Character Identification (was Does JKR's portrayal of woment combat sexism?)

[lupinesque]

Pippin wrote:

> > If a girl, or a woman, can't identify 
> > with Hermione, she isn't likely to enjoy the series in the first 
> > place, and she'll find something else to read.

David:

demurred.  

I question it based on something I noticed when I first 
sought out an adult HP group: girls (as distinct from women) who 
love the books frequently *despise* Hermione. "She's so bossy! 
She's such a know-it-all!" This is purely anecdotal (would love to 
see that poll done) but it did jump out at me as a trend, if not an 
overwhelming one, among girls. I recall wondering whether a 
disproportionate number of adult women HP lovers were, like JKR, a 
bit Hermionelike in their youth and look upon that honest but 
affectionate portrayal with gratitude. However, I can't jump to that 
conclusion without contradicting the one implied by the Hermione-
hating girls: female readers can love the books while disliking 
Hermione. Perhaps adults are just more sophisticated readers, able 
to see beyond "ugh, she's like that know-it-all who sits in the front 
row of my English class." (We on this list never, ever develop 
illogical biases for or against a particular character just because 
his/her portrayal hits close to home. Pardon me, this coughing fit 
is just terrible. I need a glass of water.) I'll come back to this.

David wrote:

> My own experience is that I identify with the POV character first 
and 
> foremost in any book. It doesn't matter if they are Bertie 
Wooster, 
> or Michael Innes' contemptible Routh (Operation Pax), or Elizabeth 
> Bennett.
> 
> I would expect girls to identify with Harry.

That's my experience too. However, it is dogma among publishers and 
other promoters of books to children, in this country anyway, that 
boys will not relate well to a book where the central character is a 
girl--that Elizabeth Bennet will *not* draw them into a story. It 
has come up on this list, when people assume (perhaps correctly) that 
the well-publicized male reading frenzy generated by Harry Potter 
would never have occurred if it were Harriet Potter. (And it isn't 
just boys and books: that spate of Jane Austen movies a few years 
back was a blossoming of "chick flicks," suggesting that men skipped 
them. This could be more about the perception that men don't like 
costume pieces, or talky movies, or dramas that are principally about 
intimate relationships, but I wonder if it's also that the central 
characters are Emma and Elizabeth and Emma again.)

I hope more boys share your approach, David, because it made me sad 
to hear it when a mother of boys I know said she skipped to Farmer 
Boy to draw them into Laura Ingalls Wilder (her books, 
autobiographical but written in 3rd person, are all from Laura's POV 
with the exception of Farmer Boy, which is about her husband's 
childhood and is from his POV). Maybe it worked, in which case all 
is well, but did they really find it that hard to get drawn into 
Little House in the Big Woods (the first in the series)? The thought 
that boys are robbed of this experience by--what? their own 
diminished capacity for empathy? weak imagination by boys? or unfair 
assumptions by the adults around them?--makes me think of what my 
childhood would have been like without Howard Pease (testosterone-
loaded seafaring mysteries), Booth Tarkington's Penrod books, Tom 
Sawyer, the Chronicles of Prydain, The Horse and His Boy . . . 
<shudder>. Part of the joy of reading is being drawn into characters 
who are not like oneself. There has to be something one can relate 
to or they just stay flat on the page; but that familiar 
characteristic draws one into other possibilities because it's mixed 
with unfamiliar ones, e.g. I relate to lots about Harry, which makes 
it possible for me to contemplate what it would be like to be 
orphaned or famous or magical, none of which I am.

> The reasons for identification always interest me. If Book 5 
> introduces an American character

Which heaven forbid. ;-)

> will American listies desert their 
> previous indentificatees (is there such a word?) in droves, or just 
> add the person to their list, or do nothing? 

Maybe again there is some maturity at work here. Fanfiction.net is 
clogged with apparently teen-girl-authored works summarized as "A 
pretty American transfer student comes to Hogwarts . . . " Romantic 
fantasies, no doubt (wonder how many of the P.A.T.S. are kissed by 
Harry by chapter 4), but why do American teenage girls need an 
American teenage girl in the story in order to play out their 
romantic fantasies? Because they're very immersed in their own world 
and still-forming identity. This is understandable in an adolescent, 
but I have hopes that adults outgrow that need to see their precise 
experience mirrored in fiction. Can we have the same hope for pre-
adolescent children--that they are able to relate to characters 
regardless of gender? I think they do it better than adolescents--
for one thing, *really* young children don't have a very firm grasp 
on these categories (e.g., four-year-old girls may think that they 
can grow up to be boys and vice versa. Transgender warriors 
notwithstanding, they haven't sorted it all out yet).

Back to gender balance, though: I still would be appalled if the 
universe of children's fiction were overwhelmingly centered upon male 
characters, or if the girls and women portrayed were overwhelmingly 
portrayed in a straitjacket-tight range of nurse, mother, and 
teacher. Children do need to see people like them doing a variety of 
things, being good and bad, etc. Amanda wrote on the main list that 
she just related to the neat characters in whatever book--this was my 
experience growing up, too, but I don't think it would have been very 
good for either one of us if *all* of the neat characters had been 
boys. Children get the message, except they get it a bit wrong: 
instead of thinking "geez, all these authors seem to think girls are 
boring and incompetent," they think, "geez, girls are so boring and 
incompetent."

Whoopi Goldberg wanted to be on Star Trek (and got her wish, the 
lucky duck) because when she was eight years old she saw Nichelle 
Nichols on the bridge of the Enterprise and went running through the 
house screaming about how there was a black woman on TV who wasn't a 
maid. It changed her life. We all need to be able to relate to 
characters who don't share our gender, race, etc., but let's not 
underestimate the importance to children of seeing people who look 
like them being powerful, competent, and essential.

And back to the Hermione question: I've certainly read and enjoyed 
books that were almost devoid of admirable female characters. Again 
I point toward the bizarrely female-free world of Tolkien, where 
there are a whopping three female characters and one of them exists 
solely as Aragorn's love interest (Arwen doesn't rescue Frodo in the 
book of Fellowship of the Ring, movie fans. Some boring male elf 
named Glorfindel does. Those of us who think Liv Tyler can't act her 
way out of an Aerosmith concert may wish Peter Jackson had stuck with 
that version, but I digress). Girls and women will tolerate, and 
enjoy, books where every female character is a depressing 
stereotype. But I think we love HP partly because Hermione isn't. I 
wonder whether even the 9-year-olds who think she's an insufferable 
swot are picking up on JKR's (and of course Harry's) tremendous 
affection for her--that some still-barely-developed part of them 
perceives that there's more to her than what has met their eye.

Amy Z