendship with Jacob. Bella even shamelessly kisses Jacob in front of Edward in Eclipse – proving that she is hardly the downtrodden victim of Edward’s controlling abuse.

In the first book, despite Edward admitting to being a monster, Bella openly says she doesn’t care. In the face of such a strange, predatory creature the vast majority of men and women would sensibly be afraid. But Bella is not sensible – she is wilful and stubborn. She knows what she wants and she relentlessly pursues it, almost to the point of recklessness. She insist on being with Edward despite his protests that he is dangerous and she’s making a mistake, on carrying her unborn baby to term in spite of the risks to her body, and on becoming a vampire in spite of the risks to her mind and soul. 

It could be argued that Bella’s only true weakness is loving Edward. Falling for a vampire is never a very good idea, but Meyer carefully avoids her seeming like too much of a masochist by making the vampires ‘vegetarian’. The point is supposed to be that she loves him despite what he is, not because of it – that others are attracted to him for superficial reasons but that Bella can see beyond them.

She is a heterosexual teenage girl - she is allowed to appreciate Edward’s physical features (and in doing so theoretically inspires the same feelings in the reader, since it is a first person narrative). Some have asked, if not for the way he looks, why does she love him? They say they can’t see anything between them except PG rated lust. But you could ask the same question of a lot of real life relationships and never come up with an answer. People have loved each other for no decipherable reason since the dawn of time.

In New Moon, I wholly sympathised with Bella’s reaction to Edward leaving. As a confident adult reading it, a young girl falling apart and sinking into a deep depression over a boy seems silly, but Bella is not a confident adult and neither is the intended audience of the books. Teenagers are typically less self-assured, more self-conscious, and more fraught with insecurities than adults.

As someone who suffered with depression for most of my adolescence, I could relate to how Bella felt she wasn’t good enough for him and how she felt in his absence. So her behaviour wasn’t aspirational, but is it weak to grieve the absence of someone we love? Bella’s strength is in how she doesn’t let it defeat her. After all, no one drags her out to spend time with Jacob. She eventually goes willingly, coping the only way she can (some take prescription meds, some turn to drink, Bella becomes an adrenaline junkie – each to their own.)

Ultimately, Bella marries Edward and becomes a mother. It might not be a popular life path these days but the choices she makes are not to be scoffed at.

In the end, she gets everything she wanted through her own perseverance and unflinching resolve in the face of incredible danger. Against the odds, she not only survives, but thrives.