Sexuality as a theme in HP (long)

[olivier.fouquet+harry at m4x.org]

No: HPFGUIDX 119563

Some read HP books as mysteries, other like to see them as of the 
adventure and fantasy genre, and some as fairy-tales. There are even 
readers that see in them deep christian or symbolic meaning. In this 
post, I try to explore the way I read them: as the journey from boyhood 
to manhood, with an explicit reference to sexuality. Just as a 
forewarning, I insist that the following will deal with adult theme. 
Other posts on this subjects include  #47966, #83372, #101297 and 
#101335.

PS/SS
Let us briefly review the story line of HP with this topic in mind. 
Harry is an orphan living in an abusive loveless family in which he 
knows he will never fit. He has always been odd, and there are 
mysteries surrounding his parents. Eventually, he discovers that all 
the oddities are explained by the "simple" fact he is a wizard, and 
that means for him a complete reversal of his life. An important theme 
in PS is Harry's quest for his parents, and more precisely his father. 
He discovers with pleasure and pride that his father was an extremely 
talented and well-liked wizard, that he was an outstanding Quidditch 
player (just like himself) and that all in all they look incredibly 
alike. I think that already in PS, the more children book of all, the 
pervasive theme of sexuality is already present.

First, note that the most unambiguous sign that Harry is a wizard is 
his freeing of a snake. A snake that was bred in captivity at that. 
This snake is described as able to "crush [Uncle Vernon's] car into a 
trash can." So, a powerful snake which could surpass Vernon (Harry's 
only paternal figure at the time), held in a cage, and freed by Harry. 
I think the symbolic meaning is quite clear.

I want to expand a bit on Harry's identification with his father by 
quickly reviewing a tale-telling scene: Harry's first nightly try of 
his father's cloak. Harry cannot find sleep because of the mystery 
surrounding the cloak. So he pulls the cloak out from under his bed and 
tries it. It was "smoother than silk, lighter than air," but first and 
foremost, it's "his father's... this had been his father's". Harry 
tries it on and immediately "excitement flooded into him." Putting the 
cloak on has awakened in Harry the feeling that he too could become a 
man, just like his father.

Before moving to CoS, I would like to speak a bit about two important 
characters with respect to sexuality: Filch and Snape. Filch is pretty 
simple to understand. He is the embodiment of the repressive forces of 
childhood trying to suppress the awakening of sexuality. If only for 
this reason, his role is bound to disappear (Filch's name occurs 52 
times in PS and only 66 times in the three times longer OoP). 
Significantly, as early as CoS we discover that Filch is himself not a 
wizard, i.e he is himself deprived of manhood and sexuality.

Snape is a much more complex character. I suspect he represents the 
more scaring and disturbing part of sexuality: its darkest, usually 
repressed, aspects. Here follows some hints that he could be so. He is 
ugly (in sharp contrast with James, the shining young man, he is 
strongly associated with black and dark). He teaches Potion (and 
specifically tells his first-year students that he will teach them "the 
delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins", no wonder 
Neville destroys his cauldron), thereby emphasizing he will deal with 
fluids. He resides in a dark, creepy and cold dungeon. But more on that 
later.

CoS
I have already covered in long details the numerous evidence that 
sexuality is a major theme in CoS, especially in post #83372. For the 
sake of completeness, I would like to come back to the Polyjuice 
incident. Hermione breaks into Snape's office, steals some ingredients 
from him to prepare a potion that will change her in to someone else. 
Alas, things don't go as well as planned and Hermione ends up locking 
herself in a deserted toilet, desperately not wanting her boy friends 
to see her, and with a lot of hairs. If one accepts that Snape 
psychological role is to embody the disturbing aspects of sexuality, 
this whole story is (in my opinion) a very nice and tactful description 
of a girl first menstruation. There are really to many things to 
discuss about CoS, so I refer to 83372 and move on.

PoA
PoA, like CoS, is also incredibly concerned with sexuality. Harry's 
story in this book is his search for a sound and healthy vision of his 
future sexuality. In other words, what kind of father will he be? Will 
he be able to choose the path of his father, the powerful, shining 
fatherly figure that he aspires to emulate (expecting patronum) or will 
he linger in the depressive memories of his now lost childhood (thus 
yielding to the power of the Dementors)? Many scenes in PoA have a 
symbolic meaning, I will give some examples.

The Patronus charm itself is a pretty vivid metaphor for, well, you 
know. Or if you don't, consider the very first patronus Harry ever 
produces, "Something whooshed suddenly out of the end of his wand; it 
looked like a wisp of silvery gas" and the last "out of the end of his 
wand burst, not a shapeless cloud of mist, but a blinding, dazzling, 
silver animal." The Patronus charm is not the only direct reference to 
sexual activity in PoA, there are of course Harry's insides which 
reacts when he sees Cho, but also this strange dream: "He had a very 
strange dream. He was walking through a forest, his Firebolt over his 
shoulder, following something silvery-white. It was winding its way 
through the trees ahead, and he could only catch glimpses of it between 
the leaves. Anxious to catch up with it, he sped up, but as he moved 
faster, so did his quarry. Harry broke into a run, and ahead he heard 
hooves gathering speed. Now he was running flat out, and ahead he could 
hear galloping. Then he turned a corner into a clearing and..." Now, if 
one looks at the symbolic and thematic object in this dream, one may 
conclude that Harry is having here on of this very first, well, 
patronus manifestation.

But most important than the scenes themselves are the characters in 
PoA. It is in this book that we first discover about Harry's parents 
generation. Unsurprisingly (considering it is the story of a boy 
looking for manhood), it seems at first this generation is entirely 
masculine. James thematic role we have already spoken about, he is the 
embodiment of an accepted sexuality, both powerful, protective and 
responsible. Sirius represents the rawest sexual impulses. He is 
(according to JKR) the "sexiest, most dangerous marauder" who had 
escaped from a prison no-one had ever left before and that no-one (even 
Dumbledore) seems to be able to catch or stop.

Snape's role in PoA expands greatly (his name occurs 246 in PoA, in 
comparison with 98 times in CoS and 256 in GoF, which is more than a 
hundred pages longer). This is in accordance with our previous 
characterization of him. As Harry discovers all the aspects of 
sexuality, it is necessary that the disturbing aspects appears all the 
more vividly. Remark that Snape was "always trying to know what [the 
others] were about." A hint that indeed he's a symbol for shame and 
guilt regarding sexual affairs. Particularly interesting is the 
confrontation between Sirius and Snape. As opposite forces, they of 
course hate themselves and would be more than happy to destroy each 
other. Note that Sirius tries to destroy Snape by sending him to a 
werewolf, that is repressed sexual forces gone wild.

Lupin's role is also clear. He is a remainder that sexual forces are 
too powerful to be tamed, they must be accepted and may be domesticated 
(the stag bows to Harry) but they also are a tremendous threat. 
Isabelle Smadja, a french author, has theorized that Lupin could also 
represent, well, pedophile tendencies. She interprets in that sense the 
infamous event where "Lupin made a sudden motion with his arm as though 
to grip Harry's shoulder, but thought better of it." As she sees it, 
Lupin knows all too well that his sexuality is not entirely safe, so he 
tries to contain his impulse as best as he can.

GoF
GoF is both more and less concerned about sexuality than the first 
books. It is the very first one where sexual themes are explicitly 
touched, with characters flirting. On the other hand, the symbolic and 
psychological aspects of sexuality are rather less touched (unless I 
have missed them). Still, there are at least two interesting situation 
to explore. One is the graveyard scene (which can be seen as a rape) 
and the other is the psyche of Barty Crouch Junior. I think an argument 
can be made that Barty Junior has such a troubled mind because he never 
resolved his oedipal desires for his mother. But I don't want to expand 
on that for now. The important thing to notice is that after a book 
concerned solely about manhood (PoA), GoF introduces woman. Important 
for later is the fact that we first encounter "a woman with thick, 
shining dark hair and heavily hooded eyes, who was sitting in the 
chained chair as though it were a throne," the gorgeous and terrible 
Mrs. Lestrange.

OoP
OoP fully explores the tendency set by GoF: feminine aspects of 
sexuality. It is in this book that Harry looses both his male referents 
(Dumbledore and the imaginary father he has found in PoA), that Sirius 
dies, and that women suddenly jump in the front scene. Very important 
is the whole Occlumency question. For the very first time in the 
series, Harry confronts Snape face to face, the aim for Harry being (in 
perfect accordance to Snape's role so far) to learn to bottle in his 
most violent emotions. There follows very interesting scenes where 
Snape dives deep into Harry's subconscious memories and feelings. Not 
surprisingly, Harry violently resents Snape's intrusion in his 
relationship with Cho (this makes him throw a spell at Snape). Snape's 
role as the embodiment of the problematic, traumatic aspects of 
sexuality is nowhere more fleshed out in the whole series that in those 
scenes. Of course, when Harry gets a glimpse at Snape's memories, he 
discovers exactly what we would have expected: troubled childhood and 
adolescence, uneasy relations with girls (the image of Snape being 
mocked by a girl for his failure to "mount" a "broomstick" carries some 
very uneasy remembrances for many teenage boy) and sexual humiliation 
of the worst kind inflicted by the two most popular boys of the school. 
Definitely, Snape was not the right person to teach Harry to control 
his sexual desires (half of Harry definitely wants to know what 
mysteries Snape is trying to hide). Fatherly advices about sex should 
have been Dumbledore's job, as he recognizes later.

Anyway, Occlumency predictably fails, and as a result Harry is fooled 
by his impulses. Sirius then dies at the hand of Bellatrix, i.e raw 
sexual forces turn into self-destructive violent trauma.




__________________________________

Such a reading of HP brings many conclusion. I find it most of the time 
interesting to try to understand the characters action in terms of 
their symbolic role rather from purely logical motives. For instance, 
it is in my opinion quite vain (though fun) to argue ad nauseam whether 
Harry or Snape is responsible for the failure of Occlumency. 
Repressive, traumatic sexuality does not do well to fifteen-year-old, 
it was bound to fail. Likewise, there are really no end to the debate 
whether Snape is a good teacher or not, or whether Snape is a monster 
or the real hero of the story. Snape is not only a teacher, he is a 
symbol of something deeply rooted in a sane mind: some kind of 
uneasiness towards sexuality. Most of what he does and says can be 
related to this. I suspect that most of the debate between Snape haters 
and Snape worshippers (or even shippers) reflects more the inner 
posture of the reader towards this uneasiness than anything in canon. 
JKR herself warned her girl readers not to fall for it. The same could 
be said of the sudden reversal of James image in OoP, or about the 
Prank. I am not sure it is fruitful to try to figure out if Snape might 
have "deserved" it one way or another. I'd rather try to read between 
the lines what it means psychologically.


Many thanks to anyone who has read until here.

Olivier