Chastity is hot. At least it is for many of the millions of Twilight fans, eagerly devouring the saga in book form and onscreen. The newest cinematic installment, based on the second book New Moon, opened just before Thanksgiving and is raking in millions.
In the capable hands of author, mother, and BYU alum Stephenie Meyer, chastity is charged with sexual excitement. In the first book the two main characters, Bella (the human) and Edward (the vampire), lurch back forth on her bed, in the forest, at school; they stare into each other’s pining eyes, wanting nothing more than to embrace one another in their eternal teen crush. And the temptations persist.
But herein lies the problem.
As a vampire, Edward’s desire to consume his human love verges on the literal: a brush too close or a kiss that lingers too long could override his better judgment and trigger his animal thirst for sex/blood! Bella, meanwhile, waffles between self-assured maturity and complete helplessness at the hands of one of most sentimental boy crushes of recent literature. Yet the stakes for her are much higher. As critics have pointed out, sex would mean death for the suffering heroine, but not for the stunning male lead, already locked into immortality. Even without the vampires, it’s surely enough to strike terror into the hearts of parents, teachers, guidance counselors, and feminists everywhere.
It has become commonplace to underscore Meyer’s Mormon background and thus, naturally, her promotion of chastity in Twilight—in The Atlantic, for example, Caitlin Flanagan tied Meyer’s Mormon faith to the “erotics of abstinence” portrayed in the novels. But is this new, sexy approach to chastity and moral purity the only Mormon manifestation to be found here?
There is definitely something Mormon about Twilight, but it’s not the focus on chaste teen love alone. More than the superhuman desire to control the teenage sexual libido, Meyer’s chronicle also draws upon much older, if somewhat less sexy, Mormon themes of eternal marriage and family life.
Of Meyer, Mormons, and the Eternal Family
Shades of Mormon theology arise quite clearly in Bella’s fixation on the vampire Edward’s “eternal family.” According to Mormon theology and practice, when a couple marries in a Temple wedding, they are bound together for all eternity, a ceremony that takes place in what is called a “sealing room.”
Sealing rooms usually have mirrors on two facing walls, so that as the couple kneels together, they can see themselves and the members of their family reflected back and forth upon each other over and over, a visual metaphor indicating that they are joined for all eternity. Any children born of a marriage sealed in a Temple are sealed to the parents for all time. Should a couple have children before they are sealed (perhaps because the children were born before joining the LDS church), the entire family can still become sealed, by all entering the sealing chamber together.
Sealing is extremely potent theological stuff. While a seal can be dissolved in the case of divorce, it is not an automatic byproduct of civil divorce. Additionally, it is one of the few places in contemporary Mormonism where one can still see the imprint of polygamy: while a woman can only be sealed to one man, men can be sealed to multiple women. A divorced or widowed woman cannot then be resealed, unless she has her initial seal dissolved in the case of divorce. A man, however, can be sealed multiple times, the ceremony remaining available to him despite divorce or the death of his wife.
Bella and Edward’s Eternal En-sealment
The Twilight saga reproduces elements of this theology through the language of eternity that echoes through Edward and Bella’s relationship. Early on in the third volume, Eclipse, for instance, Bella muses over how to describe Edward:
“The word boyfriend had me chewing on the inside of my cheek with a familiar tension,” she worried. “It wasn’t the right word at all, not at all,” she searched: “I needed something more expressive of eternal commitment.”
Underpinning Edward and Bella’s relationship is their eventual, if begrudging, agreement that if she marries him he will turn her into a vampire, thus allowing them to live together for eternity. This language of eternal marriage repeats as the dominant descriptor of their relationship, closing out each of the books. Twilight ends, finally, when Bella tells Edward:
“I love you more than everything else in the world combined. Isn’t that enough?” To which Edward responds, “Yes, it is enough… Enough for forever.”
In New Moon, the narrative ends with the observation that Edward is Bella’s destiny, walking alongside her. And in Eclipse the last line from Bella’s perspective records the moment of engagement: “He once again slid my ring into place on the third finger of my left hand. Where it would stay—conceivably for the rest of eternity.” The entire series ends with the observation that they can practice their mental intimacy “forever and forever and forever” before they move on to the physical intimacy that Bella describes in the last sense of the book as a “small but perfect piece of our forever.”
Tags: eternal family, film, mormon, mormonism, movie, new moon, twilight
I like your article -- you're correct that you see Stephenie's belief system in her work -- as you do with every author. There are plenty of other themes one could see -- integrity, commitment, self-sacrifice, joy, suppression of the "natural" to achieve the "divine", loyalty, choice/accountability. So if anyone's interested (if you find yourself wondering why you keep reading these books over and over again), see discussion of these themes at www.mormon.org.
I appreciate this article highlighting some of the Mormon themes in the Twilight series. However, one thing that is not Mormon is the encouragement to engage in this kind of intense emotional relationship as teenagers. Mormon teens are actively discouraged from dating until they are 16 and then they are warned not to date any one person, or become emotionally intimate, until they are ready and mature enough for the committment of marriage. Gordon B. Hinckley, a past president of the LDS Church, taught: “When you are young, do not get involved in steady dating. When you reach an age where you think of marriage, then is the time to become so involved. But you boys who are in high school don’t need this, and neither do the girls.” Studies show that teens who are scarred by break ups have more difficulty with intimacy and trust as adults.
What age does Gordon Hinckley think a child should be before he or she starts making decisions about whether or not to be a mormon?
I'm sure you already know this - you merely bring it up to make a point. It's a good point, however. Mormons commit to the religion via baptism at age 8. Supposedly, they are mature enough to make a decisions about religion, but not about their own relationships.
What percent of 8 year olds opt for baptism, and what percent decide to opt out of mormonism?
"While a woman can only be sealed to one man, men can be sealed to multiple women."
Acually, a desceased woman can be sealed vicariously to multiple men. Additionally, a man cannot be sealed to multiple living women. You need to keep in mind that a sealing is not the same thing as a marriage, though the two are often compared. Parents can be sealed to their children, something that obviously does not occur in the context of a marriage. Though many may claim otherwise, it's quite different than polygamy, where a man is allowed to simultaneous marry multiple women.
"Additionally, a man cannot be sealed to multiple living women."
Not true. If a couple are sealed, and later divorced, the man may remarry and be sealed to his new wife. The woman may remarry civilly, but not be sealed to her new husband unless the previous sealing is annulled.
After reading this comment and having previously read the books, I wonder if this idea of "sealing" is similar to the werewolves "imprinting"... In the books they "imprint" on small children or the lovers of family. The "imprinting" isn't necessarily romantic, but a strong force similar to, or stronger than, love.
I think that imprinting relates to Mormon's views about choosing your loved ones in the pre-existence.
It's the idea that your soul was connected to those you love before it attained a human body. Then, once a person is on earth, they can fall in love with someone but it will supposedly never be as strong as it is with the person they chose in the pre-existence.
An example of this is demonstrated in the Mormon musical Saturday's Warrior where Julie chose Todd in the pre-existence and when she gets to earth she falls in love a few times and agrees to marry two different men named Wally and Peter. Then, when Peter brings Todd home and she sees him she knows that he's the one she chose in the pre-existence (don't ask me how since I don't really get it).
That is how I perceive Meyer's definition of imprinting. It parallels the Mormon's ideology of pre-existent love between two souls that haven't yet been put through the 'test' of life on earth.
Much ado has been made about the theme of chastity in the Twilight series (currently drawing hordes into movie theaters for its second installment), but few have noticed the other, less commonly understood, Mormon theological themes that course through the series’ fevered plotline.
Hmm. The many Mormon themes running throughout Stephanie Meyer's writings have actually be discussed at length at conferences, on blogs, and in print. In fact, I'm not entirely sure what new the authors of this article have added to that conversation.
Eternity and the male-female dynamic is a perpetual vampire concept, and to attach eternal “love” to a “couple” in a vampire plot is cliché writing at its most obvious. For this author, “eternal marriage” was tangential…a natural off-shoot of her Mormon background but just a different shade of cliché. While the content of Twilight is far from being intellectually or spiritually provocative, the public’s youthful fascination with the vampire genre is another matter and begs for a deeper look. The cult of vampire popularity reveals society’s alienation from love along with the deep interior illness within our souls, which religion has professed to heal.
It is paradoxical that a religious devotee incorporates what is to them a sacred religious ritual into a shadowy literary subject as an attempt to elevate and romanticize something which is dark and despairing at its core. Adding “chastity” is creative license, a method to heighten sexual tension, engage romantic adolescent fantasies and assure profits.
Romance, as a representation of male/female love, is an immature myth. As perpetuated in vampire literature, it is a recipe of sex, conquest, and violence, associated with blood, darkness, and death that appeals to the egotistical, shadow side of human “love.”
The dark and tormented aspect of the human psyche insists that to love, is to possess, to conquer, to have absolute power over the object of one’s desire. The unconscious desire to possess another is a root of suffering in the male/female dynamic that leads to obsessive and damaging behaviors.
Vampire literature is an outlet for the repressions of sexual arousal that occurs in conjunction with a lust for power, a closeted impulse frequently indulged within the halls of religious or political influence, but which the average individual can only experience vicariously through entertainment.
Sex is a biological function and love is a spiritual emanation. Religion has set itself as the dictator of sexual expression, but in so doing it attempts to moderate the force of life itself. Interestingly, the sexual undertones of the vampire genre hail to the most ancient religious mythos, wherein the mortal and immortal join in an eternal union. In this regard, the classic vampire who lives forever is a god-like figure, trapped by darkness, seeking love the only way he knows how, longing for his victim to be willing to love him in return, standing beside him forever and thereby making his enslavement to his isolation and darkness more bearable.
To understand the human condition as a separation from divine presence, a story so ancient and cross-cultural that it that precedes the Judeo-Christian Garden of Eden mythos, is to recognize the primordial human longing to attain reunion with God and to return to immortality. The archetypal theme of humans mating with gods, thereby elevating themselves to a higher order of being with super-human power and luminescence, precedes monotheism. The Mormon cosmology of a Heavenly Father with an exalted body of flesh, mating with a mortal woman to conceive a divine/human son is a throwback to polytheist doctrines,even tribal traditions wherein the shamans were blessed with spiritual wives.
Perhaps we can gain wisdom from vampire lore through an understanding of the symbolism of the word “twilight,” that surreal period of time between day and night, light and darkness. As humans who struggle for luminescent connection and transcendence, we hang in the dangle of twilight, longing for dawn and loathing the dark. When we come to understand that dawn and darkness are wedded together as a natural and beautiful cycle of life, and we are a part of that divine experience and not separate from it, can we release ourselves to the true meaning of love and shine our inner light deep into the shadows of the human experience.
Thank you, Naomi, for this excellent, thought-provoking response.
Outstanding. Thank you, Naomi.
I thought that was odd, that part in New Moon when Edward said he had some golden tablets when wanted Bella to take dictation for...
Your comment made me belly laugh. Very funny.
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