I’m not sure that we should be trumpeting that “accomplishment”—creating a work that annoys people isn’t nearly as important as creating a work that is popular, although the two do tend to go hand in hand to a degree. If your book is popular, then its more likely that a few people will think that others need to be protected from your book.

Mormon culture has a tenuous relationship with the concept of censorship and restrictions on books. Almost from the beginning our General Authorities and other leaders have urged us to use caution when choosing what we read and the other entertainment we consume. The issues about what literature is “appropriate” have been the subject of many, many discussions, especially online, in which one side claims some book should not be read, and the other side claims that it should. And books have (so far) been spared the fate of film, which some parts of Mormon Culture have decided must be edited to make it acceptable. The issues are complicated, and I don’t want to re-hash them here or lead anyone to assume that I am overly permissive with what I read. Lets not go there.

What we have to remember is that banned books is NOT about whether or not to read trash. It IS about who gets to tell you what you can read and what you can not. Its one thing to follow the counsel not to see R-rated films, and another to say that others should not be able to see such a film or that the film should not be made. Its one thing to tell your children they can’t read Harry Potter, and another to insist that it not be available in the school library.

Our own LDS culture seems to have a tendency to try to control reading this way. The major LDS bookstore chains limit what they carry to what is “appropriate” (that annoyingly undefined, “I know it when I read it” rule that seems almost universal), and while I certainly think they have a right to restrict what they sell, I have to wonder how much of the motivation is about business and how much is about the kind of enforcement that borders on unrighteous dominion. Fortunately, there are alternatives for distribution, so the impact of these restrictions is significantly mitigated.

Likely, some Mormon parents are among those who call for books to be removed from libraries, schools, etc. I assume they see an evil and feel compelled to act. And I admit that I likely have my limits also. I’m fairly sure I would object to a high school library having a subscription to Playboy. There do have to be limits. But it seems to me that how a community sets those limits is a very important issue. Surely we can find a better way to make decisions than how many parents or customers complain or even what a librarian or bookstore employee understands about a book.

We are fortunate to live at a time when the amount of information about books is increasing, which makes individual choice easier (although the rapidly increasing number of books published means lesser known works don’t have as much information). In today’s environment are stricter limits as necessary as they may have been? Isn’t the better option to put the book on the shelf (virtual or otherwise) and make available as much information about the book as is practical?

I certainly don’t have a clear answer to what limits should be placed and when, but my preference is to err on the side of making things available, with good information for parents and readers to make choices. More than ever we must remember that books also represent our point of view—one that could be seen as something to be protected from. If Harry Potter is challenged, how easy is it to use the same logic to challenge Stephenie Meyers’ Twilight books (which made the top 10 in 2009 and 2010) or The Book of Mormon?

[Likely some in the AMV community know far more about this than I do, and I welcome their corrections and comments.] For the handful who may not know, works of fan fiction are derivative works created by fans of an original work, be it a book, film, TV show, cartoon, game, play, music, etc. Modern fan fiction is said to have begun with the 1967 Star Trek fan magazine Spockanalia, but it is also acknowledged that derivative works based on the characters of an original work or using the same setting as the original work have existed for ages. The bible has been a source of many “fan” works — much of the non-canonized apochrypha might be very similar to fan fiction, I suppose. And more recent works, such as Lew Wallace’s Ben Hur (1880), fit the definition of biblical fan fiction quite well.

My first thought was to wonder about the Mormon connections with fan fiction. Are there many Mormons writing fan fiction? Are they writing about Mormon themes? Are Mormon characters appearing? Does fan fiction arise from Mormon works?

Historically, Mormon fiction has created derivative works that might be considered fan fiction in various ways. Some of the early stories published in LDS magazines, such as B. H. Roberts Corianton, are clearly derivative works from the Book of Mormon and no different from fan fiction. The tradition of writing derivative works on the Book of Mormon hasn’t really abated, as can be seen from more recent works, such as the Tennis Shoes Among the Nephites series.

Still, none of this is quite like the Modern fan fiction phenomenon. So I did some simple (and admittedly not thorough) searches on a few of the major, non-work specific fan fiction archives, fanfiction.net and archiveofourown.org, trying to find Mormon works. And I did find some works, although not nearly as many as I had hoped.

The works largely mirrored what you might find in more formally published books. Many of the works simply mentioned Mormons as part of the text, such as an off-hand mention in dialogue. Infrequently others actually included a Mormon character. A few original works, such as South Park and the Book of Mormon Musical (yes, there is already fan fiction based on the Book of Mormon Musical), actually included Mormonism in the original work, and those characters and elements also appear in their fan fiction.

More interesting are the handful of fan fiction works that incorporate mormons or mormonism even though the original work doesn’t (for example, the short short story based on the TV show NCIS that explores what happens when character Anthony DiNozzo answers the door to find LDS missionaries, or the story by an LDS author that explores what happens when the Harry Potter villain Voldemort converts to the LDS Church through a kind of mashup with the film The Singles Ward).

Fanfiction.net even has a couple of stories that are based on the Book of Mormon itself. Blik writes a story about Abish, set about 110 B.C., which tries to parallel the story of Joseph Smith. And Beatlefan110’s story The Daughter of Ishmael looks at what happens when a non-member girl wakes up in Nephi’s time as one of Ishmael’s daughters.

Reading fan fiction does need to be approached with some caution. It has the reputation of being largely pornographic, although fanfiction.net claims to have eliminated any “NC17″ material and most of the large archives have rating systems for identifying the maturity level required. Since I didn’t look much at the archives and sites oriented toward a particular work (such as the many Star Trek and Harry Potter sites), I don’t know how common these ratings are or how well the ratings represent what is in the fiction. I can say that alternative lifestyles are common in this fiction, even if the work doesn’t rise to the level of pornography or of explicit nature.

I’m not sure what the relative lack of works about Mormonism means — although it is hard to say that it is different from the more traditional publishing venues. In books I don’t get the sense that Mormon-related (or even mormon-mentioning) works make up a very large percentage of the fiction published. In such a cursory look as this I have to wonder if the relatively few works that mention Mormons and Mormonism have to do with the popularity of the subject, or (at least in the world of fan fiction) with the popularity of the original works on which fan fiction is based. Could it also be that Mormons simply don’t think it is “appropriate” to write fan fiction based on Mormonism, or at least on the most “popular” of Mormon works, the Book of Mormon?

Where stories may not be about Mormons or Mormonism in general, there is plenty of fan fiction based on the works of Mormon authors. Stephenie Meyers’ Twilight garners more than 20,000 works on fanfiction.net and an additional 643 on archiveofourown.org and Brandon Mull’s Fablehaven has 30 works. And Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game series yields some 310 works on fanfiction.net and 24 on archiveofourown.org.

Scott Card’s presence in these archives is very interesting, given the controversy that the Time magazine article discussed. While authors like Stephenie Meyer are encouraging of the efforts of fans to write fiction based on her characters and settings, Card sees such efforts as a violation of his copyright and a threat to his livelihood. Those who know Card’s works might see this as more than a little ironic, given that Card himself has written the Homecoming saga, which clearly derives its plot and characters from the Book of Mormon. I’m sure that Card will argue that he changed his characters sufficiently and placed them in such a different setting that what he wrote doesn’t qualify as fan fiction. If so, then I await further clarification from him, and, more importantly, from courts, as to exactly where the line is between fan fiction that violate the copyright law and permitted derivative works.

Matched

Dutton began with a 250,000 copy first printing and booksellers responded to the buzz around the novel. As a result the novel started at #2 on the ABA’s bestseller list (representing sales at independent bookstores). This morning it was ranked #223 on Amazon. The buzz has extended overseas, as foreign rights have been sold into 30 countries. Given that, it should come as no surprise that Disney has purchased an option for the film rights.

Sound familiar? The Wall Street Journal also noticed the parallel.

Unlike Meyer’s work, however, the subject matter of Matched boils down to a concept with philosophical heft, and one dear to Mormonism: freedom of choice. But it is also a dystopian novel, which, as far as I know, is unusual in Mormon literature (anyone know of other Mormon dystopian works? Is Meyer’s Twilight dystopian? Anything else?).

The novel, the first volume in a trilogy, is told from the perspective of a young girl nearing the age of marriage. She lives in a society in which nothing is left to chance–her food, work, and marriage are planned for her by “the Society,” the ruling religion in her world. Believing that the Society knows best, she accepts all this, until one day she is presented with evidence of the unthinkable: that the Society doesn’t know best.

I haven’t read Matched, but the descriptions have already enticed my 16-year-old daughter, so I’m sure it will be around the house within the next few weeks (who knows, the season of the year may have something to do with that). If nothing else these descriptions make me hopeful that this will be not only as popular as Meyer’s work, but have more substantial ideas to explore.

Establishing of credentials (Shaw went to BYU too!). For the Strength of the Youth pamphlet reference. Eternal marriage. Meyer “plays Heavenly Mother to her fictional daughter, Bella”. Agency. Nod at Augustine. Edward-as-savior. Edward “means what he says” ~~ binds himself to Bella with his words. Utterance — words mean action. Nod at Austin. Sealing/union of body and spirit. Plato and love. Way liberal — LDS still man and woman, BUT! :: Meyer’s The Host. Somehow leads to a Big Love reference. Erotics of abstinence. Chastity. Deseret Book controversy ~~ sexy too sexy; shelves to special order. “Vampire family values!” Feminist film theory and the gaze :: Bella returns the gaze (Edward)! Is Twilight Mormon? All the before shows that “nice Mormon girls” can write about “sexy vampires.”

Well, I’m convinced.

And yet, sometimes he just rubs my believing-Mormon-skin the wrong way with his cursory engagement with Mormonism, something that’s simply secondary to and arising from his academic interest in literature, faith, and culture. Since he’s a newcomer to the still-blossoming field of Mormon studies* and an outsider to the LDS faith, I can’t fault him for this engagement and for getting some things wrong every now and then. Heck, cultural Mormons are a peculiar lot with an equally peculiar history. Putting things together about the religion can be difficult even for those with a lifetime commitment to it.

But as I was catching up on some FHS Professor posts I’ve fallen behind on, I felt compelled to chime in this morning and to set the record straight, as it were (though I’m sure my straight is still fairly skewed), by referring the good doctor to Reading Until Dawn. Of course, this has something to do with the need for self-promotion. But, it also has something to do with my faith in the strength of Mormon literary scholarship, especially, in this case, Eric’s “Saturday’s Werewolf” (a revised version of which, by the way, will be published in a forthcoming issue of Sunstone [get your teaser here] along with a revised version of “Toward a Mormon Gothic“).

The setup: In his November 18 post in response to Stephenie Meyer’s answer to a fan’s question about the source for her imprinting werewolves (”Stephenie Meyer New Moon Q&A: Imprinting“), Granger suggests two sources beyond the one Meyer gives for this peculiar, primal relationship between imprinter and imprintee (read the post for her answer): (1) the institution of polygamy’s overabundance of man/child relationships and (2) the notion of premortal coupling. He ties Meyer to the first by suggesting that Twilight is a response to John Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven, a book published, as Granger is quick to point out, “the month Mrs. Meyer had her [series-inspiring] dream and [... that] is filled to the brim with nightmare stories about polygamist crimes against young women as well as the nightmare of the Mountain Meadows massacre.” He continues—and this is what provoked my response: “Twilight is, I suggest, on several levels a Mormon woman’s response to Krakauer’s attack on her faith.”

Here’s what I said:

How so? Unless you’re privy to more information about Meyer than I am (i.e., that she’s read or is even aware of Krakauer’s narrative, something, in my mind, she’d have to do/be aware of in order to so specifically respond), this seems like something of a jump to me, like you’ve already formed an opinion on the issue and are stretching to find evidence (however thin) to support that opinion. Sure, Meyer is aware of Mormonism’s polygamist past and I’m sure she’s struggled with it in one way or another, though I don’t know how that struggle has influenced her personal understanding of the faith or, more apropos to this post, her work as a novelist.

But Eric Jepson (in the essay Sharon mentions in comment one) makes what to me is a more compelling connection between Meyer, Mormon doctrine, and Mormon (literary) history: imprinting as a manifestation of the premortal romance. This narrative trope is based in the LDS doctrine that we existed as spirits in the presence of God prior to mortal birth, an official teaching that gave rise to the folk doctrine of premortal coupling (i.e., that male and female spirits promised to find one another on Earth and to marry for eternity), which is conveyed in a sampling of non-official LDS narrative art. Jepson takes up two of these—Nephi Anderson’s 1898 novel Added Upon and Douglas Stewart’s 1973 musical Saturday’s Warrior (the latter is still a popular cultural reference in Mormon circles)—though I’m aware of at least two more: Susa Young Gate’s 1909 novel John Stevens’ Courtship (which was serialized before Anderson’s Added Upon was published; which may have been a source for his own, more expansive treatment of the premortal romance; and which was a response to the LDS Church’s [1890] manifesto putting an official end to polygamy) and Carol Lynn Pearson’s 1977 musical My Turn on Earth[, though this one is more simply about keeping premortal promises in general than it is about realizing a premortal romance].

This folk doctrine (which has been shot down by LDS Church leaders, most notably, as Jepson points out, by Spencer W. Kimball) seems a far more likely source for Meyer’s notion of imprinting than Krakauer’s discussion of Fundamentalist Mormon polygamy. (And though they share common roots, Fundamentalist Mormon does not equal Latter-day Saint.)

I’m likely to come back to this idea of Twilight Studies meets Mormon Studies in the not-too-distant future with a post on my RMMLA experience (it’s been on the backburner for over a month) and a post in response to one of Granger’s recent interviews (on the backburner for a couple of months). But I felt this interaction was worth copying here, if only to show more of how non-Mormon critics are engaging the Mormonism of Twilight; to suggest, perhaps, ways Mormon scholars can (fruitfully?) respond by referring to our own literary and cultural history; and to solicit your feedback on any/all of the above.

———-

*I place him in this position (something he may not do himself) because he takes up issues of Mormonism as they relate to Twilight.

A couple of weeks ago, I read a paper at the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association (RMMLA) Convention at Snowbird, Utah (a rundown of my experience at the AML session will come in a later post that I’ve got halfway worked up; yes, I’ve been lazy—so sue me) and over the weekend I did some revising to incorporate some of the feedback I received and posted it on Reading Until Dawn. “Toward a Mormon Gothic: Stephenie Meyer’s Vampires and a Theology of the Uncanny” takes its place in the blossoming field of Twilight studies beside RUD’s inaugural essay, Theric Jepson’s “Saturday’s Werewolf: Vestiges of the Premortal Romance in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Novels.” Link over and have a read. That’s what all the cool kids are doing (or so they tell me).

While you’re there, you might also notice that I’ve made some subtle changes to the site design (I’ve tweaked the header) and that I’ve updated the articles. The inconsistent layout was bugging me, so I took down the HTMLs until I can get them to look how I want them to look, reworked my document template slightly, and incorporated the new MLA citation standards into the notes. Hopefully this gives the collection a more consistent and professional feel.

Also: though I’ve published “Toward a Mormon Gothic” on RUD, I’m still open to feedback. So if, while you’re reading, you notice a typo or some such faux pas or notice that I’ve missed something you deem vitally important to the conversation, either email me or comment here. That or work up your own essay and submit it for publication. I promise I won’t complain.

• Cedar Fort saw unexpected promotional success with Melissa Moore’s book, Shattered Silence, which will be the subject of an Oprah episode that airs September 17th.
• Deseret Management announced that the websites of Deseret Book, KSL, the Deseret News, LDS Church News, and Mormon Times will now all be managed by a new division in the company, Deseret Digital.
• A 17-year-old American Fork teenager M’Lin Rowley, signed a 10-book deal with Deseret Book’s Shadow Mountain imprint.

Cedar Fort, in an email to its customers, the company trumpeted its success:

With the September 1st release of Shattered Silence, by Melissa G. Moore and Bridget Cook, we are excited to let you know that Oprah has filmed her story and featured the book on an upcoming show that airs SEPTEMBER 17th. Shattered Silence tells the story of Melissa’s experience of growing up with her father, who is now known as the “Happy Face Serial Killer”. It relates her remarkable journey of hope. Throughout her life she always looked for light and truth. Many times she felt guided by a Higher Power, she realized that there was a God and He did know her and watch out for her. When she was introduced to the Gospel of Jesus Christ she rejoiced and accepted the truth she had been seeking. Shattered Silence is a remarkable story of hope. Regardless of where or how you were raised and what you have experienced you can be happy and successful.

We reviewed Shattered Silence here. See also Cedar Fort’s PR Blog entry for September 9th.

Deseret Management’s creation of its new Deseret Digital division is a bit of a mystery to me. Its led by former Harvard Business School professor Clark Gilbert, who is an expert in digital news media innovation, which explains why DeseretNews.com, KSL.com, LDSChurchNews.com and MormonTimes.com were included. But digital news media innovation doesn’t really cover online retail, so I wonder what will happen to DeseretBook.com. It has loads of traffic, but hasn’t ever implemented the kind of features that will allow it to compete with other online retailers effectively. Perhaps this will make it change, but I also wonder what will happen when innovation tries to get Deseret Book to include those items it hasn’t wanted to sell but should. A complete version of the company’s press release is here.

Is Deseret Book pulling a publicity stunt, you have to wonder after reading the headlines about its 10-book deal with a 17-year-old. Of course, the books are short (roughly 70 pages according to the Salt Lake Tribune article) and aimed at 6-10-year-old beginning readers, so perhaps Deseret Book’s editors think they don’t have to be as careful with children’s books (which, in my experience, are substantially more difficult than they seem. And, I think Deseret Book has blundered in this area on more than one occasion, and been protected by its position in the LDS market). I suppose it is also possible that the fact that Rowley’s mother is also a Deseret Book author (although not a major one, as far as I can tell) might have something to do with it.

Twilight is going virtual. The production company for the Twilight films, Summit Entertainment, licensed the property to the teen-oriented virtual world Habbo, which will launch a Twilight-specific virtual world to coincide with the launch of the second movie in the series, New Moon.

Publishing Industry News

Here’s the news I found interesting that might impact Mormons in the books and art:

• Challenges to Google’s $125 million settlement with authors and publishers over its Google Books service multiplied before a court deadline this week.  Those objecting included Amazon.com, leading settlement supporter , the Author’s Guild, to slam Amazon’s “choke hold” on books, saying “Amazon’s hypocrisy is breathtaking.” Google tried to defend the settlement, offered to allow competitors to resell the works it has digitized (Amason said it will pass), and offered concessions (here also) in Europe to win support there. In testimony before a House subcommittee, the U.S. Register of Copyrights slammed the settlement as “fundamentally at odds with the law.”
• Publisher marketing budgets are down 50-70% this year. Efforts are moving toward web, cooperative advertising with retailers. For small publishers that may level the playingfield somewhat.
• Market share for the Kindle continues to expand: The Kindle accounted for 23.5% of ebook downloads in the 1st quarter of this year, and by the end of July accounted for 28% of downloads. Desktop and laptop computers were 48% of downloads then and were 40% in July. Also in July, the iPod was 6.5% of downloads and Sony’s Reader was 6% of downloads. All other devices were 19.5% of downloads in July.
• Do Book Blogs sell books? wonders an author at the Denver Post in this article.
• Here’s an idea: Have the readers write the footnotes!
• Think ebook prices are too high? Hachette’s CEO is warning that they may be too low!
• Apple’s Jobs says won’t make an “iBook.” “Right,” says UK’s Guardian.
• Whence the ISBN? Will it survive the digital age? Apparently it will be cheaper to get next year.
• UK Research: ebooks problem in content, not hardware. Readers complain not enough books and not enough good books.
• Google says its developing a micropayment system to allow publishers to charge for online content. Should AMV start charging by the post?

And They Were Not Ashamed is the “new’ Mormon sex book because it was published more recently than the one that was floating around when I got married. The one people were giving out as wedding gifts when my DH and I celebrated our nuptials was by Stephen E. Lamb and Douglas E. Brinely. (Tangential question: Why do strangers give newlyweds books about sex? Really, why? Are you so afraid my parents never brought it up that you feel compelled to help out? I just don’t get that.) We received not one but two copies of the hard, silver-jacketed tome with the open-yet-frozen-in-their-separation lilies and I read it–out of curiosity and because all my unmarried friends wanted to know what was in it. Although it was full of useful information, I was disappointed to find that it was pretty much the opposite of its subject matter: cold, clinical, boring. This was how people who believe sex is a gift from God talk about it?

And They Were Not Ashamed was originally published in March of 2004 and went into a second printing in November of that same year. From what I understand it is now in its fifth printing and word of mouth keeps this book moving. You can even get it as an audio book. (Um, awkward?) My own sister called me and told me she was reading it and sending it to me so we could talk about. The last book she did that with? Khaled Hosseini’s The Kiterunner.

So why is this book a big deal? Four words: The Good Girl Syndrome or “the deeply internalized feelings and attitudes that rigidly emphasize only the negatives associated with sexuality” (2). Brotherson hits all the usual discussion points like the commonality of sexual dissatisfaction, physiology lessons, and relationship tips, but before all that she details the fairly common, and perhaps mainly LDS, “Good Girl” mindset: Sex is bad. No matter what. In any circumstance. Except for maybe procreation. And it is up to the girls to keep men in check. (Because all women are meant to stay as innocent as girls while boys turn into men and do whatever they want.) Brotherson’s entire book, even the title in its reference to Adam and Eve, argues passionately against those false and debilitating ideas.

I can see where Brotherson is coming from. I was raised by two well-meaning LDS parents who wanted to teach their kids to CTR about “intimacy.” My mother, a nurse and prenatal educator, took me to class with her so I had plenty of technical information on intercourse and its consequences. My Young Women leaders gave the yearly lesson on the pretzel versus the chocolate (see also: the licked cupcake). My dad taught family home evening lessons on chastity so many times he developed a pamphlet that he handed out to any teenager who walked in the house. The message was the same everywhere I looked: It’s bad. It’s dangerous. And whatever it was it wasn’t sex-y. Only dirty and low people talked about it like that. In fact, my friends and I preferred to spell it out rather than say it. And even then we couldn’t own the word. We spelled it s-e-c-k-s.

One rocky adolescence later, I went to college and a visiting professor asked me to explain May Swenson’s “Bleeding” and why straight people think it’s about sex. My newly-wed brain fritzed. I blushed. I coughed. I hemmed. I hawed. And I punted the question off on my forty-something, non-LDS motherly group partner. While I worked on recovering my breath I realized something: If I was going to survive as a writer, as an artist, I needed to figure out how to talk about sex in an upfront way. The example set by that specific professor seemed too disrespectful to me, as did many of the approaches my fellow students took. I myself probably crossed a couple lines while figuring out how to reconcile the “worldly” way of sex and the gospel way. Confronting the beast that is human sexuality was difficult for this Good Girl but I did it. The looks I get at Relief Society book club discussions tell me that many other women haven’t that yet. I probably wouldn’t have if I wasn’t forced to.

Keeping this in mind, how sex is handled in an LDS/Mormon work of art can make or break it. Think about how Mormons handle movies. Violence? The most orthodox might turn away but most don’t even flinch. Sex? Mormons walk out of the theater or turn off the TV. It’s similar for books. If it’s violent, well, that’s part of life. If it’s dirty, well, it’s trash.

To be clear, I’m not necessarily knocking this approach. I think it’s important to draw lines and boundaries and say there are places we are not willing to go. I think it’s important to respect where other people draw their lines. But I also think it’s important to understand why we are drawing those lines where we are drawing them. Are we drawing them based on true principles or culturally-filtered emotional responses to those principles?

Take, as one example, Heather Moore’s . Moore makes several interpretative changes to the Abinadi story, the biggest of which is that Abinadi is a young man deeply in love. The object of his affection: Raquel, the daughter of one of King Noah’s priests. Moore works hard to make Raquel a likable character that LDS readers will identify with. She is beautiful, smart, kind, spunky; cut out of the same mold as the female protagonists in books by Rachel Anne Nunes and Anita Stansfield.

Raquel’s big character-developing moment comes when her father is forced to offer her up to be one of King Noah’s concubines. Raquel, in all her spunky splendor, fights her way out of Noah’s lustful clutches and into Abinadi’s righteous, loving arms, thereby putting everyone she loves (her family, a young scout named Ben, and Abinadi’s own mother) in mortal danger. It is this moment that makes her a heroine.

Raquel, in many ways, is the stereotypical Good Girl. (She worries incessantly about the fact that Noah kissed her before she fought back and she and Abinadi don’t kiss until their wedding day.) The death of everyone she loves and her own death are a small price to pay for her sexual purity. Similar story lines exist in Dean Hughes’ Children of the Promise series and Gerald Lund’s Kingdom and the Crown series. What a young woman is willing to sacrifice for her virtue is emblematic of her righteousness.

Raquel’s foil is the also beautiful but already defiled Maia. Maia is the newest of King Noah’s wives and has dutifully submitted to marriage to a most despicable man to save her family and herself. Maia suffers physical abuse and risks her life to save Raquel but is not a heroine until she escapes the castle–again, at her own peril–and admits her true love for the newly repented Alma. Moore has stated that the sequel to Abinadi will be a book about Alma, so the jury is still out on Maia’s character. How she will fare as a licked cupcake remains to be seen. But one message is clear: the true test of a girl’s worth is in how much she is willing to sacrifice for her virtue. No other factor weighs as heavily–not even sacrificing herself for her family’s safety.

Does this sound like doctrine? It’s not something I’ve ever read in scripture or heard over the pulpit. There are, however, plenty of sources that point to the opposite. Good girls can enjoy sex. (For the doctrinal validity of that statement read And They Were Not Ashamed. Brotherson has all sorts of sources.) Victims of sexual abuse can find healing and don’t need to sacrifice everything they hold dear to get it. Virtue is important, but for a lot of reasons that are bigger and more complicated than pamphlets or cupcakes or morality tales. What would happen if our art represented those things instead of tired, polarizing oppositions?

The Good Girl Syndrome is heavily embedded in our culture, it’s nearly institutionalized on a ward level, and seems to be a real sticking point with people who have left the Church. (I’m not linking to anyone because I don’t want to throw readers into a hornet’s nest. But if you really want to know just google “licked cupcake.”) So-called ex-mo’s abhor the emotional and sexual frustration it causes. On the flip side, conservative Mormon culture seems to take a lot of comfort from the clear lines the Good Girl mindset draws.

The arts, naturally, are where those extremes collide and duke it out. I firmly believe the Good Girl syndrome is one reason why Twilight was so successful (and provocative) among Mormon women. Those books manage to affirm both the expression, and enjoyment, of female sexuality and the importance of preserving a girl’s virtue. Maybe it’s also part of the reason why LDS romances are such a big part of the market. All those Good Girls are looking for something to guide them from their no man’s land to the sexual reciprocity God meant for couples to have.

“Saturday’s Werewolf explores Twilight in terms of the supernatural literature of the Latter-day Saints, specifically as the series links to the premortal romance narrative mode, as exemplified in Nephi Anderson’s Added Upon (1898) and Douglas Stewart’s popular musical Saturday’s Warrior (1989).”

It’s an entertaining and insightful read that I’ve just posted at Reading Until Dawn (both PDF and HTML versions available there). Come take a look after you finish commenting on Laura’s Harvest post.

And don’t be scared: RUD’s lone (were)wolf doesn’t bite. But it just might inspire you to submit.

Here’s the relevant excerpt:

The erotic relationship between Bella and Edward is what makes this book—and the series—so riveting to its female readers. There is no question about the exact nature of the physical act that looms over them. Either they will do it or they won’t, and afterward everything will change for Bella, although not for Edward. Nor is the act one that might result in an equal giving and receiving of pleasure. If Edward fails—even once—in his great exercise in restraint, he will do what the boys in the old pregnancy-scare books did to their girlfriends: he will ruin her. More exactly, he will destroy her, ripping her away from the world of the living and bringing her into the realm of the undead. If a novel of today were to sound these chords so explicitly but in a nonsupernatural context, it would be seen (rightly) as a book about “abstinence,” and it would be handed out with the tracts and bumper stickers at the kind of evangelical churches that advocate the practice as a reasonable solution to the age-old problem of horny young people. (Because it takes three and a half very long books before Edward and Bella get it on—during a vampiric frenzy in which she gets beaten to a pulp, and discovers her Total Woman—and because Edward has had so many decades to work on his moves, the books constitute a thousand-page treatise on the art of foreplay.) That the author is a practicing Mormon is a fact every reviewer has mentioned, although none knows what to do with it, and certainly none can relate it to the novel; even the supercreepy “compound” where the boring half of Big Love takes place doesn’t have any vampires. But the attitude toward female sexuality—and toward the role of marriage and childbearing—expressed in these novels is entirely consistent with the teachings of that church. In the course of the four books, Bella will be repeatedly tempted—to have sex outside of marriage, to have an abortion as a young married woman, to abandon the responsibilities of a good and faithful mother—and each time, she makes the “right” decision. The series does not deploy these themes didactically or even moralistically. Clearly Meyer was more concerned with questions of romance and supernatural beings than with instructing young readers how to lead their lives. What is interesting is how deeply fascinated young girls, some of them extremely bright and ambitious, are by the questions the book poses, and by the solutions their heroine chooses.

What’s interesting is that although technically Flanagan is correct about Bella making the “right” choices, there are also Mormons who are uncomfortable with some of the other choices she makes. In addition, I’m somewhat amused by all the people who have felt (or been) compelled (and that includes us here at AMV) to write about Twilight and how much our reactions betray our attitudes towards certain feminist issues as well as literary value and Mormonism.

* This is no knock on those who do. We all have varying tolerance levels for gadflies c.f. Camille Paglia, Ben Stein, Noam Chomsky, etc.

** It’ll be interesting to see if Reading Until Dawn can get us beyond some of the basic reactions that tend to come up repeatedly.