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Beyond Twilight: Identity, Anxiety and Agency in YA Vampire Novels

By

Charity Fowler

“Every age embraces the vampire it needs” – Nina Auerbach

Introduction

A cruise down the Young Adult fiction aisle at Barnes and Noble quickly demonstrates

the resurgent popularity of fiction featuring supernatural creatures in young adult literature.

Among fairies and witches, werewolves and trolls, the figure of the vampire stands out on its

own, part of the pack, but not, much as the vampire has always stood slightly apart from other

traditional monsters. Though most supernatural creatures in young adult fiction these days are at

least humanoid in appearance, the vampire remains the one monster most identified and

inextricably linked to humanity. Even the werewolf, with his bestial nature, cannot claim to be as

close a kin. The vampire comes as close as we can imagine to a shadow self with whom we

inhabit the world, us at our worst and, in recent trends, perhaps us striving for our best as we

handle the challenges presented by a rapidly changing world (Nelson 1).

The vampire novel is nothing new in Western society, just as the myth is nothing new in

the world. Bram Stoker froze and popularized a certain version of the vampire in his Dracula

and it is his conception, in some form or another, which has endured. Traces of the Count—

aristocratic, elegant, sensual, lonely—can be seen through the history of the vampire in fiction.

This fiction is divided, however, along two tracks identifiable as horror and speculative fiction

(to include paranormal romance). The vampires of horror novels are generally written by men,

are unrepentantly predatory and generally a representation of elemental evil. In speculative

fiction, however, vampires are portrayed far more sympathetically—either by being given

complex emotional lives from which we can understand the “evil” they do, or by finding

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themselves in the realm of the “ethical” vampire. Notably, these vampires are far more often

written by female authors (Gordon 230-31). More and more, lately, it is the sympathetic, ethical

vampire who is being portrayed in fiction, and this is most certainly true of young adult vampire

novels. The massive commercial success of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight has brought these

sympathetic vampires out into the metaphorical sunlight, and now it seems that young adults

(and many adults) cannot get enough of them.

The craving for the vampire novel, for these alternate realities which construct worlds in

which a reader can explore a wide variety of positions and concepts, has fed into another

standard in young adult literature: the series. There is a comfort in the familiar for most people,

and a reluctance to let things go that seems to manifest itself in young adults. While series are

hardly confined to young adult literature, it is far easier to come up with a popular, enduring

adult novel that stands alone than it seems to be with young adult novels. This is nothing new,

and certainly not at all confined to fantasy novels or vampire novels. Early fiction aimed at

young people often situated itself in series: L. Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz series, C. S. Lewis’s

Chronicles of Narnia, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House, L. M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green

Gables, Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, Trixie Belden, The Bobbsey Twins, Pippi Longstocking,

Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. Even after the formation of young adult literature as a genre,

series still dominated: Nancy Drew was modernized and new series formed, Sweet Valley High,

Harry Potter, Hunger Games, His Dark Materials.

Some of this fascination with novels in a series may well be influenced even farther now

by a being well within a third generation raised on television. We expect to be able to tune in to

fictional character’s lives. We are reluctant to let them end. We want to know what happens next,

when one obstacle has been overcome. Vampire fiction is no different. While there are stand-

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alone vampire novels within young adult fiction, the most popular and the most enduring have

been those located within a series—a continuing world where either an overarching plot binds

the series together or a single character comes back for multiple adventures.

This paper examines the particulars of vampire fiction written specifically for young

adults, focusing even more narrowly at times at the subgenre of vampire romance (though for at

least two series, romance is actually secondary to the larger plot, which sets those two apart a bit

more). I begin by defining the genre briefly and situating it within the larger field of young adult

literature. I briefly consider the critical treatment of the genre—which has been lamentably

narrow in its focus on Twilight to the exclusion of its predecessors, genre defining works and the

variances which came later. Next, I identify the themes which permeate the genre, the questions

raised, and the tropes which are seen repeatedly in novels in the genre. Finally, using the critical

framework developed, I examine the first novels in five vampire series, four of which are highly

popular, one of which I had never heard, but stumbled upon by accident and found myself

enchanted, intrigued and wanting more.

These are the five novels I will be examining more closely (in order of publication):

1. The Vampire Diaries: Awakening (1991) by L.J. Smith

2. Twilight (2005) by Stephenie Meyer

3. Boys that Bite [The Blood Coven series] (2006) by Mari Mancusi

4. Marked [House of Night series] (2007) by P.C. and Kristin Cast

5. Vampire Academy [Vampire Academy series] (2007) by Richelle Mead

My initial discussion will focus on The Vampire Diaries: The Awakening and Twilight, given the

two series are often accused of ripping off one another and their similarities and differences can

be cast in sharp contrast. Because The Vampire Diaries was the first young adult vampire series

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to be published, it set a great many of the themes and tropes in place, most of which are present

in Twilight, as well. The three later novels, then, all appear to make a conscious effort to

differentiate themselves from the previous two series, handling the issues and tropes in slightly

different ways, but always coming back to many of the same questions. Therefore, I will

examine the three later novels in relation to their resistance to the generic narrative formed in

The Vampire Diaries and reiterated in Twilight, as well as consider their unique deviations and

their similarities to one other.

Each of these five novels (and by extension their series) contains a majority of the critical

elements of the genre, situating them firmly both within the classic definition of the young adult

novel, and within the traditional scope of the young adult vampire novel. Most of them address

very similar questions of identity and agency, family and friendship, belonging, changing, love

and sexuality, though some of the later novels are more tongue-in-cheek or playfully aware of

their own situation on the spectrum, which makes for an interesting read for those fluent in or

jaded by the genre.

Defining a Genre

Vampire novels written for young adults can span genres from urban fantasy to magical

realism to horror to romance—more often than not combining elements from more than one

genre. While it is difficult to define a prototypical vampire novel these days as authors attempt to

write a story that has not yet been told a thousand times, some common characteristics find their

way into most stories in this genre. Like most young adult novels, early YA vampire novels were

fairly short, well under 300 pages. Characters were limited in number, and often only the main

protagonists were developed beyond two dimensions. Nearly all of them, even now, still take

place in a restricted setting—a small town or an isolated boarding school are common settings.

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Most novels take place within, at most, a school year, but generally far less time than that.

Beyond these very broad definitional characteristics they share with young adult fiction

in general, vampire novels also usually contain at least a couple of “hot topic” items of potential

concern for adults evaluating them which are common in most young adult literature. Parents are

often absent, or disengaged. Other adult authority figures are quite often ineffectual or outright

villainous. They most certainly cannot be relied upon to be of assistance in a crisis. Issues of sex

and drugs are latent within the vampire motif anyway—when combined with teenage hormones,

these can often lead to controversial readings of sexuality and addiction within the vampire

relationship. Vampire novels also often raise issues of self-harm, suicide and body image for

critical readers, though these often are not addressed in those terms and teens often do not see the

presence of these themes, or interpret them the way a concerned adult reader might.

Issues of race relations underlie almost every vampire/human story, though these are

rarely recognized either by the characters or critics. But the vampire is essentially, automatically,

Other, even if capable of passing for human. Issues of race are often overlooked, because the

vampire in the story is often male, and, in young adult vampire fiction, at least, white. Ergo, he

carries with him the privilege of a human white male, coupled with wealth and sophistication

accrued over centuries of life. With these points in his “favor,” the issue of “race” can seem

trivial, but actually a great deal of critical work has been done examining the vampire as a feared

racial Other simply by nature of his existence, and while it is not an element on which I spend

much time in this analysis, it is worth mentioning (Brox; Winnubst).

The subgenre of vampire romance is generally defined by some sort of transition or

question of transition. Most of the time, one of the lovers is a vampire, one is human, though this

can be subverted within narratives where the vampire’s world makes up the world of the story

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instead of the intrusion of the vampire world into the human one. Where this defining

characteristic is challenged, inevitably there is some other sort of transformation which separates

the lovers, offering not just the upheaval of new romance in an adolescent world, but an extra

layer of some sort of physical transformation or challenge to overcome in order for the romance

to succeed. Still, even where the conventional narrative is disrupted, many traditional notions

remain: the vampire lover is handsome, wealthy and sophisticated. The male partner is almost

always older than the female—sometimes by decades or centuries, but always by at least a few

years. Even where the girls are strong and self-reliant, the male partner is nearly always cast into

a protective role, at some point—generally due to greater strength, speed or stamina, or, where

the two are equal in those arenas, by dint of greater experience (Mukherjea 12). In general, these

are not worlds of poverty, struggle and starvation. However, for all their potential luxury, in

almost all of these novels, there is some menacing force, an element of danger, and a sense of

isolation for at least one, if not both, protagonists. Given how menacing adolescence can seem

sometimes, and how very isolating, these themes tie not just into genre expectation, but also to

the adolescent experience.

Notable Works That Define the Genre

A disappointing result of the mega-success of Twilight is the lack of critical attention

which has been paid to previous and subsequent works within the arena of young adult vampire

fiction. In fact, reading some critics, it would be easy to get the impression that no other vampire

novels had ever been written for young adults before Twilight. The majority of critical study of

vampire literature in the past decade has focused on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Twilight.

Critical work before that focused mostly on Interview with a Vampire and Dracula with the

occasional inquiry into Polidori’s and Poe’s vampires. While the random article can be found

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which addresses other narratives (True Blood is popular in media studies articles, though little

attention has been paid to the novel series behind it), nearly none of it is targeted at a discussion

of young adult vampire narratives which are not Twilight. When such discussion can be found,

issues of quality are rarely, if ever, discussed. Ananya Mukherjea in her article, “My Vampire

Boyfriend: Postfeminism, ‘Perfect’ Masculinity, and the Contemporary Appeal of Paranormal

Romance,” does acknowledge The Vampire Diaries and The Silver Kiss as “examples of

excellent genre stories that precede Buffy,” she says little else about them (4). A mention is made

of the first book in L.J. Smith’s other vampire series, Secret Vampire (book one of the Night

World series), but again, no more than a sentence (Mukherjea 11). Instead, Mukherjea focuses on

the Byronic qualities of the Vampire Boyfriend, the equation of biting with sexual penetration

and worldly experience, all of which are far more descriptive of the vampires in The Vampire

Diaries than they are of the virginal Edward Cullen.

This lack of attention to other series and novels within the genre is regrettable and

frustrating. For one, many of the issues discussed as if Meyer first deployed them are present in

previous works (most notably, The Vampire Diaries, but also The Silver Kiss). For another, when

an entire genre is defined by a work which has received popular acclaim, but mostly negative

criticism, work of higher quality often gets tarred by the same brush. Finally, such a narrow

focus on one franchise denies a deeper inquiry into commonality and difference across a genre.

This critical lack is something which this essay begins to address.

Some of the major criticisms leveled at Twilight, and seemingly by extension the young

adult vampire genre, concern Bella’s agency or lack thereof, the novel’s reinforcement of

traditional gender roles, concerns of abuse and issues of self-harm and Bella’s arguable death

wish, the message being sent when Bella gives up college and a life in order to freeze herself in

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perpetual adolescence while taking on the duties of wife and mother, the heavily anti-abortion

message in the fourth book and the seeming idealized reinforcement of the values that underlie

the True Love Waits movement. While it is true that some of these issues are present in other

novels in the genre, which I will discuss in comparing them, it is also true that there are a great

many of them which contain exactly the opposite messages and scenarios, even while playing

within the same tropes and themes. Failure to mention these deviations within the genre and

attempts to categorize a genre by the potential failings of one example—however popular—of it

strikes me as irresponsible scholarship.

Themes, Tropes and Questions Raised by the Vampire Romance

What themes, tropes, questions and concerns are raised in young adult vampire novels—

specifically those with an element of romance? How do they play against each other across the

genre? How do they relate to adolescent concerns and lives? In the next section, I will apply

several of these themes, tropes, issues and concerns to five specific novels, but because they are

so ubiquitous within the genre, I wish to briefly define and touch on the themes themselves

before examining them in practical application. Any one of these themes, issues, or tropes could

be the subject of an entire essay on its own, and a close reading comparison of The Vampire

Diaries and Twilight could easily encompass a dissertation, so I regret that a thorough

investigation of each element is not possible within the scope of this essay. Some of them are

more vital to the genre and the five books analyzed for illustrative purposes, though, and so those

will receive the majority of my analytical attention.

Beyond the parameters for the teen vampire novel set out above, several recurring themes

and issues are explored in most novels in the genre. As I mentioned earlier, even when a novel is

not explicitly a romance, most YA vampire novels contain at least a romantic subplot. In the

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context of a more traditional YA vampire romance (such as The Vampire Diaries, Twilight, and

Boys that Bite), a human/vampire romance raises the big issues for both the vampire and human

of immortality versus death, life versus unlife, choice and agency for both characters but most

often the human, gender stereotypes and roles and sexuality. Inevitably, issues relating to

feminism often coincide with these other issues, especially when the vampire character is

significantly older than the human—how active can a teenage girl be in a relationship with a

vampire decades or centuries older than her?

Often in vampire romances, as in any other romance, the love triangle becomes a plot

device. Love triangles are ubiquitous plot devices in Western fiction, as it is, insisting on the

necessity of choice—often between not just two different lovers, but two different lives. This is

one of the central conflicts in two of the series discussed later, and is at least toyed with in two of

the other three. The issue of vampiric ethics (the morality of how and on what to feed) plays a

large part in teen vampire novels, and in modern vampire novels in general (Gordon 232;

Gomez-Galisteo 2; Nelson 3). This also can feed into (no pun intended) the romantic tension and

issues of choice—should the heroine decide to be a vampire, what sort of vampire will she be? Is

love worth becoming a vampire? Are human/vampire relationships naturally doomed without

transformation? Can a teenage girl really be asked, or legitimately decide, to change into another

species, to consign herself to living forever, based on a first love and after a short time? Almost

every vampire novel which presents “good” vampires also counters them with others in their

society who are “bad” and further Othered than even our sympathetic hero or heroine (Nayar 68-

69). Beyond her own character, if she chooses to be a vampire and still has a love choice to

make…who will the heroine choose—the ethical “good” vampire, or the roguish gothic anti-hero

who needs her love to save and reform him? (Bailie 143)

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Vampire novels also have recurrent themes of isolation and identity formation.

Inevitably, at least one, if not both, of the main protagonists are somehow isolated from the rest

of society or their peer group. For the vampire boyfriend, this feeds into prevalent Gothic

stereotypes of the brooding loner who is cut off from his own kind for various reasons (Bailie

143). For the female character, isolation can feed into the general isolation adolescents feel—the

sense of being alone in a crowd, that no one understands them—though in the fictionalized

world, there is generally some sort of reason beyond “everyone feels this way” to heighten the

heroine’s isolation (Gomez-Galisteo 3). Within isolation, pulled out of it by peers or love, how

do the protagonists reconstitute their identity? How do they transform from loner to hero? These

are common questions addressed in these narratives. In contrast to their isolation, most vampire

narratives weave within them the idea of family – either reconciliation with family by blood or

the creation of family by choice. The protagonists may be loners in some ways at the start, but

they will always be formed into some sort of family unit by the end of the novel or series (Nayar

66).

The final issue addressed in nearly every teen vampire novel—whether or not it can be

constructed as a romance—is the issue of sexuality. In more recent novels, this exploration is

nearly always blatant and sometimes graphic. In older ones, it was shrouded in sensuality, but

still addressed. The vampire as a sexual figure dates back to Dracula, though it was almost

always a transgressive sexuality. Now, it still raises issues (often around the issues of age,

consent, potential violence), but the vampire as a sexually desirable figure has become a literary

trope in and of itself. The manner in which these novels handle sexuality and the messages

embedded in the narratives about it are vastly different and defy categorization in any

standardized way. The one constant that can be applied to the genre is the notion of

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overwhelming temptation, tapping in to raging adolescent hormones and the potentially

unrestrained, predatory monster the vampire has always represented within our subconscious.

Analysis, Comparison and Contrast – Five Enduring Narratives

Published in 1991, L.J. Smith’s series The Vampire Diaries is the first series of vampire

novels written specifically for teens that I have been able to find. In many ways it set the stage

for everything that has come after—including Twilight, which shares several notable similarities

with it. While it might be the first YA vampire novel, its vampire hero, Stefan Salvatore, owes a

literary debt to Anne Rice’s Louis, while his brother, Damon, could arguably be a less careless

Lestat. Before the 1980s, sympathetic vampires—those from whose vantage point we see the

world and who kills either discreetly or not at all while capable of examining the morality of his

behavior—were rare (Gordon 231). Rice’s Louis made his appearance in Interview with the

Vampire in 1976, but the series did not gain a great deal of recognition until after the publication

of The Vampire Lestat in 1985, when the sympathetic vampire trend had begun to gain steam

(Gordon 227). While Lestat is not nearly as ethical as vampires have developed to be in recent

literature (Nelson defines the ethical vampire as a vampire who wishes to peacefully coexist with

humans), he is, nonetheless, a figure of sympathy and a protagonist with whom many readers

became enchanted (Nelson 4; Gordon 227).

While Smith did not invent the trope of the repentant, or ethical, vampire, but by writing

Stefan Salvatore in that light, she brought the now-familiar character of the sympathetic vampire

from out of adult speculative fiction and into young adult. While there have been unrepentantly

evil vampires in young adult fiction since, it is this sympathetic vampire who has become the

signature character of the genre. Disgusted by what he sees as the evil of his nature, Stefan has

not taken a human life—and possibly has never even fed from a human—since the night he was

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turned in the 15th century. Subsisting solely on animal blood, Stefan is weaker than others of his

kind, who gain their power from human blood and killing, but this sets him up to be the vampire

hero—isolated and outcast from his own kind because of his refusal to treat humans as they do

(Bailie 143). Stefan has lived in shadows for five hundred years, but decides to come forward, to

attempt to live among humans and walk in the light.

Of course, when he does enroll in a small town high school in Virginia, he immediately

meets seventeen year old Elena Gilbert, who looks just like his first love, Katherine—the

vampire who turned him. Elena is the queen bee of the school, but she feels as isolated as Stefan

does. Her parents were recently killed, and nothing has felt real to her since. Fascinated by the

new boy in town, Elena tries to meet him, but Stefan avoids her. Because the point of view

switches between Elena and Stefan through the novel, we are privy to his reasoning and his

secrets long before she is—he is afraid of hurting her and the way she reminds him of Katherine

hurts (see Appendix I-A).

When Stefan rebuffs her first attempts to get to know him, Elena becomes determined to

win him over, going to great lengths to get his attention. When she is attacked and nearly raped

by the school bully, it is Stefan who is there to save her, because he has been watching her. He

takes her back to his home to let her get straightened up before taking her home, and Elena

confronts him about his avoidance of her, wanting to know why he hates her. Stefan finally

explains, at least partly, and assures her that he does not hate her (see Appendix I-B).

It is no wonder that accusations of story theft have been rampant among Vampire Diaries

and Twilight fans, though interestingly Twilight fans rarely seem to realize that The Vampire

Diaries was published 14 years before Twilight, and thus Smith could not have stolen anything

from Meyer. But the similarities of the two series cannot be overlooked. Edward Cullen, like

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Stefan Salvatore, is an ethical vampire. He hates what he is and believes he is damned. He and

his family call themselves “vegetarians” and feed only on animals, not people, which makes

them outcasts among the greater vampire population for their strange ways. When Edward first

meets Bella, he is cold to her, almost cruel, flinching away from her and avoiding being too close

to her. Only when he saves her first from an out of control truck and then from men intent on

raping her, do they finally begin to truly talk. When Edward finally confesses his secret to Bella

and they are able to speak openly about their initial encounter, the conversation sounds

hauntingly like Elena and Stefan’s, as Bella expresses her bewilderment at his automatic initial

rejection and her presumption of his hatred of her.

Once Elena knows Stefan’s secret, she is determined to keep him safe, but their romance

becomes complicated when Stefan’s brother Damon arrives in town, determined to make Elena

his. If Stefan is the sympathetic, repentant vampire who offers the illusion of danger under the

familiarity of safety, Damon is raw sensuality. What he wants, he usually gets, and the novel is

set up to make it seem as if Damon has been stalking and killing the people in Elena’s town for

sport. He hasn’t been, but we do not learn that until the third book in the series. The brothers’

antagonism to each other, rooted in their rivalry for both their father’s affection and Katherine’s,

is a sharp contrast to the warmth and support of the Cullen household.

If Damon in the early books of the series has a counterpart in Twilight, it is James, the

vampire who hunts for sport and sets his sights on Bella, mostly to take her away from Edward.

James does not want to turn Bella, true, where Damon wishes to turn Elena, but the threat to the

main pair is much the same in these first novels in their respective series. However, where James

is defeated at the end of Twilight, Damon has the upper hand at the end of The Awakening. While

Victoria, James’s mate, stalks Bella in revenge later in the series, Damon continues to woo and

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starts to win over Elena before Katherine—presumed dead, but not—strikes out at Elena in

vengeance for taking Damon and Stefan’s love away. Not identical plots, no, but similar enough.

The similarities do not end there. Both Bella and Elena are left adrift without much

parental guidance. Elena is an orphan, in classic young adult literature fashion. She has a maiden

aunt who cares for her, and a baby sister who is little more than a toddler, but her aunt is unable

to control her and their relationship is not one of great closeness. While Bella’s parents are both

still alive, they are divorced and Bella’s mother has chosen to go on the road with her new

husband, while Bella has moved back to Washington to live with her father. While her father

clearly loves her very much, he is not used to having a child to look after, and Bella, like Elena,

operates with a great deal of freedom from parental control and authority.

The starker contrast in family in the two novels comes from the vampire families. Here

there is a contrast between family of blood and birth and family of affinity. Damon and Stefan

are brothers both by birth and in vampiric terms, having both been turned by Katherine as she

attempted to create the perfect vampire clan and family for herself. All three of them were

motherless with distant fathers (possibly abusive in Damon and Stefan’s case). Katherine spent

all of her time only with her maid—no friends, no siblings. Damon and Stefan were several years

apart in age and rivals in most things. Katherine’s attempt to create her own perfect family did

not go well, and the brothers spent the next five centuries at war with each other, with Damon

threatening to kill Stefan any time they came into contact.

In Twilight, the vampire family is far different. In contrast to the traditional isolation

exemplified by Damon and Stefan, the Cullens have formed a close-knit clan over the centuries.

Carlisle Cullen turned Esme and married her, then set out to save others and give her the children

she wanted. Their family is close-knit and unlike the Renaissance aristocracy, steeped in

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Florentine politics of Damon and Stefan’s world, the Cullens are All-American down to

Carlisle’s productive membership in society as a doctor and the family’s love of baseball (Nayar

68).

However, the seeming dissonance between the familial relationships in the two novels is

reduced through the arc of The Vampire Diaries. While Damon and Stefan never grow toward

the close camaraderie exhibited by the Cullens, Damon’s animosity is show to be more bark than

bite, a wall he has erected against expected rejection. Despite his blatant threats, should Stefan

get in his way when Stefan’s life is threatened, it is Damon who saves him, not once, but three

times, risking his own life to do so. When the brothers are left with only each other in the wake

of tragedy, they work to form a closer bond, to reach some level of understanding for the first

time in their lives, demonstrating that the bonds of family, perhaps, are as important to them as

they are to the Cullens.

Two areas where The Vampire Diaries and Twilight somewhat diverge, however, are in

the issues of vampiric transformation and sex. Here, the two novels take opposite positions

which are somewhat interesting. Sex itself is never explicitly discussed in The Vampire Diaries.

Inferred, yes, hinted at, absolutely, but unlike the other four novels I examined, it is very coy.

Instead, sexual exploration follows the pattern of early vampire fiction. The vampires themselves

are sexual creatures, masters of sensuality. And sexual fulfillment is demonstrated not through

explicit sexual encounters (though the text leaves room for implication of such if the reader

wishes to infer it), but through the sexualization of the biting. It is with their fangs that Stefan

and Damon both explicitly penetrate Elena, and it is their blood they give her in return. The

blood exchange between lovers is a common theme in adult vampire romances, experienced and

expressed in nearly transcendental ecstasy which binds the couple, often allowing for the

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intimate sharing of thoughts, memories and emotions via a telepathic link (Bailie 146).

When Elena realizes the significance of biting for vampires, she offers her blood to

Stefan. Bella’s offer, in fact continued entreaties, of sex to Edward echo this, and, like Edward

refuses at first, so too does Stefan, though less on grounds of moral purity so much as a fear of

hurting Elena. Here again, the parallels in the text are achingly similar, as both vampires

demonstrate graphically what they could do to the fragile human girl they love if they, for one

moment lost control (See Appendix II A & B). Neither girl is dissuaded. However, Elena

manages to come out farther ahead than Bella. Edward agrees to date Bella, but will not give in

to her sexual urgings until they are married. Stefan, on the other hand, once Elena goes after

what she wants—him, his fangs, his blood—gives in fairly quickly. Their passion is delivered in

sparse prose, a fade to black moment that comes back into focus with Stefan and Elena sated and

holding each other and vowing eternal love (Smith 302). With Edwards’s moral standards, Bella

has to wait until her wedding night, and does not manage to attain the equality with Edward that

Elena has with Stefan until she has been transformed.

That transformation is the other sharp divide in the series. While both girls become

vampires, Bella is the one who seeks it out. A great deal of criticism has been leveled at Bella for

her seeking harm and her lack of agency and her wanting death, but it isn’t suicide she is after,

but eternity with a man she loves and a family that provides stability and certainty she never had

in her own home. While these may be traditional desires, Bella’s determination to achieve them

is no more passive than Elena’s pursuit of Stefan. Elena’s transformation into vampire, however,

is something done to her against her will and, mostly, by accident. Where Bella fights marrying

Edward and will not agree to it without a promise of transformation, Elena promises to marry

Stefan while maintaining that she does not want him to turn her. Ultimately, through some deux

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ex machina plot convolution, Elena is able to have what she desires—her humanity and Stefan—

just as Bella gets both her vampirism and Edward, but the security of Bella’s future is far more

certain at the end of her series than Elena’s. Where Bella ends her series secure in her husband

and her family, facing an eternal happily ever after, Elena ends on a note of hope and rejoicing,

as well, but ultimate uncertainty. Human and vampire, she and Stefan are forced to face a future

of inevitable loss unless she chooses to transform again. Given that Elena’s feelings for Damon

are equally as unresolved as her feelings about vampirism, Smith’s series ends on an open note

that leaves readers in far more control of how they think the future will play out than Twilight

fans.

This open ended, who knows what the future will hold uncertainty marks the other pure

vampire romance up for consideration: Mari Mancusi’s Boys that Bite. Published a year after

Twilight, in 2006, Boys that Bite follows many of the same tropes and examines many of the

same issues as The Vampire Diaries and Twilight. However, where the previous two novels are

examples of traditional Gothic genre romance, up to and including brooding, Byronic heroes and

anti-heroes, Boys that Bite tackles similar issues with a twist and more than a little splash of fun.

The most lighthearted of the five novels, Boys That Bite is a novel completely aware of

its precedents and its place in a well-defined genre that includes elements of camp. More similar

to the movie version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer than the television show, Mancusi’s novel

irreverently pokes at the tropes and trials of the vampire romance and launches a series of novels

that seem set to do the same.

In Mancusi’s world, the vampires have gone corporate. Senior vampires—those over

1,000 years old—are the only vampires able to make new vampires and this they can only do

once in their lives. Candidates who wish to be vampires must undergo a three month training and

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then have a vampire mate selected for them via DNA screening to ensure compatibility. The two

barely meet before the turning, which is done with a single bite and subdural injection of the

vampire’s blood. No need to die, the transition takes place gradually over the next seven days.

The vampires are extremely ethical—not only do they not kill, they also do not feed without

permission. Willing human donors are assigned to each vampire, and vampires drink only

enough from each donor to never cause them harm. Donors, in turn, are well compensated for

their services, both monetarily and, often, sexually.

The only little problem in this well-oiled machine is Slayer, Inc. Consciously, blatantly

and openly spoofing Buffy in the text, Slayer, Inc., gives the girls it recruits nearly the same

speech Buffy is given when told she has been Chosen to be a Slayer—one girl in all the world in

each generation, etc. It is not word for word from the television show, but the characters in the

novel have seen the show and often finish the quote for the Watchers, who aren’t called

Watchers, but serve the same purpose—to train and guide the new Slayer. The one we meet in

the first book even works at the high school, though as a drama teacher, not librarian. Of course,

the Slayer isn’t exactly Buffy. Overweight and pimply and badly dressed with no sense of

humor, Bertha the Vampire Slayer is not an impressive sight. However, her skills are pretty

sharp, and she manages to take out a few of the head vampires in town before being forced to

retire due to high blood pressure.

Enter our lovers. Rayne McDonald has gone through the rigorous testing and is set to be

turned into a vampire. However, nervous about the whole thing, she asks her identical twin sister

to come along to the meeting place with her. Sunny does not know what they are going out for,

except to go dancing, so when a handsome stranger, Magnus, comes up to her she thinks he just

wants to flirt. Sadly, Magnus has mistaken her for Rayne, and before the misunderstanding can

19

be clarified, he bites her, starting her transformation into a vampire. Sunny, who did not even

know vampires existed until now, and who just wants to make it to her next field hockey match

is horrified.

The novel flies by quickly and amusingly, with frequent pop culture references, mostly to

Buffy and Lost Boys, but also to other traditional vampire motifs. While Magnus and Sunny try to

figure out how to stop her transformation, they, of course, find themselves falling in love (they’re

perfectly compatible, after all, since Sunny’s DNA is the same as Rayne’s). A trip to

Glastonbury to find the Holy Grail, which is being guarded by some Druids who just want to

move to London and party, gives them a cure for Sunny’s vampirism, but she is then faced with

the same choice regarding transformation as Elena and Bella.

It is in this choice that the few serious moments of the novel come. Sunny loves Magnus

and wants to be with him, but how does a relationship between a 17 year old human and a 1,000

year old vampire work? He can’t go out during the day and she has school early in the morning,

so she can’t stay out late at night. He’ll live forever. She’ll grow old and die. He might be

assigned another mate. She wants to go to college, if she can ever pass geometry.

While the treatment of the tropes are far more lighthearted, to the point of verging on

parody, the characters still feel very real and very well drawn. Just when you think you have the

stereotype figured out, something comes along to twist it—like Magnus loosening up enough to

dance around madly at an open air music festival, or Rayne being pegged as the next Slayer after

Bertha’s forced retirement. In the end, Sunny, like Elena, chooses to undo her transformation and

face the world uncertainly as Magnus’s girlfriend, not his mate. The series continues for many

more books, so it is possible she changed her mind, but the first novel ends with them deciding to

figure out how to make it work, and Sunny completely relieved that she does not have to face

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living forever, or losing all of her friends.

The novel has a very limited scope of characters, focused mostly on the sisters and

Magnus. Everyone else just drops in and fades out. The girls have a single mother, with no

father. In a twist on the conventions, their mother is not absent or uninvolved. In fact, she is

highly observant and caring, if a little wacky (she’s a former hippie, of course, with daughters

named Sunny and Rayne). Her observant qualities pose a problem, demonstrating how getting

parents out of the way can be important for young adult fiction. Mom notices the changes in

Sunny and grounds her, thinking that she is using drugs. This threatens the trip to England to

change Sunny back, and causes momentary panic. However, the convention of twins and the

inability of even observant parents to tell them apart saves the day, and Rayne poses as Sunny

while Sunny runs off to England unimpeded.

Sexuality is very light in the novel. Rayne is something of a sexual free-spirit, to put it

nicely (Sunny calls her a slut). She’s slept with more than a few people, including one of her

high school teachers. Sunny, on the other hand, is a virgin, which she gets constantly teased

about and feels is something of a burden she’s eager to be rid of when she meets the right guy.

However, even upon meeting Magnus, she never goes farther than kissing in the first book.

Likewise, where biting is sexualized in The Vampire Diaries, the experience is far more akin to

Twilight in Boys that Bite. Realistically, in some ways, the bites hurt and never turn pleasurable,

though the agony of venom is not there as it is in Twilight. There is the suggestion that blood

donors might like it, but that is not thoroughly explored.

The last two novels I examined were far different than the other three. These two are both

the start of series of their own, and while both have strong romance subplots, they are not the

main plot device of the story, and while they are not simple, they are nowhere near as complex as

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those in the first three books. However, both books share similarities to other factors in the other

three books and have a great deal in common with each other.

Both P.C and Kristen Cast’s Marked and Richelle Mead’s Vampire Academy are set for

the most part at exclusive boarding schools for vampire teenagers. Parental figures are both

emotionally and physically absent for the heroines of these novels. Both worlds set up a scenario

where vampirism is biological and does not involve dying, but is a form of a different species.

The vampire world exists separately from the human world, but there are varying levels of

human knowledge of their existence. In Vampire Academy, the vampires mostly pass as human,

if forced to go among them, but live within their own society for the most part. In Marked,

however, the vampyres live openly among humans. In fact, they have an affinity for the arts and

so most actors, writers and musicians are actually vampyres and everyone knows it. With their

inhuman beauty and talent, very few humans could compete against them.

In Vampire Academy, Rose and Lissa are best friends and compatriots on the run at the

beginning from the school. No explicit threat has been identified, but a teacher they trusted very

much intimated that Lissa was in grave danger if they stayed. Lissa is the vampire, and one of the

royal blood. Rose, on the other hand, is a dhampir—a half-human, half-vampire who is trained to

be a guardian for the pure-vampires, the Moroi. The Moroi, like the vampires in Boys that Bite

and like Stefan and Edward, are ethical vampires. They do drink from humans, but like Magnus

and his kind, they only drink from willing donors. Donors are hired and well paid and well cared

for. Unlike in Boys that Bite, the bite of a Moroi is exquisitely pleasurable to the one bitten,

something which causes most donors to become addicts.

This is a social construct and a barrier in the girls’ lives, because while on the run, Lissa

had no one to feed from. Because her job was to keep her safe, Rose allowed Lissa to feed from

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her. However, for a dhampir to allow a Moroi to bite is a highly transgressive act. Dhampir who

allow Moroi to feed from them are almost always kicked out of training to be guardians and

relegated instead to the communes where they serve the sexual needs of the Moroi, becoming

what is derogatorily called “blood-sluts.”

The majority of the plot of Vampire Academy is setting up the series and the world. There

is a villain and a danger, and through it we learn of Lissa’s ability to heal, but there is a sense of

a far greater plot to come. The romance elements are somewhat transgressive, in that both girls

fall for boys who are somewhat inappropriate, but there are no real impediments to their desire,

either, despite Rose not approving of Lissa’s choice.

Despite the more world-building than plot in the novel, it is extremely well written and

the world constructed is intricate and complex. The series is highly popular, and it is easy to see

why. Of the five novels, Vampire Academy probably ranks second in quality. The characters are

more than repeats of stereotypes. The girls are the central characters with the boys in their lives

being highly secondary. Both girls struggle to figure out who they are, where they fit back in

their world after the freedom of the human world. Their loyalty and friendship are tested both by

their romances and the leaking of the secret that Rose allowed Lissa to feed from her. While

sexuality is definitely apparent, it is almost mostly just normalized—they are teenagers. They

have sex. It’s all cool, so long as you obey the biting rules. The major conflict revolves around

Rose protecting Lissa and the female friendships are far more important than the romances. Both

girls have very different powers, but they are both powerful in their own right and complement

each other, forming their own unit which is difficult for the males in the circle to penetrate.

Similarly, in Marked, a world is constructed around the world of the vampire. Unlike in

Vampire Academy where the girls are what they have been from birth, though, in Marked the

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issues of transformation arise again. No one knows why certain teenagers begin to change into

vampyres. It is theorized to have something to do with a latent gene and an imbalance of

hormones, but once it begins, the teenager is marked—a tattoo spontaneously appears on his or

her forehead—and found by a Tracker who takes the teen back to the House of Night—an

exclusive boarding school for fledglings. There, the fledgling teens undergo a training in arts and

languages and religion (the vampires are blatantly pagan, set in contrast to the People of the

Faith, clearly meant to represent Christians in this alternate world). Some fledgling’s bodies

reject the Change and they die mid-transitions. Those that survive go on to become full vampyres

and members of the community.

Marked is the story of one fledgling, Zoey, who begins her transition at the beginning of

the novel. Unlike Vampire Academy where Lissa’s parents are dead and Rose’s mother is off

being a guardian somewhere, Zoey has a home that is blatantly unhappy. Her mother has

remarried a strictly religious man who is emotionally abusive and has isolated the family. When

Zoey begins to transition, he tries to stop it with prayer and locks her in her room to keep her

from leaving – which will kill her.

Zoey escapes and makes it to the House of Night where she discovers she has a special

gift from the goddess Nyx and is poised to fulfill some destiny to save vampire-kind. In the

meantime, however, she is dealing with the transitioning process, where her body is no longer

her own. More so than any of the other series, Marked blatantly makes its story about the horror

of growing up, in some ways, the awkwardness of teenagers trapped in a changing body. Like an

adolescent dealing with puberty and a rapidly changing body, Zoey must accustom herself to

changes in her looks (pallor, brighter eyes, sharper features, the tattoo), in her senses, in her

emotions and in her cravings. All of this is happening to her at once and fast, and her confusion

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and feeling of being lost is palpable and heartbreaking.

At the same time, in finding her place at the House of Night, Zoey is able to break her

isolation. She very quickly makes very good friends and finds a certainty in herself and her

purpose that she had been lacking in the human world. Like Vampire Academy, Marked sets up a

world and the beginning of a plot more than a full arc, yet. It positions Zoey as different, but

accepted, and has her dealing with the first flush of change and the recognition that death can

happen to anyone. While being mentored and cared for, she nevertheless has to grow up and take

responsibility for herself.

In the mix is a new love interest at the school, but she has inadvertently enthralled her ex-

boyfriend who won’t stop stalking her. Where Boys That Bite played with this same scenario in a

campy manner, Marked treats it completely seriously, positing real danger both to Zoey and her

ex. In the meantime, issues of sexuality are rampant and more explicit than in any of the other

books. Zoey’s first introduction to Eric, her vampire love interest, is by walking in on him and

his ex as the ex tries to give him a very bloody blow job in the hallway.

Zoey’s absolute disgust at this—not the blood, but that a girl would do such a thing—sets

an interesting tone for the sexual exploration of the novel. Where Twilight posits a wait for true

love chastity, it never reviles sexuality. Zoey, on the other hand, seems disgusted by the very

idea of oral sex (which is, admittedly, probably a valid 16 year old response). But more than that,

she has the lowest opinion of any girl who would let herself be “used like that” (Cast 59). When

Zoey and Eric are making out later in the book—just kissing—she pulls back sharply and tells

him that she is not like his ex, while her inner monologue says she was “making out with him

like a slut” (Cast 255). Throughout the novel, she constantly worries about becoming or being

perceived as a slut. She is highly sex-negative in this way. On the other hand, Marked is the only

25

novel with an openly homosexual male character, and issues of sexual identity and acceptance

are discussed openly and honestly and with a great deal of tolerance.

This sexual uncertainty—of the place of sex in a life—is the one odd note in an otherwise

fantastic novel. Its premise is really fascinating and its take on vampires and their world is fresh

and unlike anything I had read before in the genre. It is well crafted with description and realistic

dialogue. Issues of diversity (there are several characters of color, including Zoey, who is Native

American), sexuality, tolerance and acceptance run throughout the novel, as does the questioning

of moral absolutes and religion. The novel is the only one for which I found evidence of it being

actively taught in high schools, and I can see why. (“An Interview with P.C. and Kristin Cast”

35. All five novels are fun in their own ways, and The Vampire Diaries will always have a place

in my heart, but when it comes to quality of writing, seriousness of themes and overall

applicability to the struggles of modern teenagers, Marked is by far superior to the others.

Conclusion

While literary trends rise and fall, I believe it is safe to say that the vampire novel is not

in danger of disappearing from the literature of either adults or young adults. The fascination the

figure holds is an enduring one which has stretched through cultures and centuries and shows no

indication of releasing its hold on the human psyche any time soon. If every age embraces the

vampire it needs, undoubtedly the figure will continue to morph as time goes on, reshaping to

reflect the anxieties and cultural negotiations of the society shaping itself beside the narratives.

From horror to romance to mystical meditation on the transformative nature of faith, the vampire

is a figure deeply, perhaps permanently, embedded within the human psyche.

It is unlikely that novels which present themselves too close to the narrative structure of

Twilight or The Vampire Diaries (and, by extension into the “adult” world—Charlaine Harris’s

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Southern Vampire Mysteries) will be able to thrive in this saturated market. By revisiting and

reviving the themes and structures in The Vampire Diaries, leading to the rediscovery of the

older narrative, Twilight and the televised version of The Vampire Diaries have possibly

saturated the space for similar narratives. Certainly, the similarity in the very wording and scenes

between the two novels (as exhibited in the Appendix) leave little room for too closely similar

explorations.

Instead, I would expect to see more novels along the lines of The Vampire Academy,

House of Night and Blood Coven series. These series all strive to find a twist on the theme, to

create a world that is not just the intrusion of the fantastic into the otherwise ordinary, as in The

Vampire Diaries and Twilight. Fans of the genre are calling for greater originality, a new story,

and these novels deliver, addressing the critical concerns raised by earlier narratives (most

notably Twilight), while still remaining true to some of the inherent tropes of the genre,

struggling with the same questions raised by the genre.

Undoubtedly, the figure of the vampire lover is also here to stay, and, while the narratives

around him may morph, some figures are too deeply engrained to be easily shaken. Even in the

more “hip” narratives of the series which followed Twilight, the male figures often maintain their

ties to their predecessors. Like the figure of the vampire itself, these figures of romantic

masculinity may be too embedded in our cultural expectations to be shaken easily. But as writers

tackle the problems raised by traditional figures in a postmodern world, I expect to see a

continued morphing of the character of the vampire lover as the ancient figure glides into a new

century and a new world, bringing the cultural baggage of the old along with him, but hopefully

learning to discard it, even as the readers who embrace the figure do the same.

The vampire novel allows for the play of identity and independence. The narratives give

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girls the opportunity to situate themselves in various fields of thought, to pose questions of life

and death, ethics and morality, sexuality and love, friendship and family. This thoughtful play

takes place within a fantastical genre that allows for the pondering of these questions one step

removed from the everyday reality of their lives. Sometimes that step of removal is crucial for

critical engagement and nonjudgmental exploration, and that is space and engagement is

something adolescents greatly need. The escapist fantasy of genre fiction can also foster

imagination and play of a lighter sort, a fact that often gets overlooked when we speak of

literature and reading.

Reading anything involves a play of language, senses, emotions and imagination. The

expectation that fiction should only be erudite or teach “good” lessons (and what those lessons

might be change depending on where critics situate themselves in society and its structures,

anyway) is a utilitarian ethic which does more harm than good. By denigrating works which

capture teen interest—like vampire novels or dystopian novels or action-adventure novels—but

which perhaps have less literary merit in form and originality, we make reading seem like

something to be checked off a list of things we did that were good for us today. Reading can be

magic, can transport us out of our lives, into another world, another time, another possibility.

Vampire novels provide that for a lot of readers, and vampire romance, specifically, gives girls

(and women) something to fill a gap in their fantasy which situates them in a long history of

readers. To dismiss or denigrate that is short sighted.

Was Twilight a literary masterpiece? I don’t think even its most ardent supporters will

claim that. Is The Vampire Diaries worthy of being called high literature? Not likely. But do

these novels raise issues of importance? Can they be jumping off points for discussions of vital

matters in teen lives? Absolutely. Do later series offer twists and turns on the narratives, bringing

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in relevant questions on contemporary issues in a manner that is engaging and entertaining at the

same time? Undoubtedly. Can tapping into timeless tropes and myths and primal fears and

questions be done in a way that is fun for reluctant readers and refreshing for seasoned veterans?

Yes. The vampire novel does all of this, and more, and it is something that should be celebrated

and examined both in our classrooms and our reading lives.

Even Twilight.

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Works Cited

Bailie, Helen T. "Blood Ties: The Vampire Lover in the Popular Romance." Journal of American Culture 34.2 (2011): 141-148. Academic Search Complete. Web. 10 Oct. 2012

Beck, Bernard. "Fearless Vampire Kissers: Bloodsuckers We Love In Twilight, True Blood And

Others." Multicultural Perspectives 13.2 (2011): 90-92. Academic Search Complete. Web. 27 Nov. 2012.

Brox, Ali. "“Every Age Has The Vampire It Needs”: Octavia Butler's Vampiric Vision In Fledgling."

Utopian Studies 19.3 (2008): 391-409. Art Full Text (H.W. Wilson). Web. 6 Dec. 2012. Cast, P.C. and Kristin Cast. Marked (The House of Night Book 1). New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2007.

Kindle. Gomez-Galisteo, M. Carmen. "Vampire Meets Girl: Gender Roles and the Vampire's Side of The

Story in Twilight, Midnight Sun and The Vampire Diaries." Neoamericanist 5.2 (2011): 1-6. Humanities International Complete. Web. 15 Nov. 2012.

Gordon, Joan. "Rehabilitating Revenants, Or Sympathetic Vampires in Recent Fiction." Extrapolation

(Kent State University Press) 29.3 (1988): 227-234. Humanities International Complete. Web. 2 Dec. 2012.

"An Interview with P.C. and Kristin Cast." Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 53.1 (2009): 83-85.

Academic Search Complete. Web. 6 Dec. 2012. Mancusi, Mari. Boys That Bite. New York: Berkley Jam Books, 2006. Print. Mead, Richelle. Vampire Academy. New York: Penguin Books, Ltd., 2007. Kindle. Meyer, Stephenie. Twilight. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2005. Kindle. Mukherjea, Ananya. "My Vampire Boyfriend: Postfeminism, ‘Perfect’ Masculinity, and the

Contemporary Appeal of Paranormal Romance." Studies in Popular Culture 33.2 (2011): 1-20. Humanities International Complete. Web. 15 Nov. 2012.

Nayar, Pramod. "How to Domesticate a Vampire: Gender, Blood Relations and Sexuality in

Stephenie Meyer's Twilight." Nebula 7.3 (2010): 60-76. Humanities International Complete. Web. 24 Nov. 2012.

Nelson, Elizabeth. "Abstinence vs. Indulgence: How the New Ethical Vampire Reflects Our

Monstrous Appetites." Journal of Jungian Scholarly Studies 6.2 (2010): 1-13. Academic Search Complete. Web. 10 Oct. 2012.

Smith, L.J. The Vampire Diaries: The Awakening. New York: Harper Collins, 1991. Print. Winnubst, Shannon. "Vampires, Anxieties, and Dreams: Race and Sex in the Contemporary United

States." Hypatia 18.3 (2003): 1-20. Art Full Text (H.W. Wilson). Web. 6 Dec. 2012.

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31

Appendix: Textual parallels between The Vampire Diaries and Twilight

I. Avoidance vs. Hatred

The Vampire Diaries:

A: [S]he smiled.

He looked down from the smile quickly...And at last, slowly, she turned around

again. She was hurt. Even through the blocks, he could feel that. He didn't care. In

fact, he was glad of it, and he hoped it would keep her away from him. Other than

that, he had no feelings about her at all.

He kept telling himself this as he sat, the droning voice of the teacher pouring

over him unheard. But he could smell a subtle hint of some perfume—violets, he

thought. And her slender white neck was bowed over her book, the fair hair

falling on either side of it. In anger and frustration he recognized the seductive

feeling in his teeth—more a tickling or a tingling than an ache. It was hunger, a

specific hunger. And not one he was about to indulge (Smith 30).

B:

"Why do you hate me?"

He stared at her. For a moment he couldn't seem to find words. Then he said, "I

don't hate you."

"You do," said Elena. "I know it's not… not good manners to say it, but I don't

care. I know I should be grateful to you for saving me tonight, but I don't care

about that, either. I didn't ask you to save me. I don't know why you were even in

the graveyard in the first place. And I certainly don't understand why you did it,

considering the way you feel about me."

He was shaking his head, but his voice was soft. "I don't hate you." (Smith 139)

Twilight:

C:

“If I hadn’t been denying my thirst for the last, well, too many years, I wouldn’t

have been able to stop myself.” He paused, scowling at the trees. He glanced at

me grimly, both of us remembering. “You must have thought I was possessed.”

“I couldn’t understand why. How you could hate me so quickly…”

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“To me, it was like you were some kind of demon, summoned straight from my

own personal hell to ruin me. The fragrance coming off your skin…I thought it

would make me deranged that first day.” (Meyer 268-269).

II. Why We Shouldn’t Do That/Be Together:

A: The Vampire Diaries

"You don't know what you're talking about!" He was standing rigid, his face furious, his

eyes anguished. "If I once let go, what's to keep me from changing you, or killing you?

The passion is stronger than you can imagine. Don't you understand yet what I am, what I

can do?"

She stood there and looked at him quietly, her chin raised slightly. It seemed to enrage

him.

"Haven't you seen enough yet? Or do I have to show you more? Can't you picture what I

might do to you?" He strode over to the cold fireplace and snatched out a long piece of

wood, thicker than both Elena's wrists together. With one motion, he snapped it in two

like a match stick. "Your fragile bones," he said.

Across the room was a pillow from the bed; he caught it up and with a slash of his nails

left the silk cover in ribbons. "Your soft skin." Then he moved toward Elena with

preternatural quickness; he was there and had hold of her shoulders before she knew what

was happening. He stared into her face a moment, then, with a savage hiss that raised the

hairs at the nape of her neck, drew his lips back.

It was the same snarl she'd seen on the roof, those white teeth bared, the canines grown to

unbelievable length and sharpness. They were the fangs of a predator, a hunter. "Your

white neck," he said in a distorted voice.

Elena stood paralyzed another instant, gazing as if compelled into that chilling visage,

and then something deep in her unconscious took over. She reached up within the

restraining circle of his arms and caught his face between her two hands. His cheeks were

cool against her palms. She held him that way, softly, so softly, as if to reprove his hard

grip on her bare shoulders. And she saw the confusion slowly come to his face, as he

realized she was not doing it to fight him or to shove him away.

Elena waited until that confusion reached his eyes, shattering his gaze, becoming almost

a look of pleading. She knew that her own face was fearless, soft yet intense, her lips

slightly parted. They were both breathing quickly now, together, in rhythm. Elena could

feel it when he started to shake, trembling as he had when the memories of Katherine had

become too much to bear. Then, very gently and deliberately, she drew that snarling

mouth down to her own (Smith 281-282).

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B: Twilight

Copying the exact text for this proved difficult, as it is somewhat more scattered across several

pages which brought copyright considerations to mind, but consider the scene with Edward and

Bella in the forest, as he is ripping up trees and showing her just what he could do to her and how

perfect a predator he is. (Meyer 260-265).