Scans_Daily

I never really had the same level of investment in Harry Potter to have any really, really strong feelings on the matter. Well, that's kind of a lie, but my strong feelings weren't about the characters, but rather the occasional mismatch between subtext and text.

(Caveat! This is just my feelings towards it, I've very aware I'm in the minority here. )

In a nutshell, stuff like....textually, fantastic racism and slavery is bad. Subtextually, it's all about the White Man's Burden. There was a lot of that, actually, it drove me nuts. For example, Hermione came across like an abolitionist in a less shrill pro-slavery novel: well intentioned, but fundamentally misguided, to the point of harming those she wants to help. (And when I say she came across that way, I mean it very literally, the portrayal of the issue could have been lifted from a pro-slavery novel with just a bit of copy and paste. You wouldn't even have to change the dialogue, as the house elves' speech was highly reminiscent of the old minstrel shows. Or, for a completely different example, Harry was selfless (everyone said so. Repeatedly), but subtextually...he was pretty self-absorbed. That kind of disconnect kind of drives me insane, as a reader. It gives me a figurative headache to have text and subtext sending such opposite messages. So I can't really say anything about heart wrenching or character harm, because by the end of the series, I was wishing for some mental Advil and thinking that maybe I'd have preferred it more from Neville's point of view, heh.