I am not a fan of the Harry Potter books (what was that noise? So that’s what a million people simultaneously unsubscribing sounds like!) — my kids enjoyed them, we’ve got all of them around here somewhere, and I read the first couple of them, but they were just a bit too repetitive for my taste, and also too familiar. But don’t worry, I can understand how a lot of people liked them.
But now I’ve read a rewrite of the main story line, with Hermione as the main character. Much better! That’s a story I’d read to the end!
I will have to show my girlfriend this, she would probably enjoy it. We both enjoy Harry Potter, and have watched the films many times, read the books, and listened to Stephen Fry read the audio books a number of times. At the same time, we rip them apart whenever we look at the franchise again. It has a lot of flaws, ridiculous plot issues, characters do strange and foolish things, and the books have a tendency to fall into an awful lot of sexist tropes, so this rewrite is interesting.
“Brightest witch of her age.”
Actually, I always thought she was the best one in the books anyway. She was always saving Harry’s and Ron’s asses because she was smart and knew how to do things. They sometimes prevailed with luck, but Hermione was the brains of the lot.
You insulted my beloved book and therefore my feelin’s! That means, that should we ever meet, I am justified to punch you. Or something like that, I am getting a little confused lately by theo-logic presented in previous post.
But it is a tad sad, that a book written by a woman has the same distorted gender ratio as most books of last thousand years.
Oh PZ; if you haven’t yet read Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (hpmor.com) you really should give it a go. Harry Potter as a rational scientist exploring the wizarding world… and finding most of it to be just as insane as it seems to us as readers. But also (imo) well-written and funny. Way WAY better than the original.
That. Was. Amazing.
I would start quoting my favorite bits, but it would just be a rewrite of at least half of it.
So written by Angela Brazil rather than Thomas Hughes or Frank Richards?
(Children’s Lit. Joke™)
One of the things I most liked about Hermonie was that even after she and Ron finally hooked up she continued to be a useful and productive member of the team instead of having her role reduced to “Ron’s girlfriend.” Far too few works of fiction manage to do that.
There’s something a bit weird about how it’s about combating sexism but portrays all the men as incompetent, sexist jackasses.
I particularly enjoyed “It’s about ethics in magic teaching.”
Hermione was always kind of awesome and always wondered why Harry was the main character from the start. At the end I also wondered whether Neville wouldn’t have also been a better hero. All I know is that Ron wouldn’t have made a better hero (though the twins would have been superb heroes, but that would have been a radically different set of books!)
Luscious Locks and Draco Hair Gel. I just couldn’t.
I especially liked the commentary about organization, perfect timing, and esp. the strut walk. And Harry’s formative experience of the Patriarchy. “Yes all witches!”
(Though it did overuse the word b****, to my mind.)
“Not all wizards!”
Neville would totally have been a better hero. I like(d) him a lot better than Harry himself.
Plus he grew into the movies rather nicely.
We’re reading the books with the kids right now, so it’s interesting to see how they perceive all the characters – and also how the books differ from the movies (which are, honestly, even more white- and gender-washed than the books).
Very nice. Independently of the humorous spin here, I’ve always felt that Hermione is clearly the only competent wielder of magic among the trio, and the most mature/courageous/sensible of them by far. In fact, to me that’s so obvious that when I read this, I assumed a “rewrite” would be a description of a different plot that actually centers Hermione more (has her defeat the villains directly, and so on). In addition to the overuse of messiah archetypes in fantasy, there’s a dearth of stories centering on “the chosen one’s friend who actually does everything.”
I like “Harry had first conjured a Patronus two years earlier, while standing atop his lofty mountain of privilege.”
Not fond of the way this piece uses “b****”. As an insult it almost never works, and as verbal punctuation it’s just dated. Also not fond of the “small wand” joke directed at smug sexist Draco. Even in a feminist context, small-penis jokes still contribute to the narrative whereby big penises are good and their owners are better people for having them, and that small ones are genuinely worthy of shame in the same way that being a jerk-bro is worthy of shame. Of course, that’s distinct from feminist jokes that point out phallocentrism in male culture and psychology. (For example, the joke in this piece that Voldemort is defeated by killing his very important snake). The problem with small-penis jokes is their phallocentrism.
Aside from all that: I’m surprised that none of the piece ever discusses Hermione’s Muggle-born status as an additional locus of oppression. Intersectionality, yo! In the past I’ve pondered what it would be like if at some point in the series, Hermione had an “I like you a lot but…” conversation with Ron about his pureblood privilege (which is not erased by his poverty), and how even he and his “Muggle-loving” family has sometimes demonstrated cluelessness and problematic behaviors (like his father’s condescending exotification of Muggles and their technology). Of course, with Harry, raised by terrible Muggles, it’s another story altogether. Who knows what toxicity is in that fictional wizard’s head? (Answer: no one, because he’s fictional. Also, the Shadow knows.)
You only read the first few of them? That’s too bad – those are the boring ones (I can’t bring myself to read any of the first four books anymore). It’s the last three books that are the good ones, especially the “slice-of-life” book Order of The Phoenix.
I never read the books or watched the movie. Aside from the main character being switched around, what big change to the story happens here?
Loved the movies, but when I read the books they turned out to be standard YA boarding-school mysteries — OK, but nothing to write home about. The action and FX really carried the movies. Of course, I only got as far as the start of book #3, so I defer to the opinion @13.
And yes, I loved the Hermione character: smart, strong, brave, resourceful. She’s the steady one of the three, and avoids the “I wish I was a normal girly-girl who could just hang with my friends at the mall and buy shoes” stuff that somewhat spoils one of my other favorite heroines, Buffy.
But re the important point here: loved the parody ;-). Arguably a bit heavy-handed in places, but it *is* a work of humour.
Dark Jaguar
Just an emphasis on Hermione’s badassery, as opposed to the usual lucky born-to-be-a-hero shtick exemplified by the original protagonist.
Also, the Patriatchy.
Which is why, though I do like Buffy, my favourite character of that series is Willow.
The HP trio follows a pretty standard archetype. Hermione is the brains, Ron is the heart, and Harry is the will. At least in this case the female character didn’t get shoehorned into the “heart” role which has been traditional.
Harry is also a common combination of Chosen One and Everyman. The problem with privilege is always an issue with this character type. He cannot be too exceptional or competent or else he will cease to be an Everyman, but that makes his Chosen One status unearned. A common way to avoid having the hero succeed entirely through luck is to give him a hyper-competent sidekick. Hence Hermione. Properly done, the hero can be shown to earn his happy ending by being the kind of person who can win and hold the loyalty of that sidekick.
In a fantastical work with magic and/or science fiction that requires explanation to the audience regarding the mechanics of things, the Everyman hero can act as the audience surrogate. Explanations for the audience can be given as explanations to the character. But for this not to seem forced or artificial the hero cannot be too competent, because a hero that is too competent shouldn’t require such explanations. He would be expected to know this stuff already.
See also, http://globalcomment.com/in-praise-of-hermione-granger-series/
Go and read the Flavia de Luce books, if you want to have a female heroine of that kind. She doesn’t even need male sidekicks. She’s awesome on hereself.
Second the recommendation for Flavia de Luce. Not just a badass heroine, but a badass scientist. The world needs more female scientists, even if they are tweeners with questionable ethics.
rq #16 has got it.
Hermione was always my favorite character. She worked her ass off to learn how this magic stuff worked and how to use it to achieve her goals. Harry just coasted along, counting on his genetic inheritance and dumb luck. And often his luck depended on Hermione to pull his butt out of the fire.
I recommend anym’s link @19, along with its follow-up post (linked at the end of that post). And the comments are interesting, for once (at least one other link worth reading within).
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*closes tags*
In addition to the awesomeness of Hermione already mentioned by others above, she was also the only one to stand up against the slavery of the house elves. She really was the best character by pretty much every measure.
@25 Grewgills
Yea, I found this strange because as @18 says, Ron is supposed to be the Heart (although I think the better way to describe it is the Superego, Ego, and Id). The thing is, I don’t think Ron comes off this way in the books.
The dynamic that ends up happening to me is that Harry is the hot-blooded courageous hero, Hermione is the cool-headed thinker, and Ron is the Load. I felt that Harry and Hermione often played off each other well, as Harry always wanted to dive headfirst into the task at hand and Hermione always wanted to wait and think things through.
And that brings me to one of the things I disliked the most about the HP novels: Harry’s total lack of curiosity regarding anything magical so that Hermione could provide detailed exposition.
And Ron talked about how cool it was but rarely contributed much. Yeah, I think you’re on to something there.
An interesting book, but it will never sell. Wizards aren’t getting all the credit.
What is needed, then, is a mashup of Harry Potter and Discworld.
or would that be crossing the streams?
The Heart is also very, very, very frequently the Load. Particularly whenever it comes to action.
Oh yes, this works much better than the original story.
(I do have to note that with all the badassery of the original Hermione character, she did lure a witch to be raped and /or tortured by centaurs. Rowling could really have done without making that kind of thing a funny ordeal, with Hermione being the instigator or not)
Wouldn’t Ron be more of the Muscle? He does stuff for them, including various heroic actions when needed – but he doesn’t really lead or discover stuff.
To be fair to the books, they actually did show Ron’s insecurity over this. One of his biggest fears is a belief that Hermione thinks he’s a second-rate nobody to Harry and actually wants Harry romantically.
PZ, since you didn’t like much the Harry Potter books, I think you read Jonathan Stroud’s The Bartimaeus Trilogy. It covers similar ground and is much funnier. I think your grown-up offspring would too.
http://www.amazon.com/Amulet-Samarkand-Bartimaeus-Trilogy-Book/dp/0786852550/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1421490679&sr=1-1&keywords=jonathan+stroud+bartimaeus+trilogy
Beatrice, an amateur cynic looking for a happy thought (#31):
The “Umbridge was raped by centaurs” myth really does need knocking on the head, since it’s painfully obvious that Rowling’s centaurs are based on the Chiron archetype (and possibly C.S. Lewis’s centaurs) rather than the brutish creatures of early Greek myth. They’re portrayed, quite consistently, as (for want of a better term) a rather “spiritual” race of seers, who only get violent when provoked (e.g., when the Ministry under Fudge and Umbridge try and restrict their territory). The assumption of a background culture of violating human women simply doesn’t fit with the archetype and literary tradition that Rowling is drawing on, nor does it fit with the way centaur culture and centaur-human relations are portrayed in the books (would Dumbledore have been able to get away with hiring Firenze otherwise?).
And it’s not even clear that the centaurs need to do all that much to Umbridge to reduce her to the gibbering wreck we see at the end of OotP. She’s a visceral racist, abducted by beings that she fears and loathes, and would probably have been in fear of her life even if they’d just sat her down and given her a stern talking to (not that I’m suggesting that that was all they did – one imagines there were at least threats of violence or death). But “raped” seems inconsistent with the evidence of the text, and while “tortured” is possible, it is not strongly supported.
And in defense of Hermione, it’s worth noting that she tells the centaurs that she was hoping that they’d drive Umbridge off, nothing more (which the centaurs, naturally enough, find more than a little presumptuous). There’s no indication in the text that she intended anything else.
devnll (#4):
While it’s entertaining, I must admit that I lost interest after the first 60 chapters, and then when I went back to it I lost interest again when Hermione got Stuffed in the Fridge (and I make no apologies for this spoiler, since it still pisses me off, and it’s kind of relevant to this thread – MoR has its own problems with sexist tropes).
Oh, and the linked article in the OP is indeed hilarious and true.
Hermione was always my favourite character, although oddly enough Luna was always my second favourite, despite the fact that I find the latter’s real-life counterparts annoying as hell.
I loved the series, and could only be bothered to watched some of the movies.
Later, I came to realize that Harry’s ONLY real power was surviving Voldemort’s attack as an infant.
Every single time, his friends (mostly Hermione) save his sorry ass. Without fail, Rowling pulls a Deus Ex Machina at the end of each book so Harry can be the “Hero”.
I will not speak to how well, specifically, it was done or portrayed in either the movie or the books, but a hero who is saved by friends must first make those friends, win their loyalty and keep their loyalty. It is the way that they treat their friends that motivates their friends to be willing to act to save them in those critical moments.
This to me is a legitimate way for a hero to earn his or her victories and is in no way a “deux ex machina”. In good works of fiction this aspect of the hero and his or her relationships with his or her friends is clear from very early on.
And in the books, the one biggest exception I can think of is the final and most important one. The final and most important insight that allowed Harry to defeat and kill Voldemort (that the Elder Wand’s loyalty lay with HIM and not Tom Riddle) was his own. He figured that one out by himself, without any help from Hermione or anyone else. (Because destroying the horcruxes, in the books, only renders Voldemort killable, it doesn’t actually kill him or weaken him in any way, as was implied by the sequencing of the events in the movies. One still has to overcome his magic and beat him, and his magic is just as strong as it ever had been when he still had horcruxes.)
Of course, narratives where the hero doesn’t seem to “earn” his victory by his own efforts, and are instead aided by others or helped by coincidence, have religious implications (or are influenced by religious traditions), whether overt or not. It is providence that saves the hero, and providence comes from the divine.
Amphiox (#38):
And then there’s the actual confrontation with Riddle at the end of DH – a psychological battle in which this insight (and his knowledge of Snape’s double-agent status) allows Harry, on his own, without additional assistance, to dominate effortlessly. It’s not just the insight that is Harry’s own, but the way in which he exploits it.
(#39):
Maybe, but I don’t think one is obligated to read the Potter books in those terms. The “luck” that often helps Harry to success rarely comes out of nowhere – it emerges from the past decisions and actions of himself and others and from the mechanics of the fantasy world. Indeed, for all that Rowling’s religious beliefs helped shape the themes and symbolism of the books, it’s remarkable how humanistic they are. Within the narrative, religion is invisible and magic is portrayed not as something mystical or a gift from on high but in matter-of-fact, naturalistic terms (even the afterlife, the only religious idea that ever features prominently, is treated matter-of-factly and as something without theological weight). And the values and motivations of the characters are all very human-centric. Even Harry’s self-sacrifice in DH is treated as such – he goes to his death for concrete, real-world moral reasons, to protect actual people who are in physical danger there and then. To use an old analogy of PZ’s, there’s no metaphysical blather involved, he’s just straightforwardly throwing himself on a hand-grenade. (I’ve often thought that if you want a morally-uplifting narrative about sacrifice for others followed by resurrection, then read the Harry Potter books, not the fucked-up authoritarian morality play of the gospels.) So whatever Rowling’s intentions, it’s remarkably easy to read the books as a humanistic fable set in a godless universe.
And to get back to Hermione, one of the things that always drew me to her as a character was her resolute scepticism, and the fact that Rowling usually portrayed her as being right – and even when she was wrong, wrong for the right reasons.
Amphiox (#38):
Kreacher being an obvious example of someone who, when treated kindly by Harry, becomes a loyal ally who plays an important (if maybe not decisive) role in the final battle.
Which is also an example that I think highlights a strength of Harry’s and a corresponding weakness of Hermione’s. Hermione sees and understands the institutional oppression of house elves far more clearly than Harry, but has difficulty seeing past this (and her own unexamined privilege) to relate effectively to house elves as individuals. Harry, although politically clueless in comparison, finds it easier to treat house elves as individual people with their own priorities and desires. So while Hermione’s attempts at consciousness-raising may have helped get him there, it’s Harry’s personal approach that ultimately transforms Kreacher from antagonist to ally.
I agree with the argument that Harry’s ability to gain friends and loyalty is the point.
For me, the crowning point of the story is this:
HERE LIES DOBBY, A FREE ELF.
Curses, and I only just finished an anti-Potter novel with a female protagonist. Speaking of, anyone care to read a book? >_>
re: 42
The moment with Dobby is indeed powerful. Ironically Dobby is one of the few friends that Harry did not earn through his own treatment of them. Dobby took it upon himself to help Harry without even having met Harry. And initially Harry did not treat Dobby that well (though quite understandably, since from Harry’s perspective he was getting unsolicited interference that at the time seemed to be harming him)
But the way Harry treated Dobby after he learned the truth did show that Harry did deserve to have Dobby’s loyalty.
(Dobby was a pretty good self-sacrificing heroic character in his own right)