Revamping The Gaze: How Twilight Hosts the Conditions for Female Spectatorship

Abstract

This thesis seeks to understand how narrative pleasure operates in romance novels in order to better understand how women's consumption of romantic literature affects their personhood. The primary text examined in this project is the enduringly popular Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. First published in 2005, it is the first in Meyer's four-book Twilight series, as well as the basis not only for a collection of five movies, but also for countless spinoffs, responses, and fanfictions. Twilight is thus significant for its great popularity among young women, influence on popular culture, and lasting influence on the female psyche. This thesis is a feminist pursuit that centers female agency, empowerment, and happiness. It has an interest in the lived experiences of women influenced by the texts they consume. It proposes that we can build a theory of women readers' deep psychological attachment to Twilight by examining closely the dynamics of looking and being looked at, both within and around the text. In doing so, I draw on psychoanalytic theory, feminist film theory, feminist reader-response theory, and feminist narratology. By focusing on looking and being looked at in Twilight, this thesis takes up the challenge of applying Laura Mulvey's critical film theory of the male gaze to literature. Mulvey concludes that visual pleasure is reserved for the male spectator alone, and consequently, that cinematography is constructed for and by the patriarchy. However, through my close reading of key scenes from Twilight, I demonstrate that literary texts distribute the pleasures and powers of looking differently. This literary context ultimately allows at once for an empowering, pleasurable experience for the object of the gaze, and the possibility of a female spectator. This thesis, moreover, analyzes the gaze not only in its capacity to connect characters within a novel, but also as a function that connects reader and text, and connects reader to self. I make an argument that through visual recognition by another, the gaze serves a reflective role, mirroring self-image to aid in the construction of the self and personal identity. I further argue that such a process allows for identification with a character that likewise influences the reader's self-consciousness and experience. For example, central to the novel is the amorous relationship between Isabella Swan and Edward Cullen. A close reading of the novel reveals the gaze to be foundational to this relationship and facilitatory of connection inside the book and out. Using Sara K. Day's concept of narrative intimacy as a lens, I demonstrate how Bella relates to her reader, and how a reader in return is invited to identify with Bella. Narrative intimacy and the gaze compliment each other, joining spectatorship theory with reader-response criticism to produce a transcendental, empowering, and enjoyable experience for the female reader. In my concluding chapter, I pivot from close readings of Twilight and engagement with psychoanalytic, feminist, and literary theory, towards reception studies. I use selected fan responses to Twilight as evidence of the theory I have developed. Keywords: spectatorship, gaze, reader-response, scopophilia, identification