Umbridge: Sadist and Stereotype

[elfundeb]

No: HPFGUIDX 127606

I'm packaging together several Umbridge responses here.  Warning: 
this post contains speculation about sexual repression, but no sex.

bboyminn:
> She is insecure about her looks, so she compensates with her sickly
> sweet voice, her girly-girly clothes, and her affect of a sweet
> pleasant demeanor. And rightly she should since her true personality
> is mean and exceedingly umpleasant.

I would say that she is insecure about her age more than her looks. 
Hence the "little velvet black bow" Harry notices at the hearing and
the emphasis on her "girlish, high-pitched voice."  More on that
later.

> Another part of her deep insecurity is her fear that she is a mediocre
> witch with mediocre magical powers, and again, she is right. So, like
> many, she compensates for her deep sense of personal and magical
> powerlessness by seeking power. It's s form of self-validation.

That's one possible interpretation, but we don't really know about her
magical ability.  It's true that we rarely see her do any magic (she
did bewitch her blackboard), but there are explanations for that:  (i)
the point of her DADA class is to keep the students from learning any
useful magic so we're not likely to see much of interest there, and
(ii) she keeps her own hands clean by sending henchmen to do her dirty
work for her.  Unlike Lockhart, who really was a mediocre wizard, we
aren't shown examples of her botching any spells.

Besides, mightn't Umbridge have invented that quill of hers?  

Shunra wrote:
I am not up on sadism but think it would be a
> more fruitful direction to ponder.

Tooks wrote (after almost over a year of lurking):
The thing with with
> sadism is that it is, technically, a sexual fetish.  I really don't see
> Umbridge getting sexually excited by the pain of Harry and the others;
> she does seem to enjoy it, but not sexually.  

No?  I see sexual frustration as the genesis of all of her behavior. 
Umbridge is a caricature of a common stereotype -- the frustrated
spinster.  Her sickly sweet femininity, her outdated fluffy pink
cardigan and Alice band, her fondness for pink, all suggest an older
woman who would like to believe that she is still youthful, that there
is still time to catch a man.  And to hammer the point home, Harry
concludes at the Sorting that she looks "like somebody's maiden aunt."

Like all stereotypes, the spinster stereotype has a basis in reality;
I recall a couple of mean spinster teachers from my childhood (but
it's an older stereotype, less noticeable in my generation where young
women had many more oppotunities).  Some spinsters were career women
who chose to flout societal expectations for women, but many were
women who wanted husbands but couldn't attract one.  Between the
clothes and the lace-and-kittens decor in Umbridge's office, I'll vote
for the latter.  Thus, her problem is not that she is insecure and/or
a mediocre witch; she is repressed and she keeps it under control by
becoming "more sweetly girlish as she always did when she was furious"
(ch. 32).

My instinctive reading of Umbridge, from the way she projects
familiarity with her boss, was that she either imagined she was having
an affair with Fudge or perhaps even a real affair.  Ok, I'm expecting
at least an "ewwwww" and maybe a "tewww ewwww" reaction to that, but
it really is how I see her, though it takes some reading between the
lines to get there.  There's that faux pas in ch. 19, for example: 
"'Now, where is it?  Cornelius just sent it . . . I mean,' she gave a
false little laugh as she rummaged in her handbag, 'the *Minister*
just sent it . . .'" (emphasis in original).

Read in that light, in punishing Harry with the sadistic quill for
telling the truth about Voldemort, and in attempting to Crucio Harry,
Umbridge is protecting her pseudo-lover's position, but she's also
controlling it.   As she says, "What Cornelius doesn't know won't hurt
him." That would fit the clinical definition of sadism, wouldn't it? 
And when she sent the Dementors after Harry, she did the same thing: 
She is secretly taking control ("They were all bleating about
silencing you somehow -- discrediting you -- but I was the one who
actually *did* something about it.").

In the stereotype I think JKR is drawing from, she would not have been
eligible for Fudge's position.  Though she tells us that's not true in
the WW (unless, of course, Umbridge is a part hag), Umbridge seems
satisfied with controlling Fudge from behind the scenes.  I think it's
not about getting power for herself; it's about evening the score as
payback to those who did not find her toadlike face attractive.  Thus,
the imaginary affair I posited above would not be an affair of the
heart; like rape, it's an exercise of power and control to counter
one's powerlessness.

But I'm way out of my league here, as I know absolutely nothing about
clinical analysis; they don't teach it in law school.  So, I'll leave
it to the experts to rip my reading to shreds.

Debbie
noting that (speaking of sexual undertones) Umbridge gets her just
desserts when she gets left with the centaurs