That's fascinating! I don't know Trollope at all, so could not have picked up on that one. ) But it is pretty obvious (to an adult reader with some knowledge of the literature Rowling is copying) that the Weasleys, for example, in spite of their poverty, are in a much more stable and established position in the WW than the nouveau riche interlopers, the Malfoys. I am always shocked when I come across essays defining the Weasleys as working-class. Snape is, rather obviously so, and they are not.
It's also true that - just as Terri and Arsinoe surmise in their fics - Voldemort seems out to destroy the pureblood families, as well as Muggleborns and Halfbloods. AND that a person like Voldemort is the logical consequence of the WW's unconscious racism. Gosh, these are ugly books! At this point, I cannot think of a single positive message in them that I would actually agree with. (And I wrote this essay with a huge sense of relief, thinking "Well, maybe she didn't mean all this, after all. Maybe she just didn't think about it.)
Even the most conservative of the 19th-century authors, being far better artists and grounded in a coherent worldview, don't seem as racist, classist and sexist as Rowling does. Dickens, for example - as the above commentator pointed out for Hugo - argued that society has a duty to care for *all* its members. You don't find this in Rowling, do you?
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Date: 2008-06-29 08:38 pm (UTC)It's also true that - just as Terri and Arsinoe surmise in their fics - Voldemort seems out to destroy the pureblood families, as well as Muggleborns and Halfbloods. AND that a person like Voldemort is the logical consequence of the WW's unconscious racism. Gosh, these are ugly books! At this point, I cannot think of a single positive message in them that I would actually agree with. (And I wrote this essay with a huge sense of relief, thinking "Well, maybe she didn't mean all this, after all. Maybe she just didn't think about it.)
Even the most conservative of the 19th-century authors, being far better artists and grounded in a coherent worldview, don't seem as racist, classist and sexist as Rowling does. Dickens, for example - as the above commentator pointed out for Hugo - argued that society has a duty to care for *all* its members. You don't find this in Rowling, do you?