JKR and the boys

[Miles]

No: HPFGUIDX 161430

After watching the PoA film again, I stumbled about a scene quite at the
beginning that is not in the book. It's the scene where the boys have fun in
the dormitory, imitating animals and having a small pillow fight afterwards.
That's a nice insight in the "private life" of Harry and his friends - and
that's the point, I really miss that in the books. The scene in the film was
important to show the everyday life of students at Hogwarts - no, of male
students at Hogwarts. The same situation with girls would have been
different - don't ask me for details, but the behaviour was quite "boyish"
in my impression.

That leads to my thesis:
JKR does not understand boys well and has great difficulties describing them
and their full emotional and social capacities. On the other hand, her
description of girls is much more realistic and comprehensive.

I'm not very good at finding loads of quotes to support impressions like
that, so please forgive me if you expect such. But I will try to explain
what I mean, by writing about the main male and female character in the
book: Harry and Hermione, especially concerning romantic emotions.
Harry is... well, let's say "unprepared" and not very clever with girls. We
have an insight in his thoughts, but this doesn't make the situation more
clear. His desires seem to come from a dark place in himself that he is
unaware of. In HBP, JKR uses the metaphor of the roaring dragon. Similarly,
he doesn't recognize his feelings of jealousy with Cho.
Harry thinks about how to approach a girl, how not to make a fool of
himself, but he clearly doesn't know what he really wants. And he doesn't
understand girls at all - which might be realistic concerning "romantic"
situations in teenage years, but I think it is a general problem with Harry.

He has very few friends, and he seems not to be interested in students apart
from those who are his friends. This is shown differently in the films, by
the way.
What makes this situation unrealistic IMO is Harry's past until he came to
Hogwarts. He had a very hard time not only at the Dursley's, but at
elementary school as well. A person being bullied so much will most probably
develop good knowledge of human nature - especially a bright boy like Harry.
It's vital for him to understand people and to "read their minds" in order
to find out who will harm him and who will not. JKR seems to have left out
the emotional and social intelligence in her "Harry Potter" character. Her
Harry Potter is naive concerning girls, uninterested concerning students in
general apart from his friends, and ignorant concerning emotional and social
interaction with most of his teachers, apart from Hagrid maybe.

On the other side - Hermione Granger. She is extremely intelligent and the
academic star of Hogwarts. Additionally, she seems to be very good at
understanding people. She is the person who explains everything to Harry
when he is clueless again. She seems to have very close friendships with
several girls including Ginny, she is very clever at sorting out emotional
and romantic relationships between girls and boys. She even seems to
understand Harry's emotions better than Harry himself, Consequentially she
is Harry's main advisor. No question, Hermione is wrong sometimes, and she
failed to "catch" Ron for a long time. But compared with Harry, she is not
only an academic genius, she has much more facets in her social and
emotional profile.

Let's take a look at the three main characters - Ron and Harry are boys,
Hermione a girl. Ron is described as a total fool concerning his social and
emotional relationships. Yes, that Ron who is one of seven children with
uncounted relatives. Ron who as all children with many siblings had to learn
social interactions very, very early - but he didn't. Harry, being bullied
most of his life, needing to quickly distinguish between "good" and "bad"
people, to develop a good knowledge of human nature - but he didn't.
Hermione, an only child, on the other hand - well, she may have had a
difficult childhood as well, we don't know exactly. But she is an expert in
romances, an advisor for the boys, and "best friends" with several girls as
well.

Harry and Ron are tumbling from black to white and back, while Hermione
seems to know all shades of grey and deals with most emotional situations
like an expert. Now, this is not right in my point of view. Girls may have
more of what scientists call "emotional intelligence" statistically - but
that doesn't mean that boys are so simple and (emotionally) stupid like JKR
describes Harry and especially Ron. Boys are different than girls - due to
biological and social reasons - but they are not as simple as the male
characters in JKR's HP books are.

My impression is, that JKR does not know very much about boys becoming men,
or boys' interactions at all. Otherwise she would show us more "boys'
situations" like that in the PoA film mentioned at the beginning of my post.
Do we actually see any signs of fights (not only physical) among the boys to
find a ranking? Do we listen to any chat about girls and which boy has done
whatever with a specific girl, or which girl is most interesting? To
describe teenage boys (and girls as well) without ever mentioning sexuality
is very difficult, which is another weak point of the HP series IMO - but
that would be worth another post. JKR seems to master this difficult task
with girls - but her young male characters are far from being realistic.