some replies which are direct but off topic

[sartoris22]

No: HPFGUIDX 186210

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Carol" <justcarol67 at ...> wrote:
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> Carol responds:
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> I'm not so sure that the *narrator*, who sees from Harry's pov most of the time, is sensitive to anyone's feelings except Harry's.
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> As for the ability to create compelling characters, I'd credit JKR herself rather than the narrator, which (or who) is only the voice or persona that JKR uses to tell the story. The question is whether it's a male or a female voice. I'm not altogether sure, but I think that Magpie's point about male characters being described as handsome is a good one. How many male writers or male first-person narrators (in other words, voices that we know to be male) would be concerned with Cedric Diggory's looks?

There's nothing feminine about the books even when they deal with female characters.
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Sartoris22:

All the points you make are good ones, and I'll try to respond to a few of them.

I think the narrator is very sympathetic toward many characters, including Lupin, the Weasley family, Hermione, and Hagrid. Mostly, we get our clues about how to feel about characters from the narrator, which is why Rowling herself expressed surprize that so many fans actually "liked" Draco Malfoy, who is written as, at least in the early books, a fairly unpleasant character.

As for distinguishing between Rowling and the narrator, it goes without saying that Rowling creates the narrator, but the narrator is endowed only with the knowledge the writer gives her. The narrator doesn't necessarily know what the writer knows. She's an entity unto herself. For example, Hermione and the other muggles surely know about muggle history, yet it's rarely mentioned or acknowledged in the books. Don't you find it odd that neither the narrator nor a muggle ever likens Voldemort to Adolph Hitler? This seems all the more curious because the story takes place in England. Rowling has extensive knowledge of British and world history, yet her narrator rarely, if ever employs that knowledge, which is why I separate Rowling from the narrator, even though the narrator is her invention. Years ago, I read Wayne Booth's Rhetoric of Fiction, and I vaguely remember him discussing this distinction.

I don't think it's unusual for a female writer to be able to describe the feelings of boys because women, for the most part, raise boys in Western society, and this information about boys is shared with other women. Besides, women tend to be more observant of human behavior. It isn't that unusual for women writers to write convincingly about men; George Eliot and Ayn Rand come readily to mind. It is more unusual for a male writer to write effectively about women, in my opinion.

As for male authors describing positively male physical characteristics, Henry James and James Baldwin are two authors who did. Baldwin's Just Above My Head and Giovanni's Room both contain such decriptions, which shouldn't be discounted because Baldwin was gay.

Overall, I think that the narrator seems more female than male, and I do think she is sympathetic toward many characters besides Harry.
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