I know Molly.....

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 84155

Laura:
> >  It is *not* 
> > cute, loving or desirable to treat your grown children as 
> > emotionally dependent all their lives.  If this is where Molly is 
> > headed, that's bad news.  I don't think her kids will put up 
with 
> > it.  It is *not* desirable to lose your identity in your family.  
> > Women who are mothers, even full time mothers (like me) 
have to  have some sort of independent emotional and/or 
intellectual lives to be  healthy and balanced human beings. 
> >  ...snip...
> > The problem is hers, not his.  No mother can be 
> > everything to her children, and thinking that is a sure recipe 
for  disaster.  
> > 
> > It is rather interesting that JKR would portray such a 
traditional  societal structure.  <<

> Art: 
> 
> I agree with Laura's assessment/questioning of JKR's 
intentions with Molly. Going out on a limb, perhaps JKR is 
portraying Molly as the "mother" she wishes she could have 
been. What I'm getting at here is the transition of the author from 
out of work and poor to the  millions of dollars, nice husband, 
new child thing she has now. 
<snip>
> I'm really waiting for some of JKR's past to surface in her 
books. I  really hope that it doesn't manifest itself as evil. That 
would be a  huge setback, and utterly unnecessary in this 
modern world. 
What  doesn't kill us makes us stronger. IMO, JKR may think that 
Molly is a great mom, I am not sold. There are moms of all kinds. 
Ethnic, good,  bad, suburban, stereotypical, super-hero, 
down-in-the-mud die- hards... Sirius could have been a break 
from the mundane old- fashioned life that is portrayed in these 
books. He could have been  the single, hard-working, 
affectionate, and decent parent. We 
will  never get that opportunity to witness the beauty of the new 
age of  parenthood. No, instead he is killed off, accused of living 
through Harry, and so many other things that "make him a bad 
parent" I CRY  INJUSTICE!!! Molly too lives vicariously through 
her children. What  parent doesn't from time to time? Why is that 
ok for her, and not for 
> Sirius? I'll tell you why... Sirius was single, Molly is not. And
we  think these books are about racial predudice....
> 
> Children need to be taught that both men and women need to 
work hard  to accomplish their goals. There are no more free 
rides, death-til-we  part-happy-endings and any person who 
preaches this is deluding the  future. While suburban moms in 
mini-vans can pretend they are liberated, how many of them can 
claim that they are the main  breadwinner? 

 There is still a HUGE gap in what the real world out 
> there IS and what messages we teach to our daughters. 
Fortunetly, HP 
> is about a boy. Unfortunetly, the leading girl is deluged in 80's 
> thinking. I'd write more on this, but am running long.


Pippin:
What women in the wizarding world aren't working hard to 
accomplish their goals? I see the WW as post-feminist in some 
ways. The women in the WW, in contrast to the men, all seem to 
know what they want and how  to get it. There's an assumption, it 
seems to me, on the part of some feminist critics, that any 
woman who is not struggling desperately has given up. But what 
if they're simply on track to get what they want, and haven't got to 
struggle for anything?

We don't know what Hermione wants for herself apart from being 
a terrific student. I think that's part of the suspense. What's going 
to happen if Hermione wants a life like her Muggle mother has, 
but in the wizarding world. Will it be allowed?

I don't agree that Molly's attempts to keep authority over her 
grown children mean that she is trying to live vicariously through 
them. Molly's offspring  live in her world, not ours. We value 
independence from family, but in  more traditional cultures the 
family has multi-generational responsibilities. It has to. The 
institutions that oversee cultural transmission and social 
support  in our society, ie universities, organized religion, the 
welfare state, are either undeveloped or don't exist at all.

The MOM isn't much of a welfare state. We have JKR's word that 
there is no higher education in the WW.  Organized religion, 
though  represented by the ghosts of the Fat Friar and the nuns 
at the death day party, seems to have faded away.  Molly sees 
maintaining the values of her family, grown or not, as part 
of her job, and really, if she didn't, who would? Even though the 
twins are of age, Hermione realizes that neither the school nor 
the MOM has the influence on them than Molly does. 

In traditional cultures, the matriarch may have  authority over 
several  generations of her male offspring, and especially  their 
wives, for as long as she lives. In that context, the message of 
the tiny egg is probably not, "You slut!" (that would call for no
gift at all)  but "I don't like what I'm hearing about you and it had 
better not be true!"  

Just because JKR depicts a more traditional society doesn't 
mean that she's nostalgic for it.  She lets us bask in the rosy 
glow of torchlight and gaslamps the better to make us  blink 
painfully when she shines a  spotlight on what the good ole days 
were really like: slavery,  the double standard ( it's okay for Krum 
and Lockhart to have a flock of admirers, but a lass is only 
supposed to encourage one beau at a time) and most of all 
exclusion and intolerance. 

And while JKR's life story would make a good Danielle Steele 
novel, I don't see why JKR has to write it. Isn't the fact that she's 
lived it enough?

Pippin
working mom, main breadwinner, married, has never owned a 
mini-van