Guest Post: Mums and Their Sons — Mother/Son Relationships in Harry Potter

January 30, 2022 by

In my ongoing series of posts about The Christmas Pig, I have been arguing that the latest work by Rowling, when used as a lens through which to read her other novels and stories, reveals that Mother’s Love is her repeated symbol for the unconditional and sacrificial love that is the Logos “fabric of reality” and hence of Christ. See ‘The Blue Bunny‘ and ‘Rowling, Ring Writing, and Maternal Love‘ for how Jack’s love for his toy pigs, transference for his mum’s love for him, mirrors Lily’s love for Harry and Leda’s for Cormoran, the love that makes each of these heroes the allegorical Heart or Spirit in Rowling’s various psychomachia. Excited as I am about this idea, I was even more enthusiastic than I always am when Wayne Stauffer at Southeast Houston Community College wrote to me, this time about research he has been doing on just this subject. I asked him if he would share the first fruits of these efforts at HogwartsProfessor and he has sent the following, to include the invaluable appendices. Enjoy!

Mums and Their Sons: Mother/Son Relationships in Harry Potter by P. Wayne Stauffer

I began this analysis initially interested in Narcissa Malfoy’s intervention at the end of Deathly Hallows (DH) when Harry does not die at Voldemort’s killing curse. When she finds out Draco is alive, she lies about Harry being dead. Given the Malfoy pureblood mania in the series and six previous novels’ worth of Potter disdain, I wondered why she would do that. I also became curious about any parallels between Narcissa and Lily Potter in their motherly love for their sons…and their attempts to protect them. I then realized there are several additional sets of mothers and sons in the series. The following is an exploration of mother/son relationships across the Harry Potter series.

Rowling’s relationship with her mother and her devastation when her mum passed away not long after Rowling began drafting the Harry saga are already widely known, so I won’t comment more, other than to say that it seems intuitively obvious that mother’s love could not help but be a subtext somewhere in the background in the storylines of each novel.

The first four mother & son pairs that come to mind are Lily & Harry, Molly & Ron, Narcissa & Draco, and Petunia & Dudley, but there are several others as the series progresses— Giant Mum & Hagrid, Alice & Neville, Mum & Sirius, Merope & Tom Jr., and Eileen & Severus. Ron is the single exception in that all the others are only children—no siblings.

[A couple of side notes: Other only children in the series include Hermione, Luna, and Ginny (I know, Ginny is not an only child, but she is an only daughter). We don’t get much information about their relationships with their mums from which to draw solid conclusions, and mother-daughter relationships are different from mother-son relationships. Molly Weasley as a model magical parent and as the mother of several boys could be the subjects of subsequent analyses.

Also, Harry and Hermione have points of connection from growing up magical in the muggle world and as only children. Ginny becomes the sister Hermione never had; Ron becomes the brother Harry never had. Yes, Harry did grow up with Dudley, but theirs is hardly a brotherly relationship. Dudley was treated as though he were an only child while Harry was merely tolerated out of Petunia’s fear of Dumbledore. The Dursley’s did not encourage Dudley to consider Harry as his equal. Harry also may be drawn to Hermione because, like his mum, she has Muggle parents.]

This analysis focuses on four main combinations of a mother’s love for her son and its effects on him: Lily & Harry, Alice & Neville, Narcissa & Draco, and Merope & Tom Jr.

Join us after the jump for all that! [Read more…]

Filed Under: Guest Posts

Christmas Pig 6: The Ring Composition

January 27, 2022 by 1 Comment

Evan Willis in his ‘For the Straightforward Past Was Lost: A Few Starting Notes on The Christmas Pig‘ wrote about the story’s ring structure:

While a more detailed analysis will need to be done with greater precision, I think we have all the signs of a well-crafted ring narrative. On first read, here are the parallels that stood out to me. We have parts 1+9 centered on the real world, echoed in the middle in part 5 where Jack finds out from Bullyboss what pain had led to Holly’s throwing DP out the car window. Other echoes across the center include Recycling in parts 1 and 8, the Earrings in Mislaid and the City of the Missed, the centrality of the problem of power and politics in parts 4 and 6 on opposite sides of the center. Again, there is much more to do here.

Evan’s first thoughts, as I described in Part 2 of my series of posts on The Christmas Pig, remain an important touchstone for anyone trying to understand Rowling’s artistry and meaning in this story. In this sixth Perennialist reading I pick up the challenge he implicitly made to do a closer examination of The Christmas Pig’s nine part structure.

The post will have three sections: (1) an introduction to traditional ‘turtle-back’ ring composition story structure, (2) a look at Christmas Pig as a nine piece ring with the latch of beginning and end, the story-turn and key ‘meaning in the middle’ of Part Five, The Wastes of the Unlamented, and the correspondences between Parts 2 and 8, 3 and 7, and 4 and 6, and (3) a Perennialist explanation of why this structure simultaneously parallels and advances the subliminal work of transforming the reader.

Join me after the jump for a look ‘under the hood’ at the mechanisms that give Christmas Pig much of the  moral and message it has as something of a spiritual journey and bizarro compass. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Christmas Pig, Ring Composition

Harry Potter, Newt Scamander, & Wands

January 25, 2022 by 1 Comment

This clip from a 2016 interview with Eddie Redmayne, the actor who plays Newt Scamander in the Fantastic Beasts film franchise, highlights his relationship with the wand the character uses. I confess to enjoying this despite being no fan of the Potter adaptations and the Beasts franchise. After the jump — Three Notes! [Read more…]

Filed Under: Fantastic Beasts, Movie Thoughts

The Sword Hidden in a Frozen Pond ‘Dissolution’ and ‘Deathly Hallows:’ Literary Allusion and Reinvention?

January 24, 2022 by 10 Comments

I gave a talk to students at the University of Louisville last week in which, almost as an aside, I asserted that the pivotal chapter of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, ‘The Silver Doe,’ was the best and most important chapter in the Hogwarts Saga. The Arthurian, alchemical, and Estecean Christian symbolism make it a one-stop introduction to everything brilliant in the series; that it is the story-turn in the series finale’s meaning-laden ring structure is just an ‘extra.’

My favorite part of the chapter is Ron Weasley’s description of how Dumbledore’s Deluminator enabled him to find Harry and Hermione on the run. The combination of light, heart, Christmas, and name tokens here and their deployment as set-up to Ron’s victory over the two-eyed Locket Horcrux (and his own transformed vision, cf. Matthew 6:21-23) reveals Rowling as a traditional allegorist in the tradition of Spenser, Shakespeare, Bunyan, Coleridge, and the Inklings.

I suspect, though, that others think of Harry’s descent into the pool to get the Sword of Gryffindor, the Locket’s attempt to strangle him, and Ron the Baptist appearing ex machina to raise the Boy Who Lived from a near-certain death by drowning as ‘The Silver Doe’s defining moment. (Did I mention the albedo-photismos qualities of this chapter?) I get that choice. High drama, plenty of action, a real Big Screen life-saving sequence. The Lady in the Lake sword-deliverer story in a snow-scape. This chapter has it all.

That being said, I want to share a passage from a 2003 novel that was a very big hit in the UK, one I think it more than credible that Rowling read at the time of its publication. If you don’t see the parallels with ‘The Silver Doe’ chapter’s sword in the frozen pond scene, I think you’ll need to read it again. It’s nothing like plagiarism or theft but a brilliant re-invention and re-purposing of another writer’s work, even perhaps a hat-tip to a like-minded author. The book is C. J. Sansom’s Dissolution, the connection with Rowling is through P. D. James, and the parallel scene and compare-and-contrast discussion with Deathly Hallows’ pivotal chapter are all to be found after the jump! [Read more…]

Filed Under: Deathly Hallows Discussion Points, Deathly Hallows Lectures, Hog Pro Notes

Secrets of Dumbledore Summary Posted

January 22, 2022 by 1 Comment

Thanks to Kelly for sharing this. Three quick notes:

(1) I thought the entire plot had been revealed months ago and only those not seriously wrapped up in the series were still in the dark about the not-yet-released third Fantastic Beasts movie. Apparently not? Kelly assures me that this teaser’s information about the Grindelwald family is big news in Newt Scamander Fandom.

(2) My surprise served as a reminder that, focused as I have been on Christmas Pig and the site continues to be on the Cormoran Strike mysteries, Hogwarts Professor has neglected the third Beasts film (though we have had important moments…). Contrast our near silence about Secrets of Dumbledore with this post about an ensemble cast photograph before the release of Crimes of Grindelwald. I welcome, consequently, any and all guest posts with speculation about the next movie or links to sites devoted to such things. Let me know what folks who follow the Warner Brothers droppings and teasers are saying so I can share it with our readers here.

(3) I will not be doing a deep dive into Secrets of Dumbledore both because my time is better spent with Strike and Pig, not to mention my thesis, but, and this is reflected in “better spent” I guess, I do not believe the films can be considered a “work by J. K. Rowling” any more than, say, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. My experience in tracking down the deleted scenes from the filming script in Fantastic Beasts and in Crimes of Grindelwald demonstrate that the David Duo film Rowling’s script and then butcher it into a Blockbuster Formula Package (see here and here if you doubt me on this). I’m going to wait, consequently, until the series is done and deo volente Rowling publishes her Fantastic Beast scripts before attempting any more analysis of the series.

But I do hope that those who are movie fans — I am not — and who are knowledgeable about the artistry of this medium will share their thoughts about the movie about to be released, if only because Hogwarts Professor tries to satisfy and delight the interests of all its readers. Have at it!

 

Filed Under: Fantastic Beasts