The Female Students (and other female characters)

[liana_l_s]

No: HPFGUIDX 33456

That's interesting, I didn't even think about it that way!

I don't think the ideas of enlightenment as concerns gender behaviors 
in the non-magical world really carry over to the magical world. It's 
true we've seen a lot of fairly traditional gender roles played out, 
and I'm not saying that's not there, but as far as I can tell they 
don't have the baggage attached to them that they do in the non-
magical world. The main divide, the main conflict isn't based on 
gender, race, religion, or anything of that sort. The divide the 
magic-using community works with is the divide between magic people 
and non-magic people. Looking at the way wizards and witches tend to 
treat non-magic users, it's pretty nasty - not necessarily in a 
malicious way, but just in this condescending, dismissing way, even 
exploiting them when necessary. Magic-users and non-magical people 
are both human, but magic-users have retreated so far into their own 
world that some of them see other humans as "beasts." (And, of 
course, I imagine that were non-magic users more aware of witches and 
wizards, there would be a lot of talk like that on the other side!)

So I imagine the issue of gender (or race, religion, etc.) in the 
magical world as not being so important, because the real value of a 
person is in his or her ability to do magic, and I think so far this 
is pretty consistent with the books. Then to go on and speculate, 
there might be levels of magical ability which determine, more than 
anything else, Where Someone Belongs. (O.W.L.S.? I haven't paid too 
much attention to them.) Skilled magicians handle dragons or work for 
banks. Extremely skilled magicians head schools or work in high 
places at the Ministry of Magic. Unskilled magicians drive the buses. 
But whether you're stocking shelves or teaching children, as long as 
you've got that base level of ability, you're in - and the question 
of gender, or any other traditionally dividing characteristic, is not 
so important. (Having connections to the other side, on the other 
hand, would be highly suspect. Connections by birth or upbringing are 
the most obvious ones, but I think Arthur Weasley's "fondness for 
muggles" fits. I know we've seen that attitude mostly from 
Slytherins, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was a little more 
widespread, though not in such an overt way.)

So it's amusing to think of Rowling writing in one female name for 
every two male names, or at least being sorely tempted to! But I 
really don't think that's it, nor do I think that it's because 
wizards and witches are so darn sensitive and enlightened. Rather, 
they value their powers and form a group of solidarity against the 
non-magic users - which doesn't seem much more useful than shutting 
out women.

Then again, not really knowing all that much about traditional 
wizarding society and notions of gender, race, religion, etc. makes 
this all speculation. So it could be just as likely as a Draco/Mme. 
Maxine pairing... (And, given that I'm a newbie to the list, it 
could have been talked to death already. Hope not!)

Liana 

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "mjollner" <mjollner at y...> wrote:
> I just finished reading these two books, and I too noticed the many 
> women's names included.  In fact, it annoyed me - it seemed too 
> aggressively PC when compared to contemporary Muggle periods 
> of history.  In modernity, we presume equality of the sexes and 
> enshrine it in law; but this is a very recent development in human 
> history.  It didn't seem right to me that witches would be playing 
> Quidditch centuries ago when their Muggle counterparts had no 
> opportunity for sport and would not until relatively recently.  
> 
> Either JKR is commenting on the enlightenment of wizard society 
with 
> respect to gender issues compared to our own (which I doubt); or 
she 
> realized she was slighting her female characters and was trying in 
> some way to make up for it (perhaps...); or else since 
these "charity" 
> books are slight and meant to be strictly humorous, and are in no 
way 
> comparable in the literary sense to the long, detailed, intricately 
> plotted HP series, she was not restrained by any internal sense of 
> plot or character development or personal intentions for the series 
> and felt free to make them as widely appealing/PC as possible.
> 
> mjollner