On Dolores Umbridge and Peter Pettigrew

[fanofminerva]

No: HPFGUIDX 127588


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "mfterman" <mfterman at y...> 
wrote:
> 
> To my mind, the person who strikes me as closest in personality to
> Dolores Umbridge is Peter Pettigrew. Both of them more or less made
> careers out of hitching on to more powerful and important people. 
They
> were both to gain power from someone else.
> 
> Pettigrew's main problem was that he  first latched onto James 
Potter,
> until James more or less outgrew the juvenile need for a sycophant 
and
> then had the misfortune to be forced to switch over to Voldemort, 
who
> was more or less immune to manipulation by way of servile flattery.
> 
> Umbridge had a good deal more good luck to end up with a vain and
> insecure man such as Cornelius Fudge. I have few difficulties 
seeing
> Pettigrew ending up a toady such as Dolores Umbridge was, 
flattering
> Fudge and gaining powers over others in turn and going nuts with 
it.
> 
> Pettigrew was a good deal more servile in his few appearances, but 
in
> both cases he was around powerful people who were ready to slay 
him at
> any second, and he had no real backing in his favor. If he had 
someone
> like Fudge in his pocket under circumstances where his enemies are
> barred from direct retaliation, I think that he would have been a 
good
> deal more arrogant.
> 
> -Mfterman

Umbridge strikes me more as a "closet narcissist."  That can be a 
tricky characteristic to detect.  Are they grandiose because of the 
way they veiw themselves or because of their association with 
another?  You see them flattering the object of their grandiosity, 
which seems manipulative.  However, manipulation carries with it a 
sense of personal expectation -- flattery as a means to an end.  
With a closet narcissist, their flattery is more a way to address 
their sense of self through another.  This is why they can "look 
like" someone with Borderline PD.  I see Umbridge as not having the 
same sense of manipulation as Lucious, manipulating the system for 
his own agenda.  I see her as a power-parasite, feeding off the 
power of another and viewing that as her own.  Once some "authority" 
was given to her, she ran with it.  (Give her a rope and she wants 
to be a cowboy.)  

Julie