[HPforGrownups] Re: Logic and Math of Sexism (WAS Article)

[Edblanning at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 41350

I was staying out of this one, but........

First I should acknowldege that I agree with almost everything Porphyria 
expressed so well in her last post. I particularly liked her point about the 
books not really being written from Harry's POV, in that although by and 
large we only see and hear the things he does, we notice and question many 
things that he doesn't.

The logic and the maths of the situation don't concern me so much. How many 
readers are actually going to go and write lists and give characters 
weighting for gravitas and importance and do all the analytical stuff we do 
here? How many kids are going to do it? What matters to me is the 
*impression* I come away with and *my* impression is frankly that females get 
a bit of a bum deal when it comes to their portrayal. I just keep finding 
myself irritated by things, not because I've analysed them or anything, but 
just because they grate when I read them.

I want to throw out a piece of canon that particularly irritates me and ask 
what it implies.
This is where Harry has been told he has to find a partner for the ball:

'.........This year, however, everyone in the fourth year and above seemed to 
be staying, and they all seemed to Harry to be obsessed with the coming ball 
- or, at least, all the girls were, and it was amazing how many girls 
Hogwarts suddenly seemed to hold; he had never quite noticed that before. 
Girls giggling and whispering in the corridors, girls shrieking with laughter 
as boys passed them, girls excitedly comparing notes an what they were going 
to wear on Christmas night...
 'Why do they have to move in packs?' Harry asked Ron, as a dozen or so girls 
walked past them, sniggering and staring at Harry. 'How're you supposed to 
get one on their own to ask them?'
             (GoF, 338-9, UK hardback)

This irritates me *far* more than, say Pavarti and Lavender's thing about 
Trelawney. After all, adolescent girls *do* have platonic crushes on 
teachers/older girls, which is how I tend to interpret their lunch dates in 
the North Tower (and Sprout and McGonagall seem less likely as objects of 
such crushes).

How much of this passage is JKR speaking and how much of it is merely Harrys' 
POV? Ostensibly, it seems to be Harry's opinion, but when I come to look at 
it, it seems mixed: the second paragraph is describing something that 
*happened*, not Harry's impression. Is some of it ironic comment on female 
behaviour (later she makes the valid point that girls always seem to go to 
the bathroom in company)? Is part of it a way of slipping into the text that 
yes, there really are quite a lot of girls at Hogwarts, but they just haven't 
really been mentioned before now?

Whether or not it's Harry's POV, I'm always annoyed by this impression this 
passage gives that at the news of a ball, all the girls at Hogwarts seem to 
behave like the sillier Bennett sisters and their mother when they hear The 
Regiment is in town (_Pride and Prejudice_).

I wonder if some of the dissatisfaction some of us feel is down to some of 
the characters, particularly female ones, being written rather younger than 
they should be, so that they sound immature? Ginny is the prime example of 
this, though I think she does it with Hermione too (all that exaggerated 
hand-waving and jumping up and down when she wants to answer a question). 

Do female writers sometimes feel happier criticising the less appealing 
traits of other females than they do those of men?

Is this a trait particularly of women who write books ostensibly from a boy's 
POV?
I'm thinking of Richmal Crompton's portrayal of William Brown's sister, 
Ethel, for instance and the dreadful Violet Elizabeth Bott. At the moment 
we're listening to Penelope Lively's _The Ghost of Thomas Kempe_ and the 
protagonist's sister is again portrayed as an irritatingly girly girl.

Is there a tendency to overcompensate *because* they want it to appear that 
they are writing from a boy's POV?

I apologise if this overlaps with the previous thread on JKR being pone to 
old preconceptions about females, which I admit I haven't had time to read in 
detail.

Eloise
finding the first paragraph she quoted above fairly superfluous and wondering 
if Dicey wouldn't like to take the offending ca(n)non away on her GARBAGE 
SCOW? 


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]