OOP: Boys & Girls in the Potter World

[serenadust]

No: HPFGUIDX 67237

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "kiricat2001" <Zarleycat at a...> 
wrote:
> --- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Steve" <bboy_mn at y...> wrote:
> 
> > So Ladies, how about Hermione and Cho? Did JKR capture the 
essense 
> of
> > the teenage girl for you?

Marianne replied:

<snip Cho stuff>
> 
> Hermione is 15 going on 45. She is a smart cookie, book-wise, and 
has 
> a good understanding of how Ron and Harry think. But, she has a 
> special relationship with them. We haven't seen her in a 
> boyfriend/girlfriend situation yet. Viktor doesn't count. 
> 
> What I find a bit off-putting about her is that she seems blessed 
> with very precise insights on lots of people, including adults, 
that 
> I find a little too precocious for someone of her age. I read 
> someplace that JKR uses either Dumbledore or Hermione to present 
the 
> reader with important explanatory information.  So, we have 
Hermione 
> giving pithy one-sentence summaries that effectively highlight key 
> elements of the characters (see her statements about Sirius). Her 
> reads on characters are often correct - she just seems too young 
with 
> too little life experience and relationship experience to have 
quite 
> the level of understanding that she's presented as having.
> 
> Did that make sense?


It makes sense to me.  I agree that the all-knowing, Super!Hermione 
has gotten to be a bit much in OoP.  I can buy all the book-
knowledge she comes up with  so far; that part is all in character.  
What seems strained IMHO is all her insight into interpersonal 
relationships and how girls think, when her only quasi-relationship 
has been with Victor and that one doesn't seem to have much 
emotional involvement on her part.  She certainly shouldn't be able 
to psychoanalyse Sirius at 15.  Hermione has been depicted as 
extremely intelligent on an academic level all along, but she 
has sometimes been stunningly insensitive on an interpersonal one, 
and often has no insight at all about how her own actions are 
perceived by others.  Examples of this include the discussion with 
Lavender about her dead pet rabbit in CoS, her disregard for Ron's 
concerns about Scabbers safety in PoA, and most significantly her 
treatment of the House Elves in GoF and OoP.  In addition, apart 
from Ginny, she doesn't show any signs of ever having any girl 
friends or sisters and doesn't seem to have any interest in the 
girls who've been her dorm-mates for 4 years.

So where does all this deep insight into human behavior come from?  
This is one of the few things that bothered me about OoP.

Jo Serenadust