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I've divided this response up into two separate ones, as I think that the issues of homoeroticism, sadism, and how Voldemort feels about women are probably best separated from my analysis of how authorial decisions regarding word choice and phrasing effect how we read the Graveyard scene. This post deals with the first body of issues; its follow-up deals with the second question.
Dicentra wrote:
There's no doubt in my mind that Voldemort is getting off on something here. I just don't think the erotic imagery is necessarily pointing to homoeroticism, per se.
No. I didn't really mean to imply that. I do see strong homoerotic overtones to Riddle and Harry's encounter in the Chamber, but Voldemort's behavior in the graveyard strikes me as more purely sadistic.
The way that Riddle is depicted in the Chamber does speak to me of a certain degree of homoeroticism. JKR seems to be going out of her way to describe him as behaving in a self-consciously flirtatious and seductive manner. She also focuses on details, like those long fingers, that carry with them rather sensual connotations.
One might just as easily, however, read Riddle's interest in Harry as narcissistic, rather than as homoerotic. Harry does somewhat resemble him, after all, as did James, in whom he also seems to have paid an unusual degree of physical attention. By the time of the confrontation in the chamber, Riddle already knows that his fate is inextricably intertwined with Harry's. The "double" aspect of their relationship is not merely a literary device; it is one that the characters themselves—Riddle included—comment upon. So the possibility that what we are seeing there is pure and simple narcissism also seems quite convincing to me. Riddle is a megalomaniac, after all. It's an inherently narcissistic position.
As for Voldemort in the graveyard...
Dicentra:
As for whether his excitement is genuinely sexual or only metaphorically so, I'd prefer not to guess. Because if it's the former, it buries the needle on the EWWWW scale, as far as I'm concerned.
Far too EWWW, I agree. And none of our business besides. My goodness, even fictional characters deserve some privacy, don't they?
Just for the record, though, I don't really believe that Voldemort has sexuality in any normal human sense of the term. After all, he's supposed to have lost much of his humanity in the process of seeking immortality. I tend to assume that sexuality is one of those things that you leave behind once you start heading down that path.
The particular nature of his excitement in the graveyard is, however, physical. It has a somatic element. He is not merely mentally and emotionally engaged. He is breathing heavily, heavily enough for his nostrils to be "dilating with excitement," and he's really not been doing anything strenuous enough to account for that. So I'd say that he is certainly physically aroused. Whether this means that his excitement is actually "sexual" in any technical or, er, genital sense of the term, though, strikes me as pretty moot, honestly. It's close enough.
Dicentra:
I think Voldemort, as a predator, is getting off on killing (ever hear the noises a cat makes when a bird flies nearby?).
I remember stumbling downstairs one morning only to find one of my cats, a poor little orphan kitty who never learned to kill properly, busily engaged in the very last stages of torturing an unfortunate mouse to death.
She was purring. Loudly. And also doing that cheek rub thing that cats do. You know, the thing that they do when they're really awfully pleased with you and want to mark you as their very own? The cheek rub that we tend (no matter how often we are told that it is actually a territorial behavior) to read as a sign of deep feline affection? She was doing that to this poor suffering half-dead mouse.
Oh, yeah. It was pretty disturbing all right. I just love cats, but it did make me feel some sympathy for those people who find them unsettling.
Getting back to Voldemort, though, I do agree with you that it's predatory, but I think that it's rather worse than just getting off on killing. He doesn't just like killing. He likes causing suffering, and not merely in those he deems "worthy opponents" either. He does take some time to play with poor old Frank Bryce, after all, who is old and lame -- and a Muggle to boot. I mean, really. The man hardly offers much in the way of sport, does he? But Voldemort still insists on revealing himself before killing him, just so that he can get a kick out of that look of terror on the man's face. He's not merely a predator. He's a sadist. And as you point out, sadism is at heart about power.
Dicentra:
However, Harry is his Ultimate Foe, and getting rid of him means acheiving the power he's been looking for all his life. (This also applies to Riddle's reaction to Harry.) And since power is the ultimate aphrodisiac, it's no wonder he gets all hot and bothered.
No. It isn't a surprise, I agree. He's certainly more engaged than he is while tormenting easy prey like Avery and Pettigrew. In the absence of anything really exciting, he'll entertain himself with the likes of Bryce, but I agree with you that the main reason that he is so particularly keyed up over Harry is a question of power.
Which is also the reason that I think he is more interested in men than in women.
Dicentra:
He's probably too dehumanized to care about the sex of his victim.
Here is where we disagree. I do think that Voldemort cares about the sex of his victims, not because of any normal preference for men as romantic objects, but rather because of his contempt for women.
Neither as the teenaged Riddle nor as the reincorporated Voldemort does he seem to recognize women as valuable, powerful, or even as particularly interesting. He is profoundly dismissive of them. They barely seem to register on his radar.
Whether the teenaged Riddle preferred boys to girls as a matter of regular old preference or not (and I am most certainly not trying to equate homosexuality with misogyny here), I think that he certainly seems disinterested in girls. His emphasis on how very boring he found dealing with Ginny is obviously primarily meant to wound Harry, but I also find myself believing it. He really doesn't seem terribly interested in Ginny. Even his comments upon learning the origin of Harry's protection speak to me of a profound dismissal of women as a general class. (Oh, yes. Mother love. Should have thought of that, hadn't I? Oh, well, if that's all it was...)
Nor, as Voldemort, does he give the impression of having paid nearly as much attention to Lily's death as he had to James' (more fool he). His "die the way your father died" gloat to Harry in the graveyard does seem to imply that he actually paid some attention to James. I never receive that impression from him about Lily. Even the much-touted "hesitation," which some have read as evidence of reluctance, I tend to read as pure and simple contempt. His particular means of ordering her away ("stand aside, girl") is dismissive. She simply doesn't register to him as a person of any importance at all. He can't even be bothered to kill her, until she refuses to get out of the way of the target who really does interest him: her son.
His tone when talking about Bertha Jorkins is similarly dismissive. You would think that torturing his way through the poor woman's Memory Charm would have been just the sort of thing that he would have enjoyed, but he doesn't really speak of it with all that much in the way of relish. He doesn't reminisce, so to speak. He seems to have found her fairly uninteresting.
There do not seem to be many women in his circle of followers. The only female Death Eater that we know of is the mysterious Mrs. Lestrange, and she is both married to another DE and (if she is indeed the Pensieve woman) a person of unusual charisma, dedication, and strength of will. In other words, she is just the sort of woman that you often find as the sole exception to the rule in a male-dominated organization -- and she had an in through her husband, as well.
The overall impression that I am left with is that of somebody who simply isn't particularly interested in women, not even as the victims of his otherwise undeniable sadism. As prey go, he seems to regard them as marginally better than nothing at all, and I just can't avoid the suspicion that this is because he doesn't consider them powerful. Just as he regards Harry as a more satisfying victim than Wormtail, so he regards men as more satisfying victims than women.
::shrug::
My take, anyway.
—Elkins (who would like to reassure Amandageist that she too was a late-bloomer, and who also tends to feel that too much icky girl stuff can really get in the way of a rousing good yarn)
Posted to HPfGU by Elkins on June 26, 2002 3:22 PM
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