tTuchy-Feely Armchair Psychologist (was: No Sex...We're British)

[slgazit]

No: HPFGUIDX 83725

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, Susanne <siskiou at e...> wrote:
> To me it is irritating for a couple of reasons.
> One is that Hermione seems to be becoming more and more a
> tool for JKR to introduce things to us that other characters
> aren't able to grasp, in a way.

That is true. But JKR is contrained by the fact that she chose to 
tell the story from a single (Harry's) POV. How do you get background 
information or the POV of other characters if you only hear one 
person. Unless you'd have Harry suddenly become a prodigious reader 
and figure it all out himself.

I think it'd not hurt the story if we'd have occasional POV's from 
other major characters, but I don't see JKR changing her formula this 
late in the game, so the only solution is to have the background told 
by other characters.

> Hermione has almost reached the point of being too perfect a
> character in some ways(for me), though I still have hope that her 
overconfidence
> will cause her some problems in future books.

It already has - see the incident with the centaurs.

> I couldn't understand why Hermione took it upon herself to
> push Harry into a relationship with Cho. Harry seemed
> perfectly fine to admire her from afar, and neither one of
> them was really ready for romantic relationship at this
> point.

I did not see Hermione "pushing" Harry. All she did was get out of 
the way and, more importantly, get Ron out of the way :-), when Cho 
was approaching Harry - which is what Harry wanted. She was very 
curious about the progress of the relationship and, I suspect, shared 
the same confusion of Cho's (liking two boys), which is why she 
understood Cho's feelings so well - she had some of the same herself. 
While I believe JKR is setting us up for a RH-ship, I think Hermione 
has some feelings towards Harry as well, which is partly why she 
(subconsciously?) wrecked his date with Cho. For someone as 
understanding of the situation as she was, how could she not figure 
out that Cho was Jealous of her relations with Harry (especially as 
Krum had the same problem the year before). Had she told Harry why 
she wanted him to meet her (talk to a reporter), he could have 
explained all that to Cho and avoided the explosion, but Hermione 
asked him to meet her during a date with another girl. Why would she 
do that if she wanted that relsationship to work?

> Yes. So why did Hermione feel she needed to get them
> together? It almost felt like an experiment she was
> conducting to see how it would play out.

She did not get them together - they wanted that themselves. All she 
did was get out of the way and offer advice later.

> One other reason for feeling irked at Hermione is how she
> deals with her own and other peoples' feelings, when she *is* 
personally
> involved (talking about Ron here).

Her inability to see her own failings there is one of the things that 
make her such an irresistable character. :-)

> She has a way of making people feel stupid by cooly
> explaining things, but doesn't seem to see that she acts the
> same when it comes to her own relationships.

Aren't we all...

Salit