The Sleeping Woman

[dicentra63]

No: HPFGUIDX 37500

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "pippin_999" <foxmoth at q...> wrote:
> 
> However, as many have noticed, sexuality is not absent from the 
> novels. Instead, it is disguised. Using the traditional symbols of 
> fairy tales, such as toads and magical trances, Rowling deals 
> with sexual development in a non-threatening way. Consider  
> Hermione's first appearance in PS/SS. She arrives with Neville 
> under her wing, in search of a lost toad. Freudians will not need 
> to be told that the toad in fairy tales is a symbol of sexual 
> relations (Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment.)  In fairy tale 
> language, the toad is the part of Hermione's sexuality that is 
> "lost", ie not yet developed. As in the many tales where the toad, 
> or frog, becomes a handsome prince,  this little episode teaches 
> how what might  seem ugly and repulsive may be transformed 
> by love into something highly desireable. 
> 

Hmmmm....  I wonder.  I'm familiar with the Freudian interpretation of
frog-as-sexuality, but there are some elements missing from HP that
are present in the fairy tails on which the interpretation of the frog
motif is is based.

The most familiar frog-as-sexuality tale is the one where the princess
accidentally loses a golden ball in a deep pool.  A talking frog
offers to retreive it for her but only on the condition that she adopt
him as a pet.  She agrees, and once the frog gets the ball, he insists
on eating from her plate and sleeping on her pillow.  She is grossed
out by this. There are several versions--does she throw him against
the wall in frustration or does he tell her to kiss him? I don't
remember.  He ends up turning into a prince at the end.

Anyway, the frog represents sexuality in a context where there's a
deep pool of water (the subconscious) and the frog gets personal with
the princess.  Their interactions represent her ambivalence toward
sexuality and her eventual embracing of it.

In HP, Trevor is a toad, not a frog. Toads begin their lives in the
water, but after that they live on dry ground.  Trevor therefore does
not emerge from a deep pool of water (nor is he associated with
water), nor does he get personal with Hermione. JKR has a tendency to
adopt motifs and symbols from the existing collective subconscious (to
get Jungian on you) but she uses them for her own purposes. Given her
education, she has no doubt encountered the method of interpretation
Pippin uses, but does she subscribe to it or not?   

Furthermore, the frog tale and its many avatars were not authored by
anyone in particular (though some authors may have written their own
versions). They tend to spontaneously develop in cultures through the
oral tradition, where the tellers embellish and omit according to
their own fancies. These tales tend to best represent subconscious
processes because they pass through so many hands. 

This in stark contrast to JKR's obsessive five-year planning session.
I have a hard time with the idea that a single author, especially one
who anally keeps track of every thread that goes into her books, has
nonetheless succumbed to Freudian symbolism quite beyond her will.
(Archetypes are another question. Or are they?) 

It may be as erroneous to read Freud into HP as it is to read the
occult into it: the anti-HP folks make a lot of hay out of the fact
that occult symbols show up in HP, but the less hysterical among us
can see that the symbols have been severed at least partly from their
origins and put to new use. I wouldn't put it past her to have
harvested the frog motif and used it in some ironic way (yet to be
revealed) either to poke fun at lit. crit. or to just have a laugh. Or
not. 

Given that I'm not a real fan of Freudian criticism, I'd like to see
these symbols (frog, serpent, mother, M) take on a life of their own
in ironic juxtaposition to their conventional use or be something
entirely unique.

--Dicentra, who can't believe her lit. crit. degree is *useful*