I just have a quick random question, which goes in the Writing World section of my blog because it was spurred into being by Twilight and some of the controversy about Twilight in general and Edward Cullen specifically.
Why is it so strange and wrong that Edward watches Bella sleep?
Now, I know the answer to this, actually, but the answer doesn't actually make sense due to other instances of such reasons occurring in other media. I will elaborate.
1) He broke into her house in order to watch her sleep. A bit creepy, I suppose. Yet why is it creepy when Edward does it, but it's perfectly okay when someone else does it?
Examples would be Simon Lewis from The Mortal Instruments. He snuck into Clary's room through her window to sleep next to her in City of Lost Souls. Now, granted, he had a good reason - they're best friends.
But Edward also has a good reason. He went to Bella's house to innoculate himself against her smell, so that he could maintain the lifestyle and facade he'd put together after countless years and decades. Simon busts into Clary's house for Clary. Edward busts into Bella's house, not for Bella, but for himself, but not just for himself. His ability to control his thirst affects his family as well - Carlisle, Esme, Emmet, Rosalie, Jasper, and Alice. He has six people besides himself counting on him to be able to keep his thirst under control. Not to mention, if he slips up, someone besides Bella will no doubt die. As an example, if he attacked her in Biology, everyone in their biology class would probably die in the resulting feeding frenzy. Possibly even the entire school, if the others got caught up in it all, as well.
Another example is Peter Pan. What's Peter's reason for breaking into Wendy's house? He wants to hear her stories. That's purely selfish. Not in a dangerous way, but in no way does his desire to be inside a house that isn't his without permission negatively or positively impact anyone but himself (until he gets caught). Yet no one has considered this a dangerous message to send to children, that people aren't supposed to break into other people's houses via windows?
I'm not actually saying Peter Pan or Simon Lewis are bad people. I'm just wondering why it's okay for them to do it, but not okay for Edward. It seems like a bit of a double standard to me.
2) He watches her sleep because he has a crush on her.
Why is this bad? Why is this creepy? Why is this a sign of stalkerish behavior?
A lot of people watch a lot of other people sleep. Parents look in on their children. I love watching my husband sleep - he's so cute. And he mumbles in his sleep, too. I just wanna go, "Awwww." When we were dating and when we were engaged, and he would nap, I liked watching him sleep, then, too. He likes watching me sleep. I used to take naps on his couch when we were dating all the time. I like watching sleeping babies and sleeping small children. Makes me feel all maternal and stuff.
Peter Pan (again) watches Wendy sleep. In the old Fox kids show, Mystic Knights of Tir Na nOg, the Knight of Fire watches his love interest sleep - and they're not together. Their relationship is a lot like Edward and Bella's, except they have to work together. In Diana Gabaldon's historical romance novel, Outlander, the MC Claire Randall Frasier watches her husband sleep, but he's her husband of two days, she's known him 1 month, and it was an arranged marriage. She barely knows the guy.
In the movie Beastly, based on the novel of the same name by Alex Flinn, the Beast watches the Beauty character sleep for a little bit after she falls asleep after an all-night date. This, by the way, is after he's spent, like, 3 months following her everywhere, trying to get up the nerve to talk to her. In the 1980s television show Beauty and the Beast, in episode one, Vincent comes to Catherine's balcony to look in on her - without her invitation, without her permission, and without her knowledge. In a lot of "Beauty and the Beast" novels and other adaptations, the Beast watches the Beauty character without her knowledge all the time. Yet no one finds these instances objectionable at all. They're considered romantic.
A lot of famous fairy tales, myths, and modern novels involve a lot of spying on the female lead, actually. Sometimes because said spying has been commissioned by another party and sometimes because the person doing the spying/stalking just feels like it. Examples of both are in several books on my shelf. In The Midnight Dancers by Regina Doman, a father hires a young man to befriend his daughters by day and basically stalk them by night to figure out what secret they're keeping from him. Yet in Princess of the Midnight Ball by Jessica Day George and in Entwined by Heather Dixon, both love interests follow the female leads without their knowledge.
Lots of girls (and guys) with crushes will surreptitiously watch their crush from beneath their lashes, or from around the corner, or from the corner of their eye when their crushes pass by. On those rare occassions when I had the luck to be at a slumber party where a crush was, I would study them just to feel that heart-pounding, blood-rushing, stomach-fluttering feeling you get when you see the person you've pinned all of your young hopes, dreams, and infatuation on.
I'm actually not saying one way or the other whether Twilight (and Edward) are stalkerish and weird or not. I'm just curious as to why certain behaviors from males in other popular media are not acceptible in males from other forms of media. *shrug* Just wondering.
- LA Knight
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