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bellaswan, bookreview, bookreviewer, booktube, edwardcullen, equality, Feminism, feminist, galehawthorne, girlpower, hungergames, katnisseverdeen, peetamellark, Twilight
Compare the opening scenes of the movie Twilight and the movie Hunger Games, and it seems like one was acknowledging the other. Bella dreams of how she will die, pictures a deer, clearly herself, which is being hunted by a larger animal. The deer meets an untimely death, as she acknowledges that she would like to die in the place of a loved one. She wakes up, this was more than a dream, it was a bizarre fantasy. The Hunger Games, after a long title scrawl, sees Katniss hold her loved one close, and then act out the part of the hunter, but fail to catch a deer, stopped by one of the men in her life.
Katniss, in her movie has the singular expression, lack of social grace, brown hair and pale skin that hint at another young adult heroine. On reading the books, we realize that she keeps most of her feelings to herself, but this cannot be surmised from watching the movie. Katniss, however, is much cooler than Bella; she has discernable, useful talents with a bow and arrow, is never completely outdone by the men around her (at least in the first movie and book) and we see her providing for her family. Bella Swan is seen as intelligent, but this isn’t ever proven. She surmises that Edward is a vampire, but her reaction is one of lust rather than fear, which seems a more intelligent reaction. However, isn’t Bella Swan sacrificing for her family by moving to an unfriendly, new town, with a father who clearly neglects her? We may think Katniss is responsible for starting a revolution- which she is- and for overthrowing an empire- which she had sort of a minor hand in, but her pivotal moments are all neutered by the fact that she has no control over her actions. They are all being decided by other people, and she is a victim of puppetry. As she struggles with her helplessness and her powerlessness in this bleak world, her act of accepting her fate in some instances is as strong as her insistence on using her powerlessness to manipulate the viewing public. Her manipulation of Peeta, too, is an assertion of power, not merely an act of survival. She is using what the public assumes will happen- two stupid young lovers die for one another- to her advantage. She is using their warped sense of reality to keep herself- and as many other people as she can- alive.
However, this desperation is often played out in reality in the Twilight novels, stakes considerably lowered, with Bella putting herself in danger simply to “see” Edward. Bella would rather have love than survival, she would rather fuel her emotions in brief moments of lust and passion than live without her all-consuming love. For Katniss, in an arena where her survival is constantly threatened, and love easy, she chooses survival. She has essentially been placed in a world where survival is a believable character motivation. Bella is in a world where her love is likely to kill her but her survival can be assured by leaving the boy/old man she loves. She chooses love, and constantly faces the consequences of her choice. How important can romantic attachment really be when your survival is threatened at every step? This question seems to be asked in both books, and answered in different ways.
Both girls are protagonists of their own novel series, with Bella attempting to attain her love and happiness- and immortality, while Katniss attempts to deny and reject love as long as her world is threatened by the outward evil that has seeped into everyone’s daily life in Panem. Katniss’ choice of detaining the men in her life is a political move. She has lost her home and wants to destroy the people responsible. Bella’s act of chasing down love is personal- she will let the world crumble, and shift and rent but she will not give up the man she loves. She simultaneously desires immortality, and as we have seen, Bella has a habit of going after what she wants and getting it. Despite her demure behavior and off putting awkwardness, she aggressively follows her heart, and when she loses, feels like a part of her has died. While she is actively pursuing men, which seems a good trait, she is also the object of much unwanted male attention, most of which she is unable to fend off. She nearly gets raped early on in the series, and this is never mentioned again; as though being saved from it by a man you love can erase the horror of being there at all. In fact Bella frequently needs to be saved- from men, other vampires, even her own poor choices, apparently. Her movements are tracked and restricted, she is constantly told what to eat and she continually attempts to argue against this behavior, but even the narrative seems to assume that she is being hysterical, or that this behavior is acceptable because it is from someone who loves you.
In the second book, it becomes obvious- Bella enjoys being coddled, and fussed over. She is melodramatic and childish. Her codependency knows no bounds. On the other hand, Katniss is the breadwinner of her small family. her strength is nothing to be scoffed at, her power, nothing to be denied. Katniss is in many ways the anti Bella- she is strong where Bella is weak, chooses to overthrow a nation when Bella chooses to marry a vampire out of high school, provides for and protects her family- and she nearly breaks with the strain.
Bella is selfish. She chooses Edward when she knows that people will get hurt. Some of those are people she cares about. She chooses Edward when she knows he will also be in pain resisting the temptation to kill her, guilt ridden because he wants to kill her at all, but she chooses him because she knows she will be happy. She chooses him over Jacob but leads the latter on because she knows it will add to her happiness. When she mopes, it seems to be because she has lost control of the man she loved, and again acts in a way to hurt him, because it satisfies her. However, this hedonistic attitude leads to exactly what she wants- immortality. The narrative rewards her indifference to anyone else except herself. She wants to die in the place of someone she loves, she says, but again, this is still what she wants. In that, it is still a selfish desire.
She chooses to give up living, but Katniss doesn’t even have that choice. She nearly dies because the Capitol wants her dead, she lives because the rebellion wants her alive, and in the end, when she attempts suicide, this is taken from her on grounds of insanity. Bella has given herself to love, Katniss to her political cause, and neither find themselves again, either whole or in part. Before having an immortal life, Bella births a demon-like child that grows at an alarming rate and nearly kills her during labor. Katniss births a rebellion she wants no part of and which kills the one thing she only ever cared about- her sister. Just like we are very aware of what Bella wants, we are very aware of what Katniss doesn’t want. Bella goes after what she wants, but Katniss unsuccessfully avoids what she doesn’t.
Katniss is a character who is far more complex than the simplistic Bella. We know she doesn’t want glory, or the rebellion, despite knowing what the capitol did to her home. We know she is afraid of the direct effect on the innocent Primrose and her mother, but she at the same time decides to break away from the rebellion and kill the President herself. This is her known second choice in the entire three books, which ends badly for her. She intends to end the war before it properly starts, avert many deaths, but in return is affected by the only death that matters to her; her second active choice negates her first.
As she has been a pawn of the rebellion, it has not meant anything to her. She actively disobeys Coin, their plan and goes on her own revenge mission. The rebellion has not meant anything to her. This is why when Primrose dies, we don’t feel a progression. Katniss has not changed from the girl who hugged her sister to the revolutionary who dares to overthrow a corrupt leader. Unfortunately, she still wants nothing to do with the rebellion. A novel about Katniss without Primrose seems pointless, and denies the reader any kind of closure on her journey; she is clearly broken for good, beyond repair. The Katniss that we knew was gone, and the one that we know now is no longer the same. Her driving motivation- protection of her loved ones, is destroyed, but not in a compelling way- it is an act of pointless violence, one that makes every act of violence before it more powerful, and every act of Katniss’ compliance to the Capital hollow.
Both female protagonists have two male love interests. Bella’s male love interests are the vampire Edward and the werewolf Jacob. Both loves interests exhibit signs of sociopathy, but that is a matter for another day. One promises her devotion and her normal humanity, the other promises love, passion and immortality. Bella is aware of her choice, and her supposed greater love for Edward, but also actively chooses the latter. She knows that she will lose her best friend, but believes that it is worth it. At the very least, Bella knows what she wants, and is not afraid to go after it. Bella doesn’t want normal. She wants extraordinary. She enjoys a life that’s extraordinary, whether it’s choosing to be with her dad in an alien place even though that’s not what normal people do, dreaming of an extraordinary death, choosing to date Edward etc. If Jacob had known how much Bella craves what is not normal, he might have offered her something other than exactly that. Worse, he offers to make the supernatural fit the mundane, everyday human life. It is unsurprising, then, that she chooses to transcend her human self, and her human life, with Edward. She chooses a life beyond normal, though Katniss craves exactly that.
Katniss’ two love interests are the boy who takes life and the boy who saves and nurtures lives. Like every other choice made by Katniss, this, too, is a political, and well thought out choice. She is calculating, and cold in her perception. She chooses the boy who is definitely not responsible for killing her little sister, but she also chooses the boy who does not enjoy the violence that saved the Capitol. She understands that violence did not save the Capitol, that it has just given way to more unrest. Peeta was vicitimized by the Capitol, both to the same extent as Katniss and more, but he also survived the bigger test. He never turned in to them. Gale did. He saw nothing of making bombs and dropping it on the Capitol, whether it was Capitol civilians, women or children. He saw it as a necessary means to an end. Peeta, on the other hand, portrayed his own cunning, his own great love and his inherent likability to save the day. He was tortured by the Capital to carry out the inverse of this – making propaganda videos against Katniss – but after recovering from being literally brainwashed, returned to being Katniss’ emotional core. Peeta is human, he suffers human foibles, fails to protect his love and actively kills people.
Edward has killed people, “protects” his love to the point of her co – dependency and seems flawless. Neither one is particularly ideal. Katniss notes that Gale is like her, and Peeta is her opposite. She chooses the boy who would nurture her, not destroy her. Bella chooses the opposite, but Katniss’ choice seems to be out of her hands the moment Prim dies and she has nothing left. Katniss cannot choose Gale. That would have taken away from the one defining trait we know about her. She cannot be Katniss Everdeen without caring for Prim. Bella’s choice is, at least, still hers. She even has a vampire voting meet to show how serious she is about it. At every stage she insists, “It’s always him.”
Katniss thankfully, has experienced more conflict of the heart, but again, with not satisfying pay off. As the breadwinner, the hunter, the surrogate parent, she is taking on roles that are conventionally masculine. So far, so good. However, her character seems to be viewed as feminist also largely because she does not act like a teenage girl. The society has a hatred, a constant revulsion, against teenaged girls and everything they stand for. Their music, their exploration of their feelings, their love for dolling up and so on. Why should any girl have to be masculine in order to be seen as strong? or a breadwinner? or a hunter? Katniss may not have the money to enjoy her appearance, but why is she so markedly different from “other teenaged girls”?
If Katniss is the opposite, the rejection of girlhood and femininity, Bella is the shadow. She is an amalgam of every cardboard cut- out reason that society hates teenaged girls. With Bella, intelligent means only as far on paper, emotional is weak, disliking makeup is good, not taking pride in your beauty is good, social awkwardness is laudable. What does it mean for feminism? Katniss and Bella both are, again, similar in character, as you have no doubt noticed. Both fail in social settings, both are attractive, both downplay their femininity. There is something powerful in that similarity, though, again, our sympathies are with Katniss, not Bella. Doesn’t she have more important things on her mind? Why doesn’t Bella have goals outside of Edward? However, Katniss, too, does not have much on her mind; survival, mostly, and a surprisingly large amount of “which boy?”. Katniss doesn’t have likes of her own.
However, Katniss’ being an active force in her novel, while Bella Swan is a passive force can be contested on many grounds. Katniss chooses once, and then once more to kill for Rue, and then, arguably, once more. Each and every choice is either tainted or taken away from her. If the counter argument is that often in a teenaged girl’s life she is controlled by adults around her and often people are pawns, then the fact remains that Katniss is not an active force as people like to think. In this reading, her passivity is a strategic choice by the author, but again, we see that Bella is much the same. Bella may lie around for most of the novel series, but she chooses Edward, and then she does so several more times.
Bella chooses to keep her child. The pro – life message is thought questionable and dangerous, which, of course it is, but it remains her choice. As far as feminism goes, this is fine. As far as feminism goes, oddly, Katniss is in murky waters. Yes, a choice made before being ripped from her is a choice made. Therefore, we have to give Katniss’ extraordinary strength and bravery its due. However, why would the author have Katniss make choices, only to have her not carry them through, but have the outside world intervene and rip those choices away from her? It makes her passive, even when she clearly doesn’t want to be. The opposite is true for Bella.
One chooses to be prey and one chooses to be predator. What defines which choice is more powerful? What defines which choice is empowered? Whether we like Katniss more is irrelevant. Katniss may blow every gender expectation to smithereens, but she herself has no desires. Eros, human desire, was sprung from nothing, say the Greeks, as old as time. We have always wanted. You can’t have a story till someone wants something, says every writing book. What does Katniss want that makes her who she is? What does Katniss WANT? She is complicated, but the truth is, Katniss doesn’t have the luxury of want. Is that possible? Wouldn’t she want a better life so she can want something of her own? Katniss, the predator, has no pay off. None of her actions, ultimately, matter.
Conversely, Bella, the submissive prey, chooses a man. A far less ambitious and memorable choice than Katniss’s nobility and sacrifice. However, her choice remains intact. The problem here is Bella is no longer Bella when she gets her want. She is an immortal vampire. She loses her identity to gain what she wants, gives it up for a man’s identity. Katniss doesn’t get what she wants, but no longer is the Mockingjay everyone made her out to be. She is Katniss of District 12, again. She chooses herself, and, as I said, wants little. Her desire to kill Snow, too, is gone by the end of the book. This is a very clear choice, with very clear logic. She has not gone insane, and she meant to kill Coin, surely. For who, now is responsible for hurting those she loves? (The one defining trait of her character). Why, Coin. She dropped the bombs that killed Prim. Katniss is driven by love as much as Bella. Katniss’s love is more realistic and more…well, just better it seems. That choice is covered up with a false cry of insanity, but, I think it sort of stands, albeit on shaky grounds.
The one central big choice of the passive Bella is also the one choice of the active Katniss that is not reversed in some way. Katniss chooses Peeta over Gale. Bella chooses Edward over Jacob. That stays for the rest of the books. Could we say that deep down, both girls have different characterization, but the same character? Or similar ones? Katniss’s choice has her living an unremarkable life, the normal life she has always craved. She has children and tries to heal. Bella has children, and lives the fantastical life of a vampire.
Katniss being a far more complex character than Bella makes us like her far more. Through a feminist lens, Katniss takes on every conventionally male role. She destroys age – old cliches. Bella reinforces them. She makes you think that girls are pathetic, pretty and weak. They have to spoken to like children, treated with kid gloves, controlled. She takes every conventionally female role and plays it according to the patriarchal expectations of that role. However, under the surface there is a lot more that these two girls have in common. Did not Katniss realize Bella’s dream when she took Prim’s place in the Hunger Games? Wasn’t she agreeing to die in the place of her loved one? Prim was “the only person (Katniss) was sure (she) loved”. Didn’t Bella decide to die, to take the place of her mother? Did not Bella realize Katniss’s predatory instincts when she becomes a vampire and preys on an actual deer? True character, Robert McKee says in Story, is choice under pressure. And these two girls made the same one.