I received a pretty involved question this morning from long time reader and correspondent Wayne Stauffer, one of the original ‘HogPro All-Pros.’ While attempting to answer it, I was compelled to reconsider one of the leading suspects in any line-up of likely Leda Strike murderers, namely, Peter Gillespie. I’ve been relatively dismissive of this fandom theory — see Who Killed Leda Strike? Peter Gillespie for my thoughts way back in 2021 — but Wayne’s question and the latest iteration of the S&E podcast crew theory has me thinking I was wrong not to argue Gillespie is the most likely character to have killed Cormoran’s mom, one readers should think of immediately as the killer.
Here is Wayne’s question, one that isn’t about Leda or Peter per se but Rowling’s ‘Daddy Issues’ and how it plays out in her fiction:
I’m wondering what the Hogwarts Professoriate thinks about an aspect of JKR’s works so far.
More than once the topic of her “strained” relationship with her father has been mentioned, yet in her writings so far we don’t see much of her vicariously working through any lingering “daddy issues” in her fiction (that is, characters with those issues).
We have Luna and Xeno Lovegood, Ginny and Arthur Weasley, and a bit of Hermione and Mr. Granger in the Harry Potter books, but those are all positive relationships.
I’m not as knowledgeable in her Strike novels, though I haven’t seen much discussed on your website. Robin seems to have other issues, but not those.
Casual Vacancy characters have a variety of dysfunctions, but Ickabog and Christmas Pig seem to be free of these.
Since 4th gen Rowling Studies is digging into biographical and psychological influences, I’m wondering how much this Daughter/Father dynamic plays in the writing.
My answer to Wayne was to send him two long posts I’d written, neither of which addressed this subject the way he framed it, but both of which laid out Rowling’s fictional depictions of her relationship with ‘Peter John Rowling,’ her father, via characters named “Peter” or “Simon” and those named “John” or “James.” In the first post, ‘Christmas Pig 1: Jack Jones, Peter, and John,’ you get the Rowling family history and its reflection in the Bad Dads of her work; in the second, ‘Exceptions to the Peter-John Rule: John Bristow, Dolores Umbridge, Matt Cunliffe,’ I answered objections to the theory, namely (!), those characters named ‘John’ who were jerks (or much worse).
It wasn’t a direct answer to Wayne’s question, but it did share in a fairly cohesive way my thinking about “how much this Daughter/Father dynamic plays in the writing” of Rowling-Galbraith. I’m hoping that Prof Stauffer will consider writing up his notes on the actual Daddy-Daughter relationships in all Rowling’s work, a step beyond anything I have done.
He hinted at such an expository exercise in his answer to my response, in which he wrote, “So, Rowling has her characters embody the bad dad qualities more than she has them working through issues?” I think that’s about right, but I haven’t done the necessary survey of the work. My initial reservation would be ‘Jack Jones’ in Christmas Pig whose name is in essence ‘John squared’ and can be assumed to be the equivalent of ‘Joanne;’ the whole mythic Dante-esque alchemical transfiguration of this character in the Land of the Lost is his “working through” his Bad Dad “issues.” The money paragraph of the Christmas Pig post above:
Rowling dedicates the book to David and has explained that the story toys, the cuddly pig favorite and its replacement, reflect two such cuddly pigs that her son adored. Jack Jones, however, is a name, front and back, that is a form of the name John; he is Joanne Rowling more than David Murray, her name also derived from Johannes, the Greek word for John (Rowling has given her daughter Mackenzie the middle name Jean, the more obvious feminine form of John). To put all my allegorical and sublime symbolism cards on the table at the start, what Jack has lost in the story is his father, what Holly fears losing to her step-brother is her father, the Pig is the exteriorized ‘heart’ or love he has as token or “transitional object” of maternal, unconditional love, and the story of the Loser is the sublimated agony of separation from Dad experienced as a child-hero must in the world of things and language. The Christmas Pig, though, in addition to this psychological allegory or dream-journey is an anagogical tale of seeking communion with the Father in Heaven through the light in one’s heart, the Johannine theology of logos-love that permeates Rowling’s work.
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