Molly Weasley

[Bart Lidofsky]

No: HPFGUIDX 188768

Catlady (Rita Prince wrote:
> << 6. What did you think of Molly's alternating behavior, yelling at her sons, then being sweet and loving to Harry? >>
>
> I thought it was crazy, and would have made her kids feel worse (and blame Harry for it), but eventually I realised that she always behaved like that and they were used to it and understood that it was just because she was something of a drama queen.

Bart:
    It's a common behavior: Family is one thing, guests are another. I 
note that, as the books go on, and Molly thinks of Harry more as family 
and less as a guest, her attitude towards Harry becomes more like her 
attitude towards her own family. In a another way, it's a subtle 
putdown; Harry, being brought up by those horrible Muggles, doesn't know 
any better, but Molly's kids, who received a proper upbringing, SHOULD 
know better.

    It is not unusual that the one child to turn against the Weasley's 
was the "good" child. All the Weasley kids show signs of being 
intelligent and creative, and Molly, having to deal with so many at 
once, has to use a heavy hand to prevent disasters from taking place. 
And remember, as a lower middle class (not poor, no matter WHAT the 
Malfoys say) family, where every penny has to be watched, it doesn't 
take much for there to be a disaster.

    There's also a Depression-era mentality (I admittedly do not know 
exactly what the Depression culture was like in Great Britain) that the 
best place you can be is to have a job for a nice, stable company, or, 
even better, the government. The Weasley kids thought around that. Even 
though Charlie and Bill got stable jobs, they got stable jobs that 
allowed for a great deal of independence and creativity.

Fred and George really brought out the mentality with their mother. I 
had a friend who was an extremely talented artist, and who could have 
made an excellent living in commercial art (for those into "Furry 
Fandom" it was Deal Whitley; my wife and I were old friends with his 
wife). He had parents like the Weasleys, except he let his parents 
convince him that art was fine for a hobby, but it was no way to make a 
living, so he took low-level office work that paid far less than he 
could easily have been making as an artist.  And Molly's discouraging of 
F&G's joke & novelty business just brought to mind what happened to 
Deal, except that F&G were sufficiently strong-willed to ignore their 
mother.

I don't know what talents Percy had, but what they were, he put under 
trying to be exactly the sort of son his parents raised him to be. It is 
not at all surprising that, when his family joined the newly formed 
Order of the Phoenix, Percy took it as a betrayal of him, rather than 
seeing what he did as a betrayal of them.

Ron got the worst of all the family, because he had the headstrong 
nature and the creativity, and maybe even the intelligence, but what he 
lacked was self-confidence, being placed in one position after another 
designed to destroy it. Ginny might have ended up that way, but I 
suspect that the early experience of being taken over by the diary gave 
her a major fear of and a determination not to be, ever, overwhelmed by 
another's personality (nor, to her credit, to try to overwhelm someone 
else's personality).

    Bart