Jesse in many ways is a spoof/parody of Edward Cullen from the Twilight novels if you think about it. The character has been created to provide commentary on Edwards behaviors, mainly through his relationship with Sarah and status as the leader of the vampire council. While Jesse is a reflection of Edward, Edward himself in many ways has an origin point in the history of main character romantic partners where there is a disconnect between literary intention and actual audience reaction.
Jesse's history as Reverend Horace Black and in the lore of the series where he founded the town Black's Church sometime in the 19th century is so fascinating. He had a council of very powerful vampires who all fed on the human townsfolk, as well as practice some form of Christian-coded religion. Eventually in 1894, the townsfolk and Wiccan spellmasters (aka The Order; feel free to ask me about my feelings on them bc its wild) band together to rid the town of Jesse and his flock (as he calls it, I will primarily refer to it as a council because that is the term the show uses more often). All the vampires are killed, excluding Jesse of course. The town is then renamed to Whitechapel, which is where the entire series takes place in the early 2010s. At the start of the series, Jesse returns to Whitechapel to reincarnate his fallen vampire council, and starts building a new one by turning local teenagers into vampires by pretending to be a teenager himself who goes to high school. The overall goal is to kill 219 people and collect their souls to then trade for the souls of the deceased vampires to resurrect them. In all of this he forcibly turns Sarah into a newborn vampire (called fledgling) when they were dating, and ff course he is defeated by her, Ethan, and Benny.
How Jesse behaves throughout the series is where the Edward comparisons really come into play. Its clear to me that Jesse was created to be a response to Edward Cullen directly. The relationship between Jesse and Sarah to me is supposed to be commentary on the Edward and Bella dynamic, which is to say that I bet the writers of this show were screaming at their televisions watching the first Twilight movie, thinking it's the most toxic thing they had ever seen in the entire world. They probably wondered: "why do people think this is romantic? I'm gonna prove how unromantic this story line is by showing it for what it really is in my show!" Which, by the way, is a show for kids as you all know, so no one's gonna actually take it seriously and then they're gonna forget that this show even exists because it's gonna get canceled prematurely. It's a rough fate I must say! If anything, this representation within the show was one of the only real nuanced takes on criticizing Twilight at the time, since most of the backlash to the series was mostly making fun of the fact that it had a primarily teenage girl audience, which was a crime so severe that it deserved to be flogged for that reason alone to most people. Which is really annoying!
If you're not aware, Edward Cullen is just plain toxic throughout the series. I'm willing to defend Twilight only for the one crime committed against it that it doesn't deserve to be convicted of, which is that it is devoid of thought and does not deserve to be analyzed like a "real" piece of media. Everything else is up for the chopping block in my opinion.
So why is Edward the way he is? Well, there's a literary precedent for this kind of main character, which can be found all the way back the first ever novel. Strap in folks. In the mid 18th century, Samuel Richardson published his first novel, Pamela, Or, Virtue Rewarded (possibly the most loaded title of all time), which can be considered possibly the first novel ever. The historical fact of this is still debated to this day, but it is cited as a very important novel of the 18th century no matter what. It details the life and times of the titular 16 year old Pamela in intense detail, as she tries to survive her job as a embroiderer and mender for the Andrew’s family. Said "life and times" involve her getting kidnapped, being sexually assaulted multiple times, and constantly having salacious accusations of "performing virtue" being thrown at her, all by her employer and eventual husband Mr. B Andrews, who inherits her as a servant - and is 10 years her senior - after the death of his mother, Lady B. While someone may want to say, "despite all of this, Pamela was very successful", the proper response is something more akin to, "because of this", or "in tandem with all of this", since Pamela as a novel exists as a “conduct book”, meaning that these elements of plot were the reasons for its success, not despite of it. The book was created to teach young women a proper avenue for acting in the situations she was placed within, and is definitely not the advise any sane person would give to a young girl now in the modern day. Said success was both commercial and critical, and one of the contributing factors to the rise of the novel in the 18th century by all accounts. This, of course, is not without some backlash, even within the time of the book's original editions being published. There is plenty of drama present in the 500+ pages of the novel, all of which I will not detail as to not bore you, but just be aware that Mr. B and Pamela get married near the end of the novel, and her virtue is "rewarded" by getting to marry a wealthy man, which pulls her out of abject poverty.
If one were to want to search for a modern day comparison to Pamela, I would argue Twilight could be an adept comparison in this way! Even though Twilight is not a conduct book like Pamela, and critically has had a much different reputation, the reason for said searching from me goes back to the ways in which both novels have impacted literary history, along what lessons have – or have not – been learnt by its context, content, and success. Twilight became famous for its paranormal romance between 17 year old Bella Swan and 104 year old vampire Edward Cullen, who is physically frozen at the same age as his future partner; the aspect of power imbalances and controversial pairings being evident; just in case you didn't already know.
To go back to Jesse, he is a character who deeply desires power and control over those around him. As the leader of the vampire council he demands they do as he says, and there are consequences for those who don't obey him. When he finds Sarah and determines he wants her to be his eternal companion and forcibly turns her into a vampire, it is done against her will and she is deeply resentful of this decision. To draw parallels between the assaults committed against Pamela and Sarah's turn into a vampire, it adds a specific level of sexual danger to the relationship of Jesse and Sarah, which is mainly notable for the fact that Jesse is portrayed as a villain because of these actions. Mr. B is presented as a love interest who is condemned by Pamela for assaulting her, but needed the rejection by Pamela in those moments to learn how to be a better partner. One is rightfully condemned, whereas the other is justified and brushed aside. I don't care if it was from the 18th century, it is still bad that the story is framed this way! Also its poor storytelling but that's a discussion for another day.
So, is Jesse Black a good satire of Edward Cullen? In my opinion, yes! Because both Edward and Jesse are essentially Mr. B, who is the true antagonist of Pamela's story through my reading of the text as well as even through a more positive interpretation, and yet Jesse is the only one who is actively serving as the villain in his story; it is built into the weave of his character. Edward is accidentally extremely similar to Mr. B in many ways through his behaviors towards Bella. Examples include him stalking her, and making her feel unsafe through his predatory and controlling actions that are all framed under the guise of doing so "for her protection." Examples include him sneaking into her house at night to watch her sleep and disabling her car battery so she can't leave her house. Who tf even does that?
One of the biggest unanswered questions of Twilight is: "Why is Edward in high school?" It's because the patriarch of his coven Carlisle Cullen believes that the proper way to exist as a vampire is to cosplay human, and all of his "children" have convinced themselves they believe its proper as well, even though they all hate it. Throughout Midnight Sun, Edward describes going to high school eternally as a living hell (which it is), yet he still thinks that it's "the way", and that is the only explanation for why he is in high school. The logic is this: 17 year old humans go to high school. Edward is physically frozen at 17, so that means he must go to high school for forever. Jesse is in high school because he is specifically looking to grow his vampire council to enact his master plan of killing 200+ people, and famously teenagers are easier to manipulate than grown adults into following your rules and do what you say. I truly think the thought process of Jesse's creation in the series was, "realistically, what would happen if an ancient all powerful vampire began a relationship with a teenager?" The answer is that all of the toxic elements of Edward are still there, but now done on purpose, and Jesse is a villain because of it. And I think that is really good storytelling and very interesting ambiguity to dive further into! Having the context change from "this is just how romantic relationships are" to "this is a bad thing to do in a relationship and this is what villains do" makes me feel around 10% more sane honestly.
I have a lot more thoughts on this but this post is long enough already lmk if i should yap about this further!
the original zine scan of this post (where I was able to expand upon the topic more👍)
