OK, well, I probably won’t do a thing. But I’m tired of reading about how Bella is weak compared to Hermione, who keeps going even when Ron has abandoned her, and compared to Katniss, who wields a bow and must fight to the death to keep her little sister in food.

Since when does Bella have to be like someone else? I suppose what I really mean is since when must all protagonists embody the same level of will and strength? I allude to three widely loved stories above—stories that share some of the same fans. Yet, except for the Young Adult classification, I doubt most people would claim these stories are similar. Besides differing in plot and theme, they differ in scope. They serve different purposes for their readers.

And the Twilight series is at its heart a romance. For a successful romance, at the base level, all you need is for the heroine or hero to fall madly in love with a desirable other (I think the madly is as important as the desirable) and to be thwarted in pursuing that love by some internal or external force—either permanently or temporarily, depending on whether the story is a tragedy or a comedy. Twilight hits “romance” on the nose for a lot of readers. And despite being desperate and somewhat annoying as she moons for Edward, Bella is believable as a teenage, lovesick romantic heroine. This is not to say that all teenagers are prone to desperate lovesickness, but some of them are, and Twilight happens to be about one such teenager.

You might point out that the Twilight story involves more than just romantic love and complain that Bella is often a bystander in the events that shape her own life. (I’ve heard this complaint before, although I’d have to give it more thought before I could say whether I agree or disagree with it.) Well doesn’t the crux of the whole series, in that regard, rely on the fact that, in the end, Bella is stronger than she believes herself to be throughout much of the story? That she is, in fact, a very useful person, even though she’s always thought herself a nobody?  Whether or not you like how she becomes strong in the end (and personally, I was rooting for it to happen a different way), the climax of the story would be much less dramatic if she were to appear on page one with a perfect sense of her own strength and purpose.

I’ll admit that I found Bella’s self-loathing and extreme heartsickness, well, sickening much of the time, but I think that’s OK. Yes, it’s OK if I want to shake some sense into a character. Sometimes, people need a good, hard shakin’. Sometimes I do. I probably wouldn’t rank high on the badass scale compared to Hermione or Katniss, but I’m still a character. And there is room in the world of books for all sorts of characters, whether or not they measure up to Hermione and Katniss in some assembly line of capable heroines. Whether or not they make role models. Lord, if fiction were populated entirely by stamp-approved, strong role models… well, I think it’d get repetitive and start repeating itself over and over.

I know, I know. I have a daughter. Don’t I see what books like Twilight do? Don’t I want her to grow up knowing that infatuated, romantic love shouldn’t be the culmination of her wildest dreams? Yes, I do. But I know there’s more to life than achingly, unbearable romantic heartache, and I went through some boy-crazy days in my youth—days when I thought of little else but some guy and how he might love me one day next week if I could figure out how to speak in his presence or simply bend him to my will with my drab and baggy grunge-era clothing.

The truth is, I want my daughter to read and think about many things, but if she turns out to be a girl who dwells heavily in dreams of la-la-love during her teenage years, I doubt there’s much I can do about it. Her disposition and interests are her own. (And on an aside, I’m not sure the opposite side of the coin is much better—that going through one’s teenage years with a disdain and distrust of romantic feeling is desirable either.) But I can encourage her to seek out as many types of stories as she can and trust that, being my daughter, she’s the kind of girl who will want to anyway. I believe seeking out story after story is important. In addition to entertaining us, stories reflect and express the wide array of human experience for those of us who can’t experience it all ourselves. And that’s everybody, right?

Anyway, I’m well aware that many people hate Twilight, and I don’t presume to ask them not to hate it. (Aaaagh! Meyer morphed the vampire archetype into a fraking emo sparkler!) Personally, I enjoyed it. It isn’t the best thing I’ve read, and I have qualms with the way the story resolves, but it kept me turning pages at a faster pace than I usually do. It stirred up memories of my own girlhood crushings in a more visceral way than other stories have, and I’m not even sure why, since as far as I know, I never crushed on a brooding, sparkly vampire. In short, reading Twilight was a fun and intense experience.

As far as the other two stories go—The Harry Potter series is set like a jewel in my reading heart, and The Hunger Games is one of the most freshly toned and compelling novels I’ve encountered. It felt like clean air to me while I read it. My wish is not to compare these two to the Twilight series. My wish is to point out that there’s room for all.

(And one last point. Would you really want page-one-Bella to wield a bow and arrow?)

Writing about role models has made me wonder if nowadays some readers get up in arms wanting their protagonists to serve as role models only when those protagonists are girls or women. Do we accept more widely male protagonists who are self-deprecating fools or scaredy-cats? This article discusses this issue, although I’m not sure its author uses the term “role model.” I found it via this post by one of my favorite writer/podcasters, Mur Lafferty, which also addresses “strong female characters.”

The Children of Men

My wonderfully anti-romantic friend, Erin, picked Children of Men by P.D. James for our last book club read. I was expecting to love it, because I remember adoring the movie. Turns out I didn’t love it, but I didn’t hate it either. It’s a book I’m glad to have read because it spurred a great discussion, because P.D. James knows how to write creepy really creepy, and because sometimes it’s good to read a book that doesn’t sit well with you just to learn from it, as a writer, anyway.

The book is set in a near-future, rigidly governed England, a few decades after the human race learns that it can no longer reproduce. The protagonist is a divorced Oxford professor, who is reluctantly drawn into a group of anti-government dissidents. Most of the ladies in my book club love the book, but it misses me by a hair. I like the premise. I don’t like the main character or most of the other characters for that matter. That’s OK. I don’t have to like a character, but at the very least, I prefer to care about and believe what happens to him. The whole first half of this novel serves to convince me that the protagonist is completely detached from life and has never done more than just go through the motions, even before this humanity-ending, disastrous circumstance took hold of the world. So, I find it hard to buy into him when he begins to attach to people and act boldly in the second half of the book. I’m not convinced he would suddenly care enough do what he does. He feels more like words on a page at this point in the story than an actual person to me.

I do, however, believe in the villain of the story, and I am amazed by the ending. Wow! I never saw it coming even to the last page, the last paragraph. The ending strikes sharp, both physically and emotionally. I was stunned. So, in short, even though I didn’t love the book, I take a lot from it—images and emotional nuances I will carry in my mind. And man, can P. D. James write creepy, well, creepy. Doll babies, kittens, hymns–nothing is safe in her hands.