Hemione Granger and the Complex Feminist Icon They exist in almost every type of storytelling in the last century or so, the crucial three-person groups. Comics has DC’s holy trinity of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman; In children cartoons the Ash, Brock, and Misty dynamic was used so well that even though brock and misty haven’t been regular characters in the cartoon for a nearly a decade, they are still iconic; but, over the past 30 years, perhaps no fiction trio is as well-known and beloved as the Harry, Ron, and Hermione trio of the J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series of books and accompanying film adaptions. If you go back and review the trio of triplets listed above, you might notice two very particular things, that each group is made
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One major critiqued levied by Heilman is that Hermione is simply “an enabler of Harry’s and Ron’s adventures, rather than an adventurer in her own right.” (224). This is especially true in the early novels, such as Sorcerer’s Stone. Midway through the first novel, she is used as a plot device to lure Harry and Ron into a confrontation with the troll. She, the brainy wizard who earlier had already had success with a few spells before ever entering school, was rendered completely helpless, “shrinking against the wall opposite, looking as if she was about to faint” (Rowling, 175) as Harry, and worse yet Ron, came to save her. T make matters more problematic, Ron then suddenly has perfect the spell that only Hermione had succeeded with earlier, the Wingardium Leviosa levitation charm. While this does serve as a nice validation of Ron’s continued participation on these journeys, it comes at the price of neutralizing the talent, extremely capable characterization that Rowling had created in Hermione. Rowling again undercuts her own progress with the character when she sends Harry into the final confrontation with the villain who turns out to be Quirrell/Voldemort. While decided which of the two of them should go forward, as Ron had been knocked out of commission …show more content…
Is she superwoman or is she a relic of literature unfortunately not yet gone by? While the first book may not represent her at her most complete, it does offer a good microcosm of both the good and bad of what the character can and will offer. She is wickedly clever and far more skilled and capable than her male counter parts, but at the same time, she can be written into the most egregiously typical corners, sometimes even being places into actual corner from which to cower. If anything, when you add the lenses of gender and feminist theory to the eyes of a young man who had simply written Hermione off as a prototype of exactly what a feminist icon should be, it really muddies the water. Hermione is both aggressively feminist and egregiously stereotypical, in a word, she is
One major critiqued levied by Heilman is that Hermione is simply “an enabler of Harry’s and Ron’s adventures, rather than an adventurer in her own right.” (224). This is especially true in the early novels, such as Sorcerer’s Stone. Midway through the first novel, she is used as a plot device to lure Harry and Ron into a confrontation with the troll. She, the brainy wizard who earlier had already had success with a few spells before ever entering school, was rendered completely helpless, “shrinking against the wall opposite, looking as if she was about to faint” (Rowling, 175) as Harry, and worse yet Ron, came to save her. T make matters more problematic, Ron then suddenly has perfect the spell that only Hermione had succeeded with earlier, the Wingardium Leviosa levitation charm. While this does serve as a nice validation of Ron’s continued participation on these journeys, it comes at the price of neutralizing the talent, extremely capable characterization that Rowling had created in Hermione. Rowling again undercuts her own progress with the character when she sends Harry into the final confrontation with the villain who turns out to be Quirrell/Voldemort. While decided which of the two of them should go forward, as Ron had been knocked out of commission …show more content…
Is she superwoman or is she a relic of literature unfortunately not yet gone by? While the first book may not represent her at her most complete, it does offer a good microcosm of both the good and bad of what the character can and will offer. She is wickedly clever and far more skilled and capable than her male counter parts, but at the same time, she can be written into the most egregiously typical corners, sometimes even being places into actual corner from which to cower. If anything, when you add the lenses of gender and feminist theory to the eyes of a young man who had simply written Hermione off as a prototype of exactly what a feminist icon should be, it really muddies the water. Hermione is both aggressively feminist and egregiously stereotypical, in a word, she is