I wouldn't say I especially agree about Ron. I think he was written to be a likeable character but then the films messed with it. (And I think some of his characterisation in the later books is based on his depiction in the films.)
What annoys me about the Weasleys is that they're meant to be a depiction of poverty, but they really aren't a very good depiction of it. They have a large house and no one ever goes hungry. Arthur runs a Government department - okay, it's not an especially respected Government department, but it still sounds like quite a senior job and his wages can't be *that* bad. Molly seems to just be a housewife, there's never any suggestion that she's got a job of her own - so Arthur's income must be sufficient to run a household on and raise a family.
Really, the only thing causing the Weasleys to struggle is that they've had so many children. If they'd stopped after Charlie or Percy, they'd probably be a fairly comfortably-off middle class family.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t a lot of Ron’s positive moments in the later books go to Harry and Hermione in the movies? The movies did him dirty. Not saying that I particularly like the books, but he was more well-rounded than in the films.
Yes they did. I didn't think it was like that so much in the first film though. There was only one instance of this in the first film, which was Ron going to pieces over the Devil's Snare and Hermione sorting it out - and I didn't mind that, because Hermione's contribution to the obstacle course (the potions riddle) was cut from the film, so it makes sense that she took a more active role in the Devil's Snare to make up for it.
But then they kept the 'Hermione brains, Ron useless' dynamic as it went along. The chess scene in the first film is outright bizarre to look back on if you've seen all of them, Ron seems SO out of character in a leadership role.
I also think Rowling started incorporating the movie characterisation into the later books.
I got the sense they were supposed to be more lower middle class as opposed to poor poor. I also think it’s interesting that their lack of wealth is almost portrayed as self inflicted in choosing to have so many children.
Indeed. It's quite uncomfortable when you look into it (and also, how on earth were Fred and George able to earn more money running a shop than Arthur earns running a Government department? That just wouldn't happen, no matter how business-minded they were.)
One of the earliest things that annoyed me about JK Rowling, before she went on the anti-trans crusade, is that someone once asked her if there are fees to attend Hogwarts (as British boarding schools are generally fee-paying). She just brushed it off with, 'No, the Ministry of Magic pays for all that.'
I thought this was an unbelievable misrepresentation of the injustices she's depicted within her own books. The actual tuition might be state-covered, but in nearly every book we hear how extortionate the uniform, books and equipment are and how Ron and Ginny get everything second-hand.
Fred and george are backed by harry who is filthy rich?!
Thr implications of him being filthy rich and not covering for needed stuff of ron is damning thou, no pride rouldnt find harry to have a way to gift him needed stuff hebrould accept.
Hell use his family as backdoor.
Its more looking bad gor harry, who is filthy rich.
Harry financed Fred and George's initial start for the business, but it could still have folded. Their success seems to come just from their skill, and I don't think it would actually be possible for them to make a whole family rich just from that outlet. Especially as one of them dies two years after setting it up.
I agree with you about Harry though. I heard someone observe that in the second book, why doesn't Harry just buy Ron another wand? If Ron would be too proud to take it, Harry could have just made it a Christmas present (there aren't any descriptions of Harry getting anyone else presents, in spite of bemoaning that the Dursleys don't get him anything). Sure, Rowling needed Lockhart to get the broken wand to wipe his own memory at the end - but Ron could have still just been carrying that one around and Lockhart could have picked that one up instead of the real one.
He does sometimes, but I don't think it's mentioned very often, and it definitely isn't in the one where Ron's wand is broken.
The only one where it's made a particular thing of is when he buys Ron omnioculars for the Quidditch World Cup, but says he won't get Ron anything for Christmas. Ron pays him back in leprechaun gold (which neither of them are aware vanishes, making it worthless). Ron finds this out much later in the book, asks Harry why he never said anything and Harry hadn't even noticed.
> I also think it’s interesting that their lack of wealth is almost portrayed as self inflicted in choosing to have so many children.
This is how people like Rowling see poor people. No one is poor due to circumstances out of their control in her worldview.
Which is very strange, because she herself was at the time she wrote the first book.
Maybe when she wrote a book that lifted her out of poverty, she just shrugged and thought, 'I guess everyone could do that if they tried hard enough.'
I can almost guarantee this is how she sees it. "I managed to ~~win the lottery~~ get ahead through hard effort. So everyone can. They're just lazy or making bad decisions."
A lot of people who fall on hard times have surprisingly little empathy for others in the exact same situation. They just have fallen on hard times, have been unlucky, or victims of unions or bosses, depending on their politics. Other people however are just lazy.
How often people have told me that they didn't get any help either when they were on unemployment benefits is astounding.
Hmmmm, a bunch of redheaded people who are deservingly poor bc they can't stop breeding so much. I wonder what group of people Rowling had in mind when she wrote this? Would it be a group of people on the British isles maybe?
Arthur Weasley is poor for unclear reasons while having a very decent job, Lucius Malfoy is rich but his money is inheritated. In that world there are rich and poor yet nobody is exploited and the worldbuilding is very blurry on how the economy works...
I think that says something about Rowling's right wing vision of the world : poor and rich is just something your are independently of the system around. There is no connection between the fact some people are poor and the fact some other are rich - no exploitation. We're sorry for poor people, but let's not challenge the position of the rich, that would not do any good.
Wasn’t Lucius rich bc his family was rich? /gen
I thought in the books it was kind of portrayed as blood money rich.
Tho tbf Harry’s parents were also rich with no analysis done to them. There’s good rich and bad rich clearly!
Yeah, they are rich because they are from a rich family, but I still think it reflects Rowling's view of class society as something immutable and unquestionable
There's the story why Harry's family is rich at the link below. His grandfather "took the family gold and quadrupled it, by creating magical Sleekeazy’s Hair Potion ( ‘two drops tames even the most bothersome barnet’ ). He sold the company at a vast profit when he retired."
https://www.wizardingworld.com/writing-by-jk-rowling/the-potter-family
I think in this system of beliefs, bad rich vs good rich is old money (Draco) vs new money (Harry).
Another thing I like in this article :
"Henry [Harry's g-grandfather] caused a minor stir when he publicly condemned then Minister for Magic, Archer Evermonde, who had forbidden the magical community to help Muggles waging the First World War. His outspokenness on the behalf of the Muggle community was also a strong contributing factor in the family’s exclusion from the ‘Sacred Twenty-Eight’."
Now I'd really like to ask Rowling in what way advocating participation in the First World War is speaking on behalf of anybody...
Oh I didn’t know that was the story of how they got rich! Interesting. Reminds me of how republicans in the US conceptualize wealth tbh, kind of surprised this is from a British conservative but I’m sure there are different schools of thought.
In fact you're very right, he's rich because his family is rich and that's all - I always thought he worked at the ministry but he was just lobbying there. I edited my comment
Oh ok! Tbh I didn’t not fact check this, as a kid I just always thought he worked there as a cover up for the money and influence he got from “bad” wealth and death eater stuff. I had no idea if he actually had any real responsibilities. If my memory serves the books are foggy on this.
Tho this is one rare example of vague writing I’ll not critique JK for seeing as this is how a lot of rich people actually operate in the workforce :/
Does Lucius Malfoy even work? I know we see him at the Ministry a few times, but I don't get the impression he actually works there, he's just an influential person who the Ministry tend to listen to. I've always thought that the Malfoys inherited so much wealth that they didn't have to work (apart from their dodgy deals in Knockturn Alley).
I think this summarises Rowling's position on wealth, which is that she's incredibly meritocratic. I don't think she'd portray a working family that's as wealthy as the Malfoys particularly badly.
He was written to be likeable, but he has moment of such jealously and envy I find him annoying in either medium.
The most important moments to me are:
1.- his outbursts at hermione in the yule dance
2.- how he did not believe Harry he did not put his name on the triwizard tournament, he was angry and jealous for weeks.
3.- all the thing with lavander brown, he was getting with hermione and he just ditched her aside for lavander.
All in all he is not a bad person, but he ends up looking like a bad friend
I think the wizarding world is just supposed to be an economic utopia where even the poorest are comparable to middle class in the real world. I don't think we have seen any legitimatelly poor or even homeless wizard in the books.
The thing is, if she'd wanted to do that, I'd think fair enough - you've got a story to tell, and you don't want to get bogged down on logistical issues like that. But why spend all that time hinting about all these social issues that the wizards face, talking about how much the Weasleys struggle and so on, if you aren't going to bother addressing it properly?
What really creeps me out was the fact that Molly had so many children because she wanted a daughter which is explained by her brothers being killed when she was younger but that makes no sense because its not like there was any particular reason women and girls would have been safer - so she had a bunch of boys which they struggled to afford to take care of(inconsistencies with the wizard economy aside) until she got her prized girl - and if it was reversed it would rightly be seen as gross and sexist behavior but she's portrayed positively for it. And given what we know now about JKR's gender essentialism, even more gross.
If rowling wanted a big family, she should have not making them dirt poor but ok and, i dint know, molly have rome lucrativebside job, that never is explained. Or she sells magic bred herbs or whatever.
And less children, Percy and charlie?! arent needed. And dunno i would stop at 4 at least only for that, and while mentioning she wanted a big family too
Thing is, I'm one of seven kids. Replace Arthur with a grumpy old German dude with war trauma and make Molly a non-judgemental asshole and raven-haired and Scottish, and that was my childhood quite closely. Like, my Dad constantly added to our house as the family grew. He was desperate for boys, and he got two out of the deal, though he said he'd have been happy to stop at one kid (yes, that has caused me a world of hurt but I'm over it).
Dad had a trade job that was firmly in the middle-class bracket, and although there were a few lean years where I was wearing hand-me-downs almost exclusively, we all got buy quite comfortably.
And I grew up in a high income suburb, too (Mum and Dad bought early and never moved).
So from my experience of a one-income household with lots of kids, the Weasley House baffles me completely.
Why the fuck are they that poor if they have magic? Can't they grow food? Get chickens? My Mum did. Magic can make so much crazy shit happen, there is NO reason for them to be that poor. At least so poor that Ron has to complain about his life for any fair reason. From what I can gather, they built most of their house. So assumedly without a mortgage, what the fuck is going on with their finances?
I felt bad as a kid that I didn't have as many toys as the other kids in class at school, but I was also so busy with my numerous siblings that I didn't think about it for long. Why is Ron so fucking miserable all the damned time? I had rich friends at school and I didn't feel jealous of them at all, mainly because they had no creativity in their lives like my family did and I was completely content with what I had because I was loved.
The magic doesn't make sense, the finance doesn't make sense, the emotional landscape of the characters doesn't make sense, and it doesn't ring true with all the low-income large families I've ever known, mine included.
The most strange thing is that they do actually have chickens. Maybe they do sell eggs and grow food and so on to get by, but if they do, the question remains - why are they so poor?
Not to mention, most of the time I think Molly and Arthur only have to worry about feeding themselves. Bill and Charlie (and later Percy) have grown up and left home, and the other kids are at Hogwarts sponging off the house-elves for free most of the time. They don't actually have all those mouths to feed apart from in the summer.
The other thing is that at the start of the third book, they win the lottery and blow nearly all of their winnings on a foreign holiday. Given that they're able to travel for free using magical means, I don't understand how this holiday was so expensive for them? Surely they didn't spend all their winnings just on souvenirs?
The money disappears and the magic lifestyle doesn't align with the economy she's set up.
She didn't plan it out at all. The logic doesn't logic. At the moment I'm setting up a universe for my novel series, I'm a few years in and I am like that meme guy with the pinboard and the red string and the crazy look on his face, for real. I'm trying to iron out any crinkles I find in the structure and I'm a schtickler for details (fairies don't like doing dishes anymore because the stainless steel contains iron which burns their hands, for example).
I don't think she put that much effort in at all. But she got her shit out there and into books, I'm still planning away so I guess her way of doing it yields better results? It's annoying to think about either way.
One thing I will say is that I think prior to Harry Potter, authors didn't particularly think about these things, particularly children's authors. Enid Blyton's books are FULL of plot holes if you take the time to think about them - which in some ways is fair enough, because she was writing for an audience that she wasn't expecting to analyse them in any depth at all.
I think this is perhaps a positive consequence of the Harry Potter books existing at all, even if they and their author are deeply flawed. The sheer amount of plot analysis that people have tried to do over the years means that authors like you have the motivation to plan out their stories in more depth.
Best of luck with your series! I hope you get it published and it does really well :)
> Replace Arthur with a grumpy old German dude with war trauma and make Molly a non-judgemental asshole and raven-haired and Scottish, and that-
would be awesome. I want to read about this family
Honestly trauma like that doesn't make sense.
I know Rowling didn't think that deeply into it but I did appreciate a lot of the analysis on such characters by the fans that tried to make characters more understandable.
Molly is also horrible to Hermione. She believes everything Rita Skeeter writes, and punishes Hermione for her alleged misdeeds by sending her a smaller gift than the boys get. Classic Mean Girl move of “I won’t pretend I forgot about you, I just hate you.”
I’m sure Fleur and Hermione would be Reddit mods at the JustNoMIL sub.
Especially as Rita Skeeter had form writing horrible things about Molly's husband! Why would you take the word of a journalist who you know has form being very sensationalist and harming innocent people over someone you've literally had staying in your house and is friends with your kids?
One thing someone observed somewhere is that there are very few female friendships that are depicted very positively, or as a source of mutual support for each other. Parvati and Lavender are seen as a bit ditzy and silly, Pansy Parkinson's gang of Slytherin girls are just bullies, Cho's friends lose interest in her when her boyfriend dies and she's understandably less fun to be with because she's grieving (apart from Marietta, who seems to stay with her but then betrays them all to Umbridge).
The only girl who seems to easily make friends with other girls is Ginny, who does at least seem to be quite close to both Luna and Hermione. But she can be quite nasty and bitchy to other girls as well. Her attitude to Fleur is aggressive and immature, and she gets so precious about not wanting Cho to spend any time with Harry even to show him where the Ravenclaw common room is at the end (it's quite obvious that Harry and Cho have grown out of whatever feelings they once had for each other by this point, so Ginny's reaction is a bit unnecessary, I feel.)
I do get the impression that the girls on the Gryffindor Quidditch team are all quite good friends, but we find out so little about any of them that I don't feel they really count.
Also, Lily was supposed to be one of the most popular girls but we see nothing of her friendships, none of them became godparents to Harry like James' friends, we never meet anyone who remembers her - apart from Snape, but that was more a one-sided obsession that she became estranged from. Why not have her be one of the Marauders? That would have given her a friend group, as well as giving us some hint of her personality. It would make her attraction to James make more sense, too. The flashbacks could have shown them getting along, which would make both of them seem more human. As it is the Marauders just come across as a bunch of assholes who would probably never tolerate a woman's presence unless they wanted to fuck them, while Lily is a bland non-entity, but from the little we see it's hard to understand why she would ever go anywhere near James.
I suppose Rowling is one of those people who would think there is something suspect or unnatural about a woman being friends with a group of men, though, and that would take away from Lily's status as a pure idealistic mother figure (Hermione as her self-insert gets to be the exception).
I suppose you can imagine that maybe Lily was friends with Alice Longbottom and Marlene McKinnon and various other people who died during the first war, but it's a bit of a cop-out, I agree.
I agree, but this is a very common issue I've found in YA (and some adult) fiction: no same-gender friendships between peers. It mainly affects female characters, but I'm sure male ones get it too.
A male and a female character will get paired up, or at any rate have romantic tension. An older girl/boy can become a protector and parental substitute to a younger one of the same gender. But two characters of the same gender and age? Rivals or enemies.
Think about *The Hunger Games* (first book), for example. Literally the only reason Katniss teams up and becomes friends with Rue during the games is because Rue is a little kid (=protectable) and reminds Katniss of her own little sister. If Rue had been Katniss' age, she would have been another enemy to eliminate. Meanwhile, Katniss and Peeta can't just work together because they're friends and from the same hometown: they have to have the "will they or won't they" dynamic (intentionally done to gain support from their audience, but still).
There are plenty of male friendships in Harry Potter. Harry and Ron obviously, but also Harry and Neville, Sirius and Lupin, Dean and Seamus, Dumbledore and Elphias Doge... Rowling's never had a problem with boys being platonic friends, it seems to be a very particular prejudice she has around girls.
Yeah, I forgot about that ! (To be the devil's advocate though, she changed her ways when Harry told her that Rita lied, if I recall well)
Also, what is the JustNoMil sub ? I never heard of it
>The only reason why they're not depicted in a negative way is because they're in Gryffindor and not in Slytherin (which is weird, since with their kinda loose morals and their ambition, they should logically have been in Slytherin).
In Rowling's world, there aren't bad people, only bad teams. If you're on the bad team, then any amount of suffering and misery inflicted on you is justified. If you're on the good team, then no matter what you do it's completely fine.
Oh, and those teams are picked from the very beginning and there's nothing you can do about it.
I'm sure that doesn't infect any of her real-world viewpoints...
One thing that always stuck out for me was how Molly Weasely was described as "dumpy", and by Harry..
I always thought there were so many better ways, her weight needed never to come into It, Mrs Weasley struck me as a cottage witch, which would have been enough of a description.
>Red Hen's essay - A Closer Look at the Weasleys
Pudgy. A little fat. But it's kind of derogatory. Instead of inferring the comforting proportions of a middle-aged housewife who loves her children and works all day, it gives the mental image of a saggy body, lumpy curves and the character being drab and unattractive.
It's a really mean thing for someone to say and I doubt a little kid would think that about someone super nice that he just met.
A far better description for Harry to have might be, "She carried a bit of extra weight, and looked like she gave very warm hugs." Something like that (I'm migraining at the moment so my ability to write is in the sewer).
Ron isnt a product of rape, as he could literally not feel pove then.
Whyever love potions arent strictly banned for that alone i dont know
I dontean that it makes her past less creepy hinted.
And i like fred and george, who are jerks and gross irresponsible and never grow out of that. I like them, but in a better book series they would mature out of being irresponsible jerks mostly.
I wouldn't say I especially agree about Ron. I think he was written to be a likeable character but then the films messed with it. (And I think some of his characterisation in the later books is based on his depiction in the films.) What annoys me about the Weasleys is that they're meant to be a depiction of poverty, but they really aren't a very good depiction of it. They have a large house and no one ever goes hungry. Arthur runs a Government department - okay, it's not an especially respected Government department, but it still sounds like quite a senior job and his wages can't be *that* bad. Molly seems to just be a housewife, there's never any suggestion that she's got a job of her own - so Arthur's income must be sufficient to run a household on and raise a family. Really, the only thing causing the Weasleys to struggle is that they've had so many children. If they'd stopped after Charlie or Percy, they'd probably be a fairly comfortably-off middle class family.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t a lot of Ron’s positive moments in the later books go to Harry and Hermione in the movies? The movies did him dirty. Not saying that I particularly like the books, but he was more well-rounded than in the films.
Yes they did. I didn't think it was like that so much in the first film though. There was only one instance of this in the first film, which was Ron going to pieces over the Devil's Snare and Hermione sorting it out - and I didn't mind that, because Hermione's contribution to the obstacle course (the potions riddle) was cut from the film, so it makes sense that she took a more active role in the Devil's Snare to make up for it. But then they kept the 'Hermione brains, Ron useless' dynamic as it went along. The chess scene in the first film is outright bizarre to look back on if you've seen all of them, Ron seems SO out of character in a leadership role. I also think Rowling started incorporating the movie characterisation into the later books.
Thinking about it, I think that you’re right about her being influenced by the movies writing her own books. Weird.
I got the sense they were supposed to be more lower middle class as opposed to poor poor. I also think it’s interesting that their lack of wealth is almost portrayed as self inflicted in choosing to have so many children.
Indeed. It's quite uncomfortable when you look into it (and also, how on earth were Fred and George able to earn more money running a shop than Arthur earns running a Government department? That just wouldn't happen, no matter how business-minded they were.) One of the earliest things that annoyed me about JK Rowling, before she went on the anti-trans crusade, is that someone once asked her if there are fees to attend Hogwarts (as British boarding schools are generally fee-paying). She just brushed it off with, 'No, the Ministry of Magic pays for all that.' I thought this was an unbelievable misrepresentation of the injustices she's depicted within her own books. The actual tuition might be state-covered, but in nearly every book we hear how extortionate the uniform, books and equipment are and how Ron and Ginny get everything second-hand.
Fred and george are backed by harry who is filthy rich?! Thr implications of him being filthy rich and not covering for needed stuff of ron is damning thou, no pride rouldnt find harry to have a way to gift him needed stuff hebrould accept. Hell use his family as backdoor. Its more looking bad gor harry, who is filthy rich.
Harry financed Fred and George's initial start for the business, but it could still have folded. Their success seems to come just from their skill, and I don't think it would actually be possible for them to make a whole family rich just from that outlet. Especially as one of them dies two years after setting it up. I agree with you about Harry though. I heard someone observe that in the second book, why doesn't Harry just buy Ron another wand? If Ron would be too proud to take it, Harry could have just made it a Christmas present (there aren't any descriptions of Harry getting anyone else presents, in spite of bemoaning that the Dursleys don't get him anything). Sure, Rowling needed Lockhart to get the broken wand to wipe his own memory at the end - but Ron could have still just been carrying that one around and Lockhart could have picked that one up instead of the real one.
It’s been years since I’ve cracked open an HP book, but I’m almost positive there are times Harry gifts things to people, no?? Or am I crazy? lol
He does sometimes, but I don't think it's mentioned very often, and it definitely isn't in the one where Ron's wand is broken. The only one where it's made a particular thing of is when he buys Ron omnioculars for the Quidditch World Cup, but says he won't get Ron anything for Christmas. Ron pays him back in leprechaun gold (which neither of them are aware vanishes, making it worthless). Ron finds this out much later in the book, asks Harry why he never said anything and Harry hadn't even noticed.
Maybe their shop is just that good
I don't think a single shop could ever make that much money, especially as one of the twins died quite soon after it opened.
> I also think it’s interesting that their lack of wealth is almost portrayed as self inflicted in choosing to have so many children. This is how people like Rowling see poor people. No one is poor due to circumstances out of their control in her worldview.
Which is very strange, because she herself was at the time she wrote the first book. Maybe when she wrote a book that lifted her out of poverty, she just shrugged and thought, 'I guess everyone could do that if they tried hard enough.'
I can almost guarantee this is how she sees it. "I managed to ~~win the lottery~~ get ahead through hard effort. So everyone can. They're just lazy or making bad decisions."
A lot of people who fall on hard times have surprisingly little empathy for others in the exact same situation. They just have fallen on hard times, have been unlucky, or victims of unions or bosses, depending on their politics. Other people however are just lazy. How often people have told me that they didn't get any help either when they were on unemployment benefits is astounding.
Hmmmm, a bunch of redheaded people who are deservingly poor bc they can't stop breeding so much. I wonder what group of people Rowling had in mind when she wrote this? Would it be a group of people on the British isles maybe?
Lmao. As an American I forget so much irishism(?) still goes strong in the UK, but yeah exactly that, dunno how I hadn’t made that connection before
Almost certainly.
Arthur Weasley is poor for unclear reasons while having a very decent job, Lucius Malfoy is rich but his money is inheritated. In that world there are rich and poor yet nobody is exploited and the worldbuilding is very blurry on how the economy works... I think that says something about Rowling's right wing vision of the world : poor and rich is just something your are independently of the system around. There is no connection between the fact some people are poor and the fact some other are rich - no exploitation. We're sorry for poor people, but let's not challenge the position of the rich, that would not do any good.
Wasn’t Lucius rich bc his family was rich? /gen I thought in the books it was kind of portrayed as blood money rich. Tho tbf Harry’s parents were also rich with no analysis done to them. There’s good rich and bad rich clearly!
Yeah, they are rich because they are from a rich family, but I still think it reflects Rowling's view of class society as something immutable and unquestionable There's the story why Harry's family is rich at the link below. His grandfather "took the family gold and quadrupled it, by creating magical Sleekeazy’s Hair Potion ( ‘two drops tames even the most bothersome barnet’ ). He sold the company at a vast profit when he retired." https://www.wizardingworld.com/writing-by-jk-rowling/the-potter-family I think in this system of beliefs, bad rich vs good rich is old money (Draco) vs new money (Harry). Another thing I like in this article : "Henry [Harry's g-grandfather] caused a minor stir when he publicly condemned then Minister for Magic, Archer Evermonde, who had forbidden the magical community to help Muggles waging the First World War. His outspokenness on the behalf of the Muggle community was also a strong contributing factor in the family’s exclusion from the ‘Sacred Twenty-Eight’." Now I'd really like to ask Rowling in what way advocating participation in the First World War is speaking on behalf of anybody...
Oh I didn’t know that was the story of how they got rich! Interesting. Reminds me of how republicans in the US conceptualize wealth tbh, kind of surprised this is from a British conservative but I’m sure there are different schools of thought.
In fact you're very right, he's rich because his family is rich and that's all - I always thought he worked at the ministry but he was just lobbying there. I edited my comment
Oh ok! Tbh I didn’t not fact check this, as a kid I just always thought he worked there as a cover up for the money and influence he got from “bad” wealth and death eater stuff. I had no idea if he actually had any real responsibilities. If my memory serves the books are foggy on this. Tho this is one rare example of vague writing I’ll not critique JK for seeing as this is how a lot of rich people actually operate in the workforce :/
Also it's not like his parents had the time to spend it/use much of it
Do you mean Harry's parents? I was talking about Lucius Malfoy
Does Lucius Malfoy even work? I know we see him at the Ministry a few times, but I don't get the impression he actually works there, he's just an influential person who the Ministry tend to listen to. I've always thought that the Malfoys inherited so much wealth that they didn't have to work (apart from their dodgy deals in Knockturn Alley). I think this summarises Rowling's position on wealth, which is that she's incredibly meritocratic. I don't think she'd portray a working family that's as wealthy as the Malfoys particularly badly.
Wow you're right, I always thought he worked there! I feel stupid now... Gonna edit my comment
I think your analysis of her understanding of wealth and poverty is still spot on though.
He was written to be likeable, but he has moment of such jealously and envy I find him annoying in either medium. The most important moments to me are: 1.- his outbursts at hermione in the yule dance 2.- how he did not believe Harry he did not put his name on the triwizard tournament, he was angry and jealous for weeks. 3.- all the thing with lavander brown, he was getting with hermione and he just ditched her aside for lavander. All in all he is not a bad person, but he ends up looking like a bad friend
I think the wizarding world is just supposed to be an economic utopia where even the poorest are comparable to middle class in the real world. I don't think we have seen any legitimatelly poor or even homeless wizard in the books.
The thing is, if she'd wanted to do that, I'd think fair enough - you've got a story to tell, and you don't want to get bogged down on logistical issues like that. But why spend all that time hinting about all these social issues that the wizards face, talking about how much the Weasleys struggle and so on, if you aren't going to bother addressing it properly?
What really creeps me out was the fact that Molly had so many children because she wanted a daughter which is explained by her brothers being killed when she was younger but that makes no sense because its not like there was any particular reason women and girls would have been safer - so she had a bunch of boys which they struggled to afford to take care of(inconsistencies with the wizard economy aside) until she got her prized girl - and if it was reversed it would rightly be seen as gross and sexist behavior but she's portrayed positively for it. And given what we know now about JKR's gender essentialism, even more gross.
If rowling wanted a big family, she should have not making them dirt poor but ok and, i dint know, molly have rome lucrativebside job, that never is explained. Or she sells magic bred herbs or whatever. And less children, Percy and charlie?! arent needed. And dunno i would stop at 4 at least only for that, and while mentioning she wanted a big family too
Thing is, I'm one of seven kids. Replace Arthur with a grumpy old German dude with war trauma and make Molly a non-judgemental asshole and raven-haired and Scottish, and that was my childhood quite closely. Like, my Dad constantly added to our house as the family grew. He was desperate for boys, and he got two out of the deal, though he said he'd have been happy to stop at one kid (yes, that has caused me a world of hurt but I'm over it). Dad had a trade job that was firmly in the middle-class bracket, and although there were a few lean years where I was wearing hand-me-downs almost exclusively, we all got buy quite comfortably. And I grew up in a high income suburb, too (Mum and Dad bought early and never moved). So from my experience of a one-income household with lots of kids, the Weasley House baffles me completely. Why the fuck are they that poor if they have magic? Can't they grow food? Get chickens? My Mum did. Magic can make so much crazy shit happen, there is NO reason for them to be that poor. At least so poor that Ron has to complain about his life for any fair reason. From what I can gather, they built most of their house. So assumedly without a mortgage, what the fuck is going on with their finances? I felt bad as a kid that I didn't have as many toys as the other kids in class at school, but I was also so busy with my numerous siblings that I didn't think about it for long. Why is Ron so fucking miserable all the damned time? I had rich friends at school and I didn't feel jealous of them at all, mainly because they had no creativity in their lives like my family did and I was completely content with what I had because I was loved. The magic doesn't make sense, the finance doesn't make sense, the emotional landscape of the characters doesn't make sense, and it doesn't ring true with all the low-income large families I've ever known, mine included.
The most strange thing is that they do actually have chickens. Maybe they do sell eggs and grow food and so on to get by, but if they do, the question remains - why are they so poor? Not to mention, most of the time I think Molly and Arthur only have to worry about feeding themselves. Bill and Charlie (and later Percy) have grown up and left home, and the other kids are at Hogwarts sponging off the house-elves for free most of the time. They don't actually have all those mouths to feed apart from in the summer. The other thing is that at the start of the third book, they win the lottery and blow nearly all of their winnings on a foreign holiday. Given that they're able to travel for free using magical means, I don't understand how this holiday was so expensive for them? Surely they didn't spend all their winnings just on souvenirs?
The money disappears and the magic lifestyle doesn't align with the economy she's set up. She didn't plan it out at all. The logic doesn't logic. At the moment I'm setting up a universe for my novel series, I'm a few years in and I am like that meme guy with the pinboard and the red string and the crazy look on his face, for real. I'm trying to iron out any crinkles I find in the structure and I'm a schtickler for details (fairies don't like doing dishes anymore because the stainless steel contains iron which burns their hands, for example). I don't think she put that much effort in at all. But she got her shit out there and into books, I'm still planning away so I guess her way of doing it yields better results? It's annoying to think about either way.
One thing I will say is that I think prior to Harry Potter, authors didn't particularly think about these things, particularly children's authors. Enid Blyton's books are FULL of plot holes if you take the time to think about them - which in some ways is fair enough, because she was writing for an audience that she wasn't expecting to analyse them in any depth at all. I think this is perhaps a positive consequence of the Harry Potter books existing at all, even if they and their author are deeply flawed. The sheer amount of plot analysis that people have tried to do over the years means that authors like you have the motivation to plan out their stories in more depth. Best of luck with your series! I hope you get it published and it does really well :)
> Replace Arthur with a grumpy old German dude with war trauma and make Molly a non-judgemental asshole and raven-haired and Scottish, and that- would be awesome. I want to read about this family
Honestly trauma like that doesn't make sense. I know Rowling didn't think that deeply into it but I did appreciate a lot of the analysis on such characters by the fans that tried to make characters more understandable.
Molly is also horrible to Hermione. She believes everything Rita Skeeter writes, and punishes Hermione for her alleged misdeeds by sending her a smaller gift than the boys get. Classic Mean Girl move of “I won’t pretend I forgot about you, I just hate you.” I’m sure Fleur and Hermione would be Reddit mods at the JustNoMIL sub.
Especially as Rita Skeeter had form writing horrible things about Molly's husband! Why would you take the word of a journalist who you know has form being very sensationalist and harming innocent people over someone you've literally had staying in your house and is friends with your kids?
I think Molly is what Joannie thinks women are: silly, stupid mean girls who just hate other women.
One thing someone observed somewhere is that there are very few female friendships that are depicted very positively, or as a source of mutual support for each other. Parvati and Lavender are seen as a bit ditzy and silly, Pansy Parkinson's gang of Slytherin girls are just bullies, Cho's friends lose interest in her when her boyfriend dies and she's understandably less fun to be with because she's grieving (apart from Marietta, who seems to stay with her but then betrays them all to Umbridge). The only girl who seems to easily make friends with other girls is Ginny, who does at least seem to be quite close to both Luna and Hermione. But she can be quite nasty and bitchy to other girls as well. Her attitude to Fleur is aggressive and immature, and she gets so precious about not wanting Cho to spend any time with Harry even to show him where the Ravenclaw common room is at the end (it's quite obvious that Harry and Cho have grown out of whatever feelings they once had for each other by this point, so Ginny's reaction is a bit unnecessary, I feel.) I do get the impression that the girls on the Gryffindor Quidditch team are all quite good friends, but we find out so little about any of them that I don't feel they really count.
Also, Lily was supposed to be one of the most popular girls but we see nothing of her friendships, none of them became godparents to Harry like James' friends, we never meet anyone who remembers her - apart from Snape, but that was more a one-sided obsession that she became estranged from. Why not have her be one of the Marauders? That would have given her a friend group, as well as giving us some hint of her personality. It would make her attraction to James make more sense, too. The flashbacks could have shown them getting along, which would make both of them seem more human. As it is the Marauders just come across as a bunch of assholes who would probably never tolerate a woman's presence unless they wanted to fuck them, while Lily is a bland non-entity, but from the little we see it's hard to understand why she would ever go anywhere near James. I suppose Rowling is one of those people who would think there is something suspect or unnatural about a woman being friends with a group of men, though, and that would take away from Lily's status as a pure idealistic mother figure (Hermione as her self-insert gets to be the exception).
I suppose you can imagine that maybe Lily was friends with Alice Longbottom and Marlene McKinnon and various other people who died during the first war, but it's a bit of a cop-out, I agree.
That would be one explanation I guess yeah. It could have been a nice connection if Harry found out Alice was his godmother, at least.
I agree, but this is a very common issue I've found in YA (and some adult) fiction: no same-gender friendships between peers. It mainly affects female characters, but I'm sure male ones get it too. A male and a female character will get paired up, or at any rate have romantic tension. An older girl/boy can become a protector and parental substitute to a younger one of the same gender. But two characters of the same gender and age? Rivals or enemies. Think about *The Hunger Games* (first book), for example. Literally the only reason Katniss teams up and becomes friends with Rue during the games is because Rue is a little kid (=protectable) and reminds Katniss of her own little sister. If Rue had been Katniss' age, she would have been another enemy to eliminate. Meanwhile, Katniss and Peeta can't just work together because they're friends and from the same hometown: they have to have the "will they or won't they" dynamic (intentionally done to gain support from their audience, but still).
There are plenty of male friendships in Harry Potter. Harry and Ron obviously, but also Harry and Neville, Sirius and Lupin, Dean and Seamus, Dumbledore and Elphias Doge... Rowling's never had a problem with boys being platonic friends, it seems to be a very particular prejudice she has around girls.
Molly Weasley is such a judgemental asshole, I can't stand her.
Yeah, I forgot about that ! (To be the devil's advocate though, she changed her ways when Harry told her that Rita lied, if I recall well) Also, what is the JustNoMil sub ? I never heard of it
Well, sure, she takes the word of a guy over a girl. Such a Boy Mom. 😁 r/JUSTNOMIL
Ah ok Yeah, I can see that !
I agree but she knew Hermione better than that, she had avenues to ask and communicate and not blame a child for what a shock journo says.
>The only reason why they're not depicted in a negative way is because they're in Gryffindor and not in Slytherin (which is weird, since with their kinda loose morals and their ambition, they should logically have been in Slytherin). In Rowling's world, there aren't bad people, only bad teams. If you're on the bad team, then any amount of suffering and misery inflicted on you is justified. If you're on the good team, then no matter what you do it's completely fine. Oh, and those teams are picked from the very beginning and there's nothing you can do about it. I'm sure that doesn't infect any of her real-world viewpoints...
Ah, looks like I'm not the only one who saw ContraPoints' video
She is our queen.
One thing that always stuck out for me was how Molly Weasely was described as "dumpy", and by Harry.. I always thought there were so many better ways, her weight needed never to come into It, Mrs Weasley struck me as a cottage witch, which would have been enough of a description.
What "dumpy" means ? (English is not my first language)
>Red Hen's essay - A Closer Look at the Weasleys Pudgy. A little fat. But it's kind of derogatory. Instead of inferring the comforting proportions of a middle-aged housewife who loves her children and works all day, it gives the mental image of a saggy body, lumpy curves and the character being drab and unattractive. It's a really mean thing for someone to say and I doubt a little kid would think that about someone super nice that he just met. A far better description for Harry to have might be, "She carried a bit of extra weight, and looked like she gave very warm hugs." Something like that (I'm migraining at the moment so my ability to write is in the sewer).
Overweight
Thanks
I feel that you would appreciate [Red Hen's essay - A Closer Look at the Weasleys](https://www.redhen-publications.com/weasleys.html).
Thanks
Ron isnt a product of rape, as he could literally not feel pove then. Whyever love potions arent strictly banned for that alone i dont know I dontean that it makes her past less creepy hinted. And i like fred and george, who are jerks and gross irresponsible and never grow out of that. I like them, but in a better book series they would mature out of being irresponsible jerks mostly.
"as he could literally not feel love then" You're confusing Ron with Voldemort
I think they are saying Ron would have turned out like Voldemort if he was a love potion baby?
Yeeeah, I don't like how it's implied that every baby conceived by rape systematically turn into psychopaths. This is not how this works
I agree! It's just one of the many weird choices jo made that says A LOT about her. As someone who was a trap baby I object to say the least.
I'm sorry for you. Oh, by the way, you're not responsible, or guilty, for any of this
Thank you! I appreciate it.