JKR's weaknesses (sacrilege!), Molly, and lots on CSl vs JKR

[Tabouli]

No: HPFGUIDX 25923

Gwendolyn Grace:
> Some of her characters are so caricatured I can't even imagine them developing in the
series, and her poetry and incidents like the school song scene frankly make me cringe.

Yup, I'm with you on that, much as I love HP.  Cardboard henchmen, cartoon arch-villain, and I can't say her poetry is going to win her any Nobel prizes.  Her scansion, for example, is definitely a bit shaky...


Marsha/Marianna:
> Look at her (Molly's) reaction to Lockhart. She is as moony over him as a teenager. Hermione has an excuse: she is 12.  Molly doesn't. The Rita article incident is an extension of that. Despite her obvious merit and strengths, she strikes me as the type of woman who would read tabloids for fun, and is easily swayed by celebrity.

For all that Molly is tough and smart and a loving, assertive mother, I suspect that JKR has mixed in more than a dash of the gossipy, women's mag reading suburban housewife potion when cooking up her character...

Aberforth's Goat (emphasis added):
> We're currently more than a thousand pages into the series and have yet to
see a character really *change.* In CSL's books moral development and change
is all over the place. Eustace, Edmund, and Susan are all examples of
radical change; but all his books are, among other things, explorations of
growth and character development. **Of course, this change and development
takes place within the parameters of an explicitly redemptive world view;
people who don't agree with Lewis' world view may understandably find his
sort of change simplistic and unpleasantly moralistic.**<

The asterisked excerpt is precisely what I meant when I referred to lack of character development.  I don't agree that Eustace and Edmund particularly "grow" or "develop" at all, to be honest: their characters are not developed, they are *reformed*, which is a different thing altogether.  Edmund starts out as a sulky selfish bully, whose sins lead him into the clutches of the White Witch, who realises she's bad because she's nasty to people and reforms completely to a noble kind bland boy when Aslan gets crucified.  Eustace starts off as a pompous little whinger and stays that way until the dragon transformation, whereupon he is reformed to become as noble and kind and bland as the New Edmund.  Lewis even spells this out:

"It would be nice, and fairly near true, to say that 'from that time forth Eustace was a different boy'.  To be strictly accurate, he began to be a different boy.  He had relapses (...).  But most of those I shall not notice.  The cure had begun." (Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Lions paperback p89).

Cure!  Perhaps this is part of the Christian allegory: all sin and badness is a kind of disease, which can be cured by being Saved.  Eustace has been punished for his sins, and repented, and henceforth become as Good Person (more's the pity: he was much more interesting beforehand).  Lewis seems to have a fixed and not very interesting view of what a Good Person is and how such a person behaves; what characterisation he does within this category is pretty limited (Reepicheep is Brave, Lucy is Sweet and Loyal, Puddleglum is a Wet Blanket).

We don't really get more than a token insight into how CSL's characters think and feel, or about their background: this very much takes second place to what they're doing and what's happening in Narnia.  Could you really see a list like this exploring the inner motivations and thoughts of CSL characters the way we do to JKR's?  I don't feel that I really know any of his characters, as a multiple-time Narnia reader, whereas I *do* feel well-acquainted with the characters in HP.  Perhaps that's the key difference.  I also think that the changes we *have* seen in JKR's characters are much more believable than the total new leaf reformations in Narnia. 

I wonder if this difference has to do with the genders of the respective writers... there is a well-established tendency for women to focus more on the interpersonal domains and men to focus more on the objects and principles domains.

More Aberforth's Goat:
> CSL believed that morality is a simple and
intuitive thing, and that many of our moral conundrums result from ignoring
what we really know. Again, that's CSL's ethical system (and pretty
challenging one, too) - you can take it or leave it. (I do some of both.)
But I don't think you can say that his characters don't struggle with moral
issues, nor that their struggles are portrayed simplistically.<

I suppose my problem with this may be that I utterly disagree with CSL's view that morality is simple and intuitive, perhaps because I don't work within his Christian framework (at least, not consciously and canonically: having being raised in a society founded on Christian values does leave its mark, but that's another story...).  Yes, his characters do struggle with moral issues, e.g. Digory thinking about stealing an apple from the garden, but every time the Good and Evil choices and people are very clearly signposted in the text.  I don't think the world is anywhere near that simple.  People are capable of both Good and Bad, and these things are defined very differently depending on the individual and cultural context.  I greatly prefer JKR's approach, which sees Good and Bad as less intrinsic, as related to our choices, as more ambiguous, as not immediately obvious (e.g. Snape seeming Bad but turning out to be Good, Wormtail seeming Good but turning out to be Bad).

Still more:
> The way Jo constructs the wizarding world in parallel to our
own demands a close observation of contemporary trends. Narnia didn't need
that, since it is derived more from medieval and classical sources. To my
tastes, neither is better; they're just different.<

Yes, I'll buy this, but with one comment: given that contemporary trends and popular culture are more fundamental to JKR's work than CSL's, it's interesting to note that CSL is more specific about the time he's setting his stories in than JKR, who *has* left obvious enough clues, but has not specifically proclaimed any dates or eras.  I can't help wondering if JKR's work might date a lot more than CSL's for this reason.

As for the gender issue, let's move on the the third "developing" character you mentioned above: Susan. Who starts out bland and bit soft and girly, and then takes a one step transformation in Silly Teenager, revealing CSL's general disdain for adult womanhood (being, I assume, an alumnus of a traditional English boys' boarding school probably didn't help him in this) later by being derided as teenager interested in nothing but gossip and clothes who's so self-indulgent and fashionable that she pretends to have *forgotten* or dismissed all of her adventures in Narnia.  "Our sister Susan is no longer a friend of Narnia." (followed by a string of positively vicious insults from her nearest and dearest about her womanly idiocy).  Yeah right, as if and come off it Clive.  All of CSL's rare references to puberty and stereotypically "womanly" interests in the series are similarly scornful: note that Aravis, his only girl with oomph (as Aberforth's Goat says) is approved of because she is above such nonsense.

Now, as I ranted on for ages a few months ago, I think JKR does have some sexism in her books, but a lot of it is IMHO what I'd call "plausible" sexism, rather than pointed sexism (my main complaint is her lack of significant female characters, but that's gradually being overcome through the books). That is, she's describing teenage girls (Lavender and Parvati, notably) and suburban housewives (e.g. Molly) as a lot of them actually *are*, rather than trying to concoct a bunch of Role Models For Our Girls who are impossibly brave and smart and confident and capable and wise.

> I've never worked out the Pensieves' ages 

HP has clearly taken you over!  Pevensie, perhaps...?

Tabouli


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