more on stereotypes( WAs role models and gender typing)

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 33502

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "jrober4211" <midwife34 at a...> 
wrote:
> Also, no one has mentioned this lately, and since I am a 
newby, I 
> want to preface what I say with -No, I have not read every listing 
> regarding Madam Pomphrey. 
> 
> I just want to make this observation about her character.  She 
is a  nurse and IMHO is portrayed as hateful, impatient, and 
bossy.  

Welcome to the group! Madam Pomfrey is a victim of 
mistranslation by the American editors. She is not a nurse in the 
British originals. She is a 'matron', that is, "a (married or 
unmarried) woman who has official charge of the domestic 
arrangements of a hospital, school, prison, etc" according to my 
lovely old 1955 edition of the Shorter Oxford  English Dictionary.
The date is significant: Hogwarts is not based entirely on 
contemporary schooling, but on the schools  Rowling 
remembers and the schools she read about in "school stories" 
as a child. 
   So Pomfrey's bedside manner is not even the caricature of a 
medical professional, but IMO, is meant to recall the 'first aid 
ladies' I encountered in elementary school. They were 
no-nonsense types who dispensed band-aids and painted 
iodine (ouch!) on playground scrapes , their chief qualification 
being that they could apply the iodine with a steady hand, despite  
the screams and tears of their child victims, and would not faint 
at the sight of blood.   
   
   The same applies to Madame Pince. I don't think school 
librarians got all the special training available today.  Back then, 
when you entered the library you were expected to conduct 
yourself like a miniature adult, and the librarians, or at least the 
ones I remember, were not highly skilled at determining what 
sort of book I had in mind.

Pippin