Twilight Empowers Women to Suffer in Silence

An interesting aspect of the series, that has sparked quite a lot of commentary and "lively" debate, both offline and on, weaves speculation about the author's faith tradition and cultural context as factors in the Gender Issues Question.

If Edward's somewhat proprietary attitude can be chalked up to his vampirehood, being stuck in his own c 1918 cultural context, an attempt, conscious or un, on the part of the author to insert or feed into that whole thing of women being relieved of responsibility for being sexual beings ("forced kissing," etc)

yeah, it’spretty much textual fanservice for teenage fangirls.
Durandal (forum.starmen.net)

or just being a Teenager in Love, once Bella goes against Edward and aligns with Rosalie to save her unborn baby, because the root of Rosalie's angst is that she can never have one, we have clearly crossed over into another dimension, where the one thing all women desire even more than they desire a man who will love them forever and all eternity is to be a mother, and not just to be a mother, but to become one through the process of reproduction, with adoption being relegated to an OK but unsatisfying substitute, kind of like animal blood or tofurkey.

does that mean women like to be held down and feasted upon as they slowly die? That seems kinda creepy to me if that’s the case
grimp (forum.starmen.net)

The goal is not only to suffer, but to hide that suffering from those who love them.

Hiding the dual-whammy pain of both giving birth to a super-sized, super-human Renesmee and the notoriously excruciating human-to-vampire transformation, an agony so major that Meyer devotes about twenty pages to describing it, Bella exhibits a superhuman self-control, presumably born of her love for Edward, her new family and her desire to shield them from her suffering, she "slips up" only once, unable to suppress a scream when the emerging baby breaks her spine.

Ooohh - and guess what! Bella's xtra-special vampire power turns out to be shielding people.

My xtra-special non-vampire powers tell me that I will have more to say on this subject.