Mary, thanks for the quote, and the link! As you've already mentioned to your readers, we disagree on a lot of stuff. I don't have time these days to get into lengthy discussion, but for the sake of conversation, I'll lay out, in what is will probably such brief summaries as to be quite inadequate, my overall differences. (These are not numbered to corollate with the numbers in the essay).
1. I think your suggestion that Rowling might be somewhat uncritically indebted to her 19th century heroes to be a plausible explanation. I think it is equally plausible that she wrote some of these characters the way she did rather deliberately. Giants, for example - their "savage" behavior is not supposed to be seen by the reader as something quite natural to their kind. It's supposed to be seen as the result of their being oppressed by the WW. This is something Rowling does more than once; it's something of a Critical Literacy experiment with the fairy tale genre itself. She takes groups of characters who are traditionally evil - giants, werewolves, etc. - and makes them oppressed groups of people. The goblin situation is particularly interesting, and the conversation between the trio and Griphook is meant to demonstrate how unwillingness to understand another person's cultural frame of reference leads to all sorts of oppressive metanarratives.
2. I know it wasn't a major point of your article, but I think one of the most unlikely propositions about Rowling's belief system, though I've heard it repeated often, is that she's a Calvinist. Both the Anglican Church and the Church of Scotland have reformed histories; but neither carries a strong emphasis on traditional Calvinistic doctrine today. And everything else Rowling believes about human goodness in particular flies radically in the face of traditional reformed orthodoxy.
3. I think there are at least 6 promising ways to read HP in a feminist way, none of which impose upon the text and are all complementary to each other. There's no time or space to get into the six here; I only mention the number because I think much of the gender commentary has been missed due to its being a secondary social issue; racism is clearly the primary sociopolitical issue of the series.
4. There is some really nuanced commentary on racism in the series. First, in response to some of the comments - Hermione's blundering moves towards the house-elves are supposed to be portrayed as erroneous. So I don't think seeing Hermione is totally screwing that up would be a shock to Rowling, as if she just uncritically wrote a wealthy white hero of house-elves. On the contrary, Hermione doesn't get to point one of being willing and able to fight against house-elf subjugation until Book 7, when, instead of talking about revolution, she embraces her own subjugated status as a "Mudblood." When Hermione called herself a "Mudblood," embracing the painful, oppressive term, my eyes froze on the page; that's was a gutsy and brilliant move on Rowling's part.
5. The key to unlocking Rowling's social vision in the series is her deliberate links to the founders of the Fabian society, Dumbledore's "Fabian Strategy," an almost libertarian respect for free will, and a Wilberforce-like Christian social advocacy.
So, there you are - for what it's worth, a sort of bullet-point, chaotic summary of another point of view. Far too much is missing, but if I get going, I'll end up having to summarize most of Part III of my forthcoming book, and I don't think my publisher would be too happy to find my book in a comment on the internet ;-)
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Date: 2008-07-01 02:18 am (UTC)1. I think your suggestion that Rowling might be somewhat uncritically indebted to her 19th century heroes to be a plausible explanation. I think it is equally plausible that she wrote some of these characters the way she did rather deliberately. Giants, for example - their "savage" behavior is not supposed to be seen by the reader as something quite natural to their kind. It's supposed to be seen as the result of their being oppressed by the WW. This is something Rowling does more than once; it's something of a Critical Literacy experiment with the fairy tale genre itself. She takes groups of characters who are traditionally evil - giants, werewolves, etc. - and makes them oppressed groups of people. The goblin situation is particularly interesting, and the conversation between the trio and Griphook is meant to demonstrate how unwillingness to understand another person's cultural frame of reference leads to all sorts of oppressive metanarratives.
2. I know it wasn't a major point of your article, but I think one of the most unlikely propositions about Rowling's belief system, though I've heard it repeated often, is that she's a Calvinist. Both the Anglican Church and the Church of Scotland have reformed histories; but neither carries a strong emphasis on traditional Calvinistic doctrine today. And everything else Rowling believes about human goodness in particular flies radically in the face of traditional reformed orthodoxy.
3. I think there are at least 6 promising ways to read HP in a feminist way, none of which impose upon the text and are all complementary to each other. There's no time or space to get into the six here; I only mention the number because I think much of the gender commentary has been missed due to its being a secondary social issue; racism is clearly the primary sociopolitical issue of the series.
4. There is some really nuanced commentary on racism in the series. First, in response to some of the comments - Hermione's blundering moves towards the house-elves are supposed to be portrayed as erroneous. So I don't think seeing Hermione is totally screwing that up would be a shock to Rowling, as if she just uncritically wrote a wealthy white hero of house-elves. On the contrary, Hermione doesn't get to point one of being willing and able to fight against house-elf subjugation until Book 7, when, instead of talking about revolution, she embraces her own subjugated status as a "Mudblood." When Hermione called herself a "Mudblood," embracing the painful, oppressive term, my eyes froze on the page; that's was a gutsy and brilliant move on Rowling's part.
5. The key to unlocking Rowling's social vision in the series is her deliberate links to the founders of the Fabian society, Dumbledore's "Fabian Strategy," an almost libertarian respect for free will, and a Wilberforce-like Christian social advocacy.
So, there you are - for what it's worth, a sort of bullet-point, chaotic summary of another point of view. Far too much is missing, but if I get going, I'll end up having to summarize most of Part III of my forthcoming book, and I don't think my publisher would be too happy to find my book in a comment on the internet ;-)