Question About JKR's Male Characters...

[sweettalkeress]

Some comments I've seen about JKR's writing have led me to the thought that possibly, one reason why certain characters in the story have to keep insisting on their manliness and not doing anything "girly" like crying, etc. might have to do with the fact that Rowling just isn't good with writing men, and so resorts to stereotypes to do the job,

Comments

[madderbrad]

... might have to do with the fact that Rowling just isn't good with writing men ...

Fixed that for you. :-)

(Well, I guess that is being too harsh. When she's mired in the straight 'childrens books' genre, wherein which she isn't held to account for things like actual plot or logic or stories making sense, I guess she's okay.)

Like zellieh I don't have a clue how one can discern Snape as 'feminine'. Certainly that wasn't my impression/interpretation on reading the books

[oryx_leucoryx]

I think Slytherins in general are perceived as feminized - with the association with water/emotion/guile. As far as I remember Severus and Draco are the only male characters who cry in canon. Also the emphasis on the cauldron and dislike of wand-waving.

[madderbrad]

Oh, okay, I can see some of that. I think you're getting down to the 'personal interpretation' setting on the microscope though. Maybe I'm new-fashioned, but I didn't think it was thought unmanly these days for blokes to cry (if under sufficient stress). And the phallic wand imagery has never factored into how I see the HP books (I personally think readers have to go looking for it, with that imagery in mind).

Still, I see now how readers could hang the 'feminine' thing on various hooks that are in HP, so thanks for helping me out!

[oryx_leucoryx]

I remember a fan - a pro-Rowling guy with much love for literary analysis - summarizing Severus' first year speech as 'size doesn't matter'.

While early on it isn't immediately obvious how much Rowling *intended* wands to be phallic symbols and cauldrons as womb symbols we have the very Freudian 'Weighing of the Wands' in GOF, the Celestina Warbeck song about how she wants her cauldron of hot love stirred in HBP and the endless wand jokes in DH (with Hermione's commentary about wizards boasting about having bigger wands).

You may be 'new fashioned' but Rowling's world is somewhere between Dickens and Agatha Christie.

[mmmarcusz]

Don't forget LV stripping Lucius of his wand, or Umbridge's "unusually small" wand.

[for_diddled]

Or Ron's wand being broken for most of Book 2. Or Harry feeling all impotent and emasculated after Hermione (a girl, no less!) accidentally broke his wand. (Though given that he was on the run from Voldemort and his wand was his only means of defence, I suppose he can be forgiven for this.)