Exploring Gender in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight (2005) through the Lens of Elementary Structures of Kinship (1949)

Abstract

This article examines gender roles and relations in the young adult novel Twilight (2005) by Stephenie Meyer, utilizing the structuralist anthropological theory of the exchange of women as the basis of kinship introduced by Claude Lévi-Strauss in 1949. This theory with regards to its implications about gender is first analyzed through a feminist perspective and then applied to Twilight, focusing primarily on the protagonist and her love interest. Finding that what is presented in the novel in terms of gender is almost analogous to the Lévi-Strauss’s ideas, this article argues that Meyer perpetuates archaic hetero-patriarchal gender relations in her work. This conclusion is given weight by framing it through Judith Butler’s theory about the repetitive nature of gender performance.