[HPforGrownups] Re: Pansy Parkinson (Was: House characteristics)

[AnitaKH]

No: HPFGUIDX 150628



> >>Alla began with:

  Now, Okay, she likes Hermione, she really likes Hermione, I understand that, so it is understandable that she wants young girls to be like her, but what is so BAD about Pancy Parkinson that she does not want the girls to be like her, except that Pancy is in Slytherin House?

Magpie continued with:

It just seems like JKR makes it very clear which types of girls or girlish behavior are good or bad-- [which akh ruthlessly snipped]

 Betsy Hp followed up with:

 [snip!]

 Pansy is supposed to be the "mean girl".  And if this were really a 
 school days genre story, she'd have a bigger role to play as 
 Hermione's opposite.  But, while the flavor is there, JKR is 
 concentrating more on other aspects of the story and Hermione gets 
 beyond Pansy by, well, day one almost. 

[got the shears out this time]

But Pansy never does much to fill the "mean girl" role.  
[akh plays mean girl by snipping a perfectly respectable post]

akh now:

Perhaps JKR is relying on the much larger role Pansy played in Goblet of Fire to stir up trouble in order to make her point.  Pansy is the one quoted in Rita Skeeter's columns that results in Hermione's painful bout with bobotuber pus and even Molly's rather shabby treatment of her until Harry sets her straight.  I think she used the term "ugly" too, which hardly makes her an innocent little thing.  If I remember correctly, she always seems to be around to snicker at Hermione's misfortunes in that book, too.

If she's more concerned about status than science, of course she'd have to make her mark with the Slytherins, who have the pureblood cachet that the other houses lack.  Is Pansy the worst girl one could possibly meet?  No, but she's taken part in some mean-spirited acts throughout the series, and what we haven't seen is her redeeming value.  I don't count being unable to hide one's interest in baby unicorns a character about-face.

akh, who can't believe she's just hit her posting limit.  


 
		
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