Mom Character Analysis in Twilight

Bella describes her mom as “erratic,” “hare-brained,” and her best friend. Though Mom is technically the adult in charge, Bella implies that she takes more of a parental role with Mom, critiquing Mom’s choice in boyfriends, making sure Mom pays her bills on time, and making sure there’s food in the house. Mom detests Forks and left the town with Bella when Bella was an infant. So Mom is shocked and confused when Bella insists that she wants to move back to Forks to live with Charlie. Really, Bella just wants Mom to be happy—Mom has recently married a minor-league baseball player named Phil, and she wants to be able to travel with Phil rather than stay home with Bella. Mom and Bella communicate mostly via email throughout the novel, though Mom does appear in person when Bella ends up in the hospital after James attacks her. Mom takes issue with how besotted with Bella Edward seems to be—but she accepts Bella’s false insistence that she herself just has a crush on Edward, and that their relationship is nothing serious.

Mom Quotes in Twilight

The Twilight quotes below are all either spoken by Mom or refer to Mom. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:

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“No, she did not send me here. I sent myself.”

[…]

“She stayed with me at first, but she missed him. It made her unhappy…so I decided it was time to spend some quality time with Charlie.” My voice was glum by the time I finished.

“But now you’re unhappy,” he pointed out.

“And?” I challenged.

“That doesn’t seem fair.”

Related Characters: Bella Swan (speaker), Edward Cullen (speaker), Charlie Swan, Mom

Page Number and Citation: 37

Explanation and Analysis: