OoP: Women in OoP (spoilers, of course)

[grace701]

No: HPFGUIDX 65234

Jennifer Boggess Ramon wrote:
> *sacrificial spoiler-free line*
> 
> I'm not caught up, so I may inadvertently cover some territory 
> already mused upon.  If so, I apologize.
> 
> Well, Bellatrix Lestrange was Dead Sexy after all!  We even got 
> Dead Sexy vs. Dead Sexy, even if one of them ended up, well, dead 
> at the end of it.
> 
> Umbridge, on the other hand, isn't sexy at all.  Still, though, 
> previously the worst female character we've had to plot against has 
> been Rita Skeeter, who, true to her name, is a whining irritant, 
> not a true enemy.
> 
> An awful lot of Harry's self-discovery has been through 
> father-searching - trying to find out who James was <snip> 
> Well, now he got to meet him in the Pensieve, and it wasn't pretty. 
> Moreover, he's lost his substitute father-figure, Sirius.
> 
> Now, I think, Harry is ready to do some mother-searching.
<snip>
> he didn't ever really have even a substitute 
> mother-figure until Molly Weasley began rather deliberately acting 
> the role - and while she started that in CoS, she didn't really 
> kick into full Mom-mode until GoF.  His Muggle mother-figure, 
> Petunia, clearly rejected the role with respect to him <snip> 
> (Madam Pomfrey has played the role a couple of times, but never in 
> a very emotionally connecting way, so I don't think she needs to be 
> discussed specifically.)
<snip>

> Mrs. Figg rescues him in the beginning, both physically and as a 
> witness, rather than Dumbledore, even if we see how much he's 
> propping her up.  Hagrid isn't around for his CoMC class, and he 
> gets the (rather butch, but still) Professor Grubbly-Plank instead -
> who heals his owl for him, something I suspect is beyond Hagrid's 
> skills. We see a lot more of McGonnigal in this book than we have 
> previously. 
> The main bad guy is a female - Umbridge is a picture perfect Evil 
> Grandma - and it's beginning to look like Bellatrix is the de facto 
> head Death Eater, the Dark Mother herself, and poised to play the 
> role both to Harry and to Neville.
> 
> The face-off between McGonnigal and Umbridge during the career 
> counseling session, where they very clearly play the roles of Good 
> Crone and Bad Crone over Harry, I found to be very telling.
> 
> And in the same memory in which Harry loses his idealized image of 
> his father forever, he finds out how much of an upstanding woman 
> his mother was - and how much he seems to resemble her, rather than 
> James, in temperament.
> 
> It's his mother's love that saved him, and it's his mother's blood 
> in Petunia that still protects him.  Intriguingly, we have also 
> just discovered that Petunia may know more than she has appeared, 
> and seen her defy Vernon for what I beleive is the first time in 
> the series. 
<snip>Tonks, who can play any of the female roles - Maiden, Mother, 
Crone, or other.
> 
> Ginny has graduated from damsel-in-distress to a proper 
> shield-maiden.  She's been joined by Luna, who seems to be a 
> keeper-of-mysteries.  (If anyone's familiar with the Tarot, I'm 
> seeing them as sort of junior versions of the Empress and High 
> Priestess with respect to Harry right now.)
> 
> Even Trelawny got to be sympathetic this time.


I believe you're missing one very important person: Hermione 
Granger.  I know we know her better than everyone else, but she still 
is a woman in OoP.  Hermione has proven to Harry her loyalty when she 
basically was an accomplice to murder Umbridge.  She was always 
arguing with him about, and for, his safety and stood by at all times 
regardless of their fights.  She was there to give him advice with 
Cho; it was her idea for Skeeter to interview for Luna's dad Quibbler 
magazine; and it was her idea to get a group together for 
Dumbledore's Army.  She's his voice of reason.  He even stated that 
he has a voice in his head that sounds like Hermione.  That means a 
lot in my opinion.  Hermione has gone from being a stickler to 
breaking rules to helping to plot the murder or Umbridge.  That says 
a lot and no I don't find that disturbing.  If she's going to fight 
Voldemort she's going to have to do some of her own killings 
eventually.  

Greicy, who loves Hermione