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

[Susanne]

No: HPFGUIDX 83766



Hi,

Tuesday, October 28, 2003, 10:19:28 AM, slgazit wrote:

> That is true. But JKR is contrained by the fact that she chose to 
> tell the story from a single (Harry's) POV.

Yes, very much so. I do wish she had chosen a different POV
sometimes.

>  How do you get
> background 
> information or the POV of other characters if you only hear one 
> person.

Well, she's done it quite well with a multitude of
characters through Harry's POV before. It doesn't have to be
Hermione all the time. There's Prof. McGonagall, Molly,
Dumbledore...

Hermione just seemed like such an odd choice, after seeing
her NOT being sensitive to others feelings before.

And all of a sudden she had it all figured out, at least
when it came to Cho's and Harry's feelings. Otherwise she
was still good old Hermione, socially not all that adept.

>... 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.

But in the end everything worked out again for Hermione. No
real consequences to deal with, and since we only get
Harry's thoughts, we don't know if and what Hermione learned
from it.

> 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.

In my opinion, she did push things a bit, bringing up Cho
not being able to keep her eyes off Harry, asking
impatiently if Harry isn't planning to have another date
with her and just generally not leaving Harry to make his
own decisions about what to do when.

She didn't just silently get out of the way, she was an
active participant.

> 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.

Not sure if I believe that. She almost seemed to live
vicariously through that relationship, maybe because she
wished for something to happen in her own life ;)
I don't see Hermione's situation as similar to Cho's. Cho
lost her first (I think) boyfriend, and I don't really get
the feeling Hermione likes Harry romantically.

> 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.

You mean the meeting with Rita on Valentine's day?
How could Hermione have known beforehand when she would
receive the reply?
And unfortunately Hermione has always had a tendency to
leave people out of her plans/findings until the last
moment.

>  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?

 She blunders often in situations like this (her
agenda is more important than anybody else's plans), and
that's why I don't understand JKR choosing her to explain
Cho's feelings sometimes, and ignoring them at other times.
I don't believe Hermione was thinking about anyone's budding
relationships and how to ruin them here. I think she thought
about nothing but her big plan to use Rita to write an
article about Harry.
This was the Hermione we've seen throughout the books and
didn't surprise me at all.

I do like the little scenes where she is all tough Hermione,
and then does something nice despite herself.
They seem much more believable, maybe because it's show, and
not tell in those cases.

-- 
Best regards,
 Susanne                           mailto:siskiou at earthlink.net

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