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The Catlady wrote:
Until GoF, I had a vague impression that Hermione was a light-skinned black, maybe of West Indian ancestry...
(she then goes on to discuss the extent to which the brainy, middle-class, left-wing-leaning child of West Indian dentists might be attacked as an ethnic stereotype by critical readers)
Hee! Funny, because when I first read the books, I immediately identified Hermione as Jewish, and for very much the same reasons. The bushy hair, the dentist parents, the academic drive, the somewhat precious newly-risen-to-the-middle-class speech mannerisms, the strong social conscience and left-leaning political tendencies...
Where I come from (the New York metropolitan area), these are the signifiers of the stereotypical assimilated Jew.
Then I remembered that these are British books, and realized that my reading was in all likelihood seriously culturally flawed.
While I labored under this delusion, though, it never once occurred to me to be offended by the stereotype. I did wince once or twice—but that was mainly because I am myself a brainy, left-leaning, somewhat pretentious child of nouveau-middle-class suburban assimilated Jewish dentists, and the depiction at times struck a little close to home. ;)
Rowling paints with one hell of a broad brush, and I sincerely doubt that those easily offended by stereotypes would enjoy the books anyway. What must young aristocrats think of the Malfoys, one wonders? Or working class kids, of Stan Shunpike? Or, for that matter, French and Eastern European readers, of nearly all of Goblet of Fire?
Like so many other enjoyable things in life, Rowling just isn't suited for the easily-offended.
About Hogwarts, Catlady wrote:
I believe that JKR told one untruth in canon and another in interviews. I have come to believe that even though she said that Hogwarts is the only wizarding school in Britain and has 1000 students, it actually is one of three or four schools in the British Isles (Britain + Ireland + Man etc) and each has around 250-300 students. Hogwarts is the BEST and OLDEST of the lot.
I'd buy that.
I don't think that Rowling's claim that Hogwarts is the only magical school in the British Isles meshes at all well with the real canon, truth be told. The books themselves strongly imply otherwise.
In Chapter Six of PS, on the train, Hermione tells Harry and Ron:
"...it was ever such a surprise when I got my letter, but I was ever so pleased, of course, I mean, it's the very best school of witchcraft there is, I've heard..."
Why on earth would she say this, if Hogwarts were the only school of witchcraft in Britain? As a British citizen, where else would she go? Hogwarts would be rather the default, wouldn't it? So why would she bother to mention how pleased she is to have been accepted at Hogwarts in particular, unless there were other, far less prestigious possibilities open to her?
(Yes, all right. I know. Draco's parents did consider sending him off to Durmstrang. But the Malfoys are a rather special case: Lucius can pull strings, and he has sway over the headmaster there. We don't really know whether English students normally have the option of attending foreign schools, or whether Draco's admission to Durmstrang would have been a special exception made as a personal favor from Karkaroff.)
And then, in Chapter Seven, we get from Neville:
"And you should have seen their faces when I got in here—they thought I might not be magic enough to come, you see."
Neville's already told the other kids about how pleased his family was when he first showed signs of magical ability. His admission to Hogwarts is described as an even further triumph: "And you should have seen their faces when I got in here."
When I got in here. As opposed to...where? If all magical children in Britain go to Hogwarts as a matter of due course, then this statement just doesn't make any sense to me. It only makes sense to me if there are other, less prestigious schools—schools for the magical, but the not-particularly-magically-gifted, perhaps—to which Neville could have been (and clearly expected to be) relegated.
—Elkins
Posted to HPfGU by Elkins on January 21, 2002 6:55 PM
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