OOP:McGonagall's nationality (WAS: McGonagall's cookies )

[Kirstini]

No: HPFGUIDX 67606

 Vinnia Chrysshallie wrote: 
> I find it curious that McGonagall's
Scottish origin is mentioned several times. Tartan
dressing gown, tartan dress robes, now tartan biscuit
tin. Aside from her and Seamus, we don't really know
much about the other characters' ancestry, do we?> 

Me (Kirstini): Sorry to nitpick, but I think you mean "nationality" 
rather than "ancestry". We don't know anything about either Seamus 
or McGonagall's *ancestry*, we know about their nationality. We do, 
however, know a little bit about the "ancestry" of some of the other 
characters - the Ancient and Most Noble House of Black, for example.
"Ancestry" is a rather Americanised term to use to describe the 
inhabitants of a whole country. Seamus is not an American who can 
trace his ancestry back to Ireland, he is actually Irish.

It's not curious. It's slightly lazy national stereotyping. JKR may 
live in Scotland, but she's English, as are the majority of featured 
pupils in the series. The omniescent narrator is English. There 
aren't really any handy sets of stereotypes that 
denote "Englishness", because it is the assumed hegemonic state. 
However, McGonagall wears tartan robes because she has a "Mc" in her 
name, just as Seamus is scared of banshees and occasionally 
says "sure" because he's from Ireland. That's what we do, you know, 
us odd Celts. It's a similar thing to Fleur shrugging her shoulders, 
dropping her h's and eating Bouillabaisse.(The language registers 
employed to denote difference in speech always annoy me a bit as 
well. I find it rather patronising that the "stupider" characters - 
Stan Shunpike, even Hagrid - have thick accents where the others 
speak RP.)  

The tartan biscuit tin I can accept, because my gran has one of 
them - you get them free when you buy shortbread. But the tartan 
robes are taking it a bit far. You do know we don't actually wear 
tartan in Scotland, right?
Kirstini
feeling a bit jingoistic.