From: Monica R. Edinger <edinger>
Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2000 09:27:13 +0100

Robin's comments about the roles of females in HP IV made me recollect my similar feelings when reading the book.

I was frustrated by the "Cinderella within a Cinderella story" of Hermoine and Viktor. (Harry is a Cinderella too.) I suppose Rowling was doing this tongue-in-cheek (or so others have tried to convince me), but it annoyed me. The boys being so shocked, Hermoine smoothing down her hair, fixing her teeth, etc. etc. I'd probably have loved it as a kid when I'm sure I would have been better able to identify with Hermoine. (I mean, I still am a big Jane Austen fan and love a good Cinderella story!)

I disliked the veelas for the same reasons Robin mentioned. The veela contestant (my copy of the book is at school and my brain cells are aging so I can't recollect her name ) seems gratuitous. Sort of a "gotta have a girl contestant" rather than anything else. She was so minimally developed as a character besides the fact that her beauty blew Ron away. In fact, the other girls seem pretty ephemeral. I can't remember most of them as well as I can the boys. None seem to be developed as well as the subsidiary boy characters. The only one besides Hermoine who has any complexity is Ginnie. Cho seems a total cypher. I suppose that is the point: boys often have stupid and frustrating crushes. (We want Harry to fall in love with someone who merits him and so far Cho doesn't satisfy as such a person. At least not for me.)

Also, in my opinion, there are next to no significant female adults in these books. The males are far more developed in this regard. The two good adult females of significance so far are Prof. McGonagall and Mrs. Weasley. (Rita Skeeter is something else. Madame whateverhername is has yet to be developed enough to figure in as do Mrs. W and Prof. McG.) McGonagall was, most disappointingly to me, very insignificant in HP IV. I suppose she is meant to contrast with Mrs. Weasley, but she didn't this time. She hardly seemed to be around. As a result Mrs. Weasley stuck out even more. And the way she was presented in this book frustrated me. I've been convinced by other that she is meant to be the embodiment of the mother Harry misses so badly, but I think I could take her ultra-traditional behavior better if there were other worthy female adults to balance her. And there weren't in this last book. So Mrs. Weasley seemed just stuck out as the one fully developed adult female of the book.
(In fact, Rita Skeeter as the hard career woman makes Mrs. Weasley almost madonna-like.) She stays home from the World Cup which annoyed me immediately. Why is she always in the kitchen making everyone else leave instead of helping? Why doesn't she do something besides housework? I mean, as someone on another list pointed out, all the children are away from home. Then at the end when Dumbledore asked to inform her husband about Voldemort's return, one of her sons jumps in and says he'll do it.

Okay. No doubt some of my complaints will be rectified in subsequent books. And Rowling can certainly do what she wants. The books are tremendously satisfying and the overly male agency did not bother me that much. Just something that kinda stuck in the back of my mind as I read, wondering what Rowling was doing.

And I'm sure if I'd read these books as a kid I'd have adored them, read them over and over, identified with Hermoine, and been totally in love with Harry!


Monica Edinger The Dalton School New York NY edinger at dalton.org monicaedinger at yahoo.com
Received on Sat 16 Sep 2000 03:27:13 AM CDT