"Malfoy Is Mabel" and Genre Expectation (WAS: Names)

Fri Jun 21 00:27:00 UTC 2002

No: HPFGUIDX 40130

Pen Robinson wrote:

> Anyone remember my post equating Draco to Mabel or Veronica?
> Probably not. Never mind.

<waves hand excitedly in air>

Oh, I do!  I do!  Pick me!  Pick me!

Yes, I remember "Malfoy is Mabel!"  In fact, I've had it sitting 
around for ages, trying to think of some response that wouldn't be a 
naught but a "me too." 

For those watching at home: in message #39144, Pen wrote about a 
genre convention of the old-fashioned boarding school stories from 
which the HP books are, in part, derived.

Pen wrote (excerpted from message #39144): 

> Malfoy is Mabel. Or possibly Veronica.

> No, really. Come on, doesn't anyone else remember those delicious 
> Girls' Boarding School stories we... well, I, at any rate, used to 
> read? Stories in which Our Heroine (Pippa, or Daisy, or something 
> similarly wholesome), the poverty-stricken but noble-in-character 
> scholarship pupil arrived at a Jolly Good School and was promptly 
> picked on by The Nasty Little Rich Girl (Veronica or Mabel) because 
> she had No Money and came from a Poor Family. Our Heroine underwent 
> many trials, petty nastinesses of all kinds were inflicted by Mabel 
> (or Veronica), but Virtue Triumphed In The End. Usually there was a 
> Poignant Scene in which Our Heroine came to Mabel's (or Veronica's) 
> rescue, and Mabel (or Veronica) made a tearful recantation and 
> Avowal of Friendship.

Hee.  Oh, yes.  I remember these.  I found them bizarrely fascinating 
as a child.  They were just so utterly alien to my life.  Like 
reading about classical Athens, you know.  Or Middle Earth.  Or 
perhaps (given that I always thought those Jolly Good Schools sounded 
downright dystopian -- as, for that matter, I do Hogwarts) more like 
tales from the Gulag.  But indeed, that was precisely how they 
always worked.  The "Rescue and Redeem" scenario was always the order 
of the day in the boarding school story.

Genre precedent here, of course, suggests that Draco Malfoy may well 
have a life-debt to Harry Potter looming menacingly in his future.  
This possibility has also been strongly suggested by fact that the 
text has been encouraging the reader to draw parallels between Harry-
Draco and James-Snape ever since the end of the very first book.

It's always tricky dealing with genre precedent with the HP books, 
though, because the series is such an utter genre soup.  This is a 
large part of its appeal, of course. I also think that it's the 
reason that we see speculations covering such an incredible generic 
range proposed on this list.  Pip's "Spy Game" theory adheres to the 
conventions of the Le Carre-style espionage genre.  "Redeemable Draco 
With D/H Ship" looks to the conventions of Romance.  Pippin's 
"Lestrange Is Loose!" looked (quite self-consciously and 
entertainingly) straight to Agatha Christie, as -- far less self-
consciously -- does her Evil!Lupin, IMO.  "Fourth Man," despite its 
espionage-derived name, is also rooted firmly in Christie.  "Ron As 
Seventh Son" is YA fantasy.  "Harry Is the Heir of Gryffindor" is 
epic fantasy.  And so forth.

The HP books do not really belong wholly to *any* of these genres, 
but JKR has borrowed elements of all of them in brewing up her soup, 
and so it is unsurprising that they should all find themselves 
represented when people try to speculate about where the series might
be going next.

Of course, the fact that the series *is* such genre soup also 
accounts for people's wide and dramatic variance in what sort of 
future speculations they consider to be "canonically plausible."  If 
what you're picking up on while you read the books are all of the 
boarding school story conventions, then suggestions that by Book Five 
the students are all going to be engaged in some sort of grim warfare 
are likely to strike you as utterly ludicrous.  If you're looking to 
the epic fantasy influences, on the other hand, then you're more 
likely to be *expecting* the story to "take to the field" in Book 
Five, as fantasy novels are often structured to do precisely that 
once past their midpoints.  And of course, if you're looking to JKR's 
Agatha Christie influences, then *no* secret identity or missing 
person plotline can ever seem too convoluted or too improbable to be 
canonically likely, so long as all of the usual Christie textual 
clues seem to have been laid properly in their places.

But back to Malfoy As Mabel (or Veronica), I do find it reasonably 
likely that JKR might eventually smack Draco with a life-debt.  It's 
been amply foreshadowed, and there is strong genre precedent. It does 
seem a bit less likely to me post-POA, though.  After all, how many 
times can JKR really plan on pulling that whole life-debt schtick?  

Well.  Yeah.  So who can say?

-- Elkins