Jumping Ship from the Lily's Pad

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

On Saturday night I was catching up on reading DTCL and came across a post from terri_testing about why so few people claim James and Lily as friends. (posted 8/6/12, in reply to “Lupin’s ‘Resignation’,” by danajsparks) Part of it reads: 

What did happen to those witch friends Lily had in fifth year, the ones who couldn't understand why she even talked to Severus, the ones she sat and chatted with after the DADA OWL? Did their jealousy over the Mudblood scooping the Head Girl position (and the most eligible Pureblood bachelor) separate them? Were they naturally driven apart by diverging life paths caused by Lily's extremely early settling into marriage and motherhood while her friends all pursued careers....? 

Or there's always the solution I proposed in my abusive!James fic "Liberacorpus," that James had taken the precaution of sleeping his way through all of Lily's friends, so as to alienate them from her.... 

This got me to thinking: Maybe Lily’s friends were alienated, not by her good fortune or by James, but by Lily herself. I see two possibilities, both of which reflect badly on her and which are not mutually exclusive:

1) It’s certainly possible Lily’s friends were jealous because she got to be Head Girl and caught Big Wizard on Campus James. But under normal circumstances, friends get over such things. 

At least, they would have unless Lily rubbed their faces in her triumphs. If she bragged about how lucky she was, or how her success was proof of her greatness, particularly since she was a latecomer to the wizarding world, that would alienate anyone who wasn’t a complete doormat.

Of course, there is no proof Lily did that. But this kind of behavior accords with the assertion some people, most notably marionros, have made about Lily’s being a narcissist. Narcissists love to brag about themselves anyway (think Dumbledore in King’s Cross), and a triumphant narcissist would be worse than normal.

Such boasting is also compatible with the behaviors we see from Lily that indicate she had a poor character. For example, she was somewhat contemptuous and superior towards Severus, such as when she ordered him around, dismissed his feelings and concerns, or automatically took other people’s versions of events over his. 

She also exhibited a sadistic streak by using her magic to scare and torment Petunia. This is the moral equivalent of having your friends hold somebody while you punch them, or shoving over someone in a wheelchair, then laughing when they can’t get up.

No wonder she walked off and left her “best friend” to be attacked. She was doing the same thing outside of school herself, and to her own sister, who could not fight back. Which brings me to my next point. 

2) The other possibility for why Lily’s friendships ended may impart to her schoolmates a level of perspicacity they didn’t possess, but it’s an interesting idea anyway.

Lily may have bragged to or joked with her friends about using her magic to torment Petunia. I would never want to be friends with a person who was debased enough to attack her own family for entertainment.  

Regarding Severus, while Lily’s friends were no doubt happy to see her dump the greasy Slytherin, they may not have liked the way she did it. Initially, they just would have been happy he was gone, but over time, they may have become uncomfortable with her actions.

This was a boy Lily had known for six years, since she was nine. Her friends may have known she’d told Severus they were “best friends.” She had refused to break off their friendship for years, despite pressure from her House to dump him.

Then one day, he slipped up and insulted her while under extreme stress. And that was it. She literally turned her back on him and left him while he was helpless, to be assaulted by a ruthless gang of thugs. 

Severus didn’t just apologize for insulting her. He actually groveled to her, begging her forgiveness, risking his safety in the process. (Every time I think about this scene, I hear the Temptations singing, “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg.”) Yet she refused to even accept his apology, let alone have anything to do with him again.

If Lily was a prefect, her behavior was even worse. Regardless of her feelings for the victim, it was her duty to protect someone from being assaulted, especially by a group of attackers. She failed to do the job she’d been chosen for, to live up the obligation she’d accepted. This makes her nothing but a prettier, spunkier version of Remus the Spineless because they both allowed their personal feelings to prevent them from doing their duty.

I can’t help comparing Lily and Remus as prefects with the black American soldiers who served in World War II. These men fought and died for their country, even though they had been the victims of vicious racism at home and knew they would be again once the war was over. They realized many of the people they were fighting for were disgusting bigots who didn’t consider them fully human. They usually weren’t even allowed to serve in the same units as white soldiers. Many of them were only a few years older than Lily and Remus. Yet despite all that, they put their sense of duty ahead of their personal feelings and risked their lives for all Americans, regardless of how loathsome many individuals were. That is why they are now considered groundbreaking heroes. 

Imagine having Lily as a comrade in the Order. You will go into battle with her and trust her with your life. You’ll expect her to have your back, no matter what. 

What if you say or do something wrong while under pressure? How do you know that, when you need her the most, she won’t turn her back on you, too, and leave you at the mercy of your enemies? If she could do that to someone she’d been friends with almost half her life, why wouldn’t she do it to you as well?

Would you trust someone like that in battle?

I wouldn’t. 

  

Comments

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

Good post!

But actually, it's worse than just Lily.

Where are ANY of the female characters' women friends? Who are Molly's kids' godmothers, or Petunia's maid of honor, or Ginny's girlfriend, or Tonks's bff? Who's Cissy's or Bella's or Minerva's confidante? Hermione's? Dolores's? Luna's? Alecto's?

Jo has female characters, but they all orbit around men: Tom, Albus, Cornelius, Harry, James.... If several orbit around the same man, they're considered friends. Or at least allies, where they are not rivals.

Luna's golden ropes illustrated that pathetically--if she bound herself in loyalty to Harry, those others bound closest to Harry might let her in, like they let her come along on the Ministry raid.

The only canon females I can think of who are friends with each other are the Human Hosepipe, Cho, vilified by Harry for her loyalty to Marietta, and those worthless girly-girls Lav-Lav and Parvati.

And, of course, briefly, Lily and Mary McDonald and those other girls at the lake, before Lily wised up and cast her lot in with the (male) Marauders. And was seen no more among the girls. No godmother, no maid of honor, no female visitors except James's elderly neighbor instructing James's ignorant bride on ancient history and Pureblood etiquette.....

There was a misogynist myth current in my youth (Jo's youth), that women were incapable of true loyalty to one another. We could form temporary alliances, but our lives were defined by our relationships to MEN, and we'd always sacrifice other women. Fighting like cats over A MAN, or in defense of OUR MAN'S interests, or of OUR MANCHILD.

Very weird to see a world in which that's all TRUE, that any woman, however bright or powerful or "spunky," can best be defined by her loyalty to a man. Just as racist ideas are ACCURATE in the Potterverse: there exists a biological superiority which justifies the possessors' mistreatment of their inferiors.

Actually, this is a phenomenon I first observed when I was 13, reading Ayn Rand: that she was writing S/F UNINTENTIONALLY. I don't mean ignorant of genre conventions, fulfilling/transgressing them without understanding--I mean that, reading Ayn Rand, her characters sometimes acted so differently to how the people I saw daily acted, I could only account for it by assuming AR was wrtiting in some AU of her own creation where human nature was different than it is in RL.

And so is Jo.

In RL, women have friends. At least, in my experience we do.

Okay, we can cut Hermione some slack: if Forugh Farrokzhad could write "I'm as much alone as a schoolgirl crazy about geometry" and expect that image to resonate, we can accept that an overly-intellectual schoolgirl at Hogwarts (surely more benighted than mid-20th-century Tehran) might feel isolated. And after all, Hogwarts is a MUCH smaller school than any I ever attended. Maybe there actually weren't any kindred spirits among ANY of the girls. Or rather, given the structure of Hogwarts, among any of the Gryffindor girls. You whittle a group down to 3-4, and yes, you might achieve isolation.

But the other characters? No excuse. There should have been some scene, somewhere, of Harry barging in on a tea-party at the Burrow of alarming veterans of the Maternal Wars, or of Minerva conferring with Pomona or conspiring with Amelia, or of Tonks telling Ginny and Hermione about Girls' Night Out with the younger members of the DMLE....

Where are Petunia's loathsome cronies, her spiritual sisters, those narrow-minded, cold-hearted, irredeemably shallow bitches who put irrelevant markers of status and respectability before considerations of decency, kindness, and indeed self-preservation? (I'm imagining, here, the Landscaping Covenants Committee of Little Whinging's Garden Estates Properties. Chastising the Death Eaters for defacing property.)

I want them!

Nah. What's going on instead was, Jo was writing some weird AU universe in which true commonality between women simply doesn't occur. That sixties fantasy lampooned (among other places) in Russ's The Female Man.

But... here's the true question, finally--why on earth did Jo want to? Of all the weird, unaccountable, bizarre twists to bend the Potterverse Diagonally away from the real one, why pick THAT?

[annoni-no.livejournal.com]

The simplest explanation is that she truly believes that's how the world is. If she doesn't have any true female friends, only strategic 'alliances' like she learned growing up, why should she believe other women when they say their relationships are different? The same goes for the racist sentiments.

Although, there is a more disturbing options if we assume that she subconsciously wishes these things were true, even though she consciously denies them in interviews and the like. The world certainly would be much simpler and less stressful if you could tell at a glance who was good or bad or stupid or cruel....

[sunnyskywalker]

You whittle a group down to 3-4, and yes, you might achieve isolation.

Okay, I have to chime in as someone who actually attended a small high school. My graduating class was the largest to date at 39 kids - ie, almost exactly the same size as Harry's class - and the class before mine had 22.

You know what happens when there are 40 kids in your year? You make friends in other years, that's what. At minimum, with the kids one class ahead and one class behind. Especially since given the way school cutoff dates work, the kids one year ahead or behind you might actually have been born just a few months (or one month) apart from you. There really isn't that much of a gap. Hell, I was two years younger than most of the students in my year, and they didn't even know unless I told them. Also, wasn't exactly uncommon for, say, seniors and sophomores to hang out sometimes either. Occasionally even seniors and freshmen, though that was less common. My school also would almost certainly have had inter-house friendships, had we had houses, given that we never had rigidly defined groups of, say, jocks, nerds, and theater kids - plenty of students legitimately fell into all categories simultaneously (plus were on the newspaper and student council), and even those who didn't were still friends with people in the other groups.

So to me, "there's only like four Gryffindor girls in her year!" is an unbelievable reasons for someone not to have friends. Especially since Hermione is one of the oldest in her year and so ought to be closer in maturity to the second years when she starts. She could easily have been friends with Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff girls in her year, or girls from those houses one to two years ahead of her, in a realistic small school - if there weren't other factors involved. That would have been a good place for JKR to introduce the idea that Hermione really was excluded from some things for being Muggleborn, for instance. Or that her personality really is that off-putting.

I was also one of the most introverted and unobservant people around, and I still knew who all the kids in the other years were, and I didn't even live with them! I find it utterly baffling that Harry has no clue who most kids one year off from him are when they live in the same dorm and share a common room. How has he never noticed Cormac McClaggen for six years?

Maybe this is unusual, and there are small schools out there with rigid social barriers between students of different years and interest groups. I just find it hard to fathom.

[sunnyskywalker]

Oh, and yes, it is bizarre that none of those characters are ever so much as mentioned having girlfriends in an aside. That Landscaping Covenants Committee of Little Whinging's Garden Estates Properties, or something like it, seems so likely that it's utterly bizarre it doesn't exist. And it would fit right in! "Harry had to do more chores than ever that day, because Aunt Petunia was going to her equally horse-faced friend Mathilda's house for tea, and she would not be able to scrub the kitchen herself..." Or perhaps Petunia is so warped by her fear of accidentally revealing Harry's freakishness that she has deliberately isolated herself? But that still wouldn't explain why Molly never mentions friends, or Harry never comes across McGonagall discussing Quidditch scores with Sinistra.

[maidofkent.livejournal.com]

While agreeing in general, I have to point out in Petunia's defence that she does apparently have a friend called Yvonne. Yvonne is on holiday in Majorca when Mrs Figg breaks her leg, meaning that she can't mind Harry and he has to accompany the Dursleys to the zoo.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Molly makes one explicit mention of some unnamed friends in HBP, when she says none of her friends has a clock like hers, so she doesn't know if her clock showing the entire family being in 'mortal danger' is something specific to them (presumably because of their involvement with the Order and Harry) or general to the wizarding population. She also mentions that 'everyone' was eloping around the time she and Arthur did - this may have been a reference to some friends of theirs - whether hers or Arthur's we do not know.

Petunia's most common interaction with her neighbors seems to be that of constant one-upmanship - she has to spy on them to know where she stands relative to them, and she has to let them know how well she is doing (recall loud admiration of the company car that Vernon got to use).

[seductivedark.livejournal.com]

Given Petunia's need to one-up, why isn't she a member of the Landscaping Covenants Committee? Even if she's too afraid of Harry's breakthrough magic to host the meetings, she could cite Harry's "criminal bent," or some other reason, maybe something psychological about him. Everything about her property must be perfect, so, now that someone's brought it up, why isn't she on at least two neighborhood committees?

And, why isn't she joining in at Dudley's school's Parents Day? Or in a Parents Group there? Petunia is just the sort of person who would throw herself into committee work and/or school activities, to make herself look good and to give herself points to lord over her neighbors, if for nothing else. (I can see why she didn't want to do that at the school both Harry and Dudley attended before they went their separate academic ways, but after?)

[majorjune.livejournal.com]

I agree with annoni_no, Jo's HP universe is the universe Jo herself -- or at least her psyche -- inhabits in RL.

No close female friends, no close biological sisters, except for the 2-dimensional almost cartoonish Parvatis and the dysfunctional Blacks.

But in Jo's HP universe we are not only faced with the question regarding the absence of close friendships amongst contemporaries of the "Marauder Era", but also the question of why, by Harry's era, there is a decidedly strange lack of any large extended families spanning generations. For a population where living to over 100 years of age is not unusual, why are there no grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts, uncles, great-aunts and uncles, etc.?

What happened to Harry's grandparents, both Evans and Potters? Ditto Molly and Arthur Weasley's parents. The only grandmother we see mentioned is Neville's, leaving open the question of what happened to his other 3 grandparents.

So what we end up with is a singularly disjointed society that Jo presents to us, one that seems to have had it's moorings cut from it's immediate past.


This is the moral equivalent of having your friends hold somebody while you punch them, or shoving over someone in a wheelchair, then laughing when they can’t get up.

Bizarrely, the above statement exactly applies to the current Republican candidate for the presidency of the United States! :-P

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

Is he the one doing the bullying or being bullied?

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

He'd think James a paragon of virtuous manliness. By which I mean to say he was the bully, of course. He and his friends at the time thought it hilarious to, for example, physically restrain and forcibly cut the hair of a (I think gay?) kid he didn't like. And he still can't bring himself to apologize and acknowledge it as wrong. He also thought it funny to trick teachers(!) into walking into glass doors.

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

You're right. I'd heard about that hair-cutting incident and immediately thought of the similarity to James et al. As rotten as Sirius is, at least he admitted he'd bullied, even if he showed no remorse. Romney insists he "doesn't remember it." Right. I hadn't heard about his tricking teachers, though, and I watch a lot of MSNBC, which trashes him and Ryan regularly. Effing spoiled rich brat. Why wasn't he expelled and prosecuted for going after teachers?

That wife of his is seriously creepy, too. She has a real pre-Revolution French aristocrat feel to her.

OMG! THEY'RE THE REAL LIFE MIDDLE-AGED JAMES AND LILY! I JUST REALIZED IT!

Can't you just see them taking a £50,000 income tax credit for a special dancing broom? :D What a fanfic that would make!

Romney is also a more personable, better-looking version of Neil Gibson in the Sherlock Holmes story, "The Problem of Thor Bridge." Their business "ethics" are identical.

[majorjune.livejournal.com]

I hadn't heard about his tricking teachers, though, and I watch a lot of MSNBC, which trashes him and Ryan regularly.

It's been reported both on MSNBC and Current TV, also a couple of internet news sites.

The thing with the teacher walking into the door is even worse, because the teacher was BLIND! The ex-schoolmates who ratted Romney out regarding this and the hair-cutting incident not only all remember the incidents vividly, they ALL express some level of remorse over doing those things back then.

But Romney is all "don't remember it, but if I did it I guess I'm sorry..."

Then there's his attitude about strapping his dog on the top of the family car and driving at highway speeds...

That wife of his is seriously creepy, too. She has a real pre-Revolution French aristocrat feel to her.

Or Narcissa Malfoy. Dressage horses instead of white peacocks...

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

Hey!

Don't diss Cissy like that!

She clearly demonstrated, that if push ever came to shove, she'd place her child's well-being above ANY policy her husband thought to enact, or any leader her husband chose to follow.

Not anything that whassername has had the gumption to establish.

They are both rich girls who'd never had cause to question their privilege, no more (at this point) than that.

So give whassername a chance to establish she's as morally good as a random Malfoy.....

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

Then there's his attitude about strapping his dog on the top of the family car and driving at highway speeds.

For 12 hours, no less! And Mrs. Creepy treated that like a joke, insisting their dog "loved it." Devo has a new song out about that called, "Don't Roof Rack Me, Bro." There are also websites, dogsagainstromney.com, and rememberseamus.com. You can buy bumper stickers and T-shirts at both sites. There's also a book called, Dog on the Roof: On the Road with Mitt and the Mutt.

BTW, I didn't mean to suggest I thought Romney should have been expelled for attacking a teacher but not a student. I was just acknowledging that in the 1960s, attacking another student like that wouldn't have been considered a big deal.

Re all the bullying, it's completely unbelievable that he is the only one who doesn't remember it. I looked up the Washington Post article that started the controversy and read the whole thing. I don't understand why a teacher with vision that bad was allowed to have a driver's license.

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

I think that the thing about Romney that bothers me is not that he did those things, but that he refuses to feel remorse for doing so, or even remember what he did. I was a bully sometimes when I was growing up (in the hopes that it would deflect some of the bullying I myself got), but I remember it vividly and am incredibly embarrassed by how cruel I could be. How one could forget doing the kinds of things that Romney's classmates remembered him doing is beyond me.

(Generally I try not to get into politics, but I felt like I ought to give my two cents)

[majorjune.livejournal.com]

(Generally I try not to get into politics, but I felt like I ought to give my two cents)

The thread started because a simularity was noted between James Potter and Romney -- two young men of priviledge who were really bullies.

I agree with you that what is worst with Romney is not that he did crappy things when he was a teenager -- I think it would be the rare person who did NOT do something at that age that they rather they hadn't when they reflect back as an adult.

The thing about the hair-cutting incident and the tricking of the blind teacher incident is that almost ALL of the other boys who were involved not only remember both incidents, but have sincere regret over it. It's only Romney who claims forgetfulness and passes the incidents off as meaningless. I'd have more respect for him if he'd owned up to it, said something to the effect of "Yes, I did those things, they were incredibly stupid and I sincerely regret having done them."

But it wasn't just when he was a teenager -- another report's been circulating that when he was in college he liked dressing up as a state trooper and stopping cars and pretended to be a real cop and threatened the drivers with imprisonment, etc.

Another case of bullying which current Romney doesn't remember.

Bringing this back to canon, Rowling tells us that James Potter mysteriously "changed" by his final year in Hogwarts, but never tells us the exact nature of this alleged change nor what prompted it -- only that the change was enough that Lily now became romantically interested in him.

But adult Sirius doesn't show any regret regarding his schoolboy bullying, so one has to wonder if James Potter had survived, he as an adult would have regretted bullying Snape. Something tells me that whatever change there was in Potter's psyche, it did NOT extend to regretting anything he did as a boy.

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

But it wasn't just when he was a teenager -- another report's been circulating that when he was in college he liked dressing up as a state trooper and stopping cars and pretended to be a real cop and threatened the drivers with imprisonment, etc.

Isn't this illegal? I guess he must have gotten off easily because he was related to the right people.

Bringing this back to canon, Rowling tells us that James Potter mysteriously "changed" by his final year in Hogwarts, but never tells us the exact nature of this alleged change nor what prompted it -- only that the change was enough that Lily now became romantically interested in him.

I find it weird that such an important piece of character development was left out. Or maybe JKR just didn't want to admit that Lily liked bullies?

[hwyla.livejournal.com]

Well, there are two considerations here.

1) That Lily IS attracted to bullies. After all, her sister Petunia also married a bully. It is entirely possible that SOMETHING in their family dynamics suggested to both girls that you were safer married to a bully.

2) That Lily was flat-out tricked into believing James had changed. I think half of the reason she was concentrating on James in SWM (and not Sirius or the others) was because she had previously thought he HAD changed once she learned he had 'rescued' Snape and was thoroughly disappointed to find out that he had not.

Okay - 3rd possibility - she was enamored of the idea that SHE could get James to 'change' for her

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

Okay - 3rd possibility - she was enamored of the idea that SHE could get James to 'change' for her

Isn't that something that comes up in romance stories a lot? (not that I would know, as that's not a genre I read)

Also, it could be that she is also kind of a bully and that like attracts like.

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

“No close female friends, no close biological sisters, except for the 2-dimensional almost cartoonish Parvatis and the dysfunctional Blacks.

But in Jo's HP universe we are not only faced with the question regarding the absence of close friendships amongst contemporaries of the "Marauder Era", but also the question of why, by Harry's era, there is a decidedly strange lack of any large extended families spanning generations. For a population where living to over 100 years of age is not unusual, why are there no grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts, uncles, great-aunts and uncles, etc.?”

I think this might be largely due to the fact that JKR seems to have been much more interested in telling her story than she was in making a consistent and believable world. So, for example, the grandparents etc. of Harry and his friends weren’t really relevant for the story she wanted to tell, so she didn’t bother to write any. Similarly, in Harry’s parents’ generation, the only relevant characters were the Marauders, Lilly, and Severus, so they’re the only characters she really writes about, and their other friends don’t get more than a brief mention. The plot only requires a small number of teachers, so Hogwarts has a small number of teachers, even though they wouldn't in reality have enough time to teach a school as large as Hogwarts is supposed to be. And so on.

[oryx_leucoryx]

I replied elsewhere in this thread about what canon says about Molly's social life.

Hermione and Ginny (yes, connected via Ron and Harry) sometimes appear to have some kind of friendship - especially in parts of GOF (when Ginny was still in v1.0). Maybe Ginny's (v2.0) revelation (in HBP) of Hermione's snogging with Viktor really did hurt Hermione's feelings and caused that friendship to freeze over.

As to why Rowling does this - a combination of several things: Rowling appears to be a 'chill girl' - she displays much of the internalized misogyny that characterizes this type. At the very least, she finds anything to do with girls and women unappealing so she just keeps one female character of each type and keeps interactions between them to the minimum required by the plot. Rowling writes from the POV of a boy who is late to develop an interest in the opposite sex - and doesn't do much world building beyond what he needs to know for the purpose of the plot. And despite the impression she gave in the early books, Rowling hardly knows what goes on in her world when Harry isn't looking.

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

Wow, good call. I'm kind of amazed that I never noticed this before.