The Female Students (and other female charcters)

[Elizabeth Dalton]

No: HPFGUIDX 33360

Just when I was starting to think I could live without this list, a thread like
this comes along.... ;) Unlike Amanda (whose opinion I do respect), I *have*
been reading through my half-week backup of posts, looking for every related
side-turning of this thread. This is my summary and response.

cindysphynx wrote:

> Cindy (thinking the pressure is on to have Mrs. Figg be even better
> than Lupin, Black and Moody put together)
> 

Oh, wouldn't that be something to see?! (Whether or not she's the new DADA
teacher.)

Hopefully we'll see McGonnagal get sent on a secret mission, too, or otherwise
do something amazing and impressive. And even though I do think Trelawney is a
wacky old fraud, if Lavender or Parvati were to develop good accurate Seeing
abilities, that would go a long way toward improving their characters.

BTW, I think Sprout is a decent female character, not just a "flower cutter." I
really like her no-nonsense attitude about the Mandrakes and other dangerous
plants. And after all, she's a Hufflepuff. They don't go in for drama. But we
don't see an awful lot of her. I'll go along with what Pippin says:

> We don't know how powerful Professor Sprout is as a witch, but 
> she is the only professor at Hogwarts who can get a decent 
> performance out of Neville...that probably makes her the best 
> teacher in the school, bar none.

As I've written previously, I think Lupin takes that prize, for much the same
reason (with much more difficult material), but I agree with you that Sprout is
top-notch.

I will agree with Christi that Molly Weasley is a good strong female character.
I'd kind of like to find out she has an interesting past-- it would be cool if
she's a retired Auror. (Not likely, but cool.) But I don't want to go
hyper-feminist here, either. Being a good mom to the Weasley brood is a fine
accomplishment in and of itself, as Rachel points out in her Saturday post. (I
couldn't do it-- we have a stay-at-home Dad in my family-- my husband.) 

Christi also did a good job defending Maxime, Fleur, and the "bad" women in her
later post.

Susanna/pigwidgeon37 remarked:

> Frankly, I'd rather prefer a complete absence of strong women to an 
> unspoken, yet inherent equation "strong women = bad women".

That is rather disturbing, isn't it?

David writes:

> But I digress.  Lily is being saved up *because* she is important, 
> and her appearance will to some extent restore the gender balance.  
> It would be nice if her old girl friends, corresponding to Sirius and 
> Lupin, were to pop up, but that seems too easy - note that the 'old 
> crowd' characters named were men except for the (apparently) much 
> older Mrs Figg.  I suspect this question is linked to the way that 
> the past will be revealed this time around.

Unfortunately, this "old boy old crowd" doesn't help in the gender imbalance
problem. But I'll give a few points to the "Lily last because she's important"
theory. It's a good opportunity for Rowling to pull out of the current rut, if
she manages to make Lily's past overshadow James' by the end of the series.

judyserenity really sums it up here:

> I agree that JKR may have her reasons for any one particular character 
> being male, or any one particular female charcters being stereotypical 
> or failing at a task.  But, it still adds up to a pattern of very weak 
> female characters.  JKR's quite creative, she could have fixed this 
> problem if she wanted to. 

Exactly.

Debbie (elfundeb) adds:

> I would add that in my view JKR's treatment of women (and minorities, 
> for that matter) doesn't square well with statements she has made 
> that prejudice is a major theme of the books.  After paying lip 
> service to the lack of traditional prejudice in the wizarding world 
> by peppering the sidelines with female professors and Quidditch 
> players and making sure we're aware that the Hogwarts population has 
> a reasonable percentage of minorities...

And at that, Dean Thomas being Black was added by Scholastic for the American
edition!

I agree with everything else Debbie wrote about the problems with McGonnagal. I
keep wanting to like her more. I keep wanting to see her *doing* more. But
really, she doesn't.

Red XIV suggests:

> We haven't seen any female Aurors because, I'm fairly certain, we've 
> seen a grand total of ONE Auror.

Two, at least: Frank Longbottom was one. (Debbie caught this, too, I see, and
said everything I was going to say about it, only better, probably.)

I don't buy the often-cited excuse that we don't see girls because Harry doesn't
notice girls yet. Harry certainly notices McGonnagal. She just doesn't *do*
much. Ditto the other female teachers, generally.

I have to admit, though, Liana has a good point about the different status of
women as portrayed in TTTA and FB&WTFT:

> ....There are women leaders (one of whom 
> outlaws the killing and use of Golden Snidgets), women researchers, 
> women Quidditch players (according to the book, the only position women 
> do not usually play is that of Beater, meaning they play all other 
> positions - and could play a Beater with the appropriate skills), 
> women adventurers (if I'm right that Jocunda is a woman's name - 
> she made the first Atlantic broom crossing) and women inventors. 

Maybe Binns is a male chauvinist. He only teaches about goblins because they're
chauvinistic too, so he doesn't have to mention any female accomplishments. ;)

I also think Pippin has an interesting theory:

> I think what makes the female characters (except Hermione) 
> less compelling than their male counterparts is that they are 
> socially secure. ...if Rowling's 
> society is supposed to be gender blind, then she can't show 
> women striving for success against sexist prejudice, can she? 

It's a good point (though judyserenity posts some counterexamples). This places
a limitation on the *kind* of things the female characters should be struggling
about. (In a series like _Protector of the Small_, by Tamora Pierce, this is the
core of the story.) Maybe Rowling is just too nice to her female characters, so
she doesn't give them enough to do. Especially McGonnagal. Hm. It's the best
excuse I've heard yet.

Aja takes the prize for funniest contribution, IMHO:

> If Malfoy happened to be female, the problem of where all
> the strong female students went would be much less of an issue--and
> undoubtedly there would be massive SHIP speculation over the prospect of
> he and Harry

LOL! Now I don't know whether to wish for it or not!

I won't comment on Michael Goodman's remarks, except to say: you'll either get
used to this kind of discussion or leave, because whatever you may have thought
you'd be getting into on a group like this, this is the kind of thing we talk
about a lot here. (Not exclusively, but a lot.)

Elizabeth
(Still hoping Rowling will manage to give us some stronger female characters in
the remaining three books, because, if for no other reason, that has a lot to do
with whether *I* like a book.)