Of Sorting and Snape

[houyhnhnm102]

No: HPFGUIDX 176375

Rowena:

> Personally I thought 'mean spirited' from the author 
> of 'Tehanu' -in which half the human race is condemned 
> to spiritual inferiority because of its gender - was 
> a bit rich.

houyhnhnm:

I haven't read _Tehanu_.  I'm not a big fan of the Earthsea 
stories in general; I prefer the Hainish cycle.  In what way 
is the author's tone mean-spirited?  I get the impression it's 
written from kind of a feminist point of view.  Are readers
encouraged to laugh at the female characters, gloat over 
their inferior status, enjoy a sense of superiority at their 
expense?  See that's what I would call mean spirited in an 
author--showing characters in pain or fear (having their 
tongues magically enlarged until they almost choke, faces 
covered with pustules, painted gold and stuck on top of a 
Christmas tree and so on and on) and encouraging the reader to 
find it funny or satisfying.  That seems a very different 
thing to me from merely creating a world that manifests 
reactionary values (which I think is probably a characteristic 
of the fantasy genre as a whole and may be the reason I've 
never cared for it very much).