Is Hermione Granger White? Is Charlotte Lucas Gay?
I just read a thought provoking article this morning:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/quora/2015/10/09/hermione_granger_in_harry_potter_is_she_white.html
This article is about whether Hermione Granger should necessarily be read as white. I have read the Harry Potter books countless times, and this is a fascinating point to consider. Hermione's race is never stated in the books. And if we assume that she's white unless we're explicitly told otherwise (as Rowling does tell us the race of Lee Jordan and Angelina Johnson) then it's absolutely true that we're deciding to make whiteness the default setting. The physical description of Hermione is that she has bushy hair and buck teeth. (The author talks about not knowing exactly what bushy hair meant, as a child, and assuming it meant black hair.) And she's absolutely right that just because Emma Watson was cast in the movie, or illustrations on book covers have depicted her that way - those actually shouldn't have any more weight than any other fan representation of the character. Monika Kothari, who wrote the article, argues in favor of a black or biracial interpretation of Hermione and why it could be important:
Hermione is a smart, interesting, and good character, a main character with major development-qualities rarely afforded to minorities in Western literature, much less minority women.
She also talks about how we read race in the Harry Potter books in general, how we assume Cho Chang looks a certain way based entirely on her name. And she also poses the question of authorial intent, wondering whether - even if JK Rowling intended Hermione to be white, does it matter? Does it shut the door on reading her as a different race? Her answer, and I agree with it, is no.
While I was reading this article, I was also thinking about the racist furor over Rue in the Hunger Games. For anyone who actually read that book, Rue is clearly and explicitly described as, "...a twelve year old girl from District 11. She has dark brown skin and eyes."
Still didn't stop racists from getting mad that a black actress was cast in the movie. Why? Because they read the book and liked her character, and so their brains overrode/ignored the authors intent and read her as white. Or, alternately, because their idea of white as the default setting is so strong that it can't even be contradicted by what the author says in the actual text of the book. Not at all different from the pictures of blond haired, blue eyed Jesus that assume his feet of burnished bronze were just, like, a really deep tan since sunscreen wasn't invented yet.
I think part of why this is really interesting to me is that growing up (and even now) I read books all the time where I would think/wonder if certain characters were gay. And my feelings about that have only sometimes been influenced by explicit text or authorial intentions. The best example of this, I think, is Charlotte Lucas from Pride and Prejudice. When she tells Elizabeth Bennet that she is going to marry Mr. Collins, and explains her decision by saying, "I am not romantic, you know. I never was," I've always read that as her trying to tell Elizabeth (and the reader) that she's never going to be swept off her feet by any man, because men aren't where it's at for her. (Where is it at for her? Elizabeth Bennet, of course. The girl who captured the heart of Mr. Darcy and two hundred years worth of readers? How could poor Charlotte have possibly been immune?)
Did Jane Austen mean to code it that way? I don't know.
Did she intend to write Emma Woodhouse as bisexual?
Because Harriet Smith is a young woman "whom Emma knew very well by sight, and had long felt an interest in, on account of her beauty."
What strikes Emma's interest in Harriet, a young lady of inferior birth who is really kind of a drip throughout most of the book? The fact that she's gorgeous.
She was a very pretty girl, and her beauty happened to be of a sort which Emma particularly admired. She was short, plump, and fair, with a fine bloom, blue eyes, light hair, regular features, and a look of great sweetness, and, before the end of the evening, Emma was as much pleased with her manners as her person, and quite determined to continue the acquaintance.
She was not struck by any thing remarkably clever in Miss Smith's conversation, but she found her altogether very engaging-not inconveniently shy, not unwilling to talk-and yet so far from pushing, shewing so proper and becoming a deference, seeming so pleasantly grateful for being admitted to Hartfield, and so artlessly impressed by the appearance of every thing in so superior a style to what she had been used to, that she must have good sense, and deserve encouragement. Encouragement should be given. Those soft blue eyes, and all those natural graces, should not be wasted on the inferior society of Highbury and its connexions.
And who instinctively dislikes Emma's newfound friendship with Harriet Smith? Mr. Knightley, who has been in love with her since she was thirteen, and - I think - knows that Emma has never sighed over his soft blue eyes. (Do we even know what color his eyes are? I don't think we do.)
Yes, yes - these books are all about women getting married, and all three of these characters are married to men by the end of their novels, but honestly - so did probably a lot of genteel lady loving ladies in the late 1700s. Not everyone could take to piracy, unfortunately.
(And for anyone who ever acts like "but how could Jane Austen, living her sheltered country life, have even known that lesbianism existed" - if I lived in any other time but the present, I can't say for sure that I'd be brave enough to ever act on them, but I would for sure know, in the privacy of my own heart, that these feelings existed.)
Anyway, I wonder if straight readers ever think that Charlotte Lucas could be gay. Maybe not, because reading characters as straight is the default setting. (But come on, Mr. Collins is a total beard!) So I understand, on some level, that I read these characters as gay becasue I am gay. It's like Anais Nin saying, "We do not see things as they are, we see things as we are." Totally true. Which brings me back to the article about Hermione. I know how much validation I find in the way I read Austen, how much I love feeling like those books reflect even a small part of my experience. And seeing as how most of mainstream Western culture reflects a bazillion images of white, straight, cis-gendered characters back at people, I'm all in on the idea of trying to reverse a bad pattern.
The next time I read the Harry Potter books, I'm going to reimagine my vision of Hermione and see who she is to me as a black character. Maybe I'll even try to make it a habit when I'm reading to ask myself how the story would be different, or interpreted differently, if a character was a different race or gender. This is fiction, after all. The only limits should be the readers imagination.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/quora/2015/10/09/hermione_granger_in_harry_potter_is_she_white.html
This article is about whether Hermione Granger should necessarily be read as white. I have read the Harry Potter books countless times, and this is a fascinating point to consider. Hermione's race is never stated in the books. And if we assume that she's white unless we're explicitly told otherwise (as Rowling does tell us the race of Lee Jordan and Angelina Johnson) then it's absolutely true that we're deciding to make whiteness the default setting. The physical description of Hermione is that she has bushy hair and buck teeth. (The author talks about not knowing exactly what bushy hair meant, as a child, and assuming it meant black hair.) And she's absolutely right that just because Emma Watson was cast in the movie, or illustrations on book covers have depicted her that way - those actually shouldn't have any more weight than any other fan representation of the character. Monika Kothari, who wrote the article, argues in favor of a black or biracial interpretation of Hermione and why it could be important:
Hermione is a smart, interesting, and good character, a main character with major development-qualities rarely afforded to minorities in Western literature, much less minority women.
She also talks about how we read race in the Harry Potter books in general, how we assume Cho Chang looks a certain way based entirely on her name. And she also poses the question of authorial intent, wondering whether - even if JK Rowling intended Hermione to be white, does it matter? Does it shut the door on reading her as a different race? Her answer, and I agree with it, is no.
While I was reading this article, I was also thinking about the racist furor over Rue in the Hunger Games. For anyone who actually read that book, Rue is clearly and explicitly described as, "...a twelve year old girl from District 11. She has dark brown skin and eyes."
Still didn't stop racists from getting mad that a black actress was cast in the movie. Why? Because they read the book and liked her character, and so their brains overrode/ignored the authors intent and read her as white. Or, alternately, because their idea of white as the default setting is so strong that it can't even be contradicted by what the author says in the actual text of the book. Not at all different from the pictures of blond haired, blue eyed Jesus that assume his feet of burnished bronze were just, like, a really deep tan since sunscreen wasn't invented yet.
I think part of why this is really interesting to me is that growing up (and even now) I read books all the time where I would think/wonder if certain characters were gay. And my feelings about that have only sometimes been influenced by explicit text or authorial intentions. The best example of this, I think, is Charlotte Lucas from Pride and Prejudice. When she tells Elizabeth Bennet that she is going to marry Mr. Collins, and explains her decision by saying, "I am not romantic, you know. I never was," I've always read that as her trying to tell Elizabeth (and the reader) that she's never going to be swept off her feet by any man, because men aren't where it's at for her. (Where is it at for her? Elizabeth Bennet, of course. The girl who captured the heart of Mr. Darcy and two hundred years worth of readers? How could poor Charlotte have possibly been immune?)
Did Jane Austen mean to code it that way? I don't know.
Did she intend to write Emma Woodhouse as bisexual?
Because Harriet Smith is a young woman "whom Emma knew very well by sight, and had long felt an interest in, on account of her beauty."
What strikes Emma's interest in Harriet, a young lady of inferior birth who is really kind of a drip throughout most of the book? The fact that she's gorgeous.
She was a very pretty girl, and her beauty happened to be of a sort which Emma particularly admired. She was short, plump, and fair, with a fine bloom, blue eyes, light hair, regular features, and a look of great sweetness, and, before the end of the evening, Emma was as much pleased with her manners as her person, and quite determined to continue the acquaintance.
She was not struck by any thing remarkably clever in Miss Smith's conversation, but she found her altogether very engaging-not inconveniently shy, not unwilling to talk-and yet so far from pushing, shewing so proper and becoming a deference, seeming so pleasantly grateful for being admitted to Hartfield, and so artlessly impressed by the appearance of every thing in so superior a style to what she had been used to, that she must have good sense, and deserve encouragement. Encouragement should be given. Those soft blue eyes, and all those natural graces, should not be wasted on the inferior society of Highbury and its connexions.
And who instinctively dislikes Emma's newfound friendship with Harriet Smith? Mr. Knightley, who has been in love with her since she was thirteen, and - I think - knows that Emma has never sighed over his soft blue eyes. (Do we even know what color his eyes are? I don't think we do.)
Yes, yes - these books are all about women getting married, and all three of these characters are married to men by the end of their novels, but honestly - so did probably a lot of genteel lady loving ladies in the late 1700s. Not everyone could take to piracy, unfortunately.
(And for anyone who ever acts like "but how could Jane Austen, living her sheltered country life, have even known that lesbianism existed" - if I lived in any other time but the present, I can't say for sure that I'd be brave enough to ever act on them, but I would for sure know, in the privacy of my own heart, that these feelings existed.)
Anyway, I wonder if straight readers ever think that Charlotte Lucas could be gay. Maybe not, because reading characters as straight is the default setting. (But come on, Mr. Collins is a total beard!) So I understand, on some level, that I read these characters as gay becasue I am gay. It's like Anais Nin saying, "We do not see things as they are, we see things as we are." Totally true. Which brings me back to the article about Hermione. I know how much validation I find in the way I read Austen, how much I love feeling like those books reflect even a small part of my experience. And seeing as how most of mainstream Western culture reflects a bazillion images of white, straight, cis-gendered characters back at people, I'm all in on the idea of trying to reverse a bad pattern.
The next time I read the Harry Potter books, I'm going to reimagine my vision of Hermione and see who she is to me as a black character. Maybe I'll even try to make it a habit when I'm reading to ask myself how the story would be different, or interpreted differently, if a character was a different race or gender. This is fiction, after all. The only limits should be the readers imagination.