First Glances Re: Ginny and Harry (SHIP)

[milztoday]

No: HPFGUIDX 33208

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "lucky_kari" <lucky_kari at y...> wrote:
<snip>
> The idea was probably even more popular in the past. I don't know 
how 
> many of you are familiar with Stephen Leacock, one of the greatest 
> humourists, imho, of the 20th century. But he wrote an absolutely 
> hilarious parody of this sort of story in which the young boy says 
> goodbye to the young girl in the garden next door, goes overseas, 
has 
> adventures, comes home, and asks himself, "Is that beautiful, young 
> woman with the exquisite manners and the aristocratic bearing, his 
> sunburned playmate of olden days?" At which Leacock adds something 
> like, "You can bet it is!" IIRC, that particular romance didn't end 
> well, and he went back to the desert to swear to his adopted Bedouin 
> father that he would be a second Harry to him (the Bedouin's son 
whom 
> he had killed in a duel) as the sun went down over the desert. It 
was 
> quite complicated. But that brings us to another theme, the girl or 
> boy from the beginning as a problem. I remember a F. Scott 
Fitzgerald 
> story along these lines, where this guy ruins his entire life 
obsessed 
> with this girl, who walked into his life as a boy. 
> 

That reminds me of something I read in the "Aristocrats" by Stella 
Tillyard. It's a biography and study of the daughters of the Duke of 
Richmond and Lennox. Anyhow, their father (who was at that time known 
as the Earl of March) was married to their mother when he was in his 
late teens and when she was about 13. It was a way of settling a debt 
that his father incurred from her father. He was terrified/horrifed 
and immediately left to travel the known world. About eight years 
later in Paris, he is attending the opera and sees a beautiful 
charming lady sitting in the next balcony. He leans over to one of his 
friends and asks who the lady is. It was his wife, who had grown up in 
the years he had been away.

A more recent example is this literary subgenre is "Gigi" based on a 
story by Collette. Gaston is older than Gigi and thinks of her more as 
a little sister than anything else. Eventually, he realizes that she's 
grown up into a lovely young woman and falls in love with her. Another 
example is Amy and Laurie in "Little Women". Laurie spends most of the 
book pining after Jo and only realizes later that Amy isn't a little 
girl anymore.

Milz