<random>Mrs. Dursley</random>

[Meghan]

No: HPFGUIDX 11841

I have a friend doing a fic, and he was asking me how to do Mrs Dursley,
and I stalled and I ummed and I finally came up with the weak suggestion
that she's very Posh, but in a bad way.  This satisfied neither of us
and I kept worrying at it.

And then we were watching PBS [ne, Ebony, did you see the thing about
the sinking of the Luisitania? or was that only in Oregon?] and Keeping
Up Appearances came on.  "That's it!" I screamed.  "Mrs Dursley is The
Protaganist!" [and I could not spell her name if you held a gun to my
head, and do I have a flower catalog handy? of course not.]

Which didn't help Catsy much, since he's never seen it. >.> [And Catsy,
if you're on this list, I still remember I'm going to tape it for you,
but I have to figure out when it's on.]

Anyway, I started thinking about it some more, and I realised how very
frightening the parallels are.  The protaganist in Keeping Up
Appearances is older than Mrs Dursley, of course, but they're both very
determined to be Better than their Neighbors, to be seen as Respectable
-- more than respectable, actually.  And they're both essentially
lower/lower-middle-class characters trying to be upper/upper-middle
class.  
Of course, there's also the fact that Mrs Dursley was named Petunia and
her sister was named Lily, but I dunno if that says something about
their socio-economic. O.o;

The main difference is that the protaganist in KUA is desperately trying
to raise her social standing in the midst of her mostly uncaring family
and friends [in fact, most of them either mock her or simply don't
understand her motivation -- the main exception being her henpecked but
loyal husband, who seems to want to figure out why she wants this so
badly], but Petunia HAS reached the class she thinks she wants.  The
only problem is, she's still a very vulgar minded little person inside. 
What interested me is when Petunia snaps and starts screaming about how
Lily was always Better Than She Was -- it seems that JR is implying that
Lily [to borrow a couple of Victorian phrases] has an innate nobility of
soul, etc, that Petunia does not, and Harry has that same innate
nobility, Cinderella-like.  And Mrs. Dursley hates it.

Anyway.  All that to say, I wonder if JK is a fan of Keeping Up
Appearances, or if Petunia is just a certain type that shows up. >_> 

meg



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Meg -- meg at fenya.net --http://www.fenya.net
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