Author avatars

[David]

No: HPFGUIDX 57625

This Binns thread reminds me of something.

At times arguments (usually in the shipping arena) are based on the 
notion of the author avatar, and the idea that if we can locate 
JKR's own identity with a character (usually taken as Hermione) then 
we can conjecture JKR's own wishes and project them onto the 
character to guess at future events in (or after) the series.

While I doubt the validity of this form of reasoning, I also think 
it is largely mistaken to consider Hermione as JKR's avatar in the 
books.

I understand JKR to have said that she has based Hermione to some 
extent on her own teenage self: in other words, she has looked back 
to the person she was and used that as a quarry for 
characterisation.  I think that's quite different from using 
characters as vehicles for aspects of her *current* self.

I think it is true that Hermione's social concerns reflect something 
of herself that JKR puts into the books.  That, to me, though, is 
relatively minor both in Hermione's character and JKR's 
preoccupations.

I believe Dumbledore is a fairly obvious representative of JKR's own 
thinking: he acts as the repository of her own ethics, so his voice 
carries especial authority.  When he speaks, much (though not all) 
of the time, his voice carries the weight of ultimate truth because 
the author's own mind comes through.

I think that Peeves is also a in some measure a self-image of JKR 
put into the books: he is her sense of humour untrammelled by moral 
or social convention.  He does the things in her world that she 
would like to do, IMO, if she weren't constrained by the needs of 
her themes and plot development.

I can't prove any of this, of course, and one can say that *all* the 
characters come out of her head, but IMO these two she identifies 
with in different ways, as well as to a lesser extent Hermione.

Binns is relevant because of his status as an anti-avatar, or failed 
avatar: someone formally identified with JKR's role as relater of WW 
history, whom she puts at a distance from herself as boring, 
ghostly, and irrelevant (though I suppose you could say that JKR is 
the unseen ghost at every Hogwarts meal?).

Any other opinions out there as to whom JKR identifies with?

David