Time and the making and remaking of the feminine gendered subject in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight saga

Abstract

Philosophy has a long tradition of speculating on the complexities of time and its impacts on individuals and a number of theorists have identified the critical role of temporality in the process of becoming and being a coherent and unified self or subject. Writers have a strong record of unpacking these ideas. The role and importance of temporality in becoming and being a female gendered subject has also been the topic of some recent feminist debate, and theorists such as Simone de Beauvoir, Luce Irigaray and Elizabeth Grosz have argued that specific configurations of temporality, such as more linear configurations, with separated zones for the past, present and future, have proved challenging to the process of being and becoming a female gendered subject. Popular creative writing is an excellent mirror to reflect the dominant concepts, beliefs and values of its society, and a critical reading of popular fiction productions provides interesting insight into the complex way that time enables and disables the female gendered subject. Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight saga is a tale of female becoming, and chronicles the development of the awkward and vulnerable teenager Bella Swan into the confident and invulnerable adult vampire Bella Cullen. Time and its effects on the female subject play an interesting role in the motivation for – as well as the process of – Bella’s subjective becoming, and factors such as aging and the decaying female body, as well as childbirth and maternity and their relationship to cyclical configurations of time, are crucial to Bella’s transformation.