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

[zgirnius]

No: HPFGUIDX 164716


> Betsy Hp:
> But are we (the readers) supposed to notice Hermione heading down a 
> bad path?  Or does JKR think Hermione is doing great and nothing 
will 
> change?  I don't know!  And it frustrates the heck out of me. <g>

zgirnius:
I guess to me it does not matter. Hermione has a self-righteous 
streak which makes her sometimes ineffective (SPEW) and sometimes 
cruel (Marietta), but it is not something I would call a fatal flaw. 
It doesn't make her evil, in my opinion anyway. I will be equally 
happy if she somehow comes to see the problem, or if she continues 
this way. 

BetsyHP:
> I mean if none of 
> them think Hermione is getting a bit scary then what do I hang my 
hat on as hope that she'll improve?

zgirnius:
I guess that's our difference. I don't see her 'getting scary', in 
the sense of changing substantially for the worse. She certainly has 
more scope for action, so her mistakes can have bigger consequences, 
but I don't think she has gotten 'worse'.

> Betsy Hp:
>  So she's not a make or 
> break part of the story like say, Sirius or Lupin are.

zgirnius:
Lupin was a make or break part of PoA. I would not say he is the same 
to the story as a whole. I don't see that he has had more emotional 
impact on Harry than McG. Both are excellent teachers whom Harry 
respects and who provide Harry with some guidance and encouragement 
at various points.

All the DADA teachers have been, in their respective books, and yes, 
we have only had one female in the bunch. However, I really didn't 
find the gender of most of the teachers that important. Lupin had to 
be a guy as he's James' old friend, Barty Jr. had to be because of 
the father/son thing with Crouch Sr., but Quirrell and Lockhart, as 
far as I can see, could have served their functions equally well had 
they been female. I don't think making them so would have been seen 
as a feminist statement, though <bg>.

(Snape's a whole 'nother kettle of fish, he definitely has a major, 
series-wide presence aside from his centrality to the plot of HBP, 
and is another character that needs to be male, probably because of 
Lily, and certainly as he was a school rival of James and Co.).

> Betsy Hp:
> I will admit that I'm always shocked when people say Molly is 
> strong.  She can't even keep her own child from being thrown out of 
> her home.  What's strong about that?  

zgirnius:
Percy was not thrown out, he left, upon attaining his majority, 
obtaining a good job, and getting into a huge fight with his father. 
Trouble had been brewing there for quite some time, but I'm not sure 
what Molly could have done to improve matters. 

Of course, for me the nails on the chalkboard characters par 
excellence are the Twins, so naturally I blame them. <g> I would also 
bet real money that in this regard, my aesthetic sensibilities and 
Rowling's do not mesh. 

> BestyHP:
> [Frankly, IMO, Molly is the perfect example of the worst sort of 
> female weakness: everything for a man who's no longer all that 
> interested; sublimating all of her rage and choked ambition into 
> cruel and meaningless mind games with the weakest of her offspring 
as 
> a stand in for the man she's losing.  That most of it is 
subconscious 
> makes her even more pathetic, IMO.  But that's just me, and I fully 
> realize that I'm pretty much alone on this. <g>]

zgirnius:
Percy being the weakest of her offspring? Or do you mean Ron? I'm 
honestly not sure what you mean here.

However, I don't see Molly as doing everything for her man. She's at 
least as focused on her kids. And even though she is not the 
breadwinner, I think she had at least 50% of the influence in 
decision making. How to spend the winnings in PoA, shopping for the 
kids' stuff all the time, and whether to join the Order (DD asks HER, 
not Arthur). Percy was not a joint decision - she can hardly keep two 
adult family members from getting into a huge fight. 

I agree she is ambitious for Arthur and the kids, but I'm not sure 
this is because her own ambitions have been thwarted. I mean, I want 
my husband to do well in his career - we will make more money that 
way and he will, presumably, be happier. I want my kids, eventually, 
to achieve things (they are 2 and 4, it is a trifle early to start 
worrying about school et. al.). This is despite having a reasonably 
successful career of my own.

I don't know if Rowling has any plans to go there - but Molly has a 
very long life expectancy, assuming she is not killed in DH. If she 
really wants a career, it would seem to be a better option for WW 
witches than RL women - she has far more time remaining to her after 
inny finishes school (presuming she wants to wait for that).

> Betsy Hp:
> But Arthur is one of the few characters who treats Harry as a 
> thinking person in his own right (against Molly's wishes and behind 
> her back, of course). And he has some strong principles (not shared 
> by Molly) that I think the WW need to consider. 

zgirnius:
Yes, he is a fine person. Still boring though. I think Molly does 
share some of his principles (not the Muggle-related ones, though, I 
will give you that). I also think their relationship is better than 
you give it credit for.

> Betsy Hp:
> You could well be right.  Though given how JKR has already handled 
> Ginny, especially if we're supposed to take Ginny as done, 

zgirnius:
I would bet we will see a good deal more of Miss Weasley in Book 7. 
Whether you will consider this a good thing or not, I could not say. 
I don't care for her either, but I don't have to. I'm not in love 
with her, Harry is, and I find this credible.
 
BetsyHP: 
> And what I also wonder about is that Lily may be something that 
makes 
> *Snape* more clear to both the readers and Harry.  So rather than 
> revealing motherhood, we've again learned something about 
fatherhood.

zgirnius:
Yes, our possible 'Lily representative' is male. I think even if in 
learning more about her, we learn about Snape, we will still be 
learning more about her. Though, we do have one Lily representative 
that I forgot...Petunia Dursley, Harry's de facto mom.

Not a very good one, poor boy.

I don't really see how we could learn more about motherhood from Lily 
(any more than we can learn about fatherhood from James, as opposed 
to Sirius) since they have been absent from Harry's life owing to 
their deaths. But Lily could be an example of a strong, and strongly 
influential, female character.