‘The urge towards love is an urge towards (un)death’: Romance, masochistic desire and postfeminism in the Twilight novels

Publication year
2012
Journal
International Journal of Cultural Studies
Volume
15.1
Pages
31-46
Comment

From the abstract:

this article analyses the way the four narratives figure adolescent feminine desire as well as how they link eroticism and death. It also positions the series within broader feminist debates about postfeminism within popular culture, and explores how (and, with more difficulty, why) a masochistic relationship and an undead subjectivity for a teenage girl are seen as utopic sites of possibility in these narratives. If, as Nina Auerbach argues, each age produces the vampire it requires, then might Edward Cullen and his teen vampire bride suggest about the current, purportedly ‘postfeminist’, context and young women in particular?