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

[lupinlore]

No: HPFGUIDX 164692

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "phoenixgod2000" <jmrazo at ...> 
wrote:

> 
> And I have made the point before, but I'll make it again.  rather 
than
> worry about the women, I worry about what I think is the very real
> lack of strong male/father characters in the story.

Well, why don't we just join the two sides and say that there is a 
notable absence of strong parental/adult figures in general?  And 
yes, it is extremely troubling.  


> 
> We have Arthur, who has a spine consisting of three parts jello and
> one part spaghetti.

That doesn't seem quite fair -- although I understand what you're 
getting at.  Arthur certainly does seem to cede most of the family-
type duties to Molly.  But then again, that's what Molly is good at 
and what she likes to do.  I wouldn't say that he is spineless so 
much as he and Molly have worked out a division of responsibility 
that suits each of them admirably.  Whether this is in the best 
interests of the family as a whole is a matter of debate, I 
understand.

> 
> We have Lupin, who wouldn't know a strong decision if it bit him in
> the behind during a full moon.

True, although I think Lupin is a good example of authorial 
dithering.  JKR introduced him in Book III and presumably has 
something important for him to do in Book VII.  Meanwhile she doesn't 
know quite what to do with him, so he's been kind of hanging around 
in the background, occasionally making unhelpful comments, piddling 
around ineffectually, and generally not getting much of anything 
useful done.  Altogether he has been kind of a wet wolf-pelt, hasn't 
he?


> We have Dumbledore, the great light side wizard who couldn't make a
> plan, run a war, run a school, or protect a child's interests to 
save
> his life.

Rather literally, in fact.  Someone who would let an attempted 
murderer run around in his school is certainly a good example of the 
Zen values some ascribe to the headmaster.  That is, he has achieved 
the state of Oneness with Idiotic Incompetence.  Of course we have 
authorial meddling here as well.  She needed Draco free for the 
endgame, and the only way she could achieve that was to have DD be an 
absolutely irresponsible idiot.  So much for our "very wise man."

> 
> phoenixgod2000, who has a very low threshold to meet for
> characterization out of his love for Robert Howard and Edgar Rice
> Burroughs and is still not happy with the characterizations in HP
>

Chuckle.  Well, although Conan, Tarzan, John Carter of Mars, and the 
rest can be rather one-dimensional, they are at least consistent and 
true to the way their characters are described.  HP characters seem 
to be genetically related to Gummi Bears.  That way they can bend, 
twist, and deform into whatever improbable and squashed-up shape is 
needed for the plot.


Lupinlore