Henrietta...

[rja.carnegie at excite.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 19701

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., Barbara Purdom <blpurdom at y...> wrote:
>  
> There have been loads
> of successful book series featuring girls as the lead
> character--Anne of Green Gables, the Little House
> Books--but those are probably largely popular with
> girls.  Somehow, we seem to be raising boys in this
> culture to believe they can't read books about girls. 
> It's okay, however, for girls to read books about
> boys.  Double standard.

_Is_ it okay for girls to read book about boys?  I don't mean
okay by you, but okay by, oh, hypothetical average parents.

Too often, boys don't read _anything_, _that's_ the problem.
If they do, it probably won't be _Sweet Valley High_.  It might
be Philip Pullman (to name an author who, unlike yours, isn't
long dead).

I used to kind of enjoy Nancy Drew, but for the intellectual
puzzle aspect rather than her social life.

A couple of problems with making Harry a girl: if Dudley
Dursley is still a boy and the boorish favourite son of the
household, the story plays like _Mansfield Park_ - whereas
if Dudley becomes Henrietta's ugly sister in the household
from which she's rescued by magic, that's _Cinderella_.

Indeed, upon not very deep reflection, the princes and
princesses in traditional fairy-stories are esteemed
in their fictional worlds for different reasons:
princes because of their parentage, and princesses
because of their own qualities (such as beauty and/or
good character).  For Harry Potter to be an important
person in his own right - if he is - reverses and
subverts the old stereotype.

> Also, I think I read somewhere that Jo Rowling was
> advised to bill herself on the books as J.K. Rowling
> so that boys wouldn't know right away that a woman had
> written them.  The publishing industry is clearly
> doing nothing to end the double standard.

Well, if presenting their product in a certain way will
alienate some of their paying customers, how do they
justify that to shareholders?  (I presume they have
shareholders...)

At that, I wonder if Bloomsbury knew what they were doing.
A quick check on the children's authors that Amazon.co.uk
are pushing (and they _should_ know what they're doing),
for ages 9-11 and 12-16, shows a moderate majority of women.
It may be otherwise elsewhere...

Anyway, PS is (c)1997, already well into the past - look at
it this way, it's before anyone had ever heard of Harry Potter.

Robert Carnegie
Glasgow, Scotland

"I read them all when I was seven and I hated them" - unnamed American
office worker on the Harry Potter books (www.dilbert.com, List of
Stupid Things Overheard)