On "Little Women", strength and maturity

[christi0469]

No: HPFGUIDX 33241

> Of course the women on your list are strong females, but all of 
them 
> are either downright bad or at least flawed:
> Skeeter- well, I don't think I've got to elaborate
> Lestrange- Death Eater, nuff said
> Maxime- not even strong enough to stand up for her own identity
> Winky- loyal, but not strong, drowns her sorrows in Butterbeer
> Trelawney- probably an old fraud
> 
> Frankly, I'd rather prefer a complete absence of strong women to 
an 
> unspoken, yet inherent equation "strong women = bad women". And as 
> for the rest of them: McGonagall seems to be a strong woman and a 
> powerful witch, but is given the looks of an old spinster. Fleur 
> Delacour is beautiful, but commits major errors in every Triwizard 
> task- so does Krum, but he is a first-class seeker, whereas Fleur 
> doesn't have any other outstanding quality. So it all seems to 
come 
> down to either "strong and intelligent, but bad/plain", 
> or "beautiful, but shallow and not top level" which is a bit 
cliché-
> ed. 
> 
> I would gratefully let myself convince of the contrary, though, so 
> I'd like to see your arguments.
> 
> Susanna/pigwidgeon37

 I think Madame Maxime deserves a closer look. Given the effect that 
Hagrid's "outing" had on him and the opinion that wizards seem to 
have of giants, its really not surprising that she was in no hurry 
to admit to being half giant. Her reaction to Hagrid's (surely 
correct) assumption that she is half giant is really unfortunate, 
but lets try to look at it from her probable point of view. She is 
an shockingly large woman who has a prestigious job and seems very 
confident. Not many men are attracted to women who intimidate them 
and are twice their size, so I doubt she's had many chances for a 
relationship. Then she meets someone with whom she can relate(size 
wise), is strong enough to handle her precious horses, and likes her 
to boot. She has probably been wary of discrimination should someone 
find out what she is, and would have been badly hurt if her giant 
parent abandonded her the way Hagrid's mom did. Things seem to be 
going very well with Hagrid, until he asks her a question which 
brings up unpleasant issues and she loses it. She gets extremely 
angry and tells off the man, possibly the only man so far, whom 
she's allowed herself to get close to. She tries to make amends, but 
he had his feelings hurt too and has convinced himself that she was 
just trying to use him all along. Finally, after the tournament is 
over and cannot be accused of trying to use him, she has tea(or 
something) with him and it apparently went well, as they are on a 
first name basis. I think she can be forgiven for being a strong but 
flawed female character. In fact I think the incident humanized her, 
which could make her better as a strong female character.

  Fleur has issues that are fairly opposite of Madame Maxime (IMHO, 
of course). She is incredibly beautiful and part veela, so men are 
swarming around her. Sounds great, doesn't it. But if men/boys can't 
get passed her good looks how is she ever goint to be appreciated 
for her intellegence or true character? When men ask her out it 
because of the way she looks, not for the person she is. Women/girls 
don't seem in any hurry to get to know her either, mostly they seem 
resentfull (Hermione doesn't seem to like her at all). I can see how 
she might build a wall around herself. Men seem like jokes to her, 
so she learns to play them along. She also developes an imperious 
attitude, so by the time we meet her she is fairly hard to like as a 
character. But at the end of the 2nd task we see the normal person 
in her. She loves her sister and is panic strickened at the thought 
that she could not save her. She says she does not believe that she 
deserved the 25 points she got, and she is completely grateful to 
Harry and Ron for saving Gabrielle. She claps enthusiastically for 
Harry getting more points than she does(and beating her in the task) 
snd is nice to Harry and Ron for the rest of the book. And she's not 
stupid, IMO she does very well in the first task. 

 We do have strong bad female character. Mrs. Lestrange is an evil 
DE, but she is the only one in the courtroom scene to be loyal to 
her master. Rita Skeeter is a blood sucking pest(mosquito), but is 
ambitious and accomplishes her goals. The battle between good and 
evil is a key part of the HP series, and to have no evil female 
characters would be patronizing to women in its own way. And is 
characters (male and female) were not flawed thay would not be 
realistic. As the HP series progresses the female characters have 
been more interesting, and if the trend continues may may have an 
equal balance of male/female characters of all sorts.

Christi