As the protagonist of the Twilight saga, Bella makes a lot of decisions over the course of the story. The plot mostly revolves around her romantic life, but there are also many intense moments involving vampire royalty and other antagonists.
While Bella sometimes makes really good decisions that help herself and the people around her, and she’s not as weak as some critics make her out to be, she also has moments of poor decision making. Often, these choices impact the story and the other characters in a major way.
Never taking much of a stand between the vampires and the shapeshifters
Bella has a more ive personality, and she’s more of a peacemaker. While she will stand up for what she thinks is right and will protect those she cares about, she does have a hard time taking a stand.
She always says that she is Switzerland in the books and won’t decide completely between Edward and Jacob. However, it probably would have been better for everyone if she was clearer.
Deciding to be a vampire even if she had to leave everyone behind
Bella decides early on that she wants to become a vampire. While Edward is reluctant to turn her and makes her wait, Bella has her mind made up as soon as they start their relationship.
While other reasons for wanting to be a vampire made some sense, the fact that she was so willing to leave behind her family and any chance at a normal life was a bit disturbing.
Lying to Charlie about not wanting to live with him
When Bella learns that James is trying to kill her because he wants to try and defeat Edward, she wants to protect those she loves. Her desire to protect Charlie is a good one, and she does need to keep him safe.
However, the way she goes about it does have a big impact on Charlie. By lying and telling him how much she hated living in Forks and with him, she really hurt him a lot.
Losing her identity to her relationships
While this point might not necessarily have a big effect on the plot of the story, it is worth pointing out because it’s one of the more troubling aspects of the books. Bella loses her identity in the men she dates and is interested in, and this is one thing that makes these relationships unhealthy.
She gets easily wrapped up in Edward, and while part of this can be attributed to the allure and supernatural pull of him being a vampire, it’s still not a great thing.
Getting a papercut
This isn't entirely serious, because obviously getting a paper cut isn’t something Bella meant to do. It was an accident, and it wasn’t really her fault as this is just something that happens occasionally.
However, it did have a big impact and changed the course of her life and the life of all of the Cullens. It’s unfortunate that Bella had a tendency to be a bit clumsy considering she was living around vampires so much of the time.
Getting married at 18
While Bella isn’t as concerned about marriage as Edward is, Edward really pushes the issue as he wants to be married before they have a sexual relationship. It was somewhat of an unfair thing for him to ask, but it's not as if Bella didn’t want to marry him.
The fact that they got married so young is a personal decision, but it did lead to them becoming pregnant and changed a lot of things rather quickly.
Not being able to recover from Edward breaking up with her
When Edward breaks up with Bella and leaves her, Bella takes this really hard. It’s a very extreme reaction, and while it’s understandable to be depressed after a break-up, it was intense how strongly she reacted.
This seems to be in part because these two are set up to be soul mates in the books, but the fact that Bella was so dependent on him was unhealthy.
Doing dangerous things to try to hear Edward
In response to Edward leaving her and breaking her heart, Bella becomes increasingly desperate to feel some connection to him. She realizes by accident that doing dangerous things creates a very realistic hallucination in her mind of Edward being there and telling her to be careful.
So, she starts doing very risky activities to hear his voice. She could easily have killed herself, and it was a dangerous and unnecessary thing all around.
Going to try to save her mother from James alone
When Bella believes that James has her mother, she obviously wants to do everything she can to keep her safe. She’s willing to sacrifice her own life for her mom’s, but the fact was that James was actually lying about having Renee.
Bella made the best decision she had in front of her with the information, but it did end up being an impactful mistake.
Letting Jacob hang around Renesmee after he imprinted on her
Many fans and critics of the series have pointed out that the idea of being able to imprint at all is problematic, but it’s especially so in the case of a teen imprinting on a baby.
While Bella did get really upset with Jacob, she still let him stay around and be like a guardian to her daughter. No matter what explanation the books give about imprinting, it is still just really weird.
