Let’s be real.
Rowling started out making a fairly bog standard magical kids book. It was all about the fantasy of being a wizard, and relied on tropes so old they get found in La Brea.
This isn’t a bad thing. There’s nothing wrong with that kind of kid lit.
But she wasn’t a good writer. She was mid tier at best. So the eventual success of the series got beyond her abilities. While the last book was much better overall than the first few, it still relied on shoddy world building because she had chased sales.
She tried to turn a kid’s light fantasy into a YA fatasy-adventure. To an extent, it worked. And I don’t mean that it wasn’t successful, she had a hit on her hands because the idea behind it all was brilliant. It pulled from a long history of British youth fiction, and added in fantasy and magic and a ton of tropes.
But from the perspective of a coherent story in a coherent world, ignoring the success in terms of sales, it was cobbled together without a plan, and it shows. It wasn’t until maybe order of the phoenix that she had a plan for how the story would end, and she had to do a lot of hand waving to make it happen.
Again, that’s okay. Nothing wrong with a bit of light fiction. But, it had cultural impact way beyond its original scope. So it draws the same kind of analysis that something like LOTR does, and it just can’t compare. It barely holds up to comparisons with Narnia, and Narnia at least kept things vague and mystical without trying to get into the mechanisms under the hood.
For whatever reasons, Harry, in the books, long before the movies, resonated with kids. So the series exploded. And now everyone pokes at it like it was ever supposed to be literature, with any serious thought behind it. It was all broad brush strokes on construction paper from the beginning, expecting anything in it to hold up to scrutiny is like expecting politicians to be honest and up front. It is what it is.
I always say - to defend the series (which doesn’t need too much defending, it’s the most successful book series after the old testament > new testament > Quran trilogy). The magic of Harry Potter is that all of the fantasy magic works exactly as well as it needs to right at the moment that it’s directly in front of the readers eyes. As you mention, as soon as it leaves the view of the characters in the story, it literally blows up into nonsense. However, as the story is being told the magic used is awesome and just what the plot needs at that exact moment to move along.
To be fair, Harry Potter is probably more logically consistent than the Bible is.
Narnia at least kept things vague and mystical without trying to get into the mechanisms under the hood.
You open the hood and it’s just C.S. Lewis crouched in the engine bay, smiling gently and saying “the lion is Jesus.”
To say it more bluntly: That whole story ark was cobbled together by an amateur and is barely hobbling on crumbling crutches. In regards of storytelling and consistency it’s one of the most shitty dilettantic book series I’ve ever encountered. And the characters aren’t coming alive, they are just bland and boring.
Really bad books.
She’s a billionaire.
We have a saying in Germany: Eat shit - millions of flys can’t be wrong.
JKR is a TERF with terrible writing skills and worldbuilding. The idea of a comfy, cozy british castle where you could fulfill your magical dreams and get sorted into a house is an incredibly fun self-insert universe, just like Pokemon, Star Trek, etc.
The idea of a comfy, cozy british castle where you could fulfill your magical dreams and get sorted into a house is an incredibly fun self-insert universe, just like Pokemon, Star Trek, etc.
Which makes her a great children’s book author. Her world building did exactly what it was supposed to do: encourage imagination.
Her political/social views and appeal to adult audiences are irrelevant. I think she’s a fantastic children’s book author because she did the thing that’s most important: get kids to read.
Her political/social views and appeal to adult audiences are irrelevant. I think she’s a fantastic children’s book author because she did the thing that’s most important: get kids to read.
She weaves her awful views into her books, though, from racist caricatures of Jewish People represented by the Goblin Bankers, to the anti-labor organizing section of the books with the odd Hermoine/Elf revolt. It’s entirely relevant.
The world has exciting and fantastical properties, yes, and she did get children to read, absolutely. However, you cannot unti her views from how they were woven into her works.
racist caricatures of Jewish People represented by the Goblin Bankers
Projecting much? She doesn’t make any ties to Jewish people in her portrayal of goblins. I honestly don’t see how anyone could get this impression w/o actively looking for reasons to dislike JK Rowling.
Rowling’s goblins come from European folklore. Here’s a Reddit post about it, or you can feel free to go down a rabbit hole about European folklore and find a bunch of similarly depicted creatures (brownies, leprechauns, etc) and see how Rowling likely constructed her view of these creatures.
I honestly don’t see any overlap between goblins and Jewish people, any overlap is a stretch by critics IMO.
Hermoine/Elf revolt
I don’t see how it’s odd.
Elves were enslaved by exploiting their innate sense of loyalty. Think of something like a dog, who will defend its master even if the master is terrible to it. Or look at humans, where once we’re part of a tribe (however you define that), we’ll overlook issues with that tribe and defend it anyway (see: cults, political divide, racial divide, etc).
Rowling is a feminist (at least how she defines it), but her book uses a male protagonist (perhaps for broader appeal?), so she develops Hermoine into a strong, female character. That’s why she puts this “odd” piece of character development into the story, she wants girls to look up to Hermoine, so she can’t just stay in the background for the whole series. As an outsider, it makes sense for her to attack “insider” things, like acceptance of elvish slavery. She could easily have used another opportunity, but HP had already freed one elf two books prior, so Hermoine trying to free more is just an easy way to develop Hermoine’s character using information already presented (she needs a way to stand apart from HP) and fits with the whole “outsider” thing her character is going for.
I see Harry Potter as having very little social commentary, other than a criticism of government (total ineptness of Ministry of Magic, which I think is a caricature of UK gov’t) and a general theme of combating intolerance (Voldemort is bad because he’s intolerant, not because he’s a murderer). Both of these are great themes for kids, since “adults dumb” and “bullies suck” really resonate with kids.
She uses caricatures as plot devices, not social commentary. Gringotts getting broken into is powerful because it’s guarded by a race that’s uniquely positioned to defend gold. Dobby being freed is powerful because it’s a complete affront to wizarding world norms and an “outsider” solution to a stalemate (elves are intensely loyal, humans are exploitative). Any of her views that make it into the book are more accidental than anything, if not completely fabricated by critics of Rowling.
HP is just a children’s book, not a social commentary.
Regarding the elf slavery, there’s a guest post on Rowling’s blog (which she must at least have approved even though she didn’t write it) that makes the case that Hermione was wrong to attempt to liberate the elves because the elves enjoyed being slaves, and the point of that subplot was to demonstrate that it’s bad when people attempt to solve other people’s problems without a request for help and bad when people get offended on other people’s behalf. A normal person wouldn’t let something advocating for such a major misunderstanding of their work on their blog, especially if it was claiming they were pro-slavery.
Most people reading the books would interpret it as implying Hermione was right, but for someone who’s seen that blog post on Rowling’s site and thinks she read it before it was published and could have vetoed it, it’s not a leap to read it again and conclude that it was meant to be pro-slavery and that’s why the other main characters, who you’re usually supposed to identify with, make fun of Hermione.
On its own, it’s simplest to say it just wasn’t thought through, but when it’s part of a pattern of off-colour opinions, it’s harder to give the benefit of the doubt.
I honestly don’t think making a statement on slavery was the point. I think she wanted Hermoine to assert herself and become a bit more than a supporting character, and the elf thing was low-hanging fruit. So I think we’re supposed to cheer for Hermoine asserting herself, and whether we think she should succeed is kind of irrelevant.
So I think both sides of the argument are reading too much into it.
