In Twilight, why is Bella so dependent on having Edward with her?
Because one, it’s a romance novel which just happens to have a sprinkling of the supernatural with vampires and werewolves as characters. Two, Bella’s relationships and interactions with the people around her from her family to her significant others, and even schoolmates, have impacted her Negative, even though there have definitely been some positive points.
Bella and Edward- and Jacob- are not built as heroes, despite their capabilities. They have no primary goals other than being with the ones they love, or keeping them safe. They have got morals, but Bella and Edward- especially Edward who is far too judgmental and opinionated, to the point where he tends to judge people instantly on what they think on the surface, even though he’s not really any better- don’t have aims. They don’t think about a greater good. It’s just plain survival and each other. That’s the only thing that matters to them. They think ‘this is wrong’ and ‘this is right’, but not ‘it would be wrong not to do anything’ or ‘we should do something to save them !’ And by them, I mean someone else. Someone not connected to them. Although- and this is noticeable in Breaking Dawn- a lot of people come to Edward and Bella’s aid, I have to be frank here, after reading four doors- stopping novels, I’m not sure if either Bella and Edward would do the same thing: risking their lives to stand against and fight the Volturi if it were another, unrelated family.
But we can’t judge too harshly. There has to be reason for this. I know introverts, being one myself, but Bella has an extreme case. Even I try not to be as unfriendly as she’s been, and not to judge too quickly and harshly.
Bella, as it’s been mentioned, is incredibly clumsy. And not only is she clumsy, she appears to have personality disorders, same as Edward. Jacob’s mental state also deteriorates in Breaking Dawn, going through his POV. I’ve looked into their background and past, and I’ve read a bit about their gender-bent characters in Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined, and I saw that Beau Swan had been bullied, but he started taking martial arts, grew buff and stopped. Although it’s never specifically stated for her, Bella is instantly suspicious of anyone and everyone, especially if they become quite friendly, upon her very first arrival in Forks High School- and unlike Beau, she’s done no martial arts training to boost her confidence, scare off bullies- or improve her coordination, as it’s known to do.
Her immediately jumping to suspicion and mistrust, if not outright harsh judgments, lead her to believe the worst of almost everyone around her, which just reinforces my belief that she has been bullied and treated as an outcast prior coming to Forks. And as someone who has been bullied herself, I don’t like to remember or acknowledge it, and for the longest time I didn’t. But even though her interactions with Lauren, for example, are rather minimal, and even Eric Yorkie for one, appears rather genuinely friendly, she immediately thinks the harshest thing possible to think of or assume from the very first time she ever sets eyes on them. Bella’s first immediate belief- and she reinforces this, without hardly ever giving anyone the chance to prove otherwise- is that anyone friendly is immediately either an idiot, a pervert, or has some malicious intent. In no time or place does she think that anyone who comes up and says ‘hi’ might actually be friendly for a good reason. Almost everyone who tries to go out of their way to make her feel welcome or befriend her (and some of them might have some hidden motive, but all of them?), is seen very negatively by her.
Bella prefers to invisible stay; not only that she is wary of and overwhelmed by extroverts and people who are drawn to them. She is consciously- and constantly- aware of the attractiveness of others, especially vampires whom we don’t have to read to be told that she wants to become one, regardless of Edward and what he actually feels. And Bella never grows comfortable nor accepts it being the way it is, not even to the smallest degree- until she a vampire herself. It’s one thing for a protagonist to feel low self-esteem. But if we compare it to another protagonist, Clary Fairchild of the Mortal Instruments series, you can see there’s a sharp contrast from book one of their narration, and book three or four.
