We can also see a tendency toward liberal feminism in some of those who take a more negative view of the series. Heilman, for example, comments on Rowling’s tendency to depict girl students in groups: “This repeated grouping . . . reinforces the idea of the sociological construct of the communal and friendly girl compared to the individual and competitive boy.” She claims that this reinforces “the inferior position of females,” which suggests that she considers being communal rather than individual, friendly rather than competitive, as an indication of actual or perceived inferiority.15
This tendency of liberal feminism to downplay roles and traits traditionally associated with women is part of the reason that a different form of feminism, radical feminism, evolved as part of the “second wave” of feminism in the 1960s and the 1970s. Radical feminism takes its name from the Latin word radix, meaning “root,” and holds that the root cause of women’s oppression is the “sex/gender system,” a set of social expectations that force identities onto people in such a way that a person’s physical sexual identification necessarily determines that person’s personality, permissible social roles, and acceptable economic occupations. In a patriarchal society, these expectations will tend to privilege men and disempower women.16 For example, in the United States within living memory, women used to be shunted into a handful of acceptable “pink-collar” jobs such as nurses, secretaries, and schoolteachers.
Although radical feminists disagree on exactly how to fix the problem, they often focus on the characteristics that are traditionally labeled masculine or feminine by society and consider ways in which these characteristics can be freed from rigid categorizations, such as the following contrasted pairs:
Traits Traditionally Considered Masculine Traits Traditionally Considered Feminine
control love
independence interdependence
individualism community
hierarchy networking
domination sharing
competition cooperation
aggression compassion
reason emotion
Some radical feminists feel that our society would benefit from people in general becoming more androgynous, so that men and women could freely mix and match whatever characteristics appeal most to them individually. In this way, both men and women would become “people,” but our understanding of what people are would no longer be limited to the guidelines laid down by a male-dominated society. Other radical feminists feel that the values traditionally considered feminine would benefit our society most and should be adopted by men and women alike, thus shifting the definition of “people” to a more feminine-centric model.17
Some scholarly commentaries on the Potter series exemplify radical feminism. For example, Zettel emphasizes the importance of Molly Weasley’s household management, pointing out that “she’s successfully raising seven kids on a tight budget. Honestly, the woman should get a medal.”18 In a more serious vein, Zettel argues that for “an author to show that only traditional male power and place matter is to discount and belittle the hard and complex lives of our peers and our ancestresses.”19 Zettel’s willingness to praise female characters who have succeeded on terms other than traditional masculine ones would be welcomed by radical feminists.
Another article that offers a radical-feminist perspective on the Potter series is Gallardo-C. and Smith’s “Cinderfella.” Although these authors criticize the gender stereotypes present on the surface of the series, they move to a deeper level to present a radical-feminist interpretation of the good and evil sides of the conflict. The evil characters, they point out, display “phallic power and ambition” and are “aggressive and power-hungry.” 20 This would apply even to female characters such as Umbridge, who, despite her stereotypically feminine taste in clothing and office decoration, demonstrates an ongoing obsession with traditionally masculine values such as control, hierarchy, and structure in her takeover of Hogwarts in Order of the Phoenix and in her creation of her own bureaucracy to persecute Muggle-born magic users in Deathly Hallows. On the other hand, Harry’s own choices and decisions “belie a preference for the feminine,” and his compatriots exhibit traditionally feminine characteristics such as “kindness, selflessness, a desire for intimacy with others, and responsibility.”21 In this way, these authors argue that Rowling associates good with values traditionally considered feminine and evil with values traditionally considered masculine.
This association of good with qualities such as love and compassion is something radical feminists have in common with earlier philosophers and theologians, who also felt that such traits needed to be integrated into our understanding and practice of humanity. From St. Gertrude the Great’s emphasis on loving-kindness as an essential feature of God’s nature and a crucial one for humans to imitate, to Gandhi’s campaign of nonviolent civil disobedience in which he proclaimed that “life without love is death,” to C. S. Lewis’s careful analysis of each of the various types of love as necessary for the fulfillment of humanity, many thinkers have emphasized the importance of traits such as love, kindness, and compassion.22
Radical feminists argue not only that these traits have been traditionally assigned to women, rather than valued by society as a whole, but that this has been done in a particularly harmful way. Women are encouraged to be so altruistic that they don’t stand up for themselves, and they submit meekly to traditional forms of oppression for fear that any attempt at assertiveness will be seen as a lack of femininity.23 Meanwhile, men are damaged as well, because living up to a macho ideal that emphasizes competition and independence is a stressful and incomplete way to be human. As Heather Booth, Evi Goldfield, and Sue Munaker wrote, “As long as artificially constructed, mythically based images of masculine and feminine are the only alternative, both men and women are going to find conflict between their imposed sexual identity and their goals as human beings.”24
More Wonderful and More Terrible than Death
As mentioned at the outset, love, traditionally identified as a feminine characteristic, occupies a position of particular importance in Rowling’s universe, and her depiction of it resonates with radical feminism. Again and again, we see Harry’s capacity to love and be loved protect him from evil and enable him to protect others.
We learn about the importance of love in the first book, when the love imprinted on Harry’s skin by his mother’s sacrifice saves Harry’s life. Professor Quirrell, whose body Lord Voldemort inhabits, finds that he cannot bear to touch Harry because of the invisible mark left by the love of Harry’s mother. This is the first example in the series in which we see that love resists evil effortlessly, without deliberate action on Harry’s part. We then learn from Dumbledore that this same love saved Harry from Voldemort’s earlier attempt to kill him in infancy. Love is not wielded as a weapon; it simply overwhelms evil by its very existence.25
This love, however, is extrinsic to Harry’s own nature. In Sorcerer’s Stone, he is saved by his mother’s love for him, not by his own love for others. It is significant that this love is literally in his skin, on the outside, rather than, say, in his heart, on the inside. As the books progress, however, we see Harry’s intrinsic ability to love others become more and more important.
In Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry saves the life of Peter Pettigrew, not out of love for the traitor who betrayed Harry’s parents, but out of love for Remus Lupin and Sirius Black. Harry does not want his father’s friends to become murderers; he cares more about them than about his own desire for vengeance. The consequences of this deeply unselfish action are multiple; ultimately, Pettigrew’s debt to Harry saves Harry’s life, although that was not Harry’s motivation for saving him.
In the later books, Rowling continues to emphasize Harry’s love for others. In Order of the Phoenix, near the end of the confrontation at the Ministry of Magic, Harry is briefly possessed by Voldemort. Harry is not strong enough to repel Voldemort, and he resigns himself to the possibility of death. The thought enters his mind
that death would reunite him with his beloved godfather: “And I’ll see Sirius again. And as Harry’s heart filled with emotion, the creature’s coils loosened, the pain was gone.”26 Harry does not deliberately set his love for Sirius against Voldemort’s will; had he done so, love would take its place as another weapon in the arsenal of masculine competition. Instead, Voldemort simply cannot bear to be in its presence; once again, love overwhelms evil without effort.
In explaining the incident in the Ministry of Magic, Dumbledore describes “a force that is at once more wonderful and more terrible than death, than human intelligence, than forces of nature.... It is the power ... that you possess in such quantities and which Voldemort has not at all. That power . . . saved you from possession by Voldemort, because he could not bear to reside in a body so full of the force he detests.”27 This power, of course, is love. As Dumbledore explains, “In the end, it mattered not that you could not close your mind. It was your heart that saved you.”28 Dumbledore’s explanation demonstrates a preference for traditionally feminine characteristics over traditionally masculine ones, because reason, the power of the mind, is traditionally identified as masculine, while emotion, the power of the heart, is traditionally considered feminine.
In Half-Blood Prince, Dumbledore states that love is the “power the Dark Lord knows not” that is mentioned in the prophecy about Voldemort and his self-chosen enemy.29 Dumbledore further explains that this power is what kept Harry from succumbing to the temptations of the Dark Arts and from yielding to the more ordinary temptations of using his magical abilities to obtain selfish goals such as wealth or immortality. He is forced to explain these things to Harry because Harry does not realize them; again, love has not functioned as a conscious barrier that Harry has deliberately raised in order to fight against these temptations, but as a quality within himself that keeps him from even being tempted in the first place.
Love achieves even greater importance in the final volume, Deathly Hallows, functioning at multiple levels in different parts of the book. Harry’s ability to love unselfishly is not confined to humans but extends to loving other beings as well, which bears unexpected benefits. Remembering Dumbledore’s critical remarks in Order of the Phoenix about Sirius’s neglectful treatment of the house-elf Kreacher, moved by Kreacher’s story of his dreadful journey with Regulus Black to replace the Horcrux locket with a replica, and stirred by Hermione’s sympathetic explanation of Kreacher’s psychology, Harry begins to treat Kreacher with kindness. As a result, Kreacher eagerly assists Harry in locating the real locket by tracking down the thief, Mundungus Fletcher, who is able to tell Harry its whereabouts. Harry’s respectful treatment of the goblin Griphook also makes possible the recovery of an object that can be used to destroy Horcruxes, the Sword of Gryffindor. And, of course, Harry’s constant kindness toward Dobby is rewarded when Dobby saves Harry’s life at the cost of his own.
Harry’s most surprising act of love, however, is his attempt to redeem Voldemort himself. Harry’s plea to Voldemort to feel remorse, with the recognition that this would enable him to heal and reunite the surviving fragments of his shattered soul, is an astonishing act of compassion that shocks Voldemort “beyond any revelation or taunt.”30 “‘It’s your one last chance,’ said Harry, ‘it’s all you’ve got left.... I’ve seen what you’ll be otherwise ... be a man . . . try . . . try for some remorse.’”31 Of course, Voldemort does not recognize Harry’s appeal as an act of compassion. A hypermasculine figure obsessed with domination and control, he fails to understand the genuine power of traditionally feminine values, a flaw that has already caused him to overlook the capabilities of house-elves and the true motivation of his supposed ally Severus Snape.
Harry’s choice of words here reveals a remarkable aspect of Rowling’s worldview. When Harry urges Voldemort to “be a man,” he is implicitly claiming that Voldemort’s actions to date have not demonstrated manhood, that Voldemort’s hypermasculinity is not in fact true manhood at all. Instead, Harry’s understanding of manhood is one that is fully human, incorporating traditionally feminine traits as well as traditionally masculine ones. As Terri Doughty wrote in her essay comparing the Potter series to other contemporary books aimed at adolescent males, “The Harry Potter books do not problematize masculinity.”32 In contrast to the protagonists of contemporary books that depict young men struggling with little guidance toward a violent and alienated adulthood, Harry has a number of positive adult male role models, such as Dumbledore, Rubeus Hagrid, and Lupin, who do not hesitate to express traits such as reassurance or sympathy, and who are able to assure Harry “that he is growing into the right sort of boy.”33 In the Potter books, the right sort of boy, indeed, the right sort of man, is not only strong and brave, but kind and loving as well.
Less surprising than Harry’s attempt to redeem Voldemort is his willingness to yield his own life to protect the ones he loves. The outcome of this act, however, is also surprising to Voldemort; Harry is not, in fact, killed, and his act of sacrifice offers magical protection to his compatriots. Meanwhile, Harry’s mastery of the Elder Wand contrasts sharply with the attempts by other wizards to obtain it; he never sets out deliberately to acquire it, and he does not intend to use it for destructive purposes. The only spell he casts in the final showdown is defensive. Harry does not engage in a “duel to the death” with Voldemort. The fact that he is successful without attempting to compete shows again that in this series, love is more important than aggression.
The Triumph of Love
In Rowling’s world, love does not enter into combat, which would mean that it was participating in and implicitly promoting the masculine structure. From a radical-feminist perspective, when love overcomes hatred, it does so without deigning to enter into any sort of contest, but simply and naturally overwhelms evil by its very presence. Although the successes of Hermione and McGonagall may mark the presence of liberal feminism in Rowling’s creation, the ultimate triumph of love and compassion over selfishness and ambition clearly provides an overarching worldview that is more in line with radical feminism.
NOTES
1 Christine Schoefer, “Harry Potter’s Girl Trouble,” on Salon.com, January 12, 2000, http://archive.salon.com/books/feature/2000/01/13/potter/index.html; Elizabeth E. Heilman, “Blue Wizards and Pink Witches: Representations of Gender Identity and Power,” in Critical Perspectives on Harry Potter, edited by Elizabeth E. Heilman (New York: Routledge, 2003), pp. 221-239; Eliza T. Dresang, “Hermione Granger and the Heritage of Gender,” in The Ivory Tower and Harry Potter, edited by Lana Whited (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2002), pp. 211-242.
2 Ximena Gallardo-C. and C. Jason Smith, “Cinderfella: J. K. Rowling’s Wily Web of Gender,” in Reading Harry Potter: Critical Essays, edited by Giselle Liza Anatol (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003), pp. 191-203.
3 Edmund M. Kern, The Wisdom of Harry Potter: What Our Favorite Hero Teaches Us about Moral Choices (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2003); Mimi R. Gladstein, “Feminism and Equal Opportunity: Hermione and the Women of Hogwarts,” in Harry Potter and Philosophy: If Aristotle Ran Hogwarts, edited by David Baggett and Shawn E. Klein (Chicago: Open Court, 2004), pp. 49-59; Sarah Zettel, “Hermione Granger and the Charge of Sexism,” in Mapping the World of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, edited by Mercedes Lackey and Leah Wilson (Dallas: Benbella Books, 2005), pp. 83-99.
4 Schoefer, “Harry Potter’s Girl Trouble,” p. 1.
5 Heilman, “Blue Wizards and Pink Witches,” p. 222.
6 Gallardo-C. and Smith, “Cinderfella: J. K. Rowling’s Wily Web of Gender,” p. 191.
7 Kern, The Wisdom of Harry Potter, p. 149.
8 Zettel, “Hermione Granger and the Charge of Sexism,” p. 99.
9 Gladstein, “Feminism and Equal Opportunity: Hermione and the Women of Hogwarts,” p. 59.
10 Dresang, “Hermione Granger and the Heritage of Gender,” p. 237.
11 Heilman, “Blue Wizards and Pink Witches,” p. 226.
12 Zettel, �
�Hermione Granger and the Charge of Sexism,” p. 98 (emphasis added).
13 Sondra Farganis, Situating Feminism: From Thought to Action, volume 2 in the series Contemporary Social Theory (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 1994).
14 Gladstein, “Feminism and Equal Opportunity: Hermione and the Women of Hogwarts,” p. 58.
15 Heilman, “Blue Wizards and Pink Witches,” p. 228.
16 Rosemarie Putnam Tong, Feminist Thought: A More Comprehensive Introduction, 3rd ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2009), p. 51.
17 Ibid., p. 54ff.
18 Zettel, “Hermione Granger and the Charge of Sexism,” p. 90.
19 Ibid., pp. 91-92.
20 Gallardo-C. and Smith, “Cinderfella,” p. 200.
21 Ibid., pp. 199, 200.
22 Gertrude of Helfta, The Herald of Divine Love (Legatus Divinae Pietatis), translated and edited by Margaret Winkworth (New York: Paulist Press, 1993); M. K. Gandhi, The Way to God (Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Hills Books, 1999), p. 56; C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1960).
23 For a surprisingly recent example, see Shankar Vedantam’s eye-opening article about research showing that contemporary working women are reluctant to ask for raises: “Salary, Gender and the Social Cost of Haggling,” Washington Post, July 30, 2007, p. A07.
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