Seems to me he didn't do much waiting. Leah bore him six sons and a daughter and the handmaids bore him four sons. (Then Rachel gave him Joseph and Benjamin). If memory serves, the first four came before he married Rachel. And you're right, he exercised favoritism toward Rachel and turned his back on Leah, for the most part.

I never could develop a fondness for Jacob (Biblical, not Black). Not only was he a supplanter and a trickster on several occasions, he had lousy taste in women. He loved Rachel, and she wasn't a nice person at all; she was only beautiful to look at. He humiliated and ignored Leah, and she was a good woman who would do anything for him. Men!

Unfortunately for me when it comes to name meanings, both my first and last names are variations of "Jacob." So I'm Supplanter Supplanter, at your service. Well, no, I must be at MY service, considering my name....

Momentarily off-topic: If you haven't read The Red Tent by Anita Diamant, please treat yourself. It is great. It's Dinah's story (Jacob and Leah's daughter) as "told" by her, and it will transport you right into ancient Mesopotamia, Canaan, and Egypt. Fascinating and very personal.


Back on-topic: The significance of Bella's names (Isabella, Bella, Swan) has been covered pretty thoroughly, I think, but here's another thought:

Bella Swan...Bella's Wan....
Wan, as in pale?

Shimmerskin,
Sure, you're a supplanter---a supplanter of knowledge. You take out the trivial and replace it with such meaningful elegance. You make these books so much deeper for me.

Since you suggested it, I will DEFINITELY read it. When I was in college, I had to translate a poem by Anna Akmatova called Leah. No one else in the class caught it. Guess I was the only Bible-versed student in the class. I got an A that day : )

I never liked the Jacob story, never understood would why God would show him favor, but who am I to question. I guess we're all redeemable to Him. {Could someone tell that to Edward, please?} If Rachel isn't nice, then my analogy makes Bella not nice. I think Mike points that out to her when he's asking her about Jacob.

That's right, Mike says something about girls and their cruelty, doesn't he, and Jacob Black also points it out to her, agreeing when she says she's "cruel." I don't have the actual references at the moment, sorry.

Well said Shimmerskin and lauralee. By the way I like the lauralee.

Thanks, LauraSTiffany. I was named after the landlady on My Favorite Martian.

Its my name also. The fun thing is I rarely find it spelled the small way.

Are you guys both lauralee or is laura your first name? Mine is Laura and I hated it growing up but now I like it since it seems like a classic name

At least you guys have a beautiful name. Try growing up with the name...Urg...Teresa...yuck. My mother called me Terri from the day I was born, but I have never had my name spelled correctly in my entire life. Everyone wants to put a H in it. I feel like Anne Shirley, camplaining about her Ann with an e.

ShimmerSkin does it again! I LOVE reading your thoughts on here. This is VERY interesting to me, since all of my ancestors were Irish. I agree, as I was reading the paragraph, it felt like you were talking about Carlisle and not just making a comparison. VERY GOOD WORK!

lollylew, Laura is my first name Lee is my middle. I found this interesting because usually Lee is spelled differently.

The interesting twist on using the name Swan for me, is not just the transformative undertones, but the fact that some swans mate for life. There are swans that are known to grieve when their mate dies, to the point where they too will die of grief. Sound familiar - NM anyone?

Sounds to me like Bella was predestined to have a mate for eternity.

Anna, did you follow the story of Petra the Swan (a real-life bird) and her peculiar great love? I found a great many similarities between her story and Bella's! At one point she was forced to separate from her "unsuitable" suitor, but earlier this year they were reunited. I posted about it on the "Different Ways of Falling In Love" thread. If you're interested you can google Petra the Swan or I can dig up my post where I pointed to parallels between these fiction and non-fiction Swan songs. Petra's is quite a touching, but also amusing, little story.

I haven't heard of her SS, I'll have a google thank you

I found this in regards to the Adonis references:

The category life-death-rebirth deity also known as a "dying-and-rising" or "Resurrection" deity is a convenient means of classifying the many divinities in world mythology or religion who are born, suffer death, an eclipse, or other death-like experience, pass a phase in the underworld among the dead, and are subsequently reborn, in either a literal or symbolic sense.

Male deities among such figures might include Osiris, Adonis, Tammuz, Zalmoxis, phoenix, Jesus, Baldr, and Odin.

add Edward to that list..........