[HPforGrownups] Wanted! Complex Female Adult Character: (was:Re: ESE!McGonagall...

[Magpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 164657


       Jeremiah:

       I don't see the "cogs in her household machine" issue. If you're in 
afamily as large as the Weasleys and the table needs to be set for 
dinnerthen you're going to delegate. If you have a bunch of kids that have 
to getoff to school then you're going to bark and nudge. a lot. And I am 
someonewho believes that kids aren't "little adults" and need to be steered 
a bunchas kids. Teen-agers aren't adults and don't behave like adults, 
either. Ican see Phineus Nigellu's perspectives but he's a Negative-Nancy 
and has a
bad attitude. But Molly has  moment where she yells at Fred and Georgebefore 
the Quidditch World Cup and then when they return safe and sound she
regrets her words of anger.

Magpie:
Right. She's a stock type. She yells at the kids but something happening to 
her is her biggest fear. She's a very familiar mother character--not exactly 
complex. Though neither are the male characters, exactly. JKR is great at 
creating characters around a conflict, so most of the characters do have 
that. The men just usually are more central to the plot and have conflicts 
that matter in that way.

       Jeremiah:

       I think some modern forms of Feminism look at the 
mother/home-makerrole as deplorable but I don't see how JKR disagrees with 
me. I think wehave a difference of interpretation.

Magpie:
I don't think JKR's much taking a stand on being a housewife. I think 
Molly's just a character who's defined by being home/family/mother to 
everyone. She does lots of domestic stuff and mothers people. You can be 
that type and be feminist or not feminist, but I think the Weasley is 
supposed to have an old-fashioned feel to it. Their own attitudes about 
women are pretty old-fashioned with the whole "Scarlet Woman" idea (which of 
course sets Ginny up to be the spunky one).

Though part of Molly's character is also that she lives through the 
successes of others. She doesn't have personal ambition so much as ambition 
for those she takes care of. She has no word about herself in the Slug Club 
but has definite thoughts about why Arthur should have been in, and how he 
should be promoted and all that. Whether one considers that attitude 
anti-feminist is probably subjective, but it's a very familiar type and was 
before women had the vote.

Jeremiah:
       But I still ask, what would it have taken to get her to do that? AndI 
do think it's sad that JKR has address it yet.

Magpie:
But why would she have to address it, especially given Bellatrix's 
background? As a DE there's no reason to think we need to get her backstory 
to that extent any more than we'll get Lucius'.

Jeremiah
:Hot for LV? Well, maybe. (yuck) Maybe. LOL. Maybe she's had the desire 
tofeel like "one of the boys" and scrambles at scraps to prove herself. She
boasts in ways that reflect LV's own boastful lies. She is a vocal 
supporterwith extremely high defenses and must have deep, deep fears about 
herself
and her family to be that boisterous and eager to be cruel. Something 
isdefinitely stinky about her past. (hee hee. Lady Macbeth. )

Magpie:
Hasn't she made it clear she's hot for LV? She worships the man and brags 
about being his most loyal supporter. What you're suggesting here is the 
kind of thing that's great for fanfic, but the books haven't suggested 
anything about Bellatrix having these motives. There's nothing about her 
wanting to be in a boys club or needing to do anything she's done to do 
that. All we've seen is that she really loves LV.
---------------------------------------------------
> >>Jeremiah:
> And Umbridge... She is career-motivated. She has a very dark and
> sinister side to her.
> <snip>

Betsy Hp:
But, but! Umbridge doesn't have any *other* side! She's dark and
sinister, and that's about it. I mean, she's a great villain (as is
Bellatrix for that matter). Absolutely wonderful to hiss at as she
stalks across the stage twirling her mustache, but we don't have any
hints of deeper things going on.


       Jeremiah:

       I think Umbridge does. I think she has a frilly soft side deep within 
but since she is so toad-like she cannot convince others to see her that 
way. She has adopted the cruelty and ridicule that stems from her "ugliness" 
(and the external perception of her physicality) and uses it to gain her own 
power. IMO she has "learned" to be cruel in the cruelest ways. Sure, I've 
extrapolated a bit, but I remember how I used to be as a kids, fat, geeky. I 
was treated cruelly and I remember the moment when I had the choice to be 
like the others who treaded me with hatred or to be compassionate and 
loving. Umbridge hasn't learned that you can get more bees with honey than
with vinegar. She's quite tragic to me.

Magpie:
You haven't extrapolated a bit, you've extrapolated a lot--unless you can 
show me the actual canon for these things instead of just taking what we 
have of Umbridge and writing your own backstory for her.

> >>Jeremiah:
> Ginny is very complicated.
> <snip>

Betsy Hp:
Only if there's something up with her in HBP. Otherwise she's
Harry's sugar and a bit of recess before his battle with the big
bad. Oh, and his baby-making machine for the wonderful epilogue. <g>

However, if it turns out that her utterly horrid behavior in HBP
really *was* horrid behavior and not short-hand for "spunky girl!"
than yes, I'll grant you Ginny's complexity. At this point though,
it's still an open question. And Ginny is still not an adult. <eg>

Betsy Hp

       ---------------------------------------------

       Jeremiah:

       You got me there, too.
             However, I still see Ginny as being complex. She seems so 
sweeton the surface and then you find out she's very devious and ingenious. 
I'msure Hermione wouldn't have Ginny as a friend if Ginny was boring and 
trite.Ginny has learned a lot from Fred and George. She's had Bill and 
Charlie to
look up to because, IMO I don't think they look at her as a "girl" but 
justas a younger sibling. Mollie never scolds her for not being "lady-like" 
and,
yet, Ginny has wonderful manners and is a well behaved person. Ok, she 
liketo make-out with lots of boys. big deal. So do I. LOL. But I don't think
she's very one-dimensional.

Magpie:
She doesn't seem sweet on the surface to me. Most every line she has in HBP 
is an insult. The "real" Ginny of OotP and HBP (who seems a blatantly 
different character than the one who came before, but we're supposed to 
think she was always like this and it was just hidden from us) is 
highlighted as not having wonderful manners or being particularly 
well-behaved. She's not necessarily boring or trite, but I think she's less 
complex than a lot of male and female characters.

Jeremiah:
Let us not forget Fleur. I thought she was some trite-boring-mushy-spoiled 
chick who should be shot between the eyes to save her from the misery of her
own life and then. Blam! She's in for the long haul. She love someone 
forwhat is within. There is a reason she was picked to be a tri-wizard 
champion
and I'm sure it will come into play during DH. (Honestly, did anyone 
elsethink she was going to still want bill after he was mauled? I didn't').

Magpie:
I can't say I thought she was any of those things--that seemed clearly about 
the cattiness of Ginny and Hermione and I liked her. But still, she's about 
as complex as most characters. She's a type, but with a twist or conflict. I 
like her fine as a character, but she's pretty unimportant.

Jeremiah:
Now, what I whole-heartedly agree to is this: The story line is 
verymale-centric. Harry, Sirius, Lupin, James, Wormtail, Voldemort, 
Dumbledore,
Malfoy. .we can tell the story using only these characters. I do believethat 
Ron and Hermione are interesting but could be written out. So, I see
how the feminist-perspective could be riled (and I agree that there needs 
tobe more female influence in the plot) but when the author is a woman. 
asingle parent who has worked hard to make this story happen. as well as 
herown life. then I don't think it holds much water, to be honest.

Magpie:
Right--I think that's the more relevent thing. I don't think JKR needs to 
write to set quota of characters where there must be X important girls and 
women or she chooses characters' genders based on some agenda. But I don't 
think it's out of line for people to see things that they think are saying 
sexist things if they do. When asked about whether Lily hated James in the 
Pensieve (which I thought clearly she didn't) JKR said, "She's a woman. You 
know what we're like" or something liek that--and that's the kind of 
attitude that I do see permeating the books when it comes to the female 
characters. There's some very clear patterns in the way romances work and 
how girls are judged that if they don't reflect anything about politics 
might still say something about how the author thinks about her own sex. Or 
it just says she likes types that aren't always feminist. (When she is being 
feminist she seems self-consciously so, with Hermione and Ginny.)

Basically, I think we are probably all using different definitions of 
"complex" because JKR's strength is she creates great, vibrant characters 
that jump off the page easily--but she's not writing a character piece. 
Nobody is really "complex" because if they were the story wouldn't work the 
way it does. They have to be interesting chess pieces (there's also very 
little character "development" which means the characters actually 
change--part of the appeal is their familiarity). So it's not a problem with 
the female characters that they're not complex, imo, because they share that 
with everybody. But that can be a different issue from whether one finds a 
particular female type used feminist.

-m