Why Edward Is Edward

I understand women. In fact, I understand women better than most women understand themselves or their own motivations. I'm fascinated by what makes people come together in relationships, and it is this knowledge that actually keeps me from wanting to be in one. People are too neurotic.

Naturally, given a love story, I have to decode it. I have to deconstruct it to see if it makes sense, and yes, despite the fantasy elements, and in some ways, because of them, the attraction does in fact seem to be appropriate, which I think is actually unintentional on Stephanie Meyer's part.

There's an old saying that "people always want what they can't have". However, "people always despise what they have," is probably a little closer to the truth.. Women are notorious for that, since it is usually the females, in our social structure, that are on the defensive in courtship situations. They are the ones approached at bars; they are the ones asked out on dates. It is simply a situation where even mediocre looking women have to sift through their potential suitors in order to find the one who is most suitable to live indefinitely with. Understanding this, you realize that women are most amorous of people outside of their grasp, or at least outside of their immediate grasp. A guy who is just as hot as Brad Pitt might hit on her at a bar, but she'll turn him away, only to swoon over the real thing. Why? Brad Pitt has money, fame, and a beautiful wife. Between the physical barrier of distance, and the more existential barriers of class and marital status, it is safe for a woman to swoon over this icon, because it is a fantasy.

Let's deconstruct Mike in Bella's eyes: he's not described as being homely, nor is he viewed as being particularly attractive. However, he is sought after by other women. He must have something attractive about his personality. In the movie he is personified with a little bit more of an energetic personality than is conveyed in the books. All in all, he is exceptional by the class standards, and stands out to Jessica, but to Bella, who regards the entire class as a sort of backwards, small-town type of people: he is unremarkable. On top of this, being one of the first people that Bella meets in Forks, he is associated with all of the negative memories that her image of Forks brings. In a way, he represents Forks to her, and thus is sort of backwards and drab.

However Edward from the get-go is an outsider. He is not a part of the world of Forks, neither physically nor socially. His physical distance represents a sort of condemnation that Bella can get behind, and an impenitrable distance through which Bella cannot immediately see. Really, if he was just a pale, attractive kid from New York City, the same effect would have been reached. He is a sort of kindred spirit in that way. Humanity, particularly in Americans, revel in challenges. Telling us that something is unattainable, or forbidden makes us want something more. We want to experience it. We want to know precisely why it is bad. Like the fruit of knowledge, we don't know what we don't know, and by the same token, we assume that it is pleasure, and not pain, from which we are being spared.

Josephine, lover of Napoleon, was known to write letters to him during the war, at first cursing his absence, then next professing her undying love. This coquettishness is an attributing factor to his downfall at Waterloo. It catches us off guard, and is a power gaining trick. The reason why it works is because at the surface level it is completely illogical: there is no reason why someone could possibly be hot, then cold when no physical decision was made in the intermediary period. It makes one question oneself, and then try to find some meaning deep down. The accused person, Bella in this case, tries to rationally come up with some reason for the changes. It eventually makes her play her hand, when in actuality it is decidedly lacking. Of course, we recognize this in other people's relationships, and could easily label it as manipulation, but in the heat of the moment, most of the time we forget what this looks like when it happens to us. Of course, there is the other interpretation where the lover's actions are just veiled in some guise of mystery where they just seem aloof and troubled, which activates the female's inborn desire to want to be the force in someone's life that heals them: cures them of all their demons.

Bella doesn't know all of this. She is a seventeen year old girl who has never been in a relationship. She doesn't realize that she is dealing with a hunter, both in the vampiric sense, and also the male sense. Here is a man who has spent lifetimes among people analyzing, calculating, learning. Even if he didn't prey on humans, he watched how they interacted: how they lied to one another: how they loved each other. He is aware.

What teenage girls don't understand is how little they understand, particularly about relationships. Bella is a key example of this: willing at first to give it all away to be with some handsome guy she met at school, but this isn't surprising. She's young and foolish and infatuous. In a way, so are all of the fans of Edward: they have all fallen for his charms and what he seems to represent: eternal youth and beauty. After all, isn't that what everyone wants?