Badass Ladies of the Twilight Universe: Alice Cullen

“‘How far is it from Florence to Volterra?’

‘That depends on how fast you drive….Bella?’

‘Yes?’

She eyed me speculatively.  ‘How strongly are you opposed to grand theft auto?’” (New Moon, 439)*

When I first encountered the accusations that Twilight was anti-feminist, one of the major reasons that I was shocked was that they all seemed to exclude Alice.  Outside of the Big Three of Bella, Edward and Jacob, Alice is arguably the next most important character in the saga.  I mean:

Starting out, the clip gets a basically excited reaction from the audience (I mean, how psyched must the Volvo marketing people be? What other mega-hyped teen romance is going to have their male lead driving a Volvo?) but they collectively lose their shit when Alice shows up.  Because she is awesome. (Can I digress for a minute and talk about how much I love this clip? It's both legit-awesome and cheesy-awesome, which is all I want in Twilight the movie. The Cullens seem note-perfect, especially Nikki Reed's bitchface as Rosalie and the expression of "Oh My God, you guys, CHILL OUT" that Robert Pattinson wears throughout the kitchen scene. Then the tree-climbing, and the piano, and it's so, so cheesy and I love it.)

Alice’s prescience makes her a vital part of the Cullen family, and she plays a significant role in the final conflicts of each book.  In Twilight and Eclipse, her contributions are mainly strategic, enabling them to find Bella at the ballet studio and prepare for the coming newborn army, respectively.  In New Moon, she and Bella work together to intervene in Edward's suicide attempt and save him from his own melodramatic impulses.  Additionally, when Edward can’t bring himself to confirm Bella’s future as a vampire to Aro, Alice is the one who steps up to rescue the situation.  Breaking Dawn shows the second situation where Bella and Alice act in tandem, this time saving everyone’s asses from the wrath of the Volturi.  First, Bella holds everyone off with the awesome power of her mind, then Alice bounces in all “Surprise Witness for the Defense!” In my opinion, it’s a pretty awesome display of girl power.  (I think also that it speaks volumes to the male-female dynamic in the series that the Volturi are one of the most straightforwardly patriarchal groups.  There are women in the guard, but the central family is dominated by the men.  The wives are non-entities, and the only one of them who ever wielded any power was killed.)

It's maybe less badass than interesting, but in my opinion Alice's detachment from a human past, and resultant fascination with the trappings of humanity make her one of the most complex characters in the series.  She's essentially the counterpoint to Rosalie, who is driven by the fact that she deeply misses being human. (Another digression: If I were the kind of person who is compelled to write fanfic, mine would be like a sitcom spinoff where the young women of the Cullen coven go off on their own and open up some sort of roadside shop: "Alice and Rosalie's Fortune Telling and Car Repair.") I love the moment in Eclipse when Alice expresses her excitement over having a sleepover – she seems to recognize that kidnapping Bella on Edward’s behalf is kind of a dick move, but she also is genuinely excited over having a real sleepover, like something that she always wanted but never got to have. 

Within Alice's story, one of the things that I find most interesting about the Cullens is the agency that the women derived from their transition from human to vampire.  As young women in early twentieth-century America, all three were held down by their circumstances.  Esme was stuck in a loveless marriage to an abusive husband, Rosalie was brutalized and left for dead by her fiancé, and Alice was institutionalized by her family.  The empowerment and freedom derived from becoming a vampire work to support Stephenie Meyer’s contention that Bella’s needing to be saved is a result of her being a human rather than her being female.  Basically, what it just sums up to is there being more women in the series beyond Bella, each representing a different point of view, history and experience.

*Meyer, Stephenie. New Moon. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2006.