"Millennials Rising" - The HP Generation

[Caius Marcius]

No: HPFGUIDX 20046

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., Schlobin at a... wrote:
> 
> > Despite their complementary tone, Strauss and Howe, like many 
> > fundamentalist and feminist critics, unfortunately give little 
sign 
> > that they have actually read Harry Potter
> 
> 
> Did you mean complimentary tone?
> 
> And by the way, this feminist critic (who is seriously unhappy at 
> being coupled with fundamentalists) has read the HP books many 
times.
> 
> They are primarily about men and boys, after all. 
> 
> This does not make them less wonderful or engaging.
> 

I meant "critic" in the literal sense of one who is actually critical 
of the books, as the aptly named Dr. Heilman:


  
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Archive - Home news Nic Barnard 04/05/2001 

Harry caught in muggle over sexism 
 
HARRY Potter is caught in the middle of a battle, and it has nothing 
to do with goblets of fire or philosophers' stones. The muggles are 
fighting over gender - the hot debate is over whether JK Rowling's 
children's books are sexist, and does it matter?
American academic Elizabeth Heilman says the books 
perpetrate "demeaning" stereotypes. Rowling's girls are "giggly, 
emotional, gossipy and anti-intellectual", while males are "wiser, 
braver, more powerful and more fun".

Harry's brainy best friend, clever-clogs Hermione, decidedly plays 
second fiddle. She does help the hero solve mysteries. But then 
Hermione takes a back seat or, worse, needs rescuing, complains Dr 
Heilman of Purdue University, Indiana.

A similar debate has been raging on academic websites. The books have 
already come under fire for their ultra-traditional boarding school 
setting. "Capitalist and patriarchal" is Dr Heilman's verdict in a 
paper to the recent American Educational Research Association 
conference.

But girl readers don't seem to see the books as sexist. And Pat 
Pinsent, senior research fellow at the National Centre for Research 
in Children's Literature at Roehampton, Surrey, says: "I don't come 
away with the image of Hermione as helpless. She has a great deal of 
ability to get herself out of situations and bounce back.

"You can get too despondent about female readers imbibing female 
characteristics. A lot of them identify with the hero and don't stop 
to consider that they're a female reader," she said.

Or as Hermione says in Potter Book One: "Books and cleverness! There 
are more important things."

Is Potter sexist? Have your say: www.tes.co.uk