[HPforGrownups] Hermione and the Grangers (some OOP)

[Pen Robinson]

No: HPFGUIDX 66370


On Monday, Jun 30, 2003, at 18:59 Europe/London, Scott wrote:

<massive snippage>

> I don't pretend to know much about the psyche of a typical British
> Boarding school child, but I find it odd that they never seem to get
> homesick (especially Hermione and other muggle-borns and esp. during
> the first year or two). I know Harry isn't going to miss the
> Dursley's but for someone like Hermione, coming from what one hopes
> is a loving and supportive household and going into a whole new
> world (literally), this can't be that easy. And at eleven? I don't
> think I would've felt comfortable departing from my family at this
> age; can anyone who lived in a boarding school speak of their own
> experiences?
>

I went to boarding school just before I turned ten - this was unusual, 
at my school people mostly started boarding in the first year of senior 
school (ie eleven), but there were odd family circumstances at work.

In my experience, homesickness was a rare thing.  I didn't feel 
homesick at all, though there are probably good reasons for that; but I 
rarely noticed anyone suffering particular pangs.  There was, in my 
seven-and-a-bit years as a boarder, one girl who was so unhappy she ran 
away.   Mostly, people were delighted to be going home for the 
holidays, but by no means sorry to get back to school.  One or two 
girls resented being at boarding school, but that tended to be because 
of family issues, not because of the school itself.

It's not so difficult to get used to boarding school.  I enjoyed it.  
It does foster a certain self-reliance, as you cannot go to your 
parents for, eg, help with homework, or money to buy friends birthday 
presents, etc, or for chauffeur/escort to scarily new places either!    
(I remember being extremely scornful, when I went to a university 
interview and stayed the night in the college, of a girl in the next 
room who seemed to spend most of the night sobbing.  She had never been 
away from home before, and I thought her pitiful.)    From that point 
of view I suppose it is reasonable that Harry, Ron and Hermione tend to 
want to deal with things themselves.  Of course, Harry is more 
independent because he has never had adult support; Hermione seems to 
want to go to the staff more often, which suggests to me that she does 
have supportive parents and is used to being able to go to them with 
problems.   I think it is probably easier to adapt to boarding school 
if you have previously experienced a loving, secure family environment 
than if you have not.

Back to boarding school: I seem to recall that we had (at least in the 
first couple of years) a timetabled weekly session for writing home - 
because otherwise, let's face it, few of us would have bothered, as 
there is usually something more interesting to do, when you are living 
with your friends and contemporaries rather than with your parents.  
Boarding school does also create very strong friendships - when you 
share a room with someone (I'm thinking of our senior years, when we 
had only two to a dorm) you can achieve a degree of closeness which I 
imagine would be harder on a days-only level.

However, the idea that one can stay at school for Christmas is, as far 
as I know, an invention of JKR's.  Students with family abroad usually 
had somewhere to go for the half-term breaks, though it was possible 
for them to stay in the boarding house if necessary - but *nobody* 
stayed there during the Christmas or Easter holidays.   Quite a lot of 
us were boarding because we had parents in the forces, posted abroad, 
and not everyone went to their parents for Easter, particularly if the 
parents were in the Far East, but everyone went home for Christmas as 
well as the summer.   In practice, we also had opportunities to go away 
for short periods during the terms - as well as half-term holidays (a 
long weekend) we were allowed to go away for a weekend to an approved 
place, eg I usually spent one weekend in every term with my aunt's 
family.   The completely cloistered life at Hogwarts is, ahem, extreme, 
and in the literary tradition of those Chalet School and St Clare's 
books where everything interesting happens at school, so nobody wants 
to be anywhere else.

Any questions?

Pen