Laura Mortiers 1 Ghent University Faculty of Arts and Philosophy From Orphan to Family Man Family, Gender and Choice in Harry Potter Supervisor: Paper submitted in partial Prof. Dr. Gert Buelens fulfilment of the requirements for the degree “Master in de Taal- en Letterkunde: Frans-Engels” by Laura Mortiers May 2014 Laura Mortiers 2 The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other's life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof. (Bach, “Family”) Laura Mortiers 3 Preface Growing up with Rowling's work, Hogwarts became in many ways a second home to me. Reading the Harry Potter novels meant – and still means – a return to a world that is magical and mysterious, one that offers me a moment away from everyday life. At Hogwarts, I meet old friends, who have changed and grown up, as I have. Indeed, having now reread the whole series while writing this paper, I have noticed that, though with each perusal new ideas strike me and characters have developed even more, that magical world is still that very same, well-known and, above all, comforting place it has always been to me. This reading pleasure and comfort, I think, is the essence of what childhood reading should be all about. Whatever may be the lessons a reader draws from the work at hand, it is important that, before any other considerations come into play, a novel has a lasting effect on its reader. Whether talking about straightforward morality, more abstract life wisdom or the work's direct reflections on life, a reader should always cherish that pure joy of opening a book, reading it, and being under its spell from page one, right through to the end. While doing my research for this paper, I read how Peter Hunt sees his work on children's literature as “the public face of an intensely private reading” (Hunt viii.). I cannot possibly express my feelings about this paper any better. To me, writing about Harry Potter has been a dream come true, but also an incredibly instructive experience. The novels have always been a passion of mine, but writing about a story with which I am so intimately familiar has taught me how to look beneath the story's surface, loving it as I have never done before. Laura Mortiers Laura Mortiers 4 Acknowledgements To Kristof I would like to thank my supervisor, Professor Dr. Gert Buelens, who has been wonderful, helping me along by always asking the right questions about my work and making me think more critically about what I was writing. Likewise, I would like to thank his daughters, who know even more about Harry Potter and have, even if they might not know it, helped my work along marvellously. Next, I want to thank my family and friends, who were utterly bewildered when I announced the topic of my dissertation, but still supported me along the way. Special thanks also to my dear friend Christine and her husband, Patrick, for taking the time to read this paper and provide me with some very useful feedback. I am also grateful to Professor Kimberley Reynolds, from Newcastle University, for personally taking the trouble of sending me her essay on “Changing families in children's fiction”, which I was unable to find anywhere in Belgium. Laura Mortiers 5 Table of contents I. Introduction 7 Situating Harry Potter : modern family fiction 8 Biological family 10 Father figures 10 Mother figures 11 Family of choice 13 II. Family in Harry Potter 14 1. Biological family 14 The Dursleys 14 The Potters 18 In the Family's Footsteps: Recognizing Right from Easy 24 2. Surrogate father figures 25 Rubeus Hagrid 25 Sirius Black 28 Albus Dumbledore 32 Severus Snape 36 Following the Father: Considering Advice 40 Laura Mortiers 6 3. Surrogate mother figures 42 Molly Weasley 42 Minerva McGonagall 46 Rubeus Hagrid 49 Hermione Granger 51 Following the Mother: a Paradigm of Care 54 4. Family of choice 56 Ronald Weasley 57 Hermione Granger 60 Neville Longbottom 64 Ginny Weasley 67 The Weasleys 68 Groupings: Gryffindor, Order of the Phoenix, Dumbledore's Army 69 Family of Choice: a Labour of Love 73 III. Conclusion 74 Harry Potter: the Family story 74 Gendered parental roles 76 A Choice Story: Exceeding Expectations 79 IV. Works cited 81 Word count : 26,551 Laura Mortiers 7 I. Introduction From the publication of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in 1997 to the seventh and last instalment, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, published in 2007, J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series has become a worldwide literary phenomenon that has enchanted its readers from the very beginning. Stretching over the seven books, the feud between the heroic Harry Potter and his ever- evil enemy, Lord Voldemort, has become one of the most legendary battles of our time. Aside from the essentially simple storyline that portrays Harry's quest to defeat his parents' killer, however, Rowling has also infused her stories with an abundance of images depicting the development of life at school, of a new family and of an overall community that has to deal with social and moral issues on a daily basis. What makes the stories so remarkable, then, is the way in which all of the values which Rowling's story cherishes come together in the surrogate family circle that gathers around the central character of Harry Potter. At first sight, the roles of these characters in Harry's life are superficially conventional, in that they conform to traditional roles, within the family and otherwise. In line with the overall story, however, each and every one of them also deviates from the norm, transforming an outwardly conservative role into a personally practicable one. What this paper will then try to demonstrate is how, in showing Harry's family to be holding the middle between convention and novelty, J. K. Rowling has constructed a complex image that confuses the traditional representation of family, while also giving a whole new meaning to the long-standing debate surrounding fate and free will. Departing from a brief overview of the prevailing ideas about family in children's literature, including the gendered nature of parental roles, a thorough discussion of the characters that constitute the family of Harry Potter will determine how, though starting out with a traditional representation, the additional element of choice ramifies the seemingly straightforward theme that is family. Laura Mortiers 8 Situating Harry Potter : modern family fiction Locating J. K. Rowling's work in a literary era what is often called the Third Golden Age of children's literature seems no less than appropriate, not only because of the series' enormous success, mirroring the consumerist trend so often noticed in recent children's literature, but more specifically also in the story's portrayal of family life, which, while not remarkably progressive, does hint at the recent changes in family conditions. The Third Golden Age, first of all, is a literary era marked by the immense commercial success of children's literature, a development that started in the second half of the twentieth century and has continued into the twenty-first century. Because of its increasing popularity, several authors have claimed that children's literature today has become a part of “an era of literacy fast- food consumerism” (Blake 74). Moreover, an increasing commercialization of children's books as profitable goods has made the genre the victim of a “relentless progress of globalization” (Zipes 2008: 21). In short, these authors argue that recent developments have taken the attention away from the books' cultural merits, making children's literature into, quite simply, globally marketable merchandise. Moreover, authors have also claimed that the result of this development has been not only the obvious, namely that the popularity and production of books have grown, but also that quality has become secondary to the economic interests of the publishing industry (Hunt 82; Zipes 2008: 5). Seen most pessimistically, then, the Third Golden Age is not, as its name would imply, a period of literary merit, but rather a time when “the cart of marketing is driving the horse of creativity” (Hunt 82). Still, when discussing Harry Potter, it is clear that popularity and quality are equally important, going hand in hand, as the publication history and astonishing success of Rowling's series are never discussed without also doing credit to Rowling's writing talent and masterful use of complex and intertextual forms and topics (Bürvenich; Blake; Eccleshare; Smadja; Laura Mortiers 9 Zipes 2008). In short, “the Harry Potter effect” (Grenby 200), created by Rowling's writing and marketing skills, is both a reflection of the spirit of the Age, that is, the public popularity of children's literature, and an achievement of remarkable literary value. Within the context of this era, a change has taken place in the representation of the family in children's literature, more specifically in the way it develops parallel to changes that are taking place in present-day society. Numerous observations have led to the strong belief that many contemporary children's books are trying to find a new way of representing family life, as reality, too, is changing and moving away from the traditional nuclear family (Grenby 136; Reynolds 203; Thiel 157). However, as Alston observes, children's literature has not yet completely caught up with this reaction against the domestic ideal, which did last well into the twentieth century; instead of being either deeply traditional or openly progressive, children's literature today is making a transition and is currently still torn between nostalgia for a past ideal and acceptance of the present changes (Alston 136).