[HPforGrownups] Re: Hermione's growth

[elfundeb]

No: HPFGUIDX 82355

Some very late responses to replies to my post of last week . . . .

Kneazle 255:
> 
> Slytherins are Machiavellian. The end they seek is power, and they 
> will use any means to get it. Hermione's end is the trio's continued 
> survival. That is a key difference. IMO,using an evil person's greed 
> and lust for power against them is not morally ambivalent. I just 
> don't feel there is anything to excuse.
> 

Hermione, of course, has many ambitions, and she has repeatedly shown herself willing to use whatever means is at her disposal to achieve them. And she does seek power in a sense, because by not consulting with others or seeking other opinions (except when she has second thoughts about the DA) she ensures that things are done *her* way, i.e., she seeks to control the agenda. In OOP she effectively takes control of Harry's life. This is power.

However, the books raise a much larger and very troubling issue regarding the relationship between ambition and power. Most of the Slytherins we have seen *do* seem to seek power at all costs, and in GoF the hat says that "power-hungry Slytherin loved those of great ambition." . Ambition does not always mean power, but JKR appears to equate the two by expressly connecting ambition to power-hungry Slytherin. 

> I think it is an interesting point when elfundeb says that Hermione 
> has a higher stake because she is muggleborn. In CoS, that was true, 
> at least until Diary!Tom decided to target Harry instead of 
> muggleborns.
> 
> For me that is a telling point. Hermione has put herself in harm's 
> way over and over again not to protect herself, but because Harry is 
> in immediate danger. Voldemort has not been obsessing about killing 
> mudbloods. He has been and continues to obsess about killing Harry 
> Potter. 
> 


However, the basilisk continued to target muggleborns after Diary!Riddle set his sights on Harry. And at the time of the polyjuice-brewing episode, none of the Trio had any inkling that Harry was or would become the basilisk's prime target.  In fact, Hermione hatches the polyjuice scheme just after Binns' lecture revealing Slytherin's unwillingness to teach muggleborns and the legend that the basilisk was there to rid the school of all those Slytherin thought unworthy to be taught magic.

Gorda wrote:

> Firstly I would like to point out/remind everyone that we only see Hermione 
> from Harry's POV, which is necessarily limited. I think Hermione probably felt 
> very bad about the whole centaur incident and the subsequent harm that 
> Grawp and the centaurs may have done to each other. In fact, JKR tells us 
> that right off the bat:
> 
> p. 757 US edition:
> "'You said you didn't hurt the innocent!' shouted Hermione, REAL tears sliding 
> down her face now." emphasis mine


But when those real tears were sliding down her face, the innocents being threatened were herself and Harry, not the centaurs. 

and later, p. 759:
> "'Oh no,' said Hermione, quaking so badly that her knees gave way. 'Oh, that 
> was horrible. And he might kill them all...'"
> 
> Clearly, this is not an experience she's going to foget in a hurry. 

She did feel sorry for the centaurs, as this quote suggests. But her concern may have been tempered by Harry's reply, "I'm not that fussed, to be honest." And we don't know that her concern is not rooted in the fact that Hagrid left responsibility for Grawp with them.  

I'm not convinced that she hasn't placed the centaurs firmly in the same category where she's placed the goblins. From GoF, ch. 24: "'Worried about poor 'ickle goblins now, are you?' Ron asked Hermione. 'Thinking of starting up S.P.U.G. or something? Society for the Protection of Ugly Goblins?' 'Ha, ha, ha,' said Hermione sarcastically. 'Goblins don't need protection.'"  There are creatures that need Hermione and there are creatures that don't. Only the former get her attention.

Gorda, on jinxing the parchment:

> It's not like they didn't know NOT to tell. P. 346:
> "we all ought to agree not to shout about what we're doing. So if you sign, 
> you're agreeing not to tell Umbridge --or anybody else-- what we'reup to."
> 
> Even if Hermione had told about the curse, Marietta may have decided that 
> the pimples still wouldn't be as bad as getting expelled and her mom losing 
> her job at the Ministry. The point was that the members needed to keep their 
> word, and Hermione was making sure there would be consequences if they 
> didn't.


It's possible that Marietta would have plowed ahead even if she had been warned that there was a jinx on the parchment they signed. But it would have made her think very hard about it first had she known there were consequences. As it is, Hermione said only that they *agreed* not to tell Umbridge. So there appeared to be nothing underlying the agreement except the honor of the signers, leaving Marietta with the impression that she could get off scot-free.

Kneazle wrote:

> Well, I suppose Hermione can be seen as quite calculating sometimes. 
> However, I see it less as a Machiavellian/Slytherinesque quality and more as 
> a result of those keen analytical powers we have discussed. Her brain sees a 
> problem (Harry seen as liar and the MoM denying LV's return) and a set of 
> tools (Rita, Luna, The Quibbler), and it comes up with a solution (exclusive 
> interview). > 


As I see it, this is a good trait carried to excess. She sees a problem and a solution, but the people who can help her carry out her solution are, as you say, *tools* and not people. She is blind to everything else. Like the centaurs, other people become instruments of her will. She is using Luna every bit as much as she uses Skeeter. And, as David pointed out originally, even Harry, the person she's trying to help, is only a pawn in this business, since Hermione presumes to decide for Harry what he should do and when he should do it, without telling him in advance.

I also don't see her as motivated by self-interest as much as you 
> propose. I think if she had been a pureblood she would still have brewed the 
> polyjuice potion in CoS and in general acted in the way she has thus far. She 
> genuinely cares for Harry, yes (whether you are a shipper or not), but she also 
> has a keen sense of right and wrong (thus her campaign for elf rights). The 
> greatest growth she has experienced int he books is that she can now tell the 
> difference between a greater Right and Wrong and the smaller right and 
> wrong of rules and regulations. She breaks the rules now because/when she 
> knows it is for a greater good.


What about Rita Skeeter, though? Eric Oppen (I think it was Eric) suggested a long time ago that Hermione's blackmail of Rita Skeeter would come back to haunt her. This is perhaps the prime example of Hermione using any means to achieve her ends. There was no need for Hermione to blackmail Rita; why didn't she turn Rita in and expose her? Yes, Harry benefited from the silencing of Rita, but Hermione had a personal vendetta against her which really took off when Rita's Witch Weekly article resulted in people sending her bobotuber pus in the mail.  From GoF ch. 28: "'At least your fingers aren't full of pus.' Hermione was having a lot of difficulty managing her knife and fork, her fingers were so stiff and swollen. 'I hate that Skeeter woman!" she burst out savagely. 'I'll get her back for this if it's the last thing I do.'" Once again, there were personal motivations behind her actions, but it's obscured because Rita's target was Harry.

Gorda:

> Well, if Hermione has a tragic flaw, I don't know that shielding rather than 
> partnering with her friends is one. (This may much more apply to Molly, who 
> needs to quit s/mothering and start treating her kids including Harry more as 
> adults). I am more inclined to think that Hermione needs to connect more with 
> her emotions than be ruled by logic and ethics, which can only take you so 
> far. I think she can be forgiven for bossing her friends around (Goodness 
> knows, they need it sometimes!).  [snip]> 
> What Hermione needs to learn is that "cool use of intellect" only goes so far in 
> taking her where she needs to go, just like Harry needs to learn that playing 
> the hero is not 

Actually, I said that her failure to work in partnership with others is how her flaw will manifest itself. The flaw itself is her extreme overconfidence (which, as you point out, derive from her reliance on her intellectual skills) and unwillingness or inability to consider others' point of view. She presumes to know what's best for others instead of working with them.

To go back to the beginning, I started analyzing Hermione's weaknesses in the first place because I felt that her amazing successes in OOP verged on MarySueism. To me, her flaws humanize her and make her a more likeable character. But even after all this analysis, I still can't get over those MarySue feelings.  In the real world, even a thinker as brilliant as Hermione would fail with much greater frequency than she did in OOP.  The only possible explanation I can come up with is that JKR is building up her overconfidence to prepare us for an enormous mistake in book 6 or 7.  And these flaws are the key to that happening.

I found it quite interesting to learn this week that eihwaz, which JKR uses to represent defence, is in fact associated with the yew, a symbol of death that appears in the Little Hangleton graveyard where Voldemort is resurrected. And ehwaz, or partnership, is a unifying concept.

Debbie 

Something else I noticed this week was what happened to Hermione in the Department of Mysteries (where everything seems to be a metaphor) just before she is hit by Dolohov's curse: "Hermione smashed into a bookcase and was promptly deluged in a cascade of heavy books." I think we're being reminded here that Hermione's book-learning and logic can only take one so far.


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