Oh, TV Tropes...!

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

Quite honestly, the Harry Potter stuff on that site has gotten to the point where I can't read it because just about everything is fawning over how great and super-special-awesome the series is, oh, and how Snape is an evil douchebag who wanted to get Harry and James killed so he could keep Lily. But this... this makes me want to scream:

"Hermione... [is] one of the smartest and more pro-active females in the whole Harry Potter canon and English literature in general"

WHAT THE FUCK?!?!?!

How could they make such a claim?! Hermione is a better heroine than, say, Tiffany Aching?! How about Eliza Doolittle?! And I'm sure you could come up with other examples.

No, no, in Harry Potter it seems fairly obvious that the most powerful women in the series are antagonists. Sure, Hermione's perfectly independent and capable, but in the last several books it's like she becomes Harry's servant because he's too lazy to do anything himself!

God damn it, Harry Potter wouldn't bother me so much if everyone didn't insist it was the greatest thing since sliced bread!

Comments

[aikaterini.livejournal.com]

Hermione certainly is one of the smartest and most pro-active female characters in the Harry Potter series. But as for English literature as a whole, I'd have to disagree. Her actions in books 5-7 pretty much killed any respectability that she may have had up until then. Permanently scarring Marietta? Sending vicious birds at Ron to attack him? Mind-wiping her parents? No, I can think of several female characters in English literature who would never stoop to those sorts of things and who are smart and proactive in their own right.

As for the "Snape is an evil douchebag who wanted to get Harry and James killed so he could keep Lily" statement, yeah, and James mercilessly bullied him so that *he* could get to Lily and keep her. Because he didn't want her best friend to get in the way.

I'm not sure if I agree that the most powerful women in the series are antagonists, however. Bellatrix is formidable to be sure, but she's the only female antagonist whom we get to see in action. We don't get to see Alecto or Narcissa dueling, so it's hard to say whether or not they're magically powerful. Meanwhile, Minerva, Molly, Ginny, and Hermione are all built up to be powerful fighters and they're all on Harry's side.

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

I was actually thinking more along the lines of Umbridge, since she's the only female character in such a high position of power who has any real role (McGonagall is ostensibly very powerful, being second to Dumbledore, but we don't really see her do anything much with that power, and the female Ministry employees are mostly just generic background characters at best). Though Bellatrix is strong too.

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

Definitely. What does it say about a series (especially one written by a woman) in which the only women with any real demonstrated power are evil? Nice feminism there, JKR.

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

I have the sneaking suspicion that if you take the HP books and analyze them in light of any of the major claims of progressive/tolerant goodness JKR or the groupies make about them, you will find them quite the *opposite* of what is claimed.

Of course that could just be my sense of jaded cynicism kicking in, but I've seen enough analysis of the books to not hold out much hope.

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

No, I think you are right. How sad is it that this is one of the few places where one can hold that view and not get jumped by rabid fans? ;-)