HBP Chapter Eighteen: "Birthday Surprises"

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

* Hermione’s still refusing to stay with Ron “for longer than it took to give him a contemptuous look”. For Heaven’s sake, Hermione, get the flip over it. You’re almost an adult now – in fact in a lot of societies you would be considered a fully-fledged adult – and if that isn’t enough to make you show some maturity, you’re currently in the middle of a war against the most powerful dark wizard in a century. Get a bit of perspective, you stupid girl.

* Also I’m surprised she hasn’t just slipped Ron some love potion. A girl who’s capable of mind-wiping her parents and sending them to the other side of the world would be perfectly capable of slipping some amortentia into her intended’s pumpkin juice… for his own good, of course.

* Although I’m even more surprised she actually wants to go out with Ron in the first place. The two don’t seem to have any real shared interests or hobbies, they never seem to get on with each other or enjoy each other’s company, and Ron is never described as being particularly attractive, so we can’t even go with the “shallow girl wants to go out with school hottie” explanation.

* Harry remembers what a bezoar is because Snape mentioned it in their first Potions lesson. I know I’ve mentioned it before, but things like this really bug me. In the books, bezoars were last mentioned in Harry’s first Potions lesson; IRL, they’d have surely come up more recently than that, and Harry wouldn’t have to go back six years to know what they are, even if he could remember what happened so long ago. Bringing up the stuff in PS just makes it look as if the world or characters have no existence outside of what we’re shown directly, which is the last effect any writer should want to produce.

* Harry wouldn’t have dared try his bezoar trick on Snape, because Snape’s an evil meanie who makes his students’ lives a misery by expecting them to actually learn stuff and do the work he sets, rather than cutting corners and cheating all the time.

* Eh, I don’t think knowing that a bezoar will cure poisons shows “individual spirit” or an “intuitive grasp of potion-making”, any more than knowing that aspirin cures headaches shows an intuitive grasp of medicine or human biology.

* So Slughorn’s not even going to look at Hermione’s fifty-two ingredient potion then? Poor Hermione. No wonder she’s so annoyed.

* Harry “remind[s] himself irresistibly of Voldemort” when he asks Slughorn for information. I’m not sure why the resemblance hits him now, and not when he crucioes a man in DH. Or when a girl gets permanently disfigured for telling a teacher about Harry’s study group. Or when he fantasises about Snape getting tortured.

* Although knowing how attracted Harry is to the dark arts, he’s probably enjoying the comparison.

* Harry asks Slughorn about horcruxes, and Slughorn completely freaks out, like he’s wracked with guilt for something terrible he’s done. Not that he’s actually done anything terrible, of course, that’d be far too interesting.

* Although I’m not sure why horcruxes are seen as such a terrible subject. C’mon, can you think of a society which seems like it would be less blasé about splitting up your soul than the wizarding world?

* Ron’s still wincing on hearing the name “Voldemort”. Kind of like how sixteen-year-old muggles wince on hearing the name “Hitler”. Or not.

* Seriously, what is up with the He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named rubbish? Especially since Ron grew up after Voldemort had been defeated, when he was no longer a threat.

* “Look, I had to try and soften him up so I could ask him about Voldemort, didn’t I?” Yes, Harry, I’m sure your cheating was entirely for the greater good, and nothing at all about maintaining your underserved reputation as a great Potions whizz.

* “I’ve been right through the restricted section and even in the most horrible books, where they tell you how to brew the most gruesome potions.” Don’t try and fool us, Hermione, it’s obvious you secretly enjoyed reading about them. Incidentally, was it really necessary to take out Magick Moste Evile and carry it around with you? (Well, I suppose it might be if it’s not just horcruxes you’re interested in…)

* Harry wonders whether the instructor’s whispy build is due to him apparating so much. Maybe, Harry. Or maybe he just happens to be really skinny and frail-looking. Some people are, you know.

* So the kids aren’t really taught, just given some vague instructions and left to struggle for an hour. That seems… kind of inefficient, really. No wonder everybody apparently has trouble learning, if this is the way they’re taught.

* So Harry spends all his spare time wondering what Malfoy’s doing, looking for Malfoy on his map, going into the toilets to think about Malfoy… the slash fiction jokes pretty much write themselves, don’t they? :p

* Harry doesn’t bother telling Lavender that Ron’s been drugged, because that would be far too sensible.

* Love potions can become stronger the longer you leave them. Yeah, I’m sure that couldn’t cause any problems at all.

* Ron gets poisoned, and Slughorn, like all adults in this series, stand around and does nothing while Harry saves the day. Colour me surprised.

Comments

[hwyla.livejournal.com]

Not only that, but she has Molly apparently hinting at giving Arthur a dose of love potion herself.

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

It all depends on what you expect out of marriage. A soul-mate? Someone you will be eager to spend significant portions of time with, for the rest of your joint lives?

Please. Such romantic drivel. (And remember what institutions the Romantics were rebelling against when they first invented this drivel.)

If you're operating in a society with strictly-functioning sex roles, what one looks for in a spouse is a Helpmate. Someone who can play the appropriate alternate role to the one you're playing. If a Guild member, a spouse who can advance your standing in said Guild. If an aristocrat, someone who enhances your power or adds to your holdings (or, worst case, your money). If a trained farmwitch, a trained farmer. If someone trained as head=of-family and-primary-wage-earner, someone who can play the wife-role on the income level you're able to provide.

All while perpetuating the Family and its interests (included, but not limited to, by reproducing) in the way demanded by your culture and the roles you two are playing.

Not, gods help us all, looking for Emotional Fulfillment and Companionship!

(Some Native American societies were completely accepting of homosexual unions--so long as one partner enacted the male-hunter role and the other, the female-gatherer-preserver one. Didn't matter, the actual gender of participants, as long as the roles were preserved.)

If you leave out such romantic drivel, Margaret Atwood neatly captures the perfect bargain of such a marital arrangement (while documenting the violence, deception, and mutual desperation [and exploitatiion, if not necessarily exactly mutual] embodied in it) in her poem "Marrying the Hangman."

She begins, after a few preliminaries, by explaining, "This is not fantasy, this is history." She ends by averring, baldly, They both kept their promises.

A more bitter arraignment cannot be imagined.

Read the poem and see.


But then, Atwood first published this poem in the late 1970's, and intended it as a critique of the unexamined ideas of marriage then prevalent. When JKR was a very very young woman, newly married, and perhaps not fully examining her ideas of what obligations she understood herself and her new young husband to have taken on.


And we know, for Jo has told us so, that the WW can sometimes be a bit old-fashioned.

[sunnyskywalker]

Maybe this is another example of the series's genre soup problem? It's both a modern story which she obviously expects us to read as having modern ideas about romance, and uses the old-fashioned setup where marriage is more of a business merger/fitting into a social role, at the same time. Without ever distinguishing them or setting them in opposition (eg Slytherins having arranged marriages while Pure and Noble Gryffindors marry for love).

And they just do not work together like this. Ron and Hermione can't be set up in every way as the best ending one could hope for given the "traditional" strictures, where you make do with limited options and hopefully you'll have some chemistry to counteract your general incompatibility in how you approach life, and a romantic subplot that celebrates young love and free choice in partners. Which is the kind of romantic supblot I think a fair number of younger readers expect, and is the framework they try to hammer R/Hr into even when, on any analysis, it doesn't fit very well at all.

We know JKR likes Jane Austen. Maybe bits of Austen's worldbuilding and storylines, as it were, seeped into HP, but without the critical commentary. Not to mention the added problem of a good quarter of JKR's characters supposedly being dropped in from a society with fairly different expectations.