Acting their age (Was It's time to defend Ginny! (some SHIP)

[serenadust <jmmears@comcast.net>]

No: HPFGUIDX 52393

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, Susanne <siskiou at e...> wrote:
 Penny wrote:

> > Well, one of my points has always been that Ginny *isn't* acting 
her
> > age in much of the canon descriptions of her!  Yes, her crush is 
an
> > accurate depiction of a crush for a girl her age (but, again, 
it's
> > just a *crush* ...... it's not based on anything really, which 
makes
> > the whole "it's *obvious* that Harry will pair up with Ginny 
thing
> > very annoying to me).

<snip>
> > But, if you compare Ginny to members of the Trio in the previous
> > book, you'll find Ginny's characterization to be really off.  
Well,
> > maybe let's compare oranges to oranges and not compare Ginny to 
Harry
> > or Ron.  Let's just compare Ginny's behavior and dialogue in CoS 
with
> > Hermione in PS/SS.  Or, compare PoA Ginny with CoS Hermione.  In 
each
> > case, Ginny appears to me to have been characterized as 
drastically
> > younger than she is chronologically speaking.


Susanne replied:
 
> I'm not sure what the problem would be with Ginny being
> characterized younger than her age.
> 
> My own daughter is one of the oldest in her grade, but
> she's "young" for her age.
> 
> Do we know Ginny's birthday?
> I see Hermione as one of the oldest in her year, maybe Ginny
> is young for her's?
> 
> People have different personalities, even if they are in the
> same house. Just look at the range we have in Harry's year
> alone. I haven't seen Lavender do anything particularly
> brave, yet, or Dean and Seamus...
> Hermione is great at theory, but tends to freeze under
> pressure.
> 
> Also, Ginny is the youngest (and maybe last) child, and only
> girl in the family.
> There *could* be some babying going on here. Keep the last
> one sticking close as long as possible...


Actually the notion of Ginny "acting young for her age" has been 
bothering me for some time now but I've never been able to put my 
finger on why until now.

Ginny doesn't in fact act young for her age as much as Hermione (our 
only basis for comparison in the books) acts "old."

The reason I say this occured to me when I suddenly remembered a 
classmate of my daughter's.  She was/is a very bright only child, 
one of the older children (January birthday in her case) in the 
class, and she had interests that were quite different and 
substantially ahead of the other girls.  In addition, her parents 
treated her very much like a mini-adult in taking her to fairly 
exotic restaurants and informing her at about the age of 6 that 
there was, in fact, no Santa Clause.  Needless to say, when she 
brought sushi in for lunch in the 3rd grade, the other kids were 
grossed out (bouillabaisse, anyone?).  When she told all the other 
kids in the second grade about Santa, many of the mothers were 
ticked off when their children came home in tears, and when she was 
put in a group of 5 or 6 for a group project in fifth grade, she 
immediately took over and directed the other kids in how she 
insisted everything be done.  Needless to say, she wasn't hugely 
popular.  Does any of this sound like anyone we know in the HP 
series ;-)?

My point is that I've just realised that this girl has been my 
template for Hermione ever since I began reading the books. She even 
looks exactly like the Hermione in my head (not movie!Hermione). She 
was a good-hearted girl, but she was way out of step with the other 
girls in the class and usually came off as bossy and arrogant. 

Ginny, OTOH, probably behaves in a very age appropriate way, 
especially for the WW where none of the kids at Hogwarts appear to 
be as socially precocious as the children we may know IRL.  Most of 
the 10/11 year old girls in my daughter's class were into American 
Girl dolls, books and magazines, while the girl I associate with 
Hermione was into Japanese anime. 

I think that to say that Ginny acts too young for her age uses 
Hermione as the standard norm for how Ginny "should" be.  I would 
suggest that it may be more correct to use Ginny for the norm in 
JKR's world rather than Hermione, who after all was being written as 
being "different" from the other kids. If you look at her this way, 
JKR's characterization of Ginny is not off at all.

Jo Serenadust, who is thrilled to have unearthed yesterdays 
Washington Post after shoveling 24" of snow out of the driveway