forms of address

[potioncat]

No: HPFGUIDX 117285


>>>Carol wrote:
 I'm specifically comparing McGonagall to the nineteenth-century 
English schoolboys in the biographies and literature I cited earlier 
(Percy Shelley is a real-life example, David Copperfield a literary 
one) who called their close male friends by their last names both 
during their schooldays and in their later lives. Are you familiar 
with this pattern, in literature, at least? Does McGonagall seem to 
be following it, at least in PS chapter one? (I did read what you 
wrote about office relationships, etc. 

Potincat jumping in:
I think I see your point now.  JKR has put this wizarding school in 
the 20th century, but the wizards don't behave like 20th century 
people.  In fact, they hold onto behaviors and tools from several 
different centuries. And JKR has mixed a 19th century form of 
address with a 20th century workplace. Because, if I'm correct, and 
I wouldn't bet on it, in 19th century literature, women did not work 
along side men as equals.

So would it be correct to say that in the RW as schools opened to 
boys and girls, and men and women teachers, the use of last names 
went away.  But in the WW it did not? 

Potioncat