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I was getting my car washed today and happened upon this editorial about
Harry Potter and its lack of strong female characters. Although I own
the first three books I have not read them, but those of you who have
might want to comment on this opinion. Michele
Here is the URL if the formatting is hard to read:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment/ncguest.htm
Harry Potter' lacks for true heroines
By Donna Harrington-Lueker
Twelve-year-old Caroleann Cookinham quickly cuts to
the difference
between Harry Potter and his friend Hermione Granger.
Harry is
adventurous and admirable. Even when he messes up,
he's cool. And
Hermione? She's brainy, a stickler for rules and not
as willing to take
chances. Little wonder that Cookinham says it's Harry
she admires.
A soon-to-be seventh-grader at Tiverton Middle School
in Tiverton, R.I.,
and a member of the Tiverton library's Harry Potter
fan club, Cookinham
has a point. What young person wouldn't want to be
Harry Potter?
Adventurous, resourceful, brave, humble, gifted,
loyal. Like the knights in
medieval romances, the young wizard with the scar
shaped like a lightning
bolt on his forehead does battle with the powers of
darkness and triumphs.
But as 5.3 million copies of Harry Potter and the
Goblet of Fire fly off
bookstore shelves in the United States and Britain
and as Hollywood
prepares to stoke Pottermania with a film and a
multibillion-dollar onslaught
of Harry Potter merchandise another question about
British author J.K.
Rowling's coming-of-age series has to be asked. Given
a choice, what
youngster would want to be Hermione Granger or any of
the other women,
young or old, in the Potter series so far?
Perhaps it's a question only a Muggle would ask. The
media and marketing
juggernaut of the past few weeks isn't baseless hype.
The Potter books are
filled with charm and imagination, close calls and
humor, powerful
friendships and abiding love. Teachers, school
librarians and parents have
welcomed the way Harry's exploits have rekindled a
love of reading among
boys.
But for girls, Goblet of Fire dashes any hope that the
subtle sexism of the
earlier books would be tempered. None of the girls or
women in Goblet of
Fire escapes shrillness, giddiness or fear. Mrs.
Weasley, matriarch of the
unwieldy Weasley family, shrieks and glowers to keep
her family in order.
Her daughter, Ginny, is routinely horror-struck and in
need of reassurance.
Now that they've reached adolescence, other female
students at Hogwarts
School of Witchcraft and Wizardry giggle, pout, travel
in packs and even
squabble over lipstick.
Admirably self-confident, Angelina Johnson, a
Gryffindor chaser, nominates
herself for the Triwizard competition, but it's
fledgling French bombshell
Fleur Delacour with her mane of silvery blond hair
who's the only woman to
compete.
(Another case of sex sells?)
Then, too, there are the veela, the mascots of the
Bulgarian national
Quidditch team whose white-gold hair and moon-bright
skin make them the
most beautiful women Harry, and every other wizard,
ever has seen. These
sirens lull men into a state of blissful happiness,
reduce them to shameless
boasting about their prowess, and then, when crossed,
change into
cruel-beaked harpies a parable of woman's power to
enslave.
Hermione remains problematic, as well. An overachiever
whom the boys
love to hate, Hermione is the stereotypical good girl
who completes her
work ahead of time, chides her friends for breaking
rules and always has her
hand up in class.
She's also bossy, shrill, exasperating and meddlesome
to a degree that
puzzles Kathleen Odean, author of Great Books for
Girls, an annotated list
of books with strong female characters, and its
companion volume, Great
Books for Boys.
"People get defensive because they like the books so
much," says Odean,
who admires the Potter books. "But it's hard for me to
understand why
Rowling wouldn't have made Hermione stronger and more
likable."
It's harder still to understand why Rowling keeps
undercutting her heroine.
The running joke in Goblet of Fire, for example, is
Hermione's campaign to
provide the "house-elves" at Hogwarts with fair wages,
proper working
conditions and even pensions. ("Slave labor," said
Hermione, breathing
through her nose. "That's what this dinner is made of.
Slave labor.")
But the boys deride such idealism. Harry himself finds
it exasperating. And
by the story's end, Hermione herself forgets about the
Society for the
Promotion of Elfish Welfare (S.P.E.W.) when she's
smitten with heartthrob
Viktor Krum: At the Yule Ball, "Harry glanced up at
Hermione to see how
she felt about this new and more complicated method of
dining surely it
meant plenty of extra work for the house-elves? but
for once, Hermione
didn't seem to be thinking about S.P.E.W. She was deep
in talk with Viktor
Krum and hardly seemed to notice what she was eating."
Claudia Mills, an associate professor of ethics at the
University of
Colorado-Boulder and a children's book author, has
similar qualms about
the conflicting messages Hermione sends. Clearly,
Hermione's intelligence is
valuable. But while girls study in the Harry Potter
books, boys take action,
Mills says. And that's a stereotype that limits both
sexes.
It's also a reason for concern. "Children's books are
windows into the world
beyond family and peers, an indication of what's
possible," says Mills, and
like other media, books send messages that influence a
person's self-image
and self-esteem.
Already girls are vulnerable. In a recent poll from
the New York-based
Girls Inc. (formerly the Girls Clubs of America), 59%
of girls in grades 3
through 12 reported that girls were told not to brag
about things they do
well, 63% said they were under pressure to please
everyone, and 56% said
they were expected to speak softly and not cause
trouble.
The group's conclusion: Girls are being told they can
do anything boys can
do, but they're also being held to obsolete
stereotypes that hold them back.
Maybe the Ministry of Magic could work on this?
Donna Harrington-Lueker, an education writer in
Newport, R.I., is a
member of USA TODAY's board of contributors.
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--
Michele Missner
Library information specialist emeritus
Appleton, Wi.
missnerm@athenet.net
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