Caste System (pg. 29-38)

There’s a scene in HBO’s Rome where Titus Pullo is paid to escort the young Octavian Caesar to a high class bordello so that Octavian can lose his virginity. Pullo, a Legionnaire, is a hedonist and he’s used to low rent whorehouses is interested when he finds the upper class of the oldest profession. What’s funny about the scene is that he’s escorting the oldest male relative of the Counsel of Rome, a member of one of the most powerful aristocratic families in the Republic and he knows that the credit line for this visit is good. He wants in too, but the matron denies him. His kind isn’t going to be having the sex at this kind of place, and it doesn’t matter who’s paying (although it would probably be different if the Counsel Julius Caesar where there with him), he is beneath this place even a brothel has social connotations.

Which is why I thought of it when I’ve read this section of our book. We’ve established who Bella is: what I have termed the “lonely loner.” A type of person that wants to appear to be the lone wolf type but is only using the appearance as a desperate vie for the attention and affection of others. This doesn’t make her sympathetic in my book since all of this is self-imposed. However she wants us to sympathize with her but her actions really make it tough for us to do so.

It’s the second day of school, the morning after the night she presumably went home and cried herself to sleep (she did promise us this) and instead of being ignored or harassed we find out that she has actually made friends, “Mike came to sit by me in English, and walked me to my next class, with Chess Club Eric glaring at him all the while; that was flattering.” [Emphasis mine] We get why Mike is sitting next to her, walking her to class, and hanging around with her–he likes her and has decided to play the always successful nice guy routine. Eric, we know is the dragon tee shirt wearing greasy pervert type, I resent the fact that she gives him the title “Chess Club Eric,” I was in chess club in high school and I wasn’t the greasy pervert type. In fact I don’t know anyone that was in chess club that was the greasy pervert type–pervert, yes but he wasn’t that greasy.

What is interesting to me is that the phrase “Chess Club Eric” reaffirms the high school social caste system. Bella isn’t the popular cheerleader girl, she’s not going to date the captain of the football/lacrosse team, but she knows that Eric better respect his social betters because he’s not getting any. So far the hierarchy is Eric at the bottom, Jessica/Mike somewhere close to the top, with the Cullen coven so far above the type they are the Medici family to the rest of Italy.* Bella isn’t sure where she belongs…well she is sure but she hasn’t found a way in yet, she wants to marry a Medici but she’s got nothing to offer them.

This is the only explanation for, “It looked like I was going to have to do something about Mike.” Why, Bella? Why does Mike have to get got? So far Mike is good looking, social, and not at Eric’s level in the social strata so the only explanation is that she is looking to trade up. Bella is at a unique place in the culture of high school, she hasn’t been pegged yet. This is both liberating and confining. She can talk to anyone she wants but only once. That second conversation, that second table at lunch is going to put her in a place that might as well be tattooed on her, your caste is your place in high school and it is as strict as it is in Hinduism. She can’t afford to apply herself as a Raja, because she wants to be a Sattva.

Luckily for her Edward has decided to skip the day. She worries about him the whole time, as her crush would necessarily dictate, but he’s not there. The book is really wonderful here as it adequately describes what it’s like to have a crush on someone you are pretty sure hates you. It’s purposely unclear what is making her more nervous: that he’s not there or that he could be there. In any case he’s not there, but she does espy the rest of the Cullens at the grocery store, driving a new Volvo wearing designer clothes (because all Vampires must be rich). He isn’t with them but she is embarrassed by her beat up truck.

She’s doing the grocery shopping because like her mother, her father can’t do normal adult things either. Sure, he’s a cop and has been living in Forks for many years now, but the guy can’t make anything more than eggs and bacon. It makes me wonder what his Cholesterol count must be if that’s all he’s been eating, so Bella showing her maturity and why normal kids don’t like her must do the shopping. She notes that the Cullens, although gorgeous and obviously wealthy, don’t have many friends in Forks, if any. She wonders if this is a small-town thing but then she figures that “the isolation must be their desire,” it would have to be right?

I can almost feel the jealousy ooze off her. They don’t play the game, they don’t have to and her biggest concern is how she can become part of that.

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*In other words, everyone respects and fears them but they are beyond such petty concerns of the mere plebians that occupy the rest of the school.