[HPforGrownups] Perfect Lily (Re: But DID James listen?)

[rebecca]

No: HPFGUIDX 150067

>>Sherry now:

<snip>

>>  Having grown up with my father who did his best to give me
>> a great life, and not missing my mother at all, who didn't want me
>> because of my disabilities, I get irritated at the clich of bad
>> father and holy mother.  I do agree that Lily did what any *parent*
>> would have done.  And I'm sure she was a great girl and would have
>> been fun to know, through the books.  But she becomes this symbol of
>> pure perfection somehow, and I'd just like to see her have a few
>> flaws, to make her more human and believable.

>Jen:
>I feel like Sherry on this one, Lily may have been cheeky,
>imperfect and 'would have done well in Slytherin' (ambitious?
>cunning?), but we haven't seen it yet.

>I wouldn't want to find out something like we saw in the Pensieve
>scene with James & Snape, just something.....well, to know she
>*struggled* sometimes.  Because so little has been revealed about her,
>it sounds like everybody liked her, she always made the right and
>morally superior choice and so on. I'd just like to know she could be
>more like Harry sometimes, wavering between impulses or knowing she
>isn't making a good choice but doing it anyway. You know, *human*!!

<snip>

>Jen R., thinking it unlikely any of JKR's characters are going to get
>out of the story unscathed and perfect, though Lily appears to be the
>last hold-out at the moment.

Rebecca, smiling:

You appear to want Lily to be a person you can believe in *now*, since JKR 
has been so overtly mysterious about her. :)  That's completely 
understandable!  I agree with you both that JKR gives a glimpse into Lily's 
character via the Pensieve scene in OoP and therein shows a "struggle" 
others might have to "do the right thing" in defending Snape from James and 
Sirius. (Note that Lupin who is sitting right there, doesn't lift a finger 
or say a word - tsk, tsk, doesn't say much about his moral fiber there, now 
does it?)  But like Harry, Lily does this intuitively because she knows it's 
the right thing to do - others would have had to think to make the decision, 
and in Harry and Lily's case, they don't have to - they take immediate 
action. Her next line after being called a Mudblood by Snape is where the 
struggle occurs to define her response.

Forgetting for a moment Lily's Harry's mother and comparing what little we 
see of her in her youth and what we've been told about her via Lupin, 
Slughorn and others, Lily as a character seems to combine the positive 
characteristics we value in Harry, Hermoine and Ron. Like Harry, she's 
brave, courageous, able to see past appearances (now that Harry's matured 
some, he is too), like Hermoine, she was a very gifted and apparently wicked 
clever witch, and evidently like Ron, afflicted with a sly wit and humor. 
There are genuinely likable and good people in the world, and sometimes 
those people are very hard for the rest of society to accept without 
suspicion. As they say, she would be quite a catch.

We're dealing with an author who has had father troubles, so naturally one 
would suspect that her perception of fatherhood could be impacted even in 
her writing. What's even more interesting is that even the in the genre of 
what literature HP's been compared to, there's a trend in either absent 
fathers or bad fatherhood. In CS Lewis's novels for the Pevensie children, 
we never hear of a father; in Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy 
Lord Asriel is originally thought by Lyra to be her uncle initially, not her 
father.  Tolkien's LotR also appears to deal with absent fathers for major 
characters such as Frodo and Aragorn. So in this view, it would appear she 
is not alone.

I mention again that ambition and cunning, such as Slytherin are noted for, 
are not necessarily *bad* characteristics to have as long as they are 
moderated with choices to live a full and happy life.The beauty of Lily's 
character is she appears to have done just that.

Rebecca