Animagus reproduction, JKR vs C.S. Lewis

[Tabouli]

No: HPFGUIDX 25860

Catherine:
> Finally, do werewolf cubs exist?  Is the condition genetic?  Or is it 
> only passed on by biting etc.???

Rita:
> FANTASTIC BEASTS says "Humans turn into werewolves only when bitten." It
doesn't say anything about inheriting the condition -- neither does it
say whether werewolves can have human children/wolf cubs (I'm inclined
to believe that female werewolves miscarry all pregnancies because the
transformation is too hard on a fetus -- I also believe that the
Animagus transformation, among all its myriad advantages over werewolf
transformation, safely transform the fetus along with its other).<

Interesting musings, these.  I'm regretfully inclined towards Rita's view that lycanthropy can only be acquired, not inherited, but if if *were* inheritable, perhaps all you Lupin lovers out there should pause for thought... would you be prepared to bear his periodically hairy, destructive werecubs for him?

Which brings me to the fascinating realm of Animagus Reproduction (***Morality Police, avert your eyes now***).  What do people think the story is there?  As I see it, there are at least four possibilities:

(1) The True Form Theory

This theory goes like this: the true form of a female Animagus is that of a witch, and therefore her child will inevitably be born human (magic or muggle).  This would mean that the fetus would have to do the mystic transformation-into-a-parallel-dimension trick of which I still disapprove when she's in animal form, *or* that the fetus transforms with the mother but she cannot give birth in animal form, perhaps undergoing a forced transformation when she goes into labour, or perhaps magically sprouting a human baby from animal womb  (what if she were a bird, eh?  Could we get a Momotaro style baby-hatching-from-egg scenario??  I like it...).

For the male Animagus, the plot thickens.  Can he father offspring when in animal form, or is he not a "true animal" and therefore sterile or not interested?   Could Wormtail have fathered a host of little ratlings in the London sewers?  And if he has, would they have any magical powers, or be Animagi (true form: Rat) themselves?

(2) The Form at Birth Theory

This theory would mean that the fetus is born in whatever form the mother is in at birth.  Hence if McGonagall got carried away with Hagrid at the Christmas party and then fled in shame as a cat to give birth, her offspring would be in kitten form (yes, it was me who suggested that Crookshanks could be an offspring of an orange Kneazle and McGonagall in cat form, mostly tongue in cheek, but you never know...).

(3) The Form at Mating Theory

OK, so then let's assume that the form of the fetus is fixed at the time of conception.  Therefore, McGonagall would only give birth to kittens if she got carried away with Crookshanks when in cat form.  Which would mean that either she'd give birth to a kitten as a woman (ew!) or undergo an involuntary shape change when her gestation as a cat was up and she went into labour.

(4) The Hybrid Theory

A touch of Piers Anthony here: perhaps the centaurs, harpies and so forth are in fact the half-human progeny of Animagus matings when in animal form!  Which would mean that a female horse Animagus would need to be very careful with herself when in mare form, lest she find herself trying to give birth to a centaur later.

(is that wincing I hear?  Come on, this is the Science of the Potterverse I'm exploring here!)

Steve:
> But I don't think she's a writer on par with C.S. Lewis or Natalie Babbitt and that's okay.

Curious: how does one measure the absolute quality of a writer?  Now I haven't read Natalie Babbit, but I'll grant that the Narnia series (which I love) doesn't have the glitches of internal consistency we're picking up in the HP series, at least, not that I've noticed.  However, I'd also argue that Narnia sits fairly safely in the middle childhood department, with a pretty, desexualised world, minimal character development, simple dualist moral messages a la Christian ideology, and fairly uncomplicated, discrete borrowings from mythology and folklore (Father Christmas, fauns, dryads, etc.).  Indeed, I read somewhere that Tolkien disapproved violently of this last: he thought that a good writer should create a completely unique world and creatures without nabbing things haphazardly from other places!

 Without going into the ol' "are they children's books" debate for the billionth time, HP is in a lot of ways more ambitious.  JKR's world *is* sexualised (beyond the fairytale romance references in Narnia), albeit in an understated way, and she is definitely engaging in more character development than C.S. Lewis, with sexual maturation being part of this.  Although she's marked out "good" and "evil", and has moral messages in her work, she approaches the issue in a much more complex way than C.S. Lewis.  Compare Aslan and Dumbledore, or Jadis and Tom Riddle, for example.  Not for C.S. Lewis the moral minefield of whether disobeying authority or lying can sometimes be justified for a greater good, or exploring what makes one person become good and the other bad, or why bad things happen to good people and vice versa which don't miraculously right themselves by the end, or whether a good guy could have a nasty temperament, or letting his audience believe for almost a whole book that an apparent good guy is in fact a villain.  This is partly because she is writing involved mystery stories, not a straightforward adventure story set in a fantasy world.  Her books are filled with plot twists and real-world fantasy world crossovers which are more numerous and easily as clever as Lewis' sneaky prequel The Magician's Nephew, where he neatly explains the origin of both the wardrobe and the lamp-post.  In terms of her mythological borrowings, JKR does this on more levels than Lewis, with her clever naming of her characters, and her adaptation of mythical creatures.

I would also argue (thought with less conviction) that the HP books are a bit more firmly rooted in popular culture, with the children using contemporary English slang, and references that will date (Playstations, video recorders, etc.).  C.S. Lewis set his books in specific eras (late Victorian London and around WW2), and his characters *do* use the slang of the time to some degree, but not (I think) quite so much.

So there we have it: in a nutshell, HP may not be as internally consistent as Narnia, but this is largely because JKR is trying to do a lot more than C.S. Lewis was, namely write fully-fledged, maturing characters, accommodate a sexual element, write ingenious mystery plots, capture late 20th century English children's culture, and provide her readers with a more realistic, multi-dimensional portrayal of good and evil.

OK, I'm bracing myself for the responses...

Tabouli.


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