There are other female characters in the story. Alice can see enough to dance circles around the average opponent. Rosalie runs around doing things. Esme’s kind of ineffectual, but then, her husband isn’t made out to be great shakes in a fight either. Victoria spends two books as the main antagonist. Jane is scary as hell. And—I repeat—the minute Bella is not fragile, there is no more of the objectionable attitude.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that the Edward/Bella dynamic wasn’t written to appeal to patriarchal tendencies, and just arose naturally from the plot. I’m completely unequipped to argue about whether or not this was the case. But I’m pretty confident the reason people who haven’t read the book think it sounds anti-feminist is that we assume that Stephenie Meyer started with the Edward-Bella relationship and built the characters and the world around it.
There are other female characters in the story. Alice can see enough to dance circles around the average opponent. Rosalie runs around doing things. Esme’s kind of ineffectual, but then, her husband isn’t made out to be great shakes in a fight either. Victoria spends two books as the main antagonist. Jane is scary as hell. And—I repeat—the minute Bella is not fragile, there is no more of the objectionable attitude.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that the Edward/Bella dynamic wasn’t written to appeal to patriarchal tendencies, and just arose naturally from the plot. I’m completely unequipped to argue about whether or not this was the case. But I’m pretty confident the reason people who haven’t read the book think it sounds anti-feminist is that we assume that Stephenie Meyer started with the Edward-Bella relationship and built the characters and the world around it.