



































CHAPTER IX


[Expositions 4.1&2 (2010) 80-86]  Expositions (online) ISSN: 1747-5376 

 

Of Virgins and Vampires: Twilight and the Issues of Beauty and Soul 

NOËL FALCO DOLAN 

Villanova University 

 

 

Stephenie Meyer’s popular Twilight series plays with double horror, offering a new take 

on not only the popular Gothic creatures, but also on the trials of high school life and 

romance for a teenage girl. Along the way, her main character, Bella Swan, must wrestle 

with fitting into a new high school community, coping with divorced parents, choosing 

between two very attractive boys, wanting to be beautiful and graceful, and, oh, a little 

thing like sacrificing the immortality of her soul for love. Interestingly, it is her vampire 

beau, Edward Cullen, who is more concerned with preserving her soul (and, as their 

romance progresses, Bella’s virginity), while Bella’s ethical code prizes love more 

highly. While the question of the immortality of the soul is the root of this argument 

between the two that extends over four books, neither Meyer nor her characters stop to 

consider fully what soul means. Still developing his understanding of the relationship 

between the soul and the body, St. Augustine writes in On the Immortality of the Soul that 

mind is life; it animates and thus correlates with soul, and thus every inanimate thing 

animated by the mind is alive. In keeping with his Neoplatonic roots, in which he comes 

to see the soul as superior to the flesh, he argues that if one possesses one’s mind and 

reasoning, one must necessarily be alive (and thus human). He was obviously not familiar 

with vampires, let alone teenage ones. Meyer’s vampires are fully rational beings capable 

of learning new languages and ideas, capabilities which would suggest by St. Augustine’s 

definition that they are alive: “for nothing which is not alive learns anything.”
1
 St. 

Augustine argues that mind correlates with soul in that it is immortal and can exist 

beyond the physical limitations of the body. Yet, it is unclear that Meyer views the life of 

the soul as anything beyond something that exists independent of both body and thought. 

For undead Edward, who frets about what will happen to him if his body is destroyed, 

soul clearly has a moral element, and thus he worries about the value of his inherent 

goodness. Feeling the desires of and pressures on young women today, Bella has looming 

insecurities that are resolved only through her attachment to Edward and mark a focus on 

the physical side of life, culminating in the price she willingly pays for beauty and eternal 

love: her soul. 

When we first meet Bella in book one, Twilight, she describes herself in ways that cast 

her as an outsider: “But physically, I’d never fit in anywhere. I should be tan, sporty, 

blond – a volleyball player, or a cheerleader, perhaps – all the things that go with living 

in the valley of the sun.”
2
 She describes attributes that could be seen positively – as 

indeed several of the young men at her new high school see them – and twists them into 



81  Dolan 

 

negatives. She muses, “I was ivory-skinned, without even the excuse of blue eyes or red 

hair,” and contextualizes the appearance of her skin with her surroundings. If in Phoenix, 

her skin was too pale, in Forks (WA), “I looked sallower, unhealthy…. I had no color 

here.” She is happy on her first day at her new school to find that she blends in with most 

of her classmates, seeking only to attract no attention to herself.  

As contrast, the Cullen family of teenaged vampires stands out as wildly attractive, 

and they become her new paradigm for beauty. While the boys are written off quite 

quickly with limited description – big, muscled, lanky, taller, leaner (about two 

adjectives and a hair color apiece) – the girls are described with greater attention: 

 

The tall one was statuesque. She had a beautiful figure, the kind you saw on the 

cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, the kind that made every girl 

around her take a hit on her self-esteem just by being in the same room. Her hair 

was golden, gently waving to the middle of her back. The short girl was 

pixielike, thin in the extreme, with small features. Her hair was a deep black, 

cropped short and pointing in every direction. (18)  

 

Meyer chooses these details once and deliberately; she hearkens back to many of the 

same choices again and again over the four-book series (count how many times vampire 

Alice “dances” across a room). It is important to see the immediate impact on Bella, in 

that she recognizes that the beauty of all five vampire “siblings” is beyond her reach, that 

they are indeed what she calls “devastatingly, inhumanly beautiful” (19; emphasis mine). 

She aligns their look with the beauty that functions as the standard for most young 

women today, that of advertising (and secondarily, that of great art): “They were faces 

you never expected to see except perhaps on the airbrushed pages of a fashion magazine. 

Or painted by an old master as the face of an angel.” Thus, both art and advertising are 

logically connected with that which is inhuman, and, for art at least, the further 

connection is to immortality. Great works of art – and beautiful vampires– are forever. 

Throughout the series, Bella will refer to Edward’s angel face and often compare him to a 

marble statue, a “carving of Adonis”
 
(299), not only for his beauty but for the cold skin of 

a vampire. As the series evolves, Bella will long again and again for the beauty and 

gracefulness of the Cullens, and as she approaches the need to be transformed into a 

vampire, these aspects will be part of her motivation. 

In the interim, during the developing romance between Edward and Bella, what is 

disturbing is how frequently Bella puts herself down in comparison to Edward. It is as if 

in the face of his ideal beauty, she cannot see any worth in herself. In Twilight, as she 

contemplates whether Edward might like her, Bella thinks, “Of course he wasn’t 

interested in me .…I wasn’t interesting. And he was. Interesting … and brilliant … and 

mysterious…and perfect…and beautiful ….”
 
(79). Bella does not consider that she is 

pretty or charming, even as other boys in her high school ask her out and she turns them 



Of Virgins and Vampires  82 

down. It is Edward who informs her that on her first day of school, “every human male” 

was thinking of how attractive she was (210), and even then she does not believe it. 

Edward’s beauty is all the more otherworldly when he dispels the myth of vampires and 

sunlight for Bella, revealing a diamond-like sparkling of his skin in the light of a 

protected meadow. If Bella thought Edward was dazzling before, well… Even while 

Bella feels clumsy at prom in a cast, frilly chiffon dress, and curled hairstyle (“like 

Guinea Pig Barbie”), she marvels at Edward’s smile: “Would I ever get used to his 

perfection?”
 
(481). 

For brevity’s sake, we can skip over the moody whining of the break-up book, New 

Moon (where Bella’s self-esteem is perhaps at its lowest), and the action-packed reunion 

of Eclipse and turn to the last book, Breaking Dawn, to note Bella’s pleasure at her 

physical transformation once she has been made a vampire. For the first time, Bella feels 

beautiful in Edward’s presence. At their wedding, the still-human Bella, who never notes 

her human prettiness on her own, is surprised when her husband Edward points to a 

mirror: “I caught a glimpse of Edward’s reflection – a perfect duplicate of his perfect face 

– with a dark-haired beauty at his side. Her skin was cream and roses, her eyes were huge 

with excitement and framed with thick lashes. […] [H]er body looked elegant and 

graceful – while it was motionless, at least.”
3
 To her, this is a fantasy, and she even hopes 

not to “blink and make the beauty turn back into me,” an ironic disassociation from her 

own name, Bella. It is through both her union with Edward (“at his side”) and the 

makeover that she was given by his vampire sister, a prefiguring of the more radical 

makeover of being turned into a vampire, that she attains a level of satisfaction with her 

appearance.  

Bella’s strong desire is to be with Edward forever, which means becoming a vampire, 

undertaking a three-day process of being inflicted with fiery vampire venom until her 

heart stops (I am not making this up). After the painful transformation, and the even more 

painful literary pronouncement “I was a newborn vampire”
 
(392), Bella first recognizes 

her new inhuman beauty in her voice, which now sounds like bells or song”
 
(394). When 

she sees herself for the first time, she puts herself on par with the Cullens, whom she had 

seen as so unattainably beautiful on her first day in Forks. Bella looks in the mirror, and 

“[her] first reaction was an unthinking pleasure. The alien creature in the glass was 

indisputably beautiful, every bit as beautiful as Alice or Esme. She was fluid even in 

stillness, and her flawless face was pale as the moon against the frame of her dark, heavy 

hair. Her limbs were smooth and strong, skin glistening subtly, luminous as a pearl”
 

(403). Why the skin that was unremarkable as pale ivory at the beginning of the series is 

only lovely now as pearl is not clear; the ideal of beauty is left to the reader and is 

colored only by Bella’s own critiques or satisfactions. If at first Bella judged herself 

within her physical context, now her self-assessment depends upon the company she 

keeps. This first glance in the mirror, like that early reflection on the day of her wedding, 

reveals a disconnect between image and self. “Who was she?” Bella asks herself, for “at 



83  Dolan 

 

first glance, I couldn’t find my face anywhere in the smooth, perfect planes of her 

features,” markedly keeping the first person pronoun for her thoughts and the third person 

for this gorgeous reflection. 

Her new looks distract Bella from the problems of her transition, such as controlling 

her new bloodthirstiness and a connecting to her human emotion. Motivated by looks and 

love, she dismisses any downside, such as not being able to maintain her family 

relationships (since she will remain eternally a teenager in appearance while her parents 

age), having red or amber eyes when thirsty (depending on whether she feeds on human 

or animal blood), never sleeping, subsisting on blood, and – a small item – not having a 

soul.  

These difficulties had earlier moved Edward to suck out the venom when Bella was 

bitten by another vampire in Twilight, preventing Bella from being transformed (the 

implicit sexual metaphor of being bitten extends throughout the series as Edward, who 

was born in 1901, is a remarkably chaste vampire who withholds not only this bite but 

the sexual relationship that Bella craves; Bella in turn makes it clear that she would be 

happiest if Edward would be the one to bite her, but that he is not the only one who 

could). When Bella asks Edward why he stopped the venom, he replies, “I refuse to damn 

you to an eternity of night and that’s the end of it.”
4
 His later clarifications focus mainly 

on human physical experiences. He wants Bella to be able to grow and to change, to be 

able to have children. He says, “It’s not right! I don’t want you to have to make sacrifices 

for me. I want to give you things, not take things away from you. I don’t want to steal 

your future,”
5
 making a distinction between future and eternity. Future to Edward has 

developmental possibility, while eternity is indicative of stasis.  

At this point, Edward distinguishes immortality (such as of the soul) from eternal 

existence (Edward resists using the word life), although by book four, Bella will use 

immortality to stand for eternal physical existence, more in the character of mythic deities 

than of the soul. For one thing, even though they are not alive, vampires can be “killed” 

by being ripped to pieces (possible only for other vampires and werewolves to do since 

Meyer’s vampires are as hard as marble) and then burned to ash. For another, Edward 

fears that he does not have a soul. When Bella asks Edward if he finds her attractive 

halfway through book one, his answer reveals the simplicity with which Meyer treats the 

question of being alive: “I may not be human, but I am a man.”
6
 This is a neat bit of 

semantics; how Edward can be a man and not be human is unclear. That Meyer allows 

Edward to have both rational thought and emotion (as alluded to here, lust) but still 

defines him as not human calls into question St. Augustine’s definition of the soul, which 

in this text marks an intermediary ground in his philosophical development. It would 

seem as if the distinction between man and human for Meyer – and Edward – hinges on 

the question of the soul. 

Yet, if as St. Augustine writes, “For whatever dead thing is said to be abandoned by 

life, is understood to be deserted by the soul. Moreover, this life which deserts the things 



Of Virgins and Vampires  84 

which die is itself the mind, and it does not abandon itself; hence the mind does not die,”
7
 

then we must consider the continuity of the mind for Edward and Bella. In Twilight, 

Edward is puzzled by what he deems human hungers, meaning desire, for he is 

accustomed only to thirst for blood, yet he says, “I have human instincts – they may be 

buried deep, but they’re there.”
8
 Telling Bella his life story, Edward clarifies that though 

human memories fade, he can “remember how it felt”
 
(287) to be saved. Saved, with its 

evangelical overtones, is used as a synonym for transformed, and later, Edward tells 

Bella, “you’re resurrecting the human in me”
 
(304, emphasis mine) of her ability to make 

him feel jealous of other boys. If Edward is correct and he has retained his human 

instincts and feelings in his transition from being human to becoming a vampire, then 

does he not exist as alive? If he has a mind with which to think, and this mind recalls that 

which was there in the human form, then can it be said that mind has abandoned body in 

the transformation? And if not, if mind indicates life, then does he not have a soul? 

Meyer seems to build a case for this in one of her subthemes. Each vampire in 

Edward’s family has a special quality that defines him or her, and for some these become 

talents. Edward explains, “Carlisle has a theory…he believes that we all bring something 

of our strongest human traits with us into the next life, where they are intensified – like 

our minds, and our senses”
 
(307). It is Carlisle, the oldest of the vampires in this family 

and thus the father figure, who has the most to say on religious faith. His struggle with 

the faith of his clergyman father defined the conscience he brought to his vampire 

existence: “But never, in the nearly four hundred years now since I was born, have I ever 

seen anything to make me doubt whether God exists in some form or the other.”
9
 It is the 

existence of God that gives life meaning for Carlisle, although he admits of vampires, 

“By all accounts we’re damned regardless. But I hope, maybe foolishly, that we’ll get 

some measure of credit for trying”
 
(36–37). Thus, being a vegetarian vampire (and 

doctor!) count as forms of good deeds, which when allied with faith may allow for 

salvation.  

Edward accepts the existence of God, as in his explanation of where vampires come 

from when he first speaks of evolution, then pronounces, “Or, if you don’t believe that all 

this world could have just happened on its own, which is hard for me to accept myself, is 

it so hard to believe that the same force that created the delicate angelfish with the shark, 

the baby seal and the killer whale, could create both our minds together?”
10

 Although he 

is not sure how to clarify the beginning of his existence as a vampire, waffling between 

born and created
 
(342) because of the need of another being to effect the unnatural 

change, Edward recognizes a greater force at work in the world, one with whom he must 

connect in some way. In part, this connection comes through his first existence, but 

otherwise it comes through his mind, specifically through his conscience. He reflects on 

his need to stop drinking human blood, “I thought I would be exempt from 

the…depression…that accompanies a conscience…. But as time went on, I began to see 

the monster in my eyes”
 
(342–43). Surely if he has a conscience, must he not have a soul? 



85  Dolan 

 

It is Carlisle who explains to Bella in New Moon that Edward’s belief, while it extends to 

God, heaven, and hell, does not allow for an afterlife for vampires: “You see, he thinks 

we’ve lost our souls.”
11

 This fear will not allow Edward to change Bella, for he cannot 

allow her to risk her soul for him. Carlisle makes this clear to Bella when he pointedly 

asks, “If you believed as he did. [sic] Could you take away his soul?” 

The possibility of losing her soul does not seem to concern Bella. Of more pressing 

concern is a teenage girl’s fixation on looks, and the second novel opens with Bella’s 

nightmare of being an old woman while Edward has remained frozen as a seventeen-

year-old. She wakes on the morning of her eighteenth birthday to examine her face in the 

mirror, searching for wrinkles. After reassurances that being one year older than Edward 

is no big deal, she automatically thinks of her desire to become a vampire because of its 

physical benefit: “[I]f I could be sure of the future I wanted, sure that I would spend 

forever with Edward, and Alice, and the rest of the Cullens (preferably not as a wrinkled 

old lady)…then a year or two one direction or the other wouldn’t matter to me so much. 

But Edward was dead set against any future that changed me”
 
(10). For Bella, the 

material benefits of the change are what matters, and she dismisses any discussion of 

greater consequence – or more disturbingly, never engages any discussion at that level of 

thought. “What was so great about mortality?” she wonders, focusing again on the 

physical rather than spiritual level. “Being a vampire didn’t look like such a terrible 

thing”
 
(emphasis mine). Perhaps it would be a hard conversation for Bella to enter, as she 

notes, “My own life was fairly devoid of belief”
 
(36) – an interesting comment from a girl 

who accepts wholeheartedly the possibility of vampires because of internet research she 

does one afternoon. Bella does not debate whether Edward has a soul so much as 

discount its importance when compared to the power of love. Faced with a break up in 

New Moon, Bella cries, “This is about my soul, isn’t it? …I don’t care! You can have my 

soul. I don’t want it without you – it’s yours already!”
 
(69). Love is the proof and purpose 

of existence, and Meyer uses Bella’s powerful love as her special vampire trait: her love 

becomes a protective shield she can extend. 

The novels end with a happy satisfaction at the endless time for love that stretches 

before them (the point has been made in the last novel that coupled vampires have quite 

active nights): “Forever and forever and forever.”
12

 Instead of fearing that there is no 

afterlife for vampires because they have no souls, Edward and Bella, having escaped 

destruction at the hands of the nefarious Italian Volturi coven, rejoice in the immortality 

of their physical life and love, even as it seems illogical to trust in this physical existence 

if what they are celebrating is the fact that they were not destroyed. Meyer’s surface-level 

treatment of this is clear in an interview in which she discusses whether one of the 

werewolves is immortal: “Jacob can continue to be the same age as he is now as long as 

he keeps turning into a werewolf every now and then, which is really not that hard for 

him. So luckily for [him and Renesmee], they’re both set up for immortality, which is 

nice.”
13

 Immortality: that’s nice. 



Of Virgins and Vampires  86 

Am I expecting too much of a teenage vampire romance? Most likely. Yet I am more 

disconcerted by Bella as a heroine. She has to trade her human life for the things she 

wants the most, love and beauty, and to her it seems like an obvious and easy choice. For 

Bella, love is stronger than improbability and danger: “About three things I was positive. 

First, Edward was a vampire. Second, there was a part of him – and I didn’t know how 

potent that part might be – that thirsted for my blood. And third, I was unconditionally 

and irrevocably in love with him.”
14

 The message that young women readers receive is 

that romantic love is the most powerful force and deciding factor of existence. Love 

overrides any difficulty; love is more durable – and desirable – than the soul itself.  

 

Notes 

 

1. St. Augustine. “Mind is Life, and Thus It Cannot Lack Life,” in On the Immortality of the 

Soul. Trans. George G. Leckie (New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1938). Creighton 

University, 2009. Accessed June 21, 2010, http://puffin.creighton.edu/phil/Stephens/ 

Augustine/On%20the%20Immortality%20of%20the%20Soul.htm 

2. Stephenie Meyer, Twilight (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2005), 10. 

3. Stephenie Meyer, Breaking Dawn (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2008), 57. 

4. Meyer, Twilight, 476. 

5. Meyer, Breaking Dawn, 28. 

6. Meyer, Twilight, 311. 

7. St. Augustine, “Mind is Life.” 

8. Meyer, Twilight, 278. 

9. Meyer, New Moon (New York: Little, Brown and Company 2006), 36. 

10. Meyer, Twilight, 308. 

11. Meyer, New Moon, 37. 

12. Meyer, Breaking Dawn, 754. 

13. Tami Heide, Interview with Stephenie Meyer (Royce Hall, University of California, Los 

Angeles, August 7, 2008) in Stephenie Meyer, Breaking Dawn (New York: Little, Brown 

and Company, 2008). 

14. Meyer, Twilight, 195. 


