The PowerPoint accompanying the 'Romancing the Gothic' Sunday lecture, 'It's only Twilight if it's from the Forks region; Anything else is just sparkling vampire romance': Twilight, the Gothic Novel and the Female Reader' by @KajaFranck.

1. ‘IT’S ONLY TWILIGHT IF IT’S FROM THE
FORKS REGION; ANYTHING ELSE IS JUST
SPARKLING VAMPIRE ROMANCE’: TWILIGHT,
THE GOTHIC NOVEL AND THE FEMALE
READER
Dr Kaja Franck
@KajaFranck
K.A.Franck@gmail.com
opengravesopenminds.com

2. The
‘Twinaissance’
• Memes
• The Twilight
Generation
• Midnight Sun

3. ‘BEYOND ARTISTIC ISSUES, ANTI-TWILIGHTERS
ALSO RAISE DEEPLY GROUNDED IDEOLOGICAL
ISSUES THAT ARE INTERTWINED WITH THE
AESTHETIC; MORE PROBLEMATIC THAN FINDING
THE ROMANCE BETWEEN EDWARD AND BELLA
POORLY WRITTEN IS CONSIDERING IT
DANGEROUSLY ABUSIVE AND ANTI-FEMINIST.’
ANNE GILBERT, ‘BETWEEN TWI-HARDS AND TWI-HATERS: THE COMPLICATED TERRAIN OF ONLINE “TWILIGHT” AUDIENCE
COMMUNITIES’, IN GENRE, RECEPTION, AND ADAPTATION IN THE “TWILIGHT” SERIES, ED. BY ANNE MOREY (FARNHAM: ASHGATE
PUBLISHING, 2012), PP. 163-79 (P. 173)
How I Hate Thee, Let me Count the
Ways …

4. • Photo on ‘EDWARD CULLEN
SUCKS!’ (17th May 2009),
Facebook group
• ‘No Edward Cullen. You’re not
a vampire, you’re a fairy.
Literally’, Facebook group
• ‘Twilight is a good book about
vampires LOL JK its about
gay sparkly faries’

5. Feminist/ Anti-Feminist/
Postfeminist
‘The gothic elements of the “Twilight” series have invigorated an otherwise
formulaic generic pattern and have demonstrated the possibilities of
“darkness, suffering, [and] passion” (Botting 20) to produce a new
romantic myth […]. Bella’s agency invites us to reconsider her position with
regard to patriarchal and heterosexual norms and to see her in a less
conservative light that embraces her sexuality and remains alert to the
paradoxes and possibilities of postfeminism.’
Kritine Moruzi, ‘Postfeminist Fantasies: Sexuality and Femininity in Stephenie Meyer’s “Twilight” Series’, in Genre, Reception and Adaptation, ed. by Morey, (p. 62)

8. Gothic Readers
‘Why the representation of
obscene events, which are merely
the products of a disordered
imagination, should not produce
as bad an effect on the female
mind as the relation of similar
events founded on fact ... we
cannot conceive’
Anonymous, ‘Book Review’, Anti-Jacobin Review and True
Churchman’s Magazine, 37:150 (December, 1810)
‘Twihards’
‘Stupid obsessive people (mostly
teenage girls) who are in love with
fictional characters and wouldn't
know a good book if it punched them
in the face.’
UrbanDictionary.com

10. The Author-Mother
■ Ann Radcliffe:
‘the mother ... of a deplorable and, though her own work is spotless, in
many cases a rather disreputable family’.
George Saintsbury, qutd in Deborah D. Rogers, The Matrophobic Gothic, p. 45
■ Stephenie Meyer:
‘Meyer plops down in a chair and is immediately surrounded by girls. She
pulls one onto her lap while another plays with her hair’.
Megan Irwin, ‘An Interview with Stephenie Meyer in her Hometown’ (May 2007)

11. ‘It is obvious to any
discerning observer, that
female literature, in this
country, is swelled beyond
its natural dimensions.’
John Bennett, Strictures on Female Education. Chiefly
as it relates to the culture of the heart. In four essays.
By the Rev. John Bennett (Worcester: 1795)

13. ‘… MEYER CRYSTALLISES ANXIETIES ABOUT
CONSUMERISM THAT WERE PRESENT IN THE EARLY
GOTHIC OF THE 1790S; HER WORK FORMS BOTH A
CRITIQUE AND A REFLECTION OF COMMERCIALISED
SOCIETY SATURATED WITH ADVERTS AND
TANTALISING DISTRACTIONS IN THE FORMS OF
COMMODITIES. […] THE TWILIGHT SAGA REPRESENTS
THE MANNER IN WHICH THE CULT OF THE
COMMODITY HAS NOT ONLY BEEN APPLIED TO
FEMALE AUTHORS AND THEIR READERSHIP BUT
APPROPRIATED BY MEYER HERSELF.’

14. The Twilight Effect
■ ‘The sparkly vampire is one that has been
made palatable for a mass marker and
readily convertible into a range of consumer
products, from make-up and jewellery to
cars and even sex-toys.’
(‘Gothic Charm School’, Catherine Spooner, in Open
Graves, Open Minds, p. 147)
■ ‘The appeal of Twilight may also lie in this
fantasy of overwhelming desire that is
constantly delayed but may potentially find
consummation’.
(‘The Twilight Saga’, Sara Wasson and Sarah Artt, in Open
Graves, Open Minds, p. 189)

15. The Vampyre (1819),
John Polidori
■ ‘In Romantic fiction, they tended to be fashionably
pallid and clean-shaven, with seductive voices and
pouting lips, and they were always sexually
attractive.’
(Vampyres: Lord Byron to Count Dracula, Christopher Frayling, p. 6)
■ ‘Following the period of Byron and The Vampyre,
the bloodsucker had left the graveyard and entered
the drawing-room. Groomed and debonair, now he
mingles within high society and is often invited into
the bedroom.’
(‘The deformed transformed’, Conrad Aquilna, in Open Graves, Open
Minds, ed. By Sam George & Bill Hughes, p. 35)

16. The Vampyre vs
Twilight
Similarities
■ Genesis – A dream
■ The Vampire: a pale outsider
■ Fanfiction and popular culture
■ Love Triangle
Differences
■ Author / Audience
■ The Victim
■ Transformation

17. Bizarre
Love
Triangle:
Ruthven,
Aubrey
and Ianthe
■ ‘the deadly hue of his face, which
never gained a warmer tint, either
from blush of modesty, or from the
strong emotion of passion, though its
form and outline were beautiful’.
(The Vampyre, Polidori, p. 69)
■ ‘he soon formed this object into the
hero of a romance’.
(The Vampyre, Polidori, p. 70)
■ ‘and though Aubrey was near the
object of his curiosity, he obtained no
greater gratification from it than the
constant excitement of vainly wishing
to break the mystery’.
(The Vampyre, Polidori, p. 72)

19. Bella’s Devouring Gaze
‘My eyes traced over his pale white features:
the hard square of his jaw, the softer curve if
his full lips – twisted up into a smile now, the
smooth marble span of his forehead – partially
obscured by a tangle of rain-darkened bronze
hair ...’
(Eclipse, Meyer, p. 17)

20. Ianthe and Edward Cullen
■ ‘As she danced upon the plain, or tripped along the mountain’s side, one
would have thought the gazelle a poor type of her beauties’.
(The Vampyre, Polidori, p. 74)
■ ‘Finally, I spotted him, still under the dense shade of the canopy at the
edge of the hollow, watching me with cautious eyes.’
(Twilight, Meyer, p. 227)