Rowling Reconsidered: Part 4
This is the fourth part of my attempt to cast light on the writing of J.K. Rowling in the Harry Potter series using the new information of her subsequent works. Part 1 (feminism) is here. Part 2 (weight prejudice and plot holes) is here. Part 3 (morality and messages) is here.
As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to her folly.
Between ten and fifteen years ago, I burned many, many pixels discussing the writing of romance in the Harry Potter series (I was for it). After Book 6 and the "Interview of Doom" came out I made a vow to myself to never again "debate ships" in the Harry Potter fandom. I wish to point out, though, that I explicitly meant "which pairing(s) will happen in canon?" and NOT "is the romance as written in canon any good?" So anything I might write now cannot possibly be taken as a violation of that vow. :)
Is J.K. Rowling bad at writing romance?
It's Supposed to Smell Differently to Each of Us According to What Attracts Us
Certainly it is often said that J.K. Rowling is bad at writing romance. Interestingly, though, I don't recall hearing people say that until after Book 6 came out. Well, possibly some people began to say it after Book 5, but not many and not with much intensity. To explain this, I would like to break down "writing romance" into two parts: arousing interest in romantic plot lines, and providing a satisfying resolution to that interest.
I would argue that it is obvious to the point of undeniability that J.K. Rowling was good at the first part. I have never seen a fandom more "aroused." There was something about the first three Harry Potter books, and then the fourth one, that brought a whole bunch of people to a frothing frenzy of shippiness. Think of the the SCUSA section of the FictionAlley.org forum, where it seemed that someone shipped every single possible pairing or triad of characters (no matter how unlikely) and was willing to spend hours and hours posting about them and answering silly questions like which one of them made coffee in the morning and who said "sorry" first after an argument. By my count, there are 928 named and submitted ships, from "Aberquaffle and Snitch" (Roger Davies/Katie Bell) to "Whispers in the Walls" (Sir Cadogan/Fat Lady). Think of the outpouring of romantic and sexual fan fiction, with multiple whole archives and discussion forums devoted to some of the more popular pairings. And, my goodness, think of the ship debates. I know that plenty other fandoms have shippy fan fiction and ship debates, but I have never seen anything before or since to rival Harry Potter in the breadth or depth or longevity of shipping madness.
Romance-inclined Harry Potter fans circa 2000-2003 were generally an optimistic, contented bunch. Obviously there wasn't universal consensus and I can only go by my possibly unrepresentative experiences and memories, but from what I can recall after Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire people were happy with the way Rowling was writing romance. Sure, it was a bit childish and silly, but that was seen as appropriate for the age group of our protagonist and his readers. And some people objected to 18-year-old Viktor Krum asking out 14-year-old Hermione (now known to have been actually 15), but that was more an "in-universe" objection than a criticism of Rowling's writing. People enjoyed reading about Harry's and Ron's Yule Ball struggles, Fleur and the Veelas, Snape blasting couples in the rose bushes, Hermione's Cinderella moment, Cedric holding hands with Cho, and Rita Skeeter writing tabloid journalism about Harry and Hermione. Everyone---well, most people---was free to imagine that his or her preferred romances might be written, and written in the way they hoped for or demanded. Of course, if you shipped Snape/Hermione or Harry/Draco you had to deal with the near-certainty that your preferred pairing wouldn't happen in canon, but very few people declared Rowling a bad writer just for that. It was common to speak slightingly of her apparent plans to unite Harry with Ginny and Ron with Hermione to create "One Big Happy Weasley Family" as cheesy or unrealistic, but of course it was still possible to hope or insist that this would not actually happen.
But arousing interest in romantic plot lines is one thing; satisfying it is another. The atmosphere of general approval started to change, slowly after Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and much more rapidly after the final two books. The very high level of romantic excitement and anticipation stimulated by the first four books almost guaranteed that some people would be disappointed, and the more intensely people cared the likelier it was that Rowling's actual writing would fall short of their hopes and dreams. This was not limited to romance, of course, and many people found the later books unacceptable for not delivering on the particular promise they saw in the earlier books, whether plot development, character development, symbolism, theme, social or political commentary, or degree of "darkness."
It is hard for me to quantify what percentage of readers were unhappy with or critical of Rowling's portrayal of romance in the last few books, but certainly there are many people who said (and are still saying) "JKR sucks at writing romance." For instance, if you look at recent ONTD post about Rupert Grint speculating on Ron and Hermione getting divorced, you can see that statement posted repeatedly, with minor deviations like "blows," "sucks donkey balls," "couldn't write for shit," "horribly executed," and "dumb af."
It is also hard for me to separate my own opinion of Rowling's portrayal of romance from my satisfaction that the pairings I foresaw, publicly predicted, and became attached to actually happened. It is very possible that my enjoyment of the romances in the books was enhanced by the greater emotional depth and focus on romance and sexuality included in some of my favorite fanfics. And, of course, I had a great deal of ego investment in being proved right after years of participation in contentious online ship debates.
However, though I am unsure of how widespread criticism of the romance is and though my own opinion of Rowling's romance writing may be artificially inflated, I certainly am familiar with the arguments against it. Here are some of the complaints I've seen most often, grouped into categories:
The wrong people were paired:
I Love Her Like a Sister and I Reckon She Feels the Same Way About Me
I should probably start with J.K. Rowling's criticism of her own romantic writing. Rowling was interviewed by Emma Watson, who played Hermione in the movies, for the February 2014 issue of Wonderland Magazine:
Watson: I thought we should discuss Hermione… I’m sure you’ve heard this a million times but now that you have written the books, do you have a new perspective on how you relate to Hermione and the relationship you have with her or had with her?
Rowling: I know that Hermione is incredibly recognizable to a lot of readers and yet you don’t see a lot of Hermiones in film or on TV except to be laughed at. I mean that the intense, clever, in some ways not terribly self-aware, girl is rarely the heroine and I really wanted her to be the heroine. She is part of me, although she is not wholly me. I think that is how I might have appeared to people when I was younger, but that is not really how I was inside.
What I will say is that I wrote the Hermione/Ron relationship as a form of wish fulfillment. That’s how it was conceived, really. For reasons that have very little to do with literature and far more to do with me clinging to the plot as I first imagined it, Hermione with Ron.
Watson: Ah.
Rowling: I know, I’m sorry, I can hear the rage and fury it might cause some fans, but if I’m absolutely honest, distance has given me perspective on that. It was a choice I made for very personal reasons, not for reasons of credibility. Am I breaking people’s hearts by saying this? I hope not.
Rowling here is clearly speaking of the Ron/Hermione relationship in terms of her choices as a writer---what I refer to as a "Doylist" perspective. Unfortunately for my purposes, but perfectly natural from her experience as an actress, Emma Watson immediately turns the conversation to a "Watsonian" perspective, discussing Ron and Hermione as if they were real people, which they do for the rest of the discussion:
Watson: I don’t know. I think there are fans out there who know that too and who wonder whether Ron would have really been able to make her happy.
Rowling: Yes exactly.
Watson: And vice versa.
Rowling: It was a young relationship. I think the attraction itself is plausible but the combative side of it… I’m not sure you could have got over that in an adult relationship, there was too much fundamental incompatibility. I can’t believe we are saying all of this - this is Potter heresy!
In some ways Hermione and Harry are a better fit, and I’ll tell you something very strange. When I wrote Hallows, I felt this quite strongly when I had Hermione and Harry together in the tent! I hadn’t told [Steven] Kloves that and when he wrote the script he felt exactly the same thing at exactly the same point.
[clipping quite a bit of discussion---follow the link if you'd like to read it]
While this is of course delightful reading to anyone who always felt that Harry and Hermione were more compatible than Ron and Hermione, it is not nearly as interesting to me, or as relevant to this essay, as whatever Rowling was starting to say about her writing choices. Let me go back to that:
I wrote the Hermione/Ron relationship as a form of wish fulfillment. That’s how it was conceived, really. For reasons that have very little to do with literature and far more to do with me clinging to the plot as I first imagined it, Hermione with Ron.
It sounds to me like Rowling has taken on board various criticisms of her romance-writing in what, after all, was her first published work and come to agree with them to some degree. She seems to be saying that pairing Ron and Hermione was a mistake from the perspective of "literature" and her use of the word "clinging" seems to imply that she now thinks she should have had second thoughts as she wrote and changed her design to put Hermione with someone else---possibly with Harry, going by her later words.
The fact that she and Watson then go on to question whether Hermione and Ron have incompatible personalities and whether Hermione and Harry would have fit better is really quite irrelevant to the question, because of course she could have written their personalities differently to make them more compatible. Or it seems like she could---of course it is possible that the way her creative mind works, she had to write the characters the way they first came to her. And it is not quite clear why Ron/Hermione was "wish fulfillment." Did she unrealistically wish that two such different people could grow to be happy together? Or was she unrealistic in thinking that she could satisfy readers with a platonic relationship between the hero and the most important female character? Or was it something else? I really wish Watson had asked her what she meant instead of jumping into a discussion of the characters as people.
I will try to speculate what she meant in terms of "literature." I see two main possibilities: that she now regrets not taking advantage of the natural affection that readers would have for Harry's female best friend to make a pairing that likely would have been enjoyed by a higher percent of readers, or that as she wrote the series she became aware that her conception of an "opposites attract" bickering-lovers romance was not realistic enough to make good writing, but she was too stubborn to either change the pairing or change the characters to make the pairing less contentious.
I think everyone can see that if Rowling had chosen to pair Harry with Hermione she would have had an easier time writing a convincing, satisfying romance. We are very accustomed to stories where the most prominent male and the most prominent female end up together. Harry and Hermione had shared danger, shared adventures, a lot of dialogue, and a strong affection built slowly over a long period of time, all of which people tend to like in romance. We can easily think of examples: Mulder and Scully, Booth and Bones, Butch and Sundance...
Of course Ron and Hermione had all these things too, but Ron was not the hero or a point-of-view character like Harry so they were less obvious to the reader. And even if it were universally recognized that the Ron/Hermione pairing had all these factors, many readers would not be happy if Ron got a "better" romance---or a more "important" girl---than Harry did.
We can get some additional insight by looking at the romances Rowling was writing when she had this discussion with Watson. The interview probably took place around December 2013 or January 2014. At that time, she had already published the first Cormoran Strike book in April 2013 and the second would be published in June 2014, so she was well along in writing the Cormoran Strike/Robin Ellacott pairing. That romance---and I can't tell you what a relief it is not to have to debate for years to get acceptance that Strike/Robin is being written as a romantic plotline!---is, in many ways, exactly what Harry/Hermione shippers always wanted for Harry and Hermione. Cormoran and Robin don't bicker; they either get along very harmoniously (much more so than Harry and Hermione did) or they argue, occasionally, over substantial, serious issues. They share danger and adventures, they trust each other, they for a long time either suppress (Cormoran) or honestly don't recognize (Robin) their attraction to each other, they don't have any awkward third wheel like Ron hanging around interfering with their dynamic, and Robin is subordinate to Cormoran both literarily and within the story, just as Hermione is to Harry.
The interview also took place three months after the announcement that Rowling would be writing the screenplay for Fantastic Beasts. This movie also has a hero-protagonist and a most-prominent-female that we know he will end up marrying. It is too soon to say what the dynamic between Newt and Tina will be, but it's definitely not a sidekick/sidekick romance like Ron and Hermione.
So I think it is very likely that either Rowling was writing Cormoran/Robin and Newt/Tina in a main guy/main girl way because she regretted her choice not to do that in the HP series, OR she was so immersed in writing main guy/main girl romances for Cormoran and Newt that she was no longer in the mindset to create or admire a Ron/Hermione type romance.
For me personally, I think that is a shame because there's nothing I love more than bickering lovers and Ron and Hermione will forever be favorites of mine. I don't agree that they have a "fundamentally incompatibility" or that the "combative side" is too strong. In fact, I have loved many relationships with much more challenging compatibility issues and a much more serious "combative side." To me, the issue of whether a fictional couple would have a stable and harmonious marriage in real life, whether they, like Fitzwilliam Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett, will "teach the admiring multitude what connubial felicity really was," is just not something I think or care about. I mean, one of my favorite pairs ever was David Addison and Maddie Hayes in "Moonlighting," and their writers couldn't even imagine them staying together for one episode after they got together. Compared to them Ron and Hermione are turtledoves, and I honestly think they have a good chance, as Rowling wrote them, of having a happy and satisfying married life. But, of course, Rowling's opinion is more important than mine at this moment, considering that she (and her collaborators) will have the final word in the "Cursed Child" play.
I'm easy, though---I like many different kinds of romance and I'm enjoying Cormoran and Robin just fine. I'm sure I will like Newt and Tina as well. When it comes to romance, I'm a liking liker who likes.
So much for the vital world-shaking issue of H/Hr versus R/Hr. Not all criticism of the books' romance comes from that perspective. A lot of people, at least among the commenters on that ONTD post I read, seem to have only one objection: that Harry didn't fall in love with the delightfully quirky outsider Luna Lovegood. But there are also many people who say that they could have liked Ron/Hermione and Harry/Ginny just fine---if it had been better written.
Wasn't a Big School. She Was the Only Girl With Any Brains Who Was Fanciable. No Choice.
Generally, the criticism of the writing of Harry/Ginny is that it came out of nowhere, that Ginny wasn't properly developed, that Ginny is shown as unlikable, that they got together too fast, that Harry's feelings were only lust, that it was telling-not-showing, and that it was portrayed distastefully, with a special dislike of the metaphor of Harry's "chest monster." The criticism of Ron/Hermione is that Ron never grew up and doesn't deserve Hermione, that Hermione became irrational and violent (sending canaries at Ron, hitting him when he returned to the campsite), that there was way too much jealousy, that Ron's book was a "rape manual," and that we were shown their fights but not their happy times or tender moments. And, of course, for both pairings, that they basically skipped from first getting together as teenagers to established married couples with kids, with no way of understanding how they progressed from one state to the other.
The question here is not whether those criticisms are valid (I think some are and some aren't). The question here is if there's anything in Rowling's later works that bears on these criticisms. Unfortunately, I do not see much.
The Casual Vacancy has no "successful" romances---no plot lines where we root for two people to get together, and they do, and we are happy. The closest, I suppose, is the relationship between Andrew Price and Gaia Bawden. Gaia is a teenaged girl, beautiful and a newcomer to the village, and Andrew, her classmate, has a huge crush on her. They end up getting a job in the same place so they get to know each other and become friends, but they never "get together" and I wouldn't expect them to do so after the book ends. Besides that there are some married couples, but none that are particularly inviting from a romance perspective.
Certainly Andrew's crush on Gaia is more realistically presented than Harry's interest in girls, in that he notices more than her shiny hair. It is true that we see more description of Andrew's feelings and behaviors as he deals with his attraction than we see of Harry's with either Cho or Ginny, and it is cute and amusing to read about. But I don't think anyone would read it and say "Oh, if only Harry and Ginny had been written like this!"
In the Cormoran Strike series, it seems to me that the romance-related bits are not really different or better than the romance-related bits in the Harry Potter series. They are small and scattered---though becoming noticeably more frequent as we move from the first book to the third. There is a "Cinderella scene" in the first book, of Robin in an expensive green dress, which is someone reminiscent of Hermione's floaty blue robes at the Yule Ball. Just as in the Potter books, Rowling relies heavily on jealousy---or, more precisely, subconscious dislike of or discomfort with the other person's romantic developments---as one of the earliest and strongest indicators of romantic interest. Apparently, on this point at least, Rowling does not agree with her detractors. Perhaps she is influenced by her admiration of Jane Austen, who used it very heavily in her masterpiece Emma. However, finally in the third book we begin to see what you might call "sexual tension"---Robin and Cormoran are awkward with each other in suggestive situations such as staying in the same hotel---and other romantic indicators besides conscious or unconscious jealousy.
If readers like Cormoran and Robin together more than Harry and Ginny (and I think many do), I'd say the main difference is the establishment of Robin as a major point-of-view character from the beginning, the long, slow development of the two of them as colleagues and friends before entering into any romance, and the lack of the humorous and unrefined tone that was part of the Potter books. Also, of course, the romance (whatever it will be) hasn't "happened" yet, so there is not yet any reason to be dissatisfied. Another way of looking at it is that a LOT fewer people are invested in Cormoran's and Robin's possible future relationship than were in Harry and Ginny's. Or Ron's and Hermione's. Or Harry's and Hermione's. Or Harry's and Luna's.
We can also, possibly, see Rowling exploring the downside of a passionate, high-conflict relationship in her description of Cormoran and Charlotte. Charlotte is emotional, irrational, and volatile, some of the same faults as Ron has (though I would say she has them to a much higher degree). However, though Hermione is in some sense a "rock" for Ron, she does not have the stolid "cart horse" quality that Cormoran has for Charlotte. Indeed, Hermione is pretty passionate, emotional, and volatile herself. Some people might want to argue that Robin and Matthew are also bad in a Ron-and-Hermione type way, but I think they're wrong. We're told that before Robin joined the detective agency they were a low-conflict couple, primarily because Robin gave in whenever they had an argument (for instance, when she didn't want to move to London). I actually see the Matthew/Robin relationship having some of the same flaws I was concerned about if Harry had ended up with Hermione. He tended to dominate her too much. Though, of course, if Harry had fancied Hermione as Ron did, he might have conceded more to her, as Ron certainly does in the last two books--and as Matthew does to Robin, when he realizes he might lose her.
I am eagerly anticipating learning the plot of "The Cursed Child" to see what light it might shine back on the relationships of Harry and Ginny and Ron and Hermione during the nineteen years between the Battle of Hogwarts and the Epilogue, and of course to see what happens to them during the play. It will also be somewhat interesting to see how the relationship between Newt Scamander and his future wife Tina Goldstein is portrayed, in comparison to the romances in the Harry Potter books.
It Was the Same Last Time He Was Powerful, People Eloping Left, Right, and Center-
One big objection to the romances in the books is, as someone named "Daniel" put it here:
But yeah, the dominant picture of romance in the Potter series is "You meet your One True Love at age sixteen, court them through school, get married shortly after graduating, have children, and spend the rest of your life in faithful marriage." There's not much to argue there; Rowling isn't exactly subtle. I suspect the idea might be that that's the only sort of romance appropriate to show children.
I sort of partly agree with this. Of course if you look at it objectively most people aren't shown marrying shortly after they graduate, many people seem to be unmarried, there are unhappy marriages, childless marriages, and a (very) few divorces or separations. However, the overwhelming impression made by the Potters, the Weasleys, and of course Harry-and-Ginny and Ron-and-Hermione tends to leave one with this general picture. I think readers tend to feel like the two last couples married soon after school even though of course the Epilogue doesn't tell us that and for all we know they actually dated other people before getting back together with their Year Seven loves. Going by the only evidence we have, the ages of James and Rose, the two marriages might have taken place as much as 5 and 7 years after the book ends.
Rowling wrote the bulk of the HP series as a divorced single mother with very little money and I have no objection at all if she wanted to create a fantasy world where people in love tended to stay married and raise children together. But her subsequent books don't necessarily show such a world. In The Casual Vacancy, the charming village of Pagfort has unhappy marriages (to put it lightly) and happy(ish) ones. Kay Bawden is a never-married single mum and both she and her boyfriend Gavin Hughes are single, with serious relationships in their pasts. Terri Weedon has had four children by different fathers and has never married. The Mollisons' daughter Patricia is a lesbian living in London with her long-term partner. Maureen Lowe is a childless widow.
As best I can judge, the world of the Cormoran Strike novels is identical to our world in the variety of life choices and life circumstances that people experience (though the detective agency setting shows us more divorcing couples than is usual in my experience). However, one interesting point is that the "bad" romances of both Strike and Robin began in school---Robin and Matthew in what we would call high school (sixth form) and Cormoran and Charlotte in college (Oxford).
Another interesting point is that Strike himself is strongly anti-child though not necessarily anti-marriage. Seen through his eyes, his sister Lucy's insistence on stable-marriage-and-children seems like an odd, rather annoying lifestyle choice. And his former colleague Anstis's marriage and children seems like a living hell. Presumably Robin is somewhat pro-child as she is pro-marriage, but I can't say for sure.
If the "Fantastic Beasts" movie is set in the 1920's, Newt Scamander will be at least 23, as the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them author bio states that he was born in 1897. I suppose those who are unhappy with incestuous Hogwarts shipping will be happy that he at least waits that long before meeting his future wife, and that she is from a foreign country. I can't help thinking that part of the reason for the Triwizard Tournaments in the magical world was so that young adult wizards might meet and possibly marry their counterparts from other parts of Europe and thus diminish the dangers of inbreeding in the small magical population, especially for those families who refuse to marry Muggles or Muggleborns. In light of Rowling saying on Pottermore that the Malfoy family has "eschewed the somewhat dangerous practice of inter-marrying within such a small pool of pure-bloods that they become enfeebled or unstable," it is quite possible that Lucius Malfoy's desire to send his son Draco to Durmstrang might have been partly with a view toward encouraging him to find a foreign wife. Alas, Astoria Greengrass, as liberal and tolerant as she might be, comes from one of the "Sacred Twenty-eight Families," so perhaps we had better hope young Scorpius, if he marries and has children, chooses a partner with Muggle blood.
As for The Cursed Child, it remains to be seen what delights (or horrors) it has in store for us.
And that's the end, yayyyyy!!! I'll shut up now. (I'm sure none of you believe that.)
As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to her folly.
Between ten and fifteen years ago, I burned many, many pixels discussing the writing of romance in the Harry Potter series (I was for it). After Book 6 and the "Interview of Doom" came out I made a vow to myself to never again "debate ships" in the Harry Potter fandom. I wish to point out, though, that I explicitly meant "which pairing(s) will happen in canon?" and NOT "is the romance as written in canon any good?" So anything I might write now cannot possibly be taken as a violation of that vow. :)
Is J.K. Rowling bad at writing romance?
It's Supposed to Smell Differently to Each of Us According to What Attracts Us
Certainly it is often said that J.K. Rowling is bad at writing romance. Interestingly, though, I don't recall hearing people say that until after Book 6 came out. Well, possibly some people began to say it after Book 5, but not many and not with much intensity. To explain this, I would like to break down "writing romance" into two parts: arousing interest in romantic plot lines, and providing a satisfying resolution to that interest.
I would argue that it is obvious to the point of undeniability that J.K. Rowling was good at the first part. I have never seen a fandom more "aroused." There was something about the first three Harry Potter books, and then the fourth one, that brought a whole bunch of people to a frothing frenzy of shippiness. Think of the the SCUSA section of the FictionAlley.org forum, where it seemed that someone shipped every single possible pairing or triad of characters (no matter how unlikely) and was willing to spend hours and hours posting about them and answering silly questions like which one of them made coffee in the morning and who said "sorry" first after an argument. By my count, there are 928 named and submitted ships, from "Aberquaffle and Snitch" (Roger Davies/Katie Bell) to "Whispers in the Walls" (Sir Cadogan/Fat Lady). Think of the outpouring of romantic and sexual fan fiction, with multiple whole archives and discussion forums devoted to some of the more popular pairings. And, my goodness, think of the ship debates. I know that plenty other fandoms have shippy fan fiction and ship debates, but I have never seen anything before or since to rival Harry Potter in the breadth or depth or longevity of shipping madness.
Romance-inclined Harry Potter fans circa 2000-2003 were generally an optimistic, contented bunch. Obviously there wasn't universal consensus and I can only go by my possibly unrepresentative experiences and memories, but from what I can recall after Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire people were happy with the way Rowling was writing romance. Sure, it was a bit childish and silly, but that was seen as appropriate for the age group of our protagonist and his readers. And some people objected to 18-year-old Viktor Krum asking out 14-year-old Hermione (now known to have been actually 15), but that was more an "in-universe" objection than a criticism of Rowling's writing. People enjoyed reading about Harry's and Ron's Yule Ball struggles, Fleur and the Veelas, Snape blasting couples in the rose bushes, Hermione's Cinderella moment, Cedric holding hands with Cho, and Rita Skeeter writing tabloid journalism about Harry and Hermione. Everyone---well, most people---was free to imagine that his or her preferred romances might be written, and written in the way they hoped for or demanded. Of course, if you shipped Snape/Hermione or Harry/Draco you had to deal with the near-certainty that your preferred pairing wouldn't happen in canon, but very few people declared Rowling a bad writer just for that. It was common to speak slightingly of her apparent plans to unite Harry with Ginny and Ron with Hermione to create "One Big Happy Weasley Family" as cheesy or unrealistic, but of course it was still possible to hope or insist that this would not actually happen.
But arousing interest in romantic plot lines is one thing; satisfying it is another. The atmosphere of general approval started to change, slowly after Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and much more rapidly after the final two books. The very high level of romantic excitement and anticipation stimulated by the first four books almost guaranteed that some people would be disappointed, and the more intensely people cared the likelier it was that Rowling's actual writing would fall short of their hopes and dreams. This was not limited to romance, of course, and many people found the later books unacceptable for not delivering on the particular promise they saw in the earlier books, whether plot development, character development, symbolism, theme, social or political commentary, or degree of "darkness."
It is hard for me to quantify what percentage of readers were unhappy with or critical of Rowling's portrayal of romance in the last few books, but certainly there are many people who said (and are still saying) "JKR sucks at writing romance." For instance, if you look at recent ONTD post about Rupert Grint speculating on Ron and Hermione getting divorced, you can see that statement posted repeatedly, with minor deviations like "blows," "sucks donkey balls," "couldn't write for shit," "horribly executed," and "dumb af."
It is also hard for me to separate my own opinion of Rowling's portrayal of romance from my satisfaction that the pairings I foresaw, publicly predicted, and became attached to actually happened. It is very possible that my enjoyment of the romances in the books was enhanced by the greater emotional depth and focus on romance and sexuality included in some of my favorite fanfics. And, of course, I had a great deal of ego investment in being proved right after years of participation in contentious online ship debates.
However, though I am unsure of how widespread criticism of the romance is and though my own opinion of Rowling's romance writing may be artificially inflated, I certainly am familiar with the arguments against it. Here are some of the complaints I've seen most often, grouped into categories:
The wrong people were paired:
- Romantic partners were incompatible.
- Characters ended up with bad people.
- Better pairings were missed.
- Paired characters brought out the worst instead of the best in each other.
- Romantic relationships were told not shown.
- Love interests or relationships came from nowhere.
- Readers weren't led to be invested in the relationships.
- Romantic feelings were shown in crude, distasteful ways.
- Romances were based on lust, not love.
- Romantic feelings were shown by jealousy.
- Everyone ended up marrying someone they dated in school.
- We hear about marriages and children rather than careers and achievements.
- We don't see divorces, childless marriages, couples living together without marriage, or single parenthood.
I Love Her Like a Sister and I Reckon She Feels the Same Way About Me
I should probably start with J.K. Rowling's criticism of her own romantic writing. Rowling was interviewed by Emma Watson, who played Hermione in the movies, for the February 2014 issue of Wonderland Magazine:
Watson: I thought we should discuss Hermione… I’m sure you’ve heard this a million times but now that you have written the books, do you have a new perspective on how you relate to Hermione and the relationship you have with her or had with her?
Rowling: I know that Hermione is incredibly recognizable to a lot of readers and yet you don’t see a lot of Hermiones in film or on TV except to be laughed at. I mean that the intense, clever, in some ways not terribly self-aware, girl is rarely the heroine and I really wanted her to be the heroine. She is part of me, although she is not wholly me. I think that is how I might have appeared to people when I was younger, but that is not really how I was inside.
What I will say is that I wrote the Hermione/Ron relationship as a form of wish fulfillment. That’s how it was conceived, really. For reasons that have very little to do with literature and far more to do with me clinging to the plot as I first imagined it, Hermione with Ron.
Watson: Ah.
Rowling: I know, I’m sorry, I can hear the rage and fury it might cause some fans, but if I’m absolutely honest, distance has given me perspective on that. It was a choice I made for very personal reasons, not for reasons of credibility. Am I breaking people’s hearts by saying this? I hope not.
Rowling here is clearly speaking of the Ron/Hermione relationship in terms of her choices as a writer---what I refer to as a "Doylist" perspective. Unfortunately for my purposes, but perfectly natural from her experience as an actress, Emma Watson immediately turns the conversation to a "Watsonian" perspective, discussing Ron and Hermione as if they were real people, which they do for the rest of the discussion:
Watson: I don’t know. I think there are fans out there who know that too and who wonder whether Ron would have really been able to make her happy.
Rowling: Yes exactly.
Watson: And vice versa.
Rowling: It was a young relationship. I think the attraction itself is plausible but the combative side of it… I’m not sure you could have got over that in an adult relationship, there was too much fundamental incompatibility. I can’t believe we are saying all of this - this is Potter heresy!
In some ways Hermione and Harry are a better fit, and I’ll tell you something very strange. When I wrote Hallows, I felt this quite strongly when I had Hermione and Harry together in the tent! I hadn’t told [Steven] Kloves that and when he wrote the script he felt exactly the same thing at exactly the same point.
[clipping quite a bit of discussion---follow the link if you'd like to read it]
While this is of course delightful reading to anyone who always felt that Harry and Hermione were more compatible than Ron and Hermione, it is not nearly as interesting to me, or as relevant to this essay, as whatever Rowling was starting to say about her writing choices. Let me go back to that:
I wrote the Hermione/Ron relationship as a form of wish fulfillment. That’s how it was conceived, really. For reasons that have very little to do with literature and far more to do with me clinging to the plot as I first imagined it, Hermione with Ron.
It sounds to me like Rowling has taken on board various criticisms of her romance-writing in what, after all, was her first published work and come to agree with them to some degree. She seems to be saying that pairing Ron and Hermione was a mistake from the perspective of "literature" and her use of the word "clinging" seems to imply that she now thinks she should have had second thoughts as she wrote and changed her design to put Hermione with someone else---possibly with Harry, going by her later words.
The fact that she and Watson then go on to question whether Hermione and Ron have incompatible personalities and whether Hermione and Harry would have fit better is really quite irrelevant to the question, because of course she could have written their personalities differently to make them more compatible. Or it seems like she could---of course it is possible that the way her creative mind works, she had to write the characters the way they first came to her. And it is not quite clear why Ron/Hermione was "wish fulfillment." Did she unrealistically wish that two such different people could grow to be happy together? Or was she unrealistic in thinking that she could satisfy readers with a platonic relationship between the hero and the most important female character? Or was it something else? I really wish Watson had asked her what she meant instead of jumping into a discussion of the characters as people.
I will try to speculate what she meant in terms of "literature." I see two main possibilities: that she now regrets not taking advantage of the natural affection that readers would have for Harry's female best friend to make a pairing that likely would have been enjoyed by a higher percent of readers, or that as she wrote the series she became aware that her conception of an "opposites attract" bickering-lovers romance was not realistic enough to make good writing, but she was too stubborn to either change the pairing or change the characters to make the pairing less contentious.
I think everyone can see that if Rowling had chosen to pair Harry with Hermione she would have had an easier time writing a convincing, satisfying romance. We are very accustomed to stories where the most prominent male and the most prominent female end up together. Harry and Hermione had shared danger, shared adventures, a lot of dialogue, and a strong affection built slowly over a long period of time, all of which people tend to like in romance. We can easily think of examples: Mulder and Scully, Booth and Bones, Butch and Sundance...
Of course Ron and Hermione had all these things too, but Ron was not the hero or a point-of-view character like Harry so they were less obvious to the reader. And even if it were universally recognized that the Ron/Hermione pairing had all these factors, many readers would not be happy if Ron got a "better" romance---or a more "important" girl---than Harry did.
We can get some additional insight by looking at the romances Rowling was writing when she had this discussion with Watson. The interview probably took place around December 2013 or January 2014. At that time, she had already published the first Cormoran Strike book in April 2013 and the second would be published in June 2014, so she was well along in writing the Cormoran Strike/Robin Ellacott pairing. That romance---and I can't tell you what a relief it is not to have to debate for years to get acceptance that Strike/Robin is being written as a romantic plotline!---is, in many ways, exactly what Harry/Hermione shippers always wanted for Harry and Hermione. Cormoran and Robin don't bicker; they either get along very harmoniously (much more so than Harry and Hermione did) or they argue, occasionally, over substantial, serious issues. They share danger and adventures, they trust each other, they for a long time either suppress (Cormoran) or honestly don't recognize (Robin) their attraction to each other, they don't have any awkward third wheel like Ron hanging around interfering with their dynamic, and Robin is subordinate to Cormoran both literarily and within the story, just as Hermione is to Harry.
The interview also took place three months after the announcement that Rowling would be writing the screenplay for Fantastic Beasts. This movie also has a hero-protagonist and a most-prominent-female that we know he will end up marrying. It is too soon to say what the dynamic between Newt and Tina will be, but it's definitely not a sidekick/sidekick romance like Ron and Hermione.
So I think it is very likely that either Rowling was writing Cormoran/Robin and Newt/Tina in a main guy/main girl way because she regretted her choice not to do that in the HP series, OR she was so immersed in writing main guy/main girl romances for Cormoran and Newt that she was no longer in the mindset to create or admire a Ron/Hermione type romance.
For me personally, I think that is a shame because there's nothing I love more than bickering lovers and Ron and Hermione will forever be favorites of mine. I don't agree that they have a "fundamentally incompatibility" or that the "combative side" is too strong. In fact, I have loved many relationships with much more challenging compatibility issues and a much more serious "combative side." To me, the issue of whether a fictional couple would have a stable and harmonious marriage in real life, whether they, like Fitzwilliam Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett, will "teach the admiring multitude what connubial felicity really was," is just not something I think or care about. I mean, one of my favorite pairs ever was David Addison and Maddie Hayes in "Moonlighting," and their writers couldn't even imagine them staying together for one episode after they got together. Compared to them Ron and Hermione are turtledoves, and I honestly think they have a good chance, as Rowling wrote them, of having a happy and satisfying married life. But, of course, Rowling's opinion is more important than mine at this moment, considering that she (and her collaborators) will have the final word in the "Cursed Child" play.
I'm easy, though---I like many different kinds of romance and I'm enjoying Cormoran and Robin just fine. I'm sure I will like Newt and Tina as well. When it comes to romance, I'm a liking liker who likes.
So much for the vital world-shaking issue of H/Hr versus R/Hr. Not all criticism of the books' romance comes from that perspective. A lot of people, at least among the commenters on that ONTD post I read, seem to have only one objection: that Harry didn't fall in love with the delightfully quirky outsider Luna Lovegood. But there are also many people who say that they could have liked Ron/Hermione and Harry/Ginny just fine---if it had been better written.
Wasn't a Big School. She Was the Only Girl With Any Brains Who Was Fanciable. No Choice.
Generally, the criticism of the writing of Harry/Ginny is that it came out of nowhere, that Ginny wasn't properly developed, that Ginny is shown as unlikable, that they got together too fast, that Harry's feelings were only lust, that it was telling-not-showing, and that it was portrayed distastefully, with a special dislike of the metaphor of Harry's "chest monster." The criticism of Ron/Hermione is that Ron never grew up and doesn't deserve Hermione, that Hermione became irrational and violent (sending canaries at Ron, hitting him when he returned to the campsite), that there was way too much jealousy, that Ron's book was a "rape manual," and that we were shown their fights but not their happy times or tender moments. And, of course, for both pairings, that they basically skipped from first getting together as teenagers to established married couples with kids, with no way of understanding how they progressed from one state to the other.
The question here is not whether those criticisms are valid (I think some are and some aren't). The question here is if there's anything in Rowling's later works that bears on these criticisms. Unfortunately, I do not see much.
The Casual Vacancy has no "successful" romances---no plot lines where we root for two people to get together, and they do, and we are happy. The closest, I suppose, is the relationship between Andrew Price and Gaia Bawden. Gaia is a teenaged girl, beautiful and a newcomer to the village, and Andrew, her classmate, has a huge crush on her. They end up getting a job in the same place so they get to know each other and become friends, but they never "get together" and I wouldn't expect them to do so after the book ends. Besides that there are some married couples, but none that are particularly inviting from a romance perspective.
Certainly Andrew's crush on Gaia is more realistically presented than Harry's interest in girls, in that he notices more than her shiny hair. It is true that we see more description of Andrew's feelings and behaviors as he deals with his attraction than we see of Harry's with either Cho or Ginny, and it is cute and amusing to read about. But I don't think anyone would read it and say "Oh, if only Harry and Ginny had been written like this!"
In the Cormoran Strike series, it seems to me that the romance-related bits are not really different or better than the romance-related bits in the Harry Potter series. They are small and scattered---though becoming noticeably more frequent as we move from the first book to the third. There is a "Cinderella scene" in the first book, of Robin in an expensive green dress, which is someone reminiscent of Hermione's floaty blue robes at the Yule Ball. Just as in the Potter books, Rowling relies heavily on jealousy---or, more precisely, subconscious dislike of or discomfort with the other person's romantic developments---as one of the earliest and strongest indicators of romantic interest. Apparently, on this point at least, Rowling does not agree with her detractors. Perhaps she is influenced by her admiration of Jane Austen, who used it very heavily in her masterpiece Emma. However, finally in the third book we begin to see what you might call "sexual tension"---Robin and Cormoran are awkward with each other in suggestive situations such as staying in the same hotel---and other romantic indicators besides conscious or unconscious jealousy.
If readers like Cormoran and Robin together more than Harry and Ginny (and I think many do), I'd say the main difference is the establishment of Robin as a major point-of-view character from the beginning, the long, slow development of the two of them as colleagues and friends before entering into any romance, and the lack of the humorous and unrefined tone that was part of the Potter books. Also, of course, the romance (whatever it will be) hasn't "happened" yet, so there is not yet any reason to be dissatisfied. Another way of looking at it is that a LOT fewer people are invested in Cormoran's and Robin's possible future relationship than were in Harry and Ginny's. Or Ron's and Hermione's. Or Harry's and Hermione's. Or Harry's and Luna's.
We can also, possibly, see Rowling exploring the downside of a passionate, high-conflict relationship in her description of Cormoran and Charlotte. Charlotte is emotional, irrational, and volatile, some of the same faults as Ron has (though I would say she has them to a much higher degree). However, though Hermione is in some sense a "rock" for Ron, she does not have the stolid "cart horse" quality that Cormoran has for Charlotte. Indeed, Hermione is pretty passionate, emotional, and volatile herself. Some people might want to argue that Robin and Matthew are also bad in a Ron-and-Hermione type way, but I think they're wrong. We're told that before Robin joined the detective agency they were a low-conflict couple, primarily because Robin gave in whenever they had an argument (for instance, when she didn't want to move to London). I actually see the Matthew/Robin relationship having some of the same flaws I was concerned about if Harry had ended up with Hermione. He tended to dominate her too much. Though, of course, if Harry had fancied Hermione as Ron did, he might have conceded more to her, as Ron certainly does in the last two books--and as Matthew does to Robin, when he realizes he might lose her.
I am eagerly anticipating learning the plot of "The Cursed Child" to see what light it might shine back on the relationships of Harry and Ginny and Ron and Hermione during the nineteen years between the Battle of Hogwarts and the Epilogue, and of course to see what happens to them during the play. It will also be somewhat interesting to see how the relationship between Newt Scamander and his future wife Tina Goldstein is portrayed, in comparison to the romances in the Harry Potter books.
It Was the Same Last Time He Was Powerful, People Eloping Left, Right, and Center-
One big objection to the romances in the books is, as someone named "Daniel" put it here:
But yeah, the dominant picture of romance in the Potter series is "You meet your One True Love at age sixteen, court them through school, get married shortly after graduating, have children, and spend the rest of your life in faithful marriage." There's not much to argue there; Rowling isn't exactly subtle. I suspect the idea might be that that's the only sort of romance appropriate to show children.
I sort of partly agree with this. Of course if you look at it objectively most people aren't shown marrying shortly after they graduate, many people seem to be unmarried, there are unhappy marriages, childless marriages, and a (very) few divorces or separations. However, the overwhelming impression made by the Potters, the Weasleys, and of course Harry-and-Ginny and Ron-and-Hermione tends to leave one with this general picture. I think readers tend to feel like the two last couples married soon after school even though of course the Epilogue doesn't tell us that and for all we know they actually dated other people before getting back together with their Year Seven loves. Going by the only evidence we have, the ages of James and Rose, the two marriages might have taken place as much as 5 and 7 years after the book ends.
Rowling wrote the bulk of the HP series as a divorced single mother with very little money and I have no objection at all if she wanted to create a fantasy world where people in love tended to stay married and raise children together. But her subsequent books don't necessarily show such a world. In The Casual Vacancy, the charming village of Pagfort has unhappy marriages (to put it lightly) and happy(ish) ones. Kay Bawden is a never-married single mum and both she and her boyfriend Gavin Hughes are single, with serious relationships in their pasts. Terri Weedon has had four children by different fathers and has never married. The Mollisons' daughter Patricia is a lesbian living in London with her long-term partner. Maureen Lowe is a childless widow.
As best I can judge, the world of the Cormoran Strike novels is identical to our world in the variety of life choices and life circumstances that people experience (though the detective agency setting shows us more divorcing couples than is usual in my experience). However, one interesting point is that the "bad" romances of both Strike and Robin began in school---Robin and Matthew in what we would call high school (sixth form) and Cormoran and Charlotte in college (Oxford).
Another interesting point is that Strike himself is strongly anti-child though not necessarily anti-marriage. Seen through his eyes, his sister Lucy's insistence on stable-marriage-and-children seems like an odd, rather annoying lifestyle choice. And his former colleague Anstis's marriage and children seems like a living hell. Presumably Robin is somewhat pro-child as she is pro-marriage, but I can't say for sure.
If the "Fantastic Beasts" movie is set in the 1920's, Newt Scamander will be at least 23, as the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them author bio states that he was born in 1897. I suppose those who are unhappy with incestuous Hogwarts shipping will be happy that he at least waits that long before meeting his future wife, and that she is from a foreign country. I can't help thinking that part of the reason for the Triwizard Tournaments in the magical world was so that young adult wizards might meet and possibly marry their counterparts from other parts of Europe and thus diminish the dangers of inbreeding in the small magical population, especially for those families who refuse to marry Muggles or Muggleborns. In light of Rowling saying on Pottermore that the Malfoy family has "eschewed the somewhat dangerous practice of inter-marrying within such a small pool of pure-bloods that they become enfeebled or unstable," it is quite possible that Lucius Malfoy's desire to send his son Draco to Durmstrang might have been partly with a view toward encouraging him to find a foreign wife. Alas, Astoria Greengrass, as liberal and tolerant as she might be, comes from one of the "Sacred Twenty-eight Families," so perhaps we had better hope young Scorpius, if he marries and has children, chooses a partner with Muggle blood.
As for The Cursed Child, it remains to be seen what delights (or horrors) it has in store for us.
And that's the end, yayyyyy!!! I'll shut up now. (I'm sure none of you believe that.)