Oh wow, this is fascinating! Going straight into my memories. Thanks so much for all the insights, and the coherent pattern you've drawn out with regards to so many of the HP story's multitude of problems.
My exposure to 19c literature consists solely of that costume-drama movie Alan Rickman starred in (gosh, I can't even remember its title...) so basically everything you point out here are fresh and enlightening for me. But most especially, the light you shone on the issue of "ambition" -- wow, you're really onto something big there. Both your arguments in the post and your discussion with cardigrl et al. are fascinating. I'd never thought of that angle.
There's only one minor point I disagree with you on, which isn't even a real disagreement because it's a moot point anyway. But I personally don't feel inclined to give JKR as much credit as you're giving her, in blaming the messagery of her story on her inexperience and lack of good editing. For reasons such as readability and plot consistency, I wish JKR had given her later volumes more rewrites (and I wish she were affiliated with a better publisher that induced her to make such efforts) and I wish to believe she would have realized how she'd depicted the moral universe of her fantasy world if she had, but she doesn't seem to posess the type of humble self-reflecting ability that allows us human beings to make such moral judgments on ourselves. It seems she has a tendency to run away from accusations rather than try to understand them and deal with them head-on, as seen when she is asked point blank by a journalist why she avoided portraying Dumbledore as textually gay in her books, and misunderstands, misinterprets, then ignores the point of the question.
...Which is likely part and parcel with *why* she doesn't reread her own work or edit as much as she ought to in the first place; if she tends to like what she has put down exactly the way it is, and tends not to hear other people's voices, let alone her own, criticizing it, then it's no surprise she's so bad at editing. And I wonder if this might also be something that relates to the moral problems you have coherently explained as 19th century mores. They are that, for sure. But could it be that this problem is rather personal than political, in that it's the author's me-ism rather than her us-ism (or the usurped ideology of her predecessors) seeping out in a way that ends up classist, racist and nationalist? Oh and sexist. And homophobic too, but let's leave that last one alone for a moment, because I think you're right: homophobia ends up very present in the series but it's probably not what the story is actually focused on as its target of obsession. (What it cares about is probably, scarily, homosocial male bonds themselves. It only ends up getting tangled up with the tale's homophobia, as another symptom of the Potterian world's twisted psyche...) All this, I suspect, is the result of a rather more personal psychological issue on the part of the author, than just a proclivity to grab everything she likes on the shelf and toss it into her purse without examining the expiration date, as it were.
The main reason I'm inclined to think this way is because the weirdness of HP extends well beyond the realm of discrimination (like, for instance, the contradictory signals we get in terms of Christianity and morality, most vividly in the glorification of suicides, or so I think?). And also because the discriminatory attitude itself is often not actually a straightforward replica of the 19 century ideology, but rather a mind-blowingly innovative new-age version -- such as the updated (and twice as scary) form of sexism she applies to her romantic heroines, which I really need to stop blabbering on about in other people's journals and start writing that damned Chapter 3, but hey! *g*
(1/2) Their problem or her problem?
My exposure to 19c literature consists solely of that costume-drama movie Alan Rickman starred in (gosh, I can't even remember its title...) so basically everything you point out here are fresh and enlightening for me. But most especially, the light you shone on the issue of "ambition" -- wow, you're really onto something big there. Both your arguments in the post and your discussion with cardigrl et al. are fascinating. I'd never thought of that angle.
There's only one minor point I disagree with you on, which isn't even a real disagreement because it's a moot point anyway. But I personally don't feel inclined to give JKR as much credit as you're giving her, in blaming the messagery of her story on her inexperience and lack of good editing. For reasons such as readability and plot consistency, I wish JKR had given her later volumes more rewrites (and I wish she were affiliated with a better publisher that induced her to make such efforts) and I wish to believe she would have realized how she'd depicted the moral universe of her fantasy world if she had, but she doesn't seem to posess the type of humble self-reflecting ability that allows us human beings to make such moral judgments on ourselves. It seems she has a tendency to run away from accusations rather than try to understand them and deal with them head-on, as seen when she is asked point blank by a journalist why she avoided portraying Dumbledore as textually gay in her books, and misunderstands, misinterprets, then ignores the point of the question.
...Which is likely part and parcel with *why* she doesn't reread her own work or edit as much as she ought to in the first place; if she tends to like what she has put down exactly the way it is, and tends not to hear other people's voices, let alone her own, criticizing it, then it's no surprise she's so bad at editing. And I wonder if this might also be something that relates to the moral problems you have coherently explained as 19th century mores. They are that, for sure. But could it be that this problem is rather personal than political, in that it's the author's me-ism rather than her us-ism (or the usurped ideology of her predecessors) seeping out in a way that ends up classist, racist and nationalist? Oh and sexist. And homophobic too, but let's leave that last one alone for a moment, because I think you're right: homophobia ends up very present in the series but it's probably not what the story is actually focused on as its target of obsession. (What it cares about is probably, scarily, homosocial male bonds themselves. It only ends up getting tangled up with the tale's homophobia, as another symptom of the Potterian world's twisted psyche...) All this, I suspect, is the result of a rather more personal psychological issue on the part of the author, than just a proclivity to grab everything she likes on the shelf and toss it into her purse without examining the expiration date, as it were.
The main reason I'm inclined to think this way is because the weirdness of HP extends well beyond the realm of discrimination (like, for instance, the contradictory signals we get in terms of Christianity and morality, most vividly in the glorification of suicides, or so I think?). And also because the discriminatory attitude itself is often not actually a straightforward replica of the 19 century ideology, but rather a mind-blowingly innovative new-age version -- such as the updated (and twice as scary) form of sexism she applies to her romantic heroines, which I really need to stop blabbering on about in other people's journals and start writing that damned Chapter 3, but hey! *g*