Family Theme Analysis

Neither Bella nor Edward come from conventional, two-parent families. Bella’s parents are divorced and have been since she was only a few months old. Edward, on the other hand, was orphaned in his human life and now, as a vampire, lives with six other vampires in an entirely chosen family. But despite their unconventional family structures, neither Bella nor Edward want for support or connection: Bella describes Mom as her best friend and cares deeply for Charlie, even as she finds him somewhat embarrassing; and when it comes to his budding relationship with Bella, Edward has the full support of everyone in his family but one of his sisters, Rosalie. Through these dynamics, Twilight suggests that families don’t have to look a certain way, or be formed a certain way, in order to be supportive and meaningful. Rather, chosen families and unconventional family structures can provide more than enough in the way of love, support, and companionship.

Though the novel acknowledges that there’s a stigma surrounding different family structures, though it ultimately suggests that such stigmas are ill-founded and wrong. On Bella’s first day at Forks High School, for instance, her new friend Jessica tells her about the Cullens—and Jessica is somewhat disapproving of the fact that Dr. Cullen and his wife adopted three kids and are fostering two more. Jessica is wholly unwilling to see the Cullens’ kindness as a kindness—indeed, she implies that adopting and fostering kids is somehow less kind and generous because, supposedly, Esme can’t have biological children. Jessica also bristles at the fact that, aside from Edward, the Cullens’ children (none of whom are related by blood) are in romantic relationships with each other. It’s inconceivable to Jessica that the Cullen family structure is in any way acceptable. However, Twilight nevertheless suggests that family structures that deviate from two married parents and a child (or children) isn’t the norm, at least within the world of the novel. Indeed, though the novel doesn’t get into what Bella’s classmates’ families look like, Bella’s parents are divorced and Mom is remarried, Jacob Black’s mother is conspicuously absent, and the Cullen family is formed entirely by choice. Some people, this suggests, prioritize the wrong things when it comes to family by prioritizing how a family looks over how one acts.

Twilight shows many times over that what’s most important isn’t how normal a family appears, but how family members support each other. As Bella gets to know the Cullens and learns their stories, she discovers that they support each other in a variety of ways. The companionship they show each other, further, is what helps them maintain their “consciences,” or the willingness to deny their vampire nature and bloodlust and stick to hunting animals over humans. Their mutual support is what allows them to keep a permanent residence in Forks, rather than living nomadic lives like vampires who feed on humans tend to do. Edward’s close relationships with his adoptive father, Carlisle, and his sister, Alice, also provide essential support as Edward figures out how to navigate his relationship with Bella. Carlisle is the one to encourage Edward to stay in Forks and make an effort, while Alice goes hunting with Edward in preparation for his first date with Bella. The bonds of family provide not just emotional support but a civilizing force. At one point on the novel, Edward suggests that it was only because he had to think about the well-being of his entire family that he was able to resist killing Bella the first time he smelled her. The support that Bella’s parents offer her is more subtle, but still important. Bella describes Mom as her best friend. Though the two communicate mainly over email throughout the novel, describing Mom this way nevertheless implies that Mom supports Bella emotionally through their relationship. When it comes to Bella’s relationship with Charlie, Charlie is able to support Bella (albeit unwittingly) by giving her the space and the freedom to make choices for herself and experiment without constant supervision. Bella deeply appreciates the freedom that Charlie allows her for much of the novel—and resents when, after she’s injured in Phoenix, he suddenly enforces curfews and the like.

Most importantly, Twilight shows that forming a family can offer people the emotional and social structure and community in which they can most fully be themselves. Early in the novel, Bella explains that she doesn’t relate well to other people, especially kids her own age. For his part, as a 107-year-old vampire, Edward also struggles to relate to other high school students, in addition to being the only single member of his family. In finding each other, Bella and Edward finally realize just how alone they’ve felt up until the point when they started spending time together—through the chosen family they start to create with each other, they feel more complete and secure than they ever have before. Family, the novel shows, can help put things in perspective, make people feel less alone, and provide support and encouragement. While the Cullens’ chosen vampire family, and Bella and Edward’s human-vampire relationship, might be fantastical, Bella and Edward’s relationship in particular illustrates that the value of a family is not in the way it conforms to a specific code of normality, but in the way it makes its members feel.