Hermione's parents

[jjjjjuliep]

No: HPFGUIDX 103774

One of the most fascinating things about joining a mailing list is 
finding out just how many opinions there are out there in the 
world.  ;-)

And one of the most interesting things about this mailing list is the 
effort to create back stories for the issues we ourselves bring to 
the books we read.

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Shaun Hately" <drednort at a...> 
wrote:

> More often than not, these decisions don't cause any major 
> problems. But there's a sizeable minority of cases where they do 
> lead to various issues arising in a family, including 
> 'estrangement'. This is the term we use for cases where cultural 
> differences between the school culture and the home culture cause 
> any form of unusual distance between members of a family.

What I find interesting about this discussion is the assumption that 
Hermione's parents find a huge disconnect between the wizarding world 
and their own world.  JKR doesn't give us any evidence of this, and 
so it's entirely possible that Hermione's parents find her experience 
at Hogwart's to be as exciting as she does, and that they simply 
accept that this is how things are.  As for Hermione's choices, I can 
totally understand choosing between time with my family (as much as I 
love my own family) and hanging out with the most powerful people in 
the WW who are at the heart of the most important thing to have 
happened in it  many years.  It's a no-brainer.  ;-)

I don't think JKR is implying in any way that there is a problem 
between Hermione and her parents and between their Muggle lives and 
her wizarding life.  I also think JKR is glossing over, or 
shorthanding, descriptions of Hermione's life outside of Hogwarts 
purely because the books are already quite long and the stories quite 
complex.  Hermione is bright, mature, and well-adjusted; I don't 
think there is any hint of a problem in her relationship with her 
parents, nor, I am emboldened to say, do I think JKR means for us to 
fine one.

I find this discussion similar to the one about Harry's mental health 
and my personal reaction is the same--the world JKR creates is not 
meant to correspond one-to-one to the world we live in; quite the 
opposite instead.  She's created a fantasy world where the usual 
rules pretty much do not apply, and that's why I think it's perhaps 
not very productive to try to investigate things that really aren't 
there.
 
> If I was Mr and Mrs Granger, the more I loved my daughter, the more 
> hurt I would be by all of this. From their perspective, their 
> daughter wants to spend more time with the Weasleys than she does 
> them.

Except we don't know this for a fact.  I think if JKR meant for us to 
think there were problems between Hermione and her parents then it 
would be pretty clear in the text.

> But honestly... I'd be hard pressed to see how they can still be 
> having a healthy real relationship with their daughter.
> 
> One weeks contact in 20 months? And a a daughter, who it seems 
> likely is concealing large aspects of her life from them?
> 
> If they love each other, it may be that they'll be able to rebuild 
> a new relationship, but I really doubt that what they have at the 
> moment is particularly healthy.

Except 1.  we don't have all of the facts to do a case study and 2. 
this is not, at least not at the moment, an important plot point--the 
book is not a psychological study of various families and the effects 
of this strange boarding school on them.  It's a fantasy about a 
young boy who becomes a hero.  So think it's OK to assume that all is 
well within the Granger family.

jujube, who is still s l o w l y getting caught up on digests