J. K. Rowling presents Umbrigde's backstory

[t0ra-chan.livejournal.com]

In time for Halloween JKR gave us another short story (more background info to be honest, it's not like it has a plot). You can read it at Pottermore (if you have an account and can actually remember your user name and password) or you can read it here: J.K. Rowling writes Harry Potter Halloween tale profiling 'malicious' Dolores Umbridge

My personal take on this little story is that it's wholly pointless. It just repeats that Umbridge was always a nasty person with no depth to her and she's worse than blood purists. Nothing really new or insightful is revealed, nor do I believe did anybody care to know this sort of stuff about Umbridge. I also found it very unbelievable that anybody would buy her claims of being a pureblood, considering how small the wizarding community is. And of course she was a Slytherin, because where else could an evil person in HP have come from.

Comments

[arcanetrivia]

Hmm. Yeah. I guess there are hints that some of Umbridge's unpleasantness links back to what sounds like an unhappy childhood and difficulties between her parents, but mostly it just seems JKR went with the "you're born that way" explanation. Bother.

I've seen fanon readings of Umbridge as a "dark side of Hufflepuff", if you will. Too bad JKR went with the stereotypical Slytherin, but I suppose she is rather the ambitious, personal-power sort...

[oryx_leucoryx]

So Umbridge is a magical and powerful Aunt Marge?

[dreamingjewel.livejournal.com]

All half-blood Slytherin are bad? Really, JK?

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

What struck me most out of this (trite backstory is trite) was Rowling's 'personal thoughts'. Carefully not naming names but happily sticking the boot into a couple of people in real life that she really - really really - didn't like. Take that, you people who know who you are! Billionaire Rowling has pronounced judgement! And trumpeted same to the WORLD!

"I am always a little wary when talking about these kinds of sources of inspiration, because it is infuriating to hear yourself misinterpreted in ways that can cause other people a great deal of hurt."

... but having said that ...

"I disliked intensely on sight ... would have been appropriate to a girl of three ... She was quite a stocky woman ... a personality that I found the reverse of sweet, innocent and ingenuous ..."

and

"... she was the most bigoted, spiteful champion of the death penalty with whom it has ever been my misfortune to share a kettle. ... there is a lack of real warmth or charity."

Understandable to want to get the last laugh / poke, but still somewhat mean. And using a soapbox the other party can never ever match.

[jana-ch.livejournal.com]

I go along with the "dark side of Hufflepuff" idea. Dolores is loyal to the Ministry, as is that supposedly contemptible fellow, Percy Weasley, but people forget that the Ministry is the legal government of Wizarding Britain, while the Order of the Phoenix and the Death Eaters are both vigilante organizations. I'm not about to say a government can never be wrong, but one should think long and hard before deciding to undermine or overthrow it by extra-legal means. Faithfulness to one's nation and its government is a legitimate form of loyalty, and belongs within the purview of Hufflepuff House.

P.S. Making Umbridge a Slytherin because "she's evil" shows just how bankrupt JKR's moral imagination has become.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Jodel predicted Umbridge would turn out to be a half-blood, that her hostility to part-humans is the outcome of her sense of inferiority within wizarding hierarchy.

[dungeonwriter.livejournal.com]

You know what's sad? Is Umbridge is less scary to me now. She was actually my favorite HP villain because she was something so simply terrifying, a person with power who wants order and will crush anything to achieve it. She was the ruthless gardener who had started cutting flowers with the weeds.

Now she's just a stereotype, a person born bad, bred in Slytherin and completely noxious to the core.

And that's not scary.

Also, am I horrible if I think Umbridge would have been more frightening had she looked like Imelda Staunton in the books, a sweet granny figure who you wanted to like and was so nice and kind and motherly, until you saw the venom beneath the fluff? Because how does JKR's villains not know they are villains? If you went to the costume store and opened the box for villains, it would be their clothing!

The Ruddigore Effect

[jana-ch.livejournal.com]

Saith W.S. Gilbert: "When in crime one is fully employed / Your expression gets warped and destroyed / It's a penalty none can avoid."

Of course Gilbert was writing a satire on the cliches of old-fashioned melodramas (which were old-fashioned in the 1880s when he was writing). And he pointed the satire by having the good guys and bad guys switch places half-way through, adopting the appropriate names, costumes, and facial attractiveness. Though there is a lot of cartoonishness in JKR's writing, she loses any pretensions to genuine satire long before Umbridge makes her appearance.

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah--that. That was horrendous. In fact, I think I may do a line-by-line MST, as soon as I get some free time.

Incidentally, wasn't there a fan once who wrote a fanfic speculating that Umbridge once had a sexually-abusive stepfather? I kinda want to read that now because I'm sure it was much better than a single line of this!

[kahran042]

Sounds great! I'll be looking forward to it. :D

Umbridge fanfic

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

Yes, and Dolly was a Hufflepuff in it, too. It was one of many superb side-threads in Excessively Perky's "The Birthday Present", a Snape-centered AU. I was thinking of how much better EP did it the whole time I was reading this.

[maidofkent.livejournal.com]

I am always a little wary when talking about these kinds of sources of inspiration, because it is infuriating to hear yourself misinterpreted in ways that can cause other people a great deal of hurt."

... but having said that ...

"I disliked intensely on sight ... would have been appropriate to a girl of three ... She was quite a stocky woman ... a personality that I found the reverse of sweet, innocent and ingenuous ..."


I agree, Madderbrad, especially since in regard to the woman whose appearance she borrowed for Umbridge, Rowling had nothing to go on but a mutual antipathy and a dislike for her style of dressing. Yet, she finds it necessary to tell the world that she has based one of her most appalling characters on this woman. I'm sure there are people out there who know exactly who this person is. That's quite special.

[vermouth1991.livejournal.com]

Well, two weeks ago I watched "Matilda" for the first time, and realized that the lady playing Trunchbull looked awfully familiar... (So much for JKR's 'no non-Britons/Irish in the cast' rule, though)

[vermouth1991.livejournal.com]

And the "proper" illustrations on the American OotP books surely wasn't helping (although in Ms. Grandpre's defense she was following Jo's text descriptions; still not sure about her depictions of Sirius [he looks younger than Snape even after jail?] and Severus [stupid goatee! I can't differentiate him from Kakaroff now]).

[dungeonwriter.livejournal.com]

There are heroes in evil as well as in good.--Francois de La Rochefoucauld

It also doesn't help that Snape is played by the incredible Alan Rickman who is closer to 60 than the 31 he was when he met Harry for the first time.

[dungeonwriter.livejournal.com]

Wow, taking pot shots at a poorly dressed and "stocky" woman. That just...really reeks of cruelty. Why not just say she imagined it?

I've base characters on people, but I'd surely never tell them and if they ever found out, I'd deny it.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Ok, something related only tangentially: There's a line in OOTP chapter 12 where it says that there were 30 classmates listening to Harry challenging Umbridge. I'm thinking, maybe Harry's DADA class in 5th year was a Gryffindor, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff class and the Slytherins had a separate class where Umbridge let them practice spells? Because we know there were at least 25 students in Harry's NEWT-level DADA class the following year (Severus collects 25 essays on dementors), and they included Draco and Pansy at the very least.

We know 7 Gryffindors, 5 Hufflepuffs (including Hannah who dropped out when her mother died, so not included in the 25) and 4 Ravenclaws practiced in the DA meetings, but at least 10 non-DA students got good enough grades on their OWLs to enter the NEWT class. One of these was Seamus (did Dean practice with him in private while circumventing the parchment-curse?) But I think the bulk of non-DA students in 6th year DADA were Slytherins, and I think Umbridge did try to give that House an advantage. (She was also quick to approve the renewal of their Quidditch team.)

[merrymelody.livejournal.com]

Ugh, she has such issues.

Like of course, Umbridge has to be secretly related to a cleaner - no classism there, it's just better when people Accept Their Lot (look at how awful Percy got painted for being so ambitious - isn't it easier when people like Harry and Dumbledore are just given positions without having the temerity to work for them? I'm surprised there's not wizarding royalty, with all the fawning for the days when people were just born into power).
People mocking her for being related to him?
Totally not in the wrong themselves or being snobbish Malfoy types, I'm sure they were just Putting Her In Her Place and recognising her pretensions, Ginny style.

And there are absolutely no parallels between Umbridge's attraction to Magical Law Enforcement, inventing methods of punishing people, the middle name, taking the credit for other's work, keeping in with the powerful, generally enjoying judging others and their pain; and any other characters in the series. Honest. That's all Slytherin stuff, really, doesn't sound at all familiar.

Dolores never succeeded in marrying.

Not that landing a man validates a woman or anything.
They just can't be fooled by appearances (the good ones just end up with hot girlfriends as rewards - totally different!) and are expert judges on inner character, which is why women need to go to arcane lengths to trick them into loving us. (I'm a woman, I know what we're like, right Jo?)
And no kids, just like awful Bellatrix, who she takes pains to draw comparisons with. Does a woman with an empty womb really understand love like a woman entirely defined by her motherly status like Lily or Molly?

Rufus Scrimgeour, had more immediate problems pressing in on him than Dolores Umbridge. Scrimgeour was later punished for this oversight, because the fact that the Ministry had never punished Dolores for her many abuses of power seemed to Harry Potter to reveal both its complacency and its carelessness.

LOL, could she be more obvious about basically structuring the entire worldview for this universe around 'how does it affect Harry?' Scrimgeour had more pressing problems than sacking Umbridge, what with the war and deaths 24/7 (albeit of unnamed minor characters)? DOOM ON YOU.
Harry needs to take a more holistic view, tbh - look at Dumbledore's methods - corruption and complacency can totally work in your favour! Make sure the people in the Order get away with stuff so they're loyal to you, while holding forth at the corruption of Big Government. (Or Arthur's way - just write your own rules, literally.)
I'm sure he and his friends' being in charge will totally overhaul the government though, and they definitely won't be casting any Unforgiveables or scarring any teenagers themselves anymore, no sirree!

It was as she sat in judgement of an innocent woman

Oh, never mind, you're totes feminist, JK!

Once, long ago, I took instruction in a certain skill or subject...and in doing so, came into contact with a teacher or instructor whom I disliked intensely on sight.

Big surprise she doesn't like learning from others.

She was quite a stocky woman, and not in the first flush of youth, and her tendency to wear frills...jarred, I felt, with a personality that I found the reverse of sweet, innocent and ingenuous.

I see weight issues rearing their head again.
And how dare ugly women try and look nice? If you're not born a hottie, you should just accept it with cheerful good humour. (Not that there are many ugly Good Guys, all the Gryffindors having Suddenly Become Hot Over The Summer/Yule Ball/whenever Ginny #1 died and Pod!Ginny replaced her.) Clearly you and your out-of-date ovaries are trying to trap some guy into not realising your insides are reflected by your outsides.

A love of all things saccharine often seems present where there is a lack of real warmth or charity.

Or, a love of all things saccharine is traditionally girly, and JKR's not a regular woman, she's a Cool Woman. Bitches, ammirite?

[t0ra-chan.livejournal.com]

Yeah, OotP made it seem like she was actually loyal to Fudge, for whatever reason, but nope, just power-hungry.

So with this revelation we still have no other non-Slytherin bad guy apart from Peter Pettigrew. Unless you count Lockhart, who was a Ravenclaw (not seeing it, to be honest) with Slytherin tendencies.

[t0ra-chan.livejournal.com]

This is now the third unpleasant character she specifically based on a real person that she didn't like (the other ones being Snape and Lockhart). Pansy kinda too, except she is more based on a certain type of person than just one specific person.

It comes across as really petty. Seriously, just let it go, JKR.

[t0ra-chan.livejournal.com]

You know what's sad? Is Umbridge is less scary to me now. She was actually my favorite HP villain because she was something so simply terrifying, a person with power who wants order and will crush anything to achieve it. She was the ruthless gardener who had started cutting flowers with the weeds.

Now she's just a stereotype, a person born bad, bred in Slytherin and completely noxious to the core.

And that's not scary.

Yeah, if she was a guy, I would expect her to have a moustache to twirl. I'm surprised JKR didn't give Umbridge facial hair just to hammer home the point about how un-feminine she is.

[nx74defiant.livejournal.com]

Remember Hepzibah. The fat old lady in pink roes.

Umbridge is less scary to me now

[nx74defiant.livejournal.com]

One of the great things in the first book was the vilian wasn't the stereotype looking Snape, it was the seemingly harmless Quirell.

[dracasadiablo.livejournal.com]

Dolores Jane Umbridge was the eldest child and only daughter of Orford Umbridge, a wizard, and Ellen Cracknell, a Muggle, who also had a Squib son.
The son doesn't even get a name.
But it's not like somebody (Jo) thinks that non magical children are worthless and unimportant. Not at all.

Also, knowing everything we've seen about love potions and the way wizards act toward Muggles, I can't help but worry about just how Dolores's parent got together.

btw, I wonder is "Orford married a Muggle" also part of class discrimination on display here. Are we supposed to see it as "nobody from WW would want to be with a lowly janitor".
Really, now when I think of it more; the only other worker in Department of Magical Maintenance at the Ministry of Magic is married to a Muggleborn.
So, is that (working as a magical janitor) very much looked down on in WW?
Is that a case of "know your place / only Muggleborn or Muggles are not above you"?

Dolores has what amounts to a phobia of beings that are not quite, or wholly, human. Her distaste for the half-giant Hagrid, and her terror of centaurs, reveal a terror of the unknown and the wild.
After what happened in the forest I very much doubt her fear of centaurs can be just waved off as "terror of the unknown and the wild".

Dolores's time at Hogwarts ended disastrously, because she overreached the remit Fudge had given her, stepping outside the bounds of her own authority, carried away with a fanatical sense of self-purpose
Stepping outside the main Hogwarts grounds and being carried away by centaurs.
I see why you choose the words you did here, JKR. And I don't think it's either funny or clever.

Scrimgeour was later punished for this oversight, because the fact that the Ministry had never punished Dolores for her many abuses of power seemed to Harry Potter to reveal both its complacency and its carelessness.
But it's only Dolores and Bellatrix who enjoy seeing people punished!
Harry is not like that at all!

which was in effect a kangaroo court
... so just like any other WW court then?

came into contact with a teacher or instructor whom I disliked intensely on sight.

The woman in question returned my antipathy with interest.
Hm, I don't know. Maybe she disliked you back because you showed your irrational dislike and disgust of her openly?

What sticks in my mind is her pronounced taste for twee accessories. I particularly recall a tiny little plastic bow slide, pale lemon in colour that she wore in her short curly hair. I used to stare at that little slide, which would have been appropriate to a girl of three, as though it was some kind of repellent physical growth. She was quite a stocky woman, and not in the first flush of youth, and her tendency to wear frills where (I felt) frills had no business to be, and to carry undersized handbags, again as though they had been borrowed from a child's dressing-up box, jarred, I felt, with a personality that I found the reverse of sweet, innocent and ingenuous.
I have to wonder is JKR aware of just how much this shows of the way she see people.

Her wizards from DD to Luna can be adorably quirky and weird. But a middle aged, "stocky" women?
Oh, the horror. How dare she not conform to JKR's expectations.
Never mind that this "inappropriate way to dress" spiel would make Petunia proud. Wonder if JKR is aware of how much in common she have with a character she loves to hate.

I have noticed more than once in life that a taste for the ineffably twee can go hand-in-hand with a distinctly uncharitable outlook on the world.
Yup, trumpet that some more.
It's not like you and your books taught kids enough harmful and terrible views. No, lets make sure they hate girls and women who like cute things too.

[akashasheiress.livejournal.com]

Well, Pam Ferris is British, she was just born in Germany.