Working mothers, was Did the Slytherins come back

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 182087

> Pippin:
> It's the old expectations for nice girls, which modern kids still
> encounter in favorites like the Narnia books, which JKR is 
countering.
>  Grownup Queen Susan of Narnia was allowed her suitors as long as 
she
> wore long skirts and was safely subject to male authority, but back 
in
> the real world when Susan Pevensey was more  interested in nylons,
> lipstick and invitations than in her lost life as a Queen (which she
> had been told was over forever),  she was not only dubbed no longer 
a
> friend of Narnia, she was punished with the loss of her entire 
family. 
> 
> So Ginny and Hermione get to giggle over the idea of love potions 
(but
> not use them) and it's okay for Ginny to wear a low cut gown, for
> Hermione to use hair products and for Fleur to be "extremely busy"
> with nice boy Roger Davies. They aren't punished as Susan was for
> showing an interest in sex, nor is it implied that sexual innocence 
is
> a higher state than sexual knowledge. Fleur's beauty as she goes to 
be
> wed gains the power to make her surroundings as beautiful as she is.
> 
> But JKR is not making the wizarding world a utopia, so along with 
> acceptance of female sexual interest as natural, there's a satiric
> inversion -- "boys will be boys" has become "girls will be girls."
> Love potions are introduced as a giggly sort of joke, but we find 
out
> eventually that if the WW thinks that its girls are too innocent or
> too harmless to abuse anyone, it's mistaken. 

Magpie:
Yeah, I get the joke. Though I don't think it's saying as much as 
you're claiming it is here. Hermione noting that people used to have 
the old-fashioned pov that boys would be likely to try to get into 
the girl's dormitories without thinking the same thing about girls in 
the boy dormitories doesn't say all that much about JKR's view of 
Susan not going to Narnia to me. Neither Ron or Harry has any desire 
to go into the girl's dormitory--but I'm not sure that would be true 
of modern boys in general living in the world today. Many of them 
actually would want to get into the girl's dormitory and assleep with 
the girls inside.

Besides which, the whole view of female sexuality, even the type 
suggested by CS Lewis imo, was always contradictory. The whore's 
always lived alongside the madonna, right? 

However, I don't see a satiric inversion. I think JKR is just 
exaggerating some of her own thoughts about us women ("You know what 
I'm talking about") and occasionally coming up with stuff CS Lewis 
himself agreed with as well as stuff with which he'd have disagreed. 

I don't agree with Betsy's interpretation--I think it's far too rigid 
and thought out. Though that goes for the other side too--I don't 
think she's making any thought out statement either way. I don't 
think she's laying down rules, I think she's doing what she would 
consider telling it like it is, plain-speaking etc. based on her 
experience of women and the world. I think it's more like the way 
most of us react to the world, instinctively seeing things we think 
are true and having emotional reactions to what's good or bad or 
funny or just the way people are. Sometimes those reactions are 
hypocritical or contradictory, and they often fall into patterns that 
maybe say more about her particular pov.

Otherwise we're talking about a world she's inverted artificially, 
which would mean she's not giving us girl sexuality as she sees it 
but rather intentionally mirroring a false view. I don't think that's 
what she's doing at all. To me the tone sounds far more like the tone 
of her interviews, a sort of *nudge nudge* you know what I'm talking 
about because this is the way the world works. There's no strict 
Puritanical judgment on sex, but there are judgments. With all these 
characters and storylines, patterns appear. 
 
> > Magpie:
> > The books just tend to mirror the Muggle world on that, even when 
> > the WW should probably have its own history. They have social 
change 
> > because they're a riff on us and our history. 
> 
> Pippin:
> Yes, but not everyone sees the real world as making social progress.
> There is a conservative point of view, you know, which assumes that
> people were more moral and more civilized in the past. 

Magpie:
Well, the series has got that too. Rosy nostalgia seems to be a big 
appeal of it. There are a lot of things in it that to me seem to be a 
throwback to bad things and attitudes of the past but they're 
presented as kind of nice--perhaps even daringly progressive and 
tolerant. 

-m