Refreshing innocence

[frantyck at yahoo.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 25269

The recent refreshing innocence thread was fascinating, and 
frustrating.

I attended a co-ed, non-religious boarding school for nine years, and 
I don't honestly remember much "refreshing innocence" of the sort 
some members of this list approved of. This is not to say that from 
the age of nine we lived in a sexually-charged world; on the 
contrary, we thought holding hands with a girl was an outrageous 
heart-thumping adventure well into high school. Very little 
exaggeration here.

What I mean is that children are aware from pretty early that boys 
and girls "go" together somehow. Part of being cool and popular is 
attracting the attention of others, especially those of the opposite 
sex. The HP characters, schoolkids though they may be, have a lively 
awareness of the opposite sex, which some of you have pointed out. 
I'd say it begins to show in CoS (Percy's kissing, at least). By PoA, 
there is a physical element to the awareness, obviously (Ron's Uranus 
line), some of the schoolboy toilet humour that accompanies all those 
physical changes, curiosity about each other's bodies and about 
girls... it's very earthy, and very normal. IMO, if Ron is saying 
that to a female classmate, and elicits no more than a sour look in 
return, there's a healthy degree of sexual tension present already.

Children talk about each other all the time, saying nice and not-nice 
things. On occasion, children can be breathtakingly rude, cruel even, 
to each other. No news there. They are accomplished and inquisitorial 
judges. There is little defence against rumour, after all.

Of course, none of this need show up in the text, beyond the extent 
to which it impinges on the story. It's pretty clear that Rowling is 
very economical in what she chooses to include; her books are, by and 
large, plot-driven. If, as seems to have been a late consensus on 
the "children's books or adults' books" thread, the HP books are 
indeed a story of growing up for growing children (or for the 
children in us adults -- a queasy formulation, but one which IMO is 
not bad), then surely the reader should be able to fill in the 
subtext of school life, good and bad.

Children are not merely small adults. They are only learning about 
the weight of consequence and the shortage of second chances. The 
issues of rape and all those other horrible things that some of you 
thought represent the experience of the real world... certainly 
children are aware of them. But -- in the small world of an isolated 
boarding school (believe me when i say it is a small world), such 
terrors do not often intrude. The Hogwarts world and even the 
wizarding world is too small for such crimes that depend on anonymity.

Rrishi