S4 E12: Season Finale of the Gothic with Special Guest, Dr. Giselle Anatol, Exploring Stephenie Meyer’s TWILIGHT & Its Power to Penetrate Readers’ Reality

Spoilers…but hey, if you don’t know what TWILIGHT is, come out from the rock you call home and join us for a lively and insightful conversation with our special guest, Dr. Giselle Anatol, editor of the 2011 collection of critical essays, BRINGING LIGHT TO TWILIGHT. Dr. Anatol has provided popular texts and the legacy of the vampire important scholarly attention, and we’re incredibly lucky to have her in the studio to talk about the attraction and cultural influence of the TWILIGHT series. 

Don’t worry, we’re not cancelling Stephenie Meyer’s TWILIGHT because, dear listener, that’s just not how we roll on IWAW.  What Sonja and Vanessa love is exercising intellectual curiosity.  And this text brings up so many questions! For starters, can you both love TWILIGHT and be a feminist? How much Jane Eyre is there in Bella Swan? Is Carlisle actually a mother? Is Meyer drawing on works like PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, ROMEO AND JULIET, A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM, and WUTHERING HEIGHTS?  Would the sparkling vampire series make a young, modern reader want to go read these classics? What are we to make of the novel linking Native Americans to wolves?  Is Bella’s life-threatening pregnancy a commentary on abortion? What role does Meyer’s Mormon faith contribute to the focus on chastity, male power, championing motherhood, the imprinting and immortality of lovers?  

With the world-wide appeal of the 4-book and 5-movie series, we really have to ask these questions because–as we always say on IWAW–stories shape who we are.  Just to point out the obvious, what message does Bella and Edward’s romance, for example, communicate to a young reader about how love works, who to date, and what kind of risks to take? Can a young reader–the target audience of this series–always discern the line between fiction and reality?

ALSO, on this episode, we announce the theme of Season 5, the first season of 2026–our second year of the pod!!!

Along the way, Sonja bed rots, TWILIGHT-style, and Vanessa, a TWILIGHT fan of old, weathers Sonja’s wordplay about how much the series sucks.

REFERENCES:

Here is Dr. Gisele Anatol’s biographical information on the University of Kansas English Department website. 

A link to Dr. Anatol’s 2015 Things that Fly in the Night

If you feel like checking out some of the fascinating articles in Dr. Anatol’s collection, here is a link to purchasing Bringing Light to Twilight

Here is a link to purchase Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature by Janice A. Radway.

Once again, we cannot say enough good things about Rachel Fader’s The Darcy Myth, and we also have a great episode on it: Rachel Feder's The Darcy Myth.

Check out Hot and Bothered Podcast: Twilight for a take on the movie by the extremely talented Vanessa Zoltan & Hannah McGregor. 

If you want to know more about the Soucouyant that Dr. Anatol mentions, here is one of many websites with information: The Soucouyant.