Mary, I read this back when you posted it. I'm only now getting around to commenting.
First, thanks for linking to my "Still Further Thoughts" essay rather than the first one. The first one was my initial attempt to express thoughts that had been simmering for a while (months!) as I read various discussions about SWM, but I think the second essay is much clearer and better organized. Unfortunately, only the first one seems to have been picked up for a wider readership, so people are mistakenly thinking that I just missed the intended parallels between real-world racism and wizarding blood-prejudice, rather than that I was questioning how we use the "racism" parallel and language in discussion of the books. Anyway, I don't want to sidetrack, here, just wanted to thank you for linking the better of the two articles!
On to your essay:
I found all of it to be thought-provoking, but especially the point on ambition.
And, in the classic 19th century British novel, social ambition is always a mark of potential evil. Even a humane reformer like Dickens was not terribly concerned with allowing people to better their stations in life.
In reading British works like the Harry Potter series, as well as Tolkien and others (it seems like so much popular fantasy is British; I wonder why that is?) I often find myself running against the barrier of how very American my point of view is. I am not familiar with 19th-century British literature, and my familiarity with America in the 19th century is mainly due to the legacy that carried over into the literature and culture of the 20th century.
The thing that strikes me is this: Broadly speaking, it seems that 19th century England espoused an ideal of stability and order, know your place and keep in your place, don't try to rise above your betters. Society had a structure, and your role was to know your place in the structure and fulfill it as expected. In contrast, America not only didn't discourage ambition; ambition was the dominant cultural motif. Go West, young man, go west! Always reaching for the next horizon, always striving for something better, the self-made man of humble origins who became a great tycoon. And so on.
Of course these are generalities, with individual exceptions, and America certainly has its share of conformism just as England has its share of individualism and ambition. Yet in terms of national ideals and types, at least as shaped the cultures during the 19th century, it strikes me that viewing the anti-ambition bias through American eyes is partly what leads to our head-scratching and wondering what the heck is wrong with wanting to be Something More.
Running out of time, so I'll just wrap with the observation that there may be something, after all, to my initial sense that Severus Snape had a lot in common with Jay Gatsby: not only having a Daisy-like idealized love object as his inspiration, but also in having the ambition to reach always for more, always for the green light, just out of reach... but someday...
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-07-04 12:42 am (UTC)First, thanks for linking to my "Still Further Thoughts" essay rather than the first one. The first one was my initial attempt to express thoughts that had been simmering for a while (months!) as I read various discussions about SWM, but I think the second essay is much clearer and better organized. Unfortunately, only the first one seems to have been picked up for a wider readership, so people are mistakenly thinking that I just missed the intended parallels between real-world racism and wizarding blood-prejudice, rather than that I was questioning how we use the "racism" parallel and language in discussion of the books. Anyway, I don't want to sidetrack, here, just wanted to thank you for linking the better of the two articles!
On to your essay:
I found all of it to be thought-provoking, but especially the point on ambition.
And, in the classic 19th century British novel, social ambition is always a mark of potential evil. Even a humane reformer like Dickens was not terribly concerned with allowing people to better their stations in life.
In reading British works like the Harry Potter series, as well as Tolkien and others (it seems like so much popular fantasy is British; I wonder why that is?) I often find myself running against the barrier of how very American my point of view is. I am not familiar with 19th-century British literature, and my familiarity with America in the 19th century is mainly due to the legacy that carried over into the literature and culture of the 20th century.
The thing that strikes me is this: Broadly speaking, it seems that 19th century England espoused an ideal of stability and order, know your place and keep in your place, don't try to rise above your betters. Society had a structure, and your role was to know your place in the structure and fulfill it as expected. In contrast, America not only didn't discourage ambition; ambition was the dominant cultural motif. Go West, young man, go west! Always reaching for the next horizon, always striving for something better, the self-made man of humble origins who became a great tycoon. And so on.
Of course these are generalities, with individual exceptions, and America certainly has its share of conformism just as England has its share of individualism and ambition. Yet in terms of national ideals and types, at least as shaped the cultures during the 19th century, it strikes me that viewing the anti-ambition bias through American eyes is partly what leads to our head-scratching and wondering what the heck is wrong with wanting to be Something More.
Running out of time, so I'll just wrap with the observation that there may be something, after all, to my initial sense that Severus Snape had a lot in common with Jay Gatsby: not only having a Daisy-like idealized love object as his inspiration, but also in having the ambition to reach always for more, always for the green light, just out of reach... but someday...