Umbridge and the Centaurs

[Tamee Livingston]

No: HPFGUIDX 78230

Abigail wrote:

>>>[I'm mercilessly snipping this excellent post]I think the fact that so
many people jumped the conclusion of rape in Umbridge's case - despite very
little hard evidence in the matter - is emblematic of the same kind of
perception.  Umbridge needs to be taken down a peg, and how do we do that?
By raping her. [Snip] I'm not pleased by the way JKR wrote Umbridge.
[Snipping description of the positive female character development] But then
there's Umbridge, and the readers who delight in the assumption that she was
raped, because the stuck-up bitch deserved it.  I don't like that at all.
<<<<

Now me (Tamee):

I really appreciated Abigail's post since it described perfectly what
squicks me out about the thought that Umbridge is raped by centaurs (even
more than trying to figure out the physical logistics of such an act).  And
I personally don't believe that the centaurs did any such thing, mainly
because I believe they would consider such a thing degrading to themselves.

However, I believe that what sent Umbridge into such a catatonic state is
that SHE believed they would do that and worse.  After all, she calls them
"filthy half-breeds" as well as "uncontrolled animals", and as she's being
hauled off she's wandless and without defense, and knowing that in her
position she'd be indulging in her own brand of cruelty, she expects them to
behave in whatever bestial way she can imagine.  For myself, I believe that
she got carted off and dropped into a pit or placed in some kind of dank and
unpleasant place of confinement while the centaurs fought with Grawp and
each other trying to decide what to do, and that her own imagination reduced
her to the state of shock.

Tamee