Meat Politics in the TWILIGHT SAGA

An hour-long read about Edward sucking Bella

Hello, fellow ghost readers!

Holy moly it’s been a while! I promise I had every intention of keeping up my weekly publications after my lil Christmas break, but quite simply life got in the way. More importantly, I realised that, as much as I was enjoying posting my humble literary musings here, it was actually stopping me from prioritising my own personal writing. It was my resolution last December 31st that 2025 would be the year I finish writing my novel, and (even as I look at my writing plan and acknowledge that having it ‘finished’ by the end of the year is a bit of a stretch) it’s still frankly the only thing I really have any interest in working on at the moment.

That being said, I don’t want to leave my lil ghost reader’s behind entirely, AND, most excitingly, this lil blog managed to get its first paid subscriber a couple of weeks ago and I wanted to at least post something to celebrate that! Although I’ve had Stripe set up on this thing since I started posting last year, I really never expected someone to actually use it, especially considering the fact that all the content I’ve posted thus far has been free, so it was a lovely surprise to see that notification pop up on my phone after so many months of inactivity.

This is my dissertation on food and meat politics in Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight Saga which I wrote for my undergrad degree. It’s not my best work by any stretch of the imagination — I was wrote and researched this entire thing in the two weeks before it was due in, when burnout was riding me hard, and I was trying (and failing) to pass my driving test. I literally haven’t read it since I submitted it, and when I opened the file today I realised I’d actually misspelt ‘transgression’ in the title, so that’s very much the energy this post is bringing. However, it was a really fun project to work on, and I remember feeling good about it at the time, so hopefully there’s something in there for you too!

Because I’m positing this to celebrate my one paid subscriber, and the fact that this is such a long piece of work, after a lot of umming and ahhing, I have decided that, for the first time on this blog, the second half of this post will be behind a paywall. This is not because I’m drunk on power and am now trying to demand payment from my heretofore free but heartwarmingly loyal subscribers — it’s a one-off paid post, and really just my attempt to demonstrate the gratitude I feel to this person (who I’m not naming, in case that’s something they’re not comfortable with) for contributing to my humble Substack in this way. It really does mean a hell of a lot, particularly to me as a freelancer, so THANK YOU, this one’s for you! (I hope you like Twilight.)

As I say, free subscribers can still read the first half of this essay. I THINK I set it up so that you can cash in one paid post for free if you want to, so maybe try that out if you’re really enraptured by the meat politics of the Twilight Saga, or consider becoming my second paid subscriber if you want 👀

I know that my actual academic essays are by far the worst performing of my posts, so perhaps this isn’t what you guys want at all, and I don’t know when/what I’ll net be posting after this, but I do have a wealth of university essays on my hard drive that are currently just gathering technological dust, so I’m thinking it makes sense to post them here sporadically on a schedule to be determined. Watch this space.

In the meantime, please enjoy this — the first Ghost Reader activity in months — my very own Where the hell have you been, Loca? post, if you will. I hope you enjoy it, and if you DO make it to the end, or even if you just read a lil bit, lmk what you think!

A ghost reader 👻

tw: this essay includes references to sexual violence, discussions around food, and traumatic birth

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‘What’s for breakfast? O negative or AB positive?’: Consuming Bodies and the Transgressive Appetite for Food in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga

A girl arrives in a sleepy, wet, North American town called Forks to live with her father, who she (not-so-affectionately) calls by his first name, ‘Charlie’. This, she tells us, is her place of self-‘exile’ - an act she ‘[takes] with great horror’, looking on her new home with a sense of violent but resigned misery akin to that of a Radcliffian heroine whisked away to an ancient castle full of monsters. ‘I detested Forks’, she states (T, p. 4). She arrives safely, the boring town, her boring father, her boring house, it turns out harbour no monsters. That is until her first day of school, when she goes to lunch and sees five vampires sitting in the cafeteria. These vampires have many inhuman qualities to attract her attention - their bone-white skin, their dark (hungry) eyes ringed in the purple shadow of eternal sleeplessness, their mesmerising beauty - but none of these are what first captures her attention about the unusual highschoolers. Despite it being lunchtime, and despite the myriad of other strange qualities, she instantly notices that ‘they weren’t eating’ (T, p. 16).

This dietary abstinence is a theme which is almost obsessively present in Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight Saga. These strange students, our heroine Bella Swan will soon discover, are, in fact, vampires who have chosen (bizarrely) to live out eternity as high school students, ‘siblings’ and lovers, cared for their ‘adoptive parents’ Carlisle and Esme Cullen (also vampires). The sacrifice they must make in order to do this is solely their unwavering commitment to a ‘vegetarian’ lifestyle - ‘vegetarian’ here not meaning the rejection of eating meat, just the rejection of eating human meat. The vampire who feeds off of animals instead of humans is not new in the Saga, but certainly the humorous moniker of ‘vegetarian’ is. Though Edward acknowledges this is a ‘little inside joke’ amongst his family (T, p. 164), it is still a curious term to describe the diet of one who exclusively eats animals. This is often commented on: Laura Wright (2014, n.p.) notes the paradox, saying that ‘In the context of Twilight, "vegetarian" means to eat animals - the very antithesis of its actual meaning - instead of humans’. Far from the insatiable, ravenous appetites of more traditional vampiric depictions, the Cullens represent a vampire who is effectively de-fanged, unthreatening and, as we will later see, sexless. The use of the moniker of ‘vegetarian’ is deliberate, not to signal a specific non-omnivorous diet, but to signal virtue. Wright’s point is that the Cullen’s depict a wholesome ideal of the modern, socially conscientious, all-American family.

Furthermore, it is clear to us that it is only this zealous commitment to their animal diet that allows for love to blossom between Bella and her teenage vampire soulmate, Edward Cullen (despite his insatiable lust for her blood). Indeed, it is almost impossible to discuss Bella and Edward’s relationship (and, by extension, the entire narrative), without distinguishing that this is a vampire that does not eat people. The rejection of food, then, plays a central role in the narrative of the Saga, as Bella and Edward navigate the pitfalls and complications of ‘making love’ where you eat. Edward desires Bella as both food and (a)sexual partner. Her body functions as an extended source of pleasure for him, but one he must restrict his indulgence in. The politics of meat dominates the morality of the Saga. As Mary Douglas (2003, p. 116) famously notes in her seminal text, Purity and Danger:

The body is a complex structure.The functions of its different parts and their relation afford a source of symbols for other complex structures. We cannot possibly interpret rituals concerning excreta, breast milk, saliva and the rest unless we are prepared to see in the body a symbol of society, and to see the powers and dangers credited to social structure reproduced in small on the human body.

For the vampire who eats people, the morality, ritual and symbolic nature of the body is reflected twofold - first in the body of the vampire, and then again in the nature of its food - the basis for the vampire as an abject figure. For the ‘vegetarian vampire’, such behaviours are suppressed and the vampire’s physicality and its symbology is entirely altered. As Ruth O’Donnell (2014, p. 98) identifies, Twilight is ‘a story preoccupied with (oral) self denial, both on the part of its vampire and human characters’. Focusing particularly on the narrative of Twilight, but with reference to the full canon (New Moon, Eclipse, Breaking Dawn, and Midnight Sun), this essay will examine the role of food and consuming in the Saga as a patriarchal tool of the repression of transgressive appetites, and investigate the safety of the boundaries erected between self/other, internal/external, and, most importantly, biter/bitten.

You Are What You Eat: The Ethics of the Vampire Diet

Before a reader may dive into the proverbial fruits of Meyer’s imaginary world of sparkly vampires and ravenous (or perhaps starved) sexual desire, one is confronted with the biblical passage, Genesis 2:17, describing the moment Adam and Eve are forbidden by God from eating the apples growing on the Tree of Knowledge. This scene, perhaps one of the best known biblical stories, is referenced again on Twilight’s famous cover: two pale, ghostly hands reaching out of the darkness, cupping a blood red apple. On her website (2023), in response to the query ‘What’s with the apple?’, Meyer states that the image of the apple, and its connection in the Christian canon to the concept of ‘the knowledge of good and evil’ felt especially appropriate to the narrative because ‘Isn’t that exactly what Bella ends up with?’ Meyer also references other literary apples alongside the biblical - Snow White’s poisoned apple from fairytale; Paris’ golden apple from Greek mythology - both of which (to a greater or lesser extent) represent the dangerous choice offered by a powerful (potentially evil) figure to a mere mortal. That Meyer should choose to align Bella and Edward’s relationship with an edible metaphor for choice is curious considering both parties allude to the fact that loving one another is, for them, something closer to fate than it is ‘choice’ (T, p. 171, and N.M., p. 449). Their only choice is how to shape their relationship, and, for a vampire in love with a human, this poses the question of what is and what is not eaten.

As we have already mentioned, the most striking thing upon Bella’s first encounter with the Cullens in the cafeteria is the fact that they are not eating (T, pp.16). As she watches them, she notes how:

The small girl [Alice Cullen] rose with her tray - unopened soda, unbitten apple [...] I watched amazed at her lithe dancer’s step, till she dumped her tray and glided through the back door. (T, p.17)

Wright (2014, pp.354) states, ‘Meyer's rewriting of vampire mythology strips vampires of their characteristic darkness and countercultural natures; these vampires like humans and want to be like them, so much so that they ascribe to a human dietary code and consume what most humans (at least humans in the United States) consume, a diet centered around the bodies of animals’. The Cullens take steps to look like, act like, and even eat like humans, however, logically, this display of buying, not eating, and then discarding perfectly good food every day is arguably more conspicuous of their abnormal nature than simply not buying food just to throw away in the first place. Or better yet, not situating themselves within the very public space of the cafeteria where the fact that they are not eating is surely only highlighted by the fact that the humans around them are. In effect this image distils and performs their commitment to not eating in order that they may live as part of the human population (their natural food source). Literally they are demonstrating the virtuous nature of their chosen diet.

However, this, for the human onlookers who are not aware that they are vampires, is wrapped up in more negative connotations. As O’Donnell (2014, pp.108) points out, such an act more closely associates the Cullen siblings with the signs of disordered eating, rather than the normal teenage behaviour they supposedly aspire to recreate. This links to how the Cullens (Carlisle and Edward in particular) see themselves. The disgust the Cullen family feel towards eating humans manifests in a revulsion towards the vampiric nature of their bodies as something which is beyond, or not worthy of salvation. Throughout the Saga, Edward repeatedly insists he is not in any way human. when he describes the moment he first encounters Bella’s delicious scent, he laments:

I tried to focus on the face [his own face] I’d seen in her eyes, a face I recognised with revulsion. The face of the monster inside me [...] How easily it sprang to the surface now! (M.S., p. 12-13)

The rejection of any humanity within himself, overtaken by ‘monstrosity’ persists throughout the Saga. Similarly, Edward describes Carlisle’s experience as a newborn vampire - how he ‘rebelled against [his nature]’, and was even ‘so repelled by himself that he had the strength to try to kill himself with starvation’ (T, p. 294). Despite their conscious effort to assimilate, the Cullens are all too aware that, however hard they try, becoming fully human (in the biological sense) is unattainable for them, thus, although Bella and the reader might maintain that the Cullens possess a humanity (if not a human body), the Cullens themselves reject, out of hand, the human nature (and body) to which they aspire in themselves. What sets the Cullen’s apart from other, human-eating vampires, is the visceral disgust they feel when confronted with the realities of their nature. Rather than a moral representation of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ ways of being, the constant obsession with, but restriction of food; the admonishment of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ behaviours and desires; the revulsion at the body and idealisation of different bodies - O’Donnell’s (2014, p. 108) assessment, that vampire ‘vegetarianism’ more closely resembles an allegory for disordered eating, appears to be correct, but is problematically rendered in the Saga as a demonstration of virtue.

The question of the existence of a vampire soul is one that underscores a lot of the conflict in Bella’s relationship with Edward, but the possibility of an alternate morality outside of the human (and distinctly Christian) ideology is never questioned by either of them. Jennifer H. Williams (2013, p. 166) states that ‘Bella herself espouses no religious views and reports that her own life ‘was fairly devoid of belief’. Yet, despite this, she says that the ‘the only kind of heaven I could appreciate would have to include Edward’. In the same conversation in which Carlisle states, ‘I look at my ... son. His strength, his goodness, the brightness that shines out of him - and it only fuels that hope, that faith [that vampires may go to heaven], more than ever’ (N.M., p. 33). The ‘strength’ that he references can only mean Edward’s capacity to resist temptation, which is increased by his proximity to Bella. Such temptation, then, must always be present for the ‘vegetarian’ vampire to be truly virtuous, and the importance of this to the Cullens cannot be overstated since the state of, not just this life, but the next are at stake. Although we will later discuss the ways in which she deviates from this, O’Donnell (2014, pp.108) points out how Bella begins to emulate the Cullen’s restrained eating habits when she refuses to eat at lunchtime, feeling too nervous from Edward’s presence (T, pp.34-35). Indeed, throughout the Saga she eats very little in his presence (and when she does, it is normally because he is making her). That eating (or not eating, as it were) is a habit of which she takes considerable notice in Edward, and that this factors into her perception of him as heaven-bound, lends his (and the Cullen’s) dietary restraint the quality of religious fasting.

For a species whose natural food source is human blood (possessing whatever state of humanity), objectively, it cannot definitively be called immoral, especially when the necessity for keeping their existence hidden from the human population offers some measure of protection from widespread vampire gluttony (most vampires live nomadically) (T, p. 254). Yet the Cullens refuse to indulge, putting themselves everyday through a trial of suffering in an effort to prove their ‘goodness’. Edward describes the ‘dry ache in [his] throat, the hollow yearn in [his] stomach, the automatic tightening of [his] muscles, the excess flow of venom in [his] mouth’ at the scent of blood, and his resigned repression of it (M.S., p. 4). More importantly, he questions whether it is worth the ‘risk’ to ‘experiment’ with Jasper’s self control, who has more difficulty than the rest of the family. ‘Wouldn’t the safer path be to just admit that he might never be able to handle his thirst as well as the rest of us? Why flirt with disaster?’, he asks (M.S., p. 3). Perhaps the best answer to this comes in a conversation between Bella and Carlisle in which Carlisle states that ‘I’m hoping that there’s still a point to this life, even for us. It’s a long shot [...] By all accounts we’re damned regardless. But I hope, maybe foolishly, that we’ll get some measure of credit for trying’ (NM, p. 33). Williams (2013, p. 175) notes that the overarching morality of the Saga suggests that ‘goodness is a matter of what one does’, as opposed to what one is. But this becomes obsessional as the Cullens seek to atone for the ‘sin’ of their vampiric bodies through the constant torment of close proximity to, and subsequent self-denial of, their deepest craving: human blood. We see this most strikingly mirrored in what is perhaps the emotional climax of the entire Saga: chapter thirteen (T, pp.228-249) - appropriately titled ‘Confessions’ - describes the famous meadow scene, where Edward finally exposes his glittering skin to bella in the sunlight and they both confess their love for one another. Lori Branch (2014, p. 54-55) identifies the ‘moral complexity’ that accompanies Edward’s declaration, which, she notes, is described in ‘explicitly anti-consuming terms’:

Love in this chapter means precisely not pursuing the experience of consuming the one he loves, either literally or sexually. Edward explains to Bella that ‘every person smells different, has a different essence’, and it is this bella-ness that he savours: he craves her company and her essence, her very life, and this is what makes him more dangerous to his beloved than to anyone else.

This relates to R. J. Hunt’s (2014, pp.167) theory that Bella’s scent threatens to destabilise (physical) boundaries between the living and the (un)dead. Edward’s need to be physically (in terms of proximity) and emotionally close to Bella, mirror his desire to disrupt this boundary with the penetrating act of biting. Hunt describes how this destabilising of boundaries is also inherently queer, thus, Edward’s desire to penetrate Bella is aligned with ‘transgressive’ sexual desire. The moment Alice dumps her uneaten lunch tray, ‘unopened soda, unbitten apple’, then takes on a whole new meaning. The Cullen’s refuse to partake of the apple, and thus the knowledge of their own ‘evil’, which we may see here translates as transgressive sexuality and desire.

Rob Latham (2002, cited in Spooner 2013, p. 147) states that ‘The vampire is literally an insatiable consumer driven by hunger for perpetual youth’, which Spooner points out is represented at its apex in the bodies and lifestyles of the Saga’s sparkly vampires. For the family who chooses to relive one period of life over and over - so that their life experience more closely resembles many short lives rather than one long, immortal one - this seems particularly pertinent. Their methods of satiating this ‘hunger’, however, does not manifest in feeding off of the vitality represented in the body, but rather any experiences of hunger are ruthlessly repressed (M.S., pp.4) and replaced with the comforts of modern life. Latham’s statement is relevant as it relates to the ways in which the Cullen family separate themselves from the material and aesthetic trappings of traditional vampirism. The fact that they do not consume blood, does not mean that the Cullens do not consume. The Cullens dress in designer clothes (T, p. 27); they live in a ‘timeless’ house that Bella estimates to only be about a hundred years old with modernistic updates (T, p. 281); they drive brand new sports cars (T, pp,174). They retain none of the material culture from their past (save for a wooden cross from Carlilse’s human upbringing (T, pp.288)), and, indeed, even seem reluctant to talk at length about their human lives (the backstories known to us in the canon generally do not extend beyond the circumstances of their vampiric transformation) and we feel the concern of the Cullens to ‘assimilate in time’, as it were. There is an extent to which this is necessary in order to comply with Volturi law - assuming the material culture of the modern age as it continually advances helps keep the existence of vampires a secret (N.M., pp.411). However, this necessity does not go far enough to explain the Cullen’s attempt to conform to human aesthetics. Instead, we know they are deeply concerned with ‘fitting in’ with the human community (T, p. 253), and it is the ‘moral’ nature of their lifestyle as beings who consume allows for their material wealth. The vast consumer capital possessed by the Cullens sublimates the necessity for human blood, and the rubs of a restricted diet are placated by the material comforts offered by the ‘vegetarian’ lifestyle. Their ability to ‘assimilate in time’ is aided by their aversion to drinking human blood. In other words, their ‘morality’ is the thing which allows them to engage in a consumer economy, thus, extensive material wealth signals an exceptional morality, in that they have presumably lived successfully as ‘vegetarians’ long enough to accrue such wealth. What is consumed externally replaces what is taken into the body, so while consuming material objects works to collapse the boundaries between human/vampire, it does so without the necessity of physical contact (or penetration) between bodies, maintaining the boundaries between self/other, internal/external that have the potential to be compromised through eating.

Moreover, this desire to assimilate to humanity - to, not only perform, but to actually be as human as possible - aligns the ‘vegetarian’ vampire lifestyle with humanity. Wright (2014, n.p.) draws the obvious conclusion that ‘Meyer’s [...] so-called vegetarian vampires [...] are actually carnivores’ - a statement which she describes as ‘muddled and contradictory’. But this paradox holds within it the very important distinction that the vegetarian vampire does not eat people for the same moral reasons that an omnivorous human makes a distinction between meat and cannibalism. Cannibalism, as both an uncanny and abject concept - not only taking something into the body which is supposed to remain outside of it, but a food source which is familiar and identifiable with the self - Jordan Dominy (2015, pp.144) states, exists in Western society as a grotesque fascination, usually situated outside the bounds of ‘civilised’ culture, and which, as a result, is considered immoral by its standards, stating:

literary and cultural criticism on cannibalism reveals it as a trope operating in two ways: as a way to emphasize the difference between European civilization and racially different barbarism and as a metaphor or tool to emphasize the greed of consumer capitalism, a trend that comes about with the emergence of widely available luxury goods and the flourishing middle class

Whether we view the biology of vampire bodies as a corrupted version of the human body, or as a separate species, the Cullen family, as we have seen, are clearly taking steps to actively align themselves with human identity, thus eating people would, indeed, be an act of cannibalism. Dominy’s attention to the concept of cannibalism as a metaphor for consumer capitalism, is especially pertinent. Though they attempt to assimilate through the acquisition of material wealth - which Bella sees as a symbol of exceptional morality - the Cullens are still voraciously feeding off of human culture in an attempt to subsume, or rather ‘consume’, their abject nature. By the Cullen’s standards, this only further marks them out as the ‘other’, since the nature they are trying to conceal is defined by what is consumed, thus, to an extent, it must be morally wrong and the Cullens remain plagued by the possibility that they will be denied salvation.

As Jennifer Brown (2012, p. 2) notes, food in the modern world holds as much potential to be harmful as it does to be healthy (for example, junk food, GM crops, diet pills, calorie counts etc.), stating that ‘It seems we consume as much to alter ourselves as we do to nourish our bodies’. As we have seen, this is blisteringly true of the Cullens attitude towards food, but the emphasis on the disgust at the body cannot be separated in their minds from the presence (or lack thereof) of identity beyond the corporeal. The reality of God for the Cullens lends an even greater emphasis on the importance of abstaining from cannibalistic practices. As Maggie Kilgour (1990, p. 1, 79) discusses, the Abrahamic religions, particularly Christianity, have a long history of cannibalistic associations attached to external perceptions of their beliefs and ritual practices. Kilgour suggests that the discomfort with which these faiths were viewed was as a result of the breakdown of the binary opposition between spirit/flesh, and that Holy Communion - the ritualistic act of eating the eucharist (a symbol of Christ’s body) and drinking wine (a symbol of Christ’s blood) as a symbolic recreation of the Last Supper - was seen, by the early Church as less a representation of the body of Christ, and something closer to the actual thing (Lindenbaum 2004, pp.80). We might, then, understand the Cullen’s act of the self-denial of blood, then, as a denial of the sacrament they do not believe themselves worthy of taking as a result of their insatiable appetites.

This rejection of the abject is distinctly un-vampiric, since the nature of vampirism implies that one has been ‘transformed’, having been penetrated by fangs, and, in the case of Meyer’s vampires, injected with venom, an act which must then perpetrated over and over in the act of feeding. Such an act, which Fred Botting (1996, pp.145) discesses as being inseparable from vampiric identity, and clearly linked to representations of non-conforming, or transgressive sexual identity and desires, is responsible for a physical ‘change’, one which they see as problematic for its effect on appetite, and by extension, we may assume, sexual appetite. The disgust at their own nature - at the implications and necessities of the physical bodies they inhabit - is internalised. The bodies they wish to consume must be restricted and offset onto external material objects, and the nature they exhibit must be contained. For the Cullen’s, the cannibal act is not only uncanny because it would mean consuming that which they have structured their identity against, but because it is an act reaffirming the mode by which they were transformed into their ‘monstrous’ selves. To consume human blood, for the vampire, is to consume, devour and destroy their previous human selves, something which is unacceptable to the Cullen’s. The aversion to drinking human blood and the material consumption that replaces it, could then be said to represent the sublimation of transgressive sexual desire which the vampire bite denotes. The rejection of humanity in the self is particularly interesting as, far from their intention of viewing humanity as an idealised state transcendent of the body to which they aspire despite not possessing the right body - a soul, if you will - it actually exposes the Cullen’s transgressive desires, though fiercely repressed. Because if the state of being human amounts to no more than possessing a correct biology, humanity is transformed into a piece of meat, one which the Cullens desire to not only possess, but consume. Wright astutely questions ‘If vampires constitute our shadow selves, then what of the soulless Cullen’s and their adherence to a system of human ethics?’. We might consider that, instead of the traditional vampire - this ‘shadow’ as a spectral reflection, inseparable from humanity as it mirrors and exposes its true and horrific nature, as Botting (1996, p. 148) suggests - the Cullen’s shadowy presence is literally a wasted shade mimicking humanity but always trailing behind it - it’s dull nature laid bare in the sunlight humanity thrive in, and which they do not.

Corporal Forms and (Sexual) Appetite

As Botting (1996, pp.148-150) notes in his assessment of the literary vampire, the connection between the vampire diet (and the means of consuming it by ripping into the jugular with sharpened fangs and sucking the blood), and insatiable sexual desire are obvious and inextricably connected. Indeed, Lorna Paitti-Farnell (2014, p. 1) sees the vampire as ‘synonymous with forbidden desire and illicit experiences’, but this is not entirely the case for the Saga’s vampires, who’s ‘vegetarianism’ mirrors a ‘conservative re-elaboration of the sexual ideal’, and for whom sex may only happen within the bounds of marriage and must naturally be preceded by children - something which Bella considers to be ‘Responsibl[e]’, and ‘the right order’ (E, p. 548-549). As we will soon see, the impenetrable, glittering skin of the Saga’s vampires does not (necessarily) indicative of carnivorous desire, but reflects and illuminates it in the bodies of the humans they mimic.

In the first ‘action sequence’ of Twilight, Edward Cullen rescues damsel Bella Swan as she is set upon by a group of ill-intentioned criminals, gallantly arriving with his noble steed (his trademark silver Volvo) to whisk her away to ‘La Bella Italia’ to buy her dinner (T, p. 143). The difference between Edward’s vampiric body and Bella’s human body could obviously not be more extreme in the scene that follows as this is the moment that Bella begins to uncover Edward’s vampiric nature, something which is betrayed in their opposing eating habits which, at dinner, are particularly on display. Bella orders the mushroom ravioli - the first thing she sees on the menu as she hurries to find out more about Edward. She drinks two Cokes, surprised by a sudden deep thirst. Edward eats nothing, instead staring at her as she eats (T, pp.145-147). Natalie Wilson (2011, n.p.) notes Bella’s fascination with Edward’s eyes, arguing that Bella’s acceptance and even enjoyment of his ‘dazzling’ glare (T, p. 145) is a romanticisation of the male gaze. This gaze is arguably no more potent than when Edward watches Bella eating, as an act that is essential to Bella’s existence, and arguably pleasure, but which Edward does not himself partake in. In these moments, Edward has nothing to do but watch since he cannot eat.

The intensity of this gaze is emphasised as Edward feels he must watch Bella at all times (including when she sleeps) fearing an often inexplicable danger will befall her, should he not be there to keep her safe (M.S., pp.210, 214). Wilson (2011, n.p.) describes the nature of Edward’s near constant gaze as both protective and erotic, and there is an extent to which the text necessitates and validates this gaze, especially at mealtimes. Bella almost never eats alone. Either she is watched by the fasting Edward, or (more problematically as we will soon discuss) she eats with her father. Almost the only times she eats without one of the two present exclusively happens in the cafeteria at lunch with her human friends - one of the instances where she is at the most risk of the Forks High School sexual economy, under the gaze of Mike, Eric and Tyler, all vying for her attention and all (according to Edward) with less honourable intentions (M.S. pp. 8). Interestingly, though we know that Bella must be eating in these moments, this is never described. Meyer tells us Bella goes to lunch, but never mentions what she consumes or that she even eats at all when she is unwatched by Edward or Charlie. The only times her appetite is referenced is when it has been conspicuously lost due to her unexpected proximity to Edward (T, 34-35), an act which mirrors the Cullen’s lack of appetite. This mirroring, O‘Donnell (2014, p. 108) suggests, is ‘symptomatic of regression’, and indicative of disordered eating as a result of her own anxiety about the nature of her human body as ‘through starving, the developing adolescent’s body appears to return to its prepubescent state and defy ageing [...] especially as the bodily changes of nascent womanhood threaten to render the girl more like the mother’. Wilson (2011, n.p.) identifies the presentation of Bella’s mother, Renee, as ‘negligent’ and a woman who ‘puts her own [sexual] desires above that of her daughter’ in reference to her decision to uproot their lives so that she may travel with her toy-boy husband. For Bella to be seen as either a woman or mother would mean the physical realisation of ageing into the sexual economy in a body with potentially uncontrollable desires or ‘promiscuous’ tendencies, which she rejects in favour of the eternally adolescent Edward. Bella cannot be seen to eat in these social moments because doing so - displaying appetite and actively taking something into the body to relieve it - would compromise the virginal purity indicative of a young body if it were to occur outside of the ‘safety’ of Edward’s gaze. As Wilson (2011, n.p.) states, ‘female sexuality is constructed as taboo - as threatening purity - and thus it must be either excised or chained to male sexuality’, in this instance, taking the form of the patriarchal gaze protecting Bella from those who cannot restrain their sexual desire.

Bella’s physical responses to food are often sexually coded. The first time Edward invites Bella to sit with him, Bella’s stomach ‘trembles’ as she wraps her hands around a bottle of lemonade, puts it to her mouth, swallows, before ‘tracing the circle of the opening with [her] pinkie’ (T, pp.76-78). Their conversation, in which Edward begins to hint at his secret nature, mirrors the sexual teasing playing out on Bella’s lemonade bottle, but where Bella draws her desires into the physical world, Edward’s teasing is purely intellectual. This renders Edward’s gaze upon Bella voyeuristic as he watches her satiate her desires without his involvement. Indeed, Meyer draws direct attention to the connection between the eyes and ‘appetite’ in both the physical and sexual sense when Bella says ‘He opened his eyes, and they were hungry. Not in a way to make me fear, but rather to tighten the muscles in the pit of my stomach and send my pulse hammering through my veins’ (T, p. 243). Bella, then, is not only an object in Edward’s gaze, as Wilson (2011, n.p.) suggests. Her eating (and eating consistently and regularly) demonstrates a sexual desire which cannot be satisfied as merely the subject of Edward’s watchful but non-physical presence.

Likewise, the act of gazing upon consuming as a pseudo-sexual act is not reciprocal. Bella displays a notable curiosity about his eating habits, trying to envision the scene (T, p.189). As she does so, Edward describes her eyes as being ‘dark’, ‘wide’, and ‘deep’ (M.S., p. 279), which, we might note, closely mirrors Edward’s own eyes which, when he is hungry, are black (T, pp.164). Bella’s eyes at the moment she tries to imagine him eating resemble a vampiric thirst - a thirst only satisfied by the penetration and subsequent consumption of a living body. However, it is also of note that, though she tries to imagine (or perhaps the better word is ‘fantasise’) about Edward eating, she struggles to fully render the image in her mind. ‘My mind was filled with opposing images that I couldn't merge together’, she states (T, p.189), highlighting Edward’s nature as one who is physically desirable, but sexually unavailable. Bella is so curious to see Edward eat that she asks if she may be allowed to see him hunt. He responds aggressively - ‘Absolutely not!’ - physically withdraws from her by moving away and ‘folding his arms across his chest’. His physical withdrawal mimics the sexual rejection of Bella’s fantasies. Though he offers her no explanation of his ‘furious’ rejection of the idea, in his own account (M.S., p. 279) he (indirectly) suggests that he will not be able to control himself around her in the frenzy of the hunt as he describes an imagined vision of ‘Bella’s crumpled, bloodless body in [his] arms’ which he feels would be that ‘clear’ and ‘obvious conclusion’. Where some might read this as an extension of the obvious power imbalance between them (physical and emotional) which, here, could be seen to render Edward as a sexual threat to Bella (Wilson 2011, p. 903), we infer from Edward’s testimony that he fears his vampiric nature considerably more than Bella. We might note that Bella’s body, in this imagined vision, resembles the qualities of a flaccid phallus, lacking blood and hanging limp in Edward’s grasp. If Edward’s fear in this moment is that Bella should bear witness to his vampirism - which he sees as both a moral failing, and a physical deficiency - then, this image is particularly poignant as it suggests betrays Edward, not as a threat, but as being potentially unsatisfactory.