Snape, Sadism, and Authorial Intent

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 186662


> Zara:
> Whereas I had given my opinion of Snape as a teacher considerable thought, and arrived at an opinon, before I ever read that interview. If she in fact meant Snape was a sadist, I disagree with her. (As I have argued years ago, in contemporary, informal speech, the adjective "sadistic" may be used as a particularly colorful synonym for "mean", which I think is more likely what Rowling actually meant. Especially as she has since stated she likes him!)

Carol responds:
Good point. I'm not sure how much weight we should give JKR's casual, off-the-cuff remarks even if we value authorial intent as one criterion for interpreting the text. But, as I said, if an author's stated intentions were the definitive interpretation, literary criticism/analysis wouldn't exist.

To risk going off-topic a bit, to say that the author's (less than objective) views of his/her own work and (stated) intentions are all we need to understand a literary work is to say that, without such statements, we can't interpret a work at all. How can a critic know, for example, that he's interpreting a Shakespeare play "correctly" if Shakespeare didn't leave us the definitive interpretation (what he "meant" or intended by that play)? Simple. There is no single "correct" or definitive interpretation. Each critic brings a different perspective to the work he interprets--it can be mythological, historical, political, or psychological. It can focus on plot or character or setting or theme or motifs or technique or the influence or other authors. "Veil after veil may be undrawn" and still we won't see the full meaning because so many interpretations, many of them undreamed of by the author but still valid because they can be supported by the text are possible.

Basing our interpretation on a casual remark by the author is like basing our interpretation of the U.S. Constitution on a casual remark by one of the Founding Fathers who drafted it. Jefferson said such and such in a letter; therefore, we have to believe that, say, the right to keep and bear arms means only what he said and nothing else. But it doesn't work that way. Even the casual remark must be interpreted.

To return to JKR and Snape. As Zara points out, "sadistic" used casually can simply mean that he's what she elsewhere calls "a mean teacher." It need not mean that he, like Bellatrix, enjoys inflicting pain. (We have textual evidence that Bellatrix is a sadist. We have no such evidence for Snape.)

Zara:
> I can give an example of an interview comment by her that changed my reading of the text. When she stated that she had always thought of Albus as gay, it was like a lightbulb going off over my head, for me. A few different things that had not been explained to my satisfaction suddenly made all kinds of sense. (Why he fell so hard for Gellert, for example, it had not fully made sense to me before. The notion of *sharing* something like the Hallows had seemed patently ridiculous. But not, perhaps, for lovers/spouses). But I do not find that she has likewise left important pieces out of her writing of Snape, that I would need to consult with her to make sense of what she has written.
> 
> (Nor am I saying she failed with Albus. If I had made the leap myself, it would have all made sense without her explanation. That I did not, may well have more to do with limitations in my own personal experiences and background).

Carol responds:
For me there was no such lightbulb moment and DD's youthful friendship with GG made perfect sense without its being a love affair. In fact, it very closely matches known friendships between boys and young men at Eton and Oxford in the early nineteenth century, in particular Percy Shelley and his friend, Thomas Jefferson Hogg (both of whom were heterosexual and both of whom were obsessed with philosophy and politics and what might be called the greater good).

So even though JKR "always thought of" Dumbledore as gay, I didn't see that in the text or need it for the DD/GG relationship to make sense to me. Her intention, IOW, certainly existed in her mind but for whatever reason did not clearly make it into the text. Even Rita Skeeter's insinuations are only insinuations. I, for one, don't believe that Grindelwald literally or figuratively conjured a white flag out of his wand. What evidence we have (and it's admittedly scanty) suggests that they really dueled.

Zara wrote:
> No. I am not discussing, note, what Rowling was thinking when she wrote something or other. I am discussing, on the basis of what she wrote, what it makes sense for me, or anyone else reading her books, to conclude about them. When she says her story was built around Snape and Dumbledore, I believe her. When she says she had the reason Voldemort would have spared Lily worked out in advance, I believe her. When she asserts that Snape is a sadist, I don't agree. If she said "I wrote Snape as a sadistic character" I would of course believe her, but would suggest she may have failed in this particular, small aspect of her project. <snip>

Carol responds:
Exactly. "Intended" and "succeeded in conveying" are two different things. All we can do is examine the text and see what's really there (as opposed to what JKR "intended" to convey) and interpret it in a way that's consistent with the evidence and that makes sense to us. (If she really "intended" Harry's Crucio of Amycus Carrow as "gallant," I'd say that she failed in that, too.)

Of course, JKR created her own characters. Of course, we wouldn't be discussing them if she hadn't done so. They are her creations. But once a book is out of its author's hands, the author can no longer control its interpretation. She (or he) can only express her (or his) intentions and hope that they came through to the majority of readers. (The same is true of real people in the hands of historians. The meaning and significance of their actions will be debated in terms that never occurred to the historical persons when they were alive. Such discussions don't make history inaccurate or invalid, but they do make it, like literary criticism, a matter of interpretation. The same is probably true of judges who interpret the law.)

Carol, who thinks that the insights of other readers are often much more valuable and revealing than those of the author, which are all too often subjective and distorted