Love and Lust Theme Analysis

Twilight follows 17-year-old Bella Swan as she moves from Phoenix, Arizona to a tiny town in Washington State called Forks to live with her father, Charlie. Though Bella made the move voluntarily, she’s nevertheless upset about living in provincial Forks—that is, until she meets the mysterious and gorgeous Edward Cullen, a fellow junior at Forks High School. The two seem magnetically drawn to each other, and they eventually embark on an intense romance. But their relationship is complicated by an important element of Edward’s identity: he’s a 107-year-old vampire, and Bella’s blood smells better to him than that of any other human. This means that in spite of how much they love each other, Edward is constantly tempted to drink Bella’s blood, and Bella is putting herself in mortal danger by continuing their relationship. But the risk and confusion this causes doesn’t deter them, and they stay steadfastly committed to each other. Through Bella and Edward’s relationship, Twilight suggests that true, passionate love is all-consuming, is sometimes confusingly interwoven with lust and control, and has the potential to conquer any problem—even Edward’s extreme bloodlust and the issue of Bella’s mortality.

Twilight portrays Bella and Edward’s love as a once-in-a-lifetime romance that is extremely fulfilling for both parties. Both Bella and Edward are misfits—Bella talks about not relating well to people, especially other kids her own age. Her mother even jokes that Bella was born middle-aged and continues to get emotionally older every year, something that makes it somewhat difficult for Bella to feel truly invested in her teenaged friends’ mundane anxieties. And Edward, as a 107-year-old vampire, is a misfit in his own way. He explains that though vampires are naturally beautiful (which helps draw human victims in), getting too close to a vampire is actually frightening and repulsive for most people, meaning that, like Bella, Edward doesn’t have any close friends at school. Edward is also the only vampire in his chosen family to not have a romantic partner who’s also a vampire—so when he and Bella meet, Edward is both a loner in his family, and a loner in the wider Forks community. Fortunately for Bella and Edward, their shared inability to connect with other people provides them something to bond over. Edward, who can read most people’s minds, can’t read Bella’s mind—but rather than creating distance between them, this makes him even more interested in Bella. And Bella doesn’t experience the same revulsion toward Edward and the other Cullens as other humans do. So in a relationship with each other, Bella and Edward find companionship, understanding, and romance—things they never thought they’d find, given how out of step they feel with their peers.

However, Twilight also shows that though their relationship results in an emotional connection, Bella and Edward’s romance stems from—and is focused on—lust. Though Edward finds Bella intriguing from the outset because he can’t read her thoughts, she becomes a temptress in his mind when he smells her for the first time. Her blood smells better to Edward than that of any other human, and it’s this that drives his attraction to Bella. Similarly, Bella is overcome by how physically attractive Edward is. The novel is peppered with Bella’s observations about how “gorgeous,” “impossibly beautiful,” and amazing Edward looks—and how even the scent of his breath makes her swoon. Their physical attraction doesn’t negate or invalidate their emotional connection, but the novel makes it clear that it’s their physical attraction to each other, both sexual and otherwise, that keeps them coming back to each other.

The novel suggests that part of the reason why Bella and Edward’s romance is so all-consuming is because it’s impossible to separate their love from things like pain or danger. Bella isn’t deterred by the fact that Edward could, at any moment, lose control or kill her. Rather, she finds the danger that Edward poses to her thrilling, which makes her more interested in spending time with him. The two even acknowledge how dangerous their relationship is, and how imbalanced the power dynamic is, when they refer to Edward as a lion and Bella as a lamb—like a lamb, Bella is wholly unable to defend herself against the strong, powerful, and dangerous Edward. While Edward’s behavior toward Bella could be read as controlling in other circumstances, Bella finds that his behavior only draws her closer to him. When she discovers that Edward has been sneaking into her bedroom to watch her sleep at night, she acknowledges on an intellectual level that this is something that should bother her—it’s an invasion of her privacy, especially since she talks in her sleep. But, instead, Bella is flattered. Further, Edward’s response to Bella expressing her love to him with the statement “You are my life now” might be read as creepy or overly intense—but Bella finds Edward’s obsession with her to be compelling and exciting.

Finally, Twilight suggests that this kind of all-consuming love can conquer all. Because of his intense love for Bella, Edward is able to subsume his nature as a vampire and, when he realizes the vampire James bit Bella, suck only the infected blood out of Bella’s hand—thereby saving her life and keeping her from becoming a vampire. His emotional connection with Bella wins out over his physical desire for her blood. Ultimately, the novel presents their love as bigger than even death. At the end of the novel, Bella begs Edward—who’s afraid of putting Bella in danger again—to stay with her forever, and to make her a vampire one day. She makes her request because she believes that the pain of living without Edward would be far worse than the pain of either dying or becoming a vampire. Bella’s final request speaks to how all-encompassing her love for Edward is—she’d rather become undead than to live without their love.