D I S P A T C H E S

Eliza T. Dresang, a professor in the School of Information Studies at Florida State University, is an expert on — and a fan of — the Harry Potter series.

Her article “Hermione Granger and the Heritage of Gender” is included in The Ivory Tower and Harry Potter: Perspectives on a Literary Phenomenon (University of Missouri Press, 2002), and “Harry Potter and Censorship” was published in Florida Media Quarterly earlier this year. She is the author of Radical Change: Books for Youth in a Digital Age (H.W. Wilson, 1999) and co-author with John S. Simmons of School Censorship in the 21st Century (International Reading Association, 2001). 

Dresang has visited some of the sites in England where scenes were shot for the film Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Days before the release of the second film, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, her ticket already purchased, she talked with PopPolitics about the complexity of the books, the strength of Hermione, and why Harry Potter is loved worldwide.

At the same time, the care with which Rowling chooses names, the references to other literary works, the magic she adds to everyday things — all of this adds another layer of understanding. Let me just talk a minute about the names. They’re amazing — all of them. For example, Dumbledore comes from an old English dialect and means bumblebee because he love music and hums a lot. The name I’ve traced with the greatest care is Harry’s pal, Hermione. The name goes thousands of years into the past — Hermione is the female form of Hermes, messenger of the Gods, God of science, trade and eloquence, and is immortalized in Greek mythology as the daughter of Helen of Troy and Menelaus, King of Sparta. The last of classical Athens’ great tragic dramatists, Euripides, brings the goddess Hermione into literature through his play Andromache, written 428-24 B.C.E. She is introduced in the Christian Bible and was canonized in 117 A.D.

She appears in Shakespeare’s The Winter” Tale (which Rowling credits) as well as in at least two well known 20th century British works: Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence and an autobiographical novel, HERmione, by poet and novelist Hilda Doolittle, known more commonly by her initials H.D. Her name is strong and so is the character to whom Rowling lends it.

Lots of people have developed quite extensive Harry Potter lexicons, some of which can be found online (click here). Rowling has this ability to weave all these layered elements together in a way that doesn’t hit you over the head. It’s there if you can see it and recognize it. If all you see are the jokes and the plot, that’s OK, too. You can re-read them and enjoy them again depending on your experience and context.

What characteristics do these books have in common with other great works of children’s literature that have also appealed to adults?

One of the remarkable things is that they are both alike and different from many other successful books for young people. They’re reminiscent of both fantasy stories, say like the Narnia series by C.S. Lewis; comparison to other fantasies is the usual comparison one hears. But the Potter books are also ’school stories’ — a tradition in Great Britain of writing books about kids in boarding schools and their adventures. In some ways, you can look at Harry Potter books in that tradition. They follow a group of students maturing and getting along with each other, or not. Phillip Pullman, Diana Wynne Jones, Roald Dahl — all are favorite British fantasy writers whose works have been compared with Rowling.

In the first fantasy books for kids, heroes and heroines weren’t ordinary children. British author E. Nesbitt was the first person to write a fantasy about ordinary children who enter fantastical worlds. Harry Potter is also in that tradition. The children travel back and forth between a real world and a fantasy one. The books are reminiscent of and include elements of things that go as far back as Greek and Roman mythology and Shakespeare. Realism and magic combine.

Like many literary heroes, Harry himself is not all good when he arrives at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. He’s got magical powers but he’s always struggling internally, having to shore himself up and fight the challenges that he has ahead of him. He’s not so magical that everything comes easily for him, which makes him appealing across many cultures and many lands despite the specific cultural context.

Do the Harry Potter books have anything to say to readers from various backgrounds? Are they saying privileged heredity is important to succeed?

Well, if you look at the whole issue of muggles [humans] being looked down on, and wizards and witches being pure-blood, on the surface there may appear to be something akin to racism in these books. If you’re not pure-blood, you’re not one of the “accepted.” But Harry is mixed — he’s half-wizard and half-muggle — and Hermione herself is completely muggle. The books are almost saying pure-blood doesn’t really mean anything even though it seems like it does — Harry and his two best friends represent everything from pure-blooded wizard (Ron) to pure-blooded muggle (Hermione).

Has the popularity of the series had an effect on scholarly appreciation of the text?

There has been some criticism of her writing, more in the literary world than in the academic world. William Safire, Pulitzer Prize winner, former speechwriter for Nixon, and New York Times columnist, has been the leader of the pack in criticizing the books. He wrote a scathing attack on the Potter books when The Prisoner of Azkaban (third book) almost won the top literary prize in England (which went that year to Irish poet Seamus Heaney for his translation of Beowulf).

He pretty much said that the judge on the literary panel who broke the tie saved the literary world. He did admit later he had read only the first book in the series, not the one he was attacking. There are those who say the books are not well written and are offended when they are talked about in the same breath as Tolkien. So there has been some of that, but by and large the academic community has put the popularity aside or else has been very enchanted by the fact that these books that really have so much depth are so popular.

If the books weren’t popular, criticism would still be done, it just wouldn’t be noticed. But the general interest in the academic world has been fascinating. Just last week there was a French news story about the release of The Ivory Tower and Harry Potter, an academic book, and it made news in India and Africa. So even the non-academic world is interested in what scholars are saying about Harry Potter.

A lot of series books that are popular with kids can be analyzed from a sociological point of view; that is, why they are so popular and what does that tell us about popular culture of the moment, but then you’re sort of done. It’s one layer deep. With Rowling’s books, you can really go inside the books. There are many things to be analyzed and multiple ways to approach criticism. Sixteen scholars from the U.S. and Great Britain contributed to the book for which I wrote the Hermione chapter, and that is only one book.

This summer there is going to be a symposium on Harry Potter in Orlando — between 500 and 1,000 adults (only) are expected — with programs for both scholars and fans. The organizers hope it will become an annual event. I’ll be on a panel (with the head of the Office of Intellectual Freedom from the American Library Association) about Harry Potter and censorship as well as talking about Hermione.

How will the series be regarded in the future? Is Harry Potter already considered a classic?

An unparalleled number of academics have taken an interest in Harry Potter. Already 20 to 25 full-length books — not all scholarly by any means — have been written. I like to say, as a colleague of mine from the University of Wisconsin once posited, that a classic is something that’s infinitely discussible. Though people say you don’t know for 30 years or so if something will be a classic, the fact that adult scholars can take issue with one another and provide evidence from the books to support their arguments is quite remarkable. I can’t believe that that much could have been written in such a short period of time and people aren’t going to continue with it. Yes, I believe the Potter books will be counted among the classics written for or appropriated by youth.

You’ve done quite a bit of writing on Hermione. Tell us more about her role and where she’s headed in the series.

Hermione has, from my analysis, grown stronger and stronger in each book. Looking at the language in all four books, you see that in the beginning there are a lot of times Rowling describes Hermione as ’squealing” or ’screeching,” which is a very stereotypical way to describe how a female reacts to frightening events. Those terms virtually disappear by the fourth book.

Hermione is a very smart character who provides the information that Harry needs to do the magical things he does. She’s the researcher of the team. She starts off as very smart, and she’s moving on to be the social conscience of the group. My prediction is she’ll grow stronger. Rowling has said in more than one interview that Hermione represents herself in the books. I don’t think she’s going to write her off as a person subservient to other members of the group.

In the fourth book, she starts the Society for the Protection of Elfish Welfare (S.P.E.W.) after it becomes clear that the elves are enslaved to serve the people at Hogwarts. She’s ridiculed for this, both by people of authority and by her peers. It has been suggested she’ll back off, but I don’t think so.

How did you approach your study of Hermione?

Very systematically. I analyzed her character by applying feminist literary theory. I started by reviewing Rosemarie Putnam Tong’s Feminist Thought: A More Comprehensive Introduction, and then I looked at Roberta Seelinger Trites’ book Waking Sleeping Beauty: Feminist Places in Children’s Novels, and Kay Vandergrift’s Model of Female Voices in Youth Literature. I selected certain elements that appear in various forms of feminist literary criticism and applied those to my study of Hermione. For example, I looked at:

- Role construction: How she was portrayed book by book, and what adjectives and nouns were used to talk about her situation. How she grows and develops.

- Self-determination: How much does she act on her own and how much agency does she have for her own self? Or is she there to provide the wisdom for Harry? More and more she’s acting on her own.

- Sense of community and connection: Within her little peer group, she has an extremely strong sense of community. From some feminist points of view, a strong woman is connected to a community of women — this Hermione doesn’t have.

- Ethics of caring: As I mentioned, I see Hermione reaching out to the house elves and striking out on her own. She has an ethic of caring for her peers and is turning outward to develop more of a social conscience.

Those are the things I looked at in all the four books, and definitely there is a progression, a definite growth of character for Hermione. And then, there is the practical matter that Rowling has said Hermione reflects what she was like or wanted to be growing up. Does it make sense that the author will let her alter-ego falter? Not everyone agrees with me about Hermione being stronger and coming into her own — only time will tell.

What’s also pretty remarkable about these books is that these kids are not only growing in terms of coming of age, but Rowling’s revealing more and more depth about each of the young characters as the books go on, which is why it’s impossible to pick one up in the middle and start reading it.

How did Hermione do in the film adaptation of the first book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone?

I saw the movie twice. The second time I sat way in the back and brought a tiny flashlight just to follow along, mostly looking at Hermione (I didn’t want to wait for the DVD). Although the film was very faithful to the book (too much so some think), I agree with some critics that parts were left out that added an extra depth of interest in the book. In the book, for example, Rowling gives the long titles of the books Hermione is studying to understand the magic she’s learning, but those were left out of the movie. It’s a detail that makes the plot more interesting and real.

One thing I was really upset about: Near the end of the movie (and book), there is a huge dog that Harry, Ron and Hermione have to get past, and in the book, all three children have a task that has to be done for all of them to succeed. In the movie, they don’t show Hermione doing hers. I kind of understood it because her task is a little vague; it involves using her intuition. I suspected that’s why Chris Columbus, the director, (or the screen writer) may have left it out — it was not easily translatable — but she wasn’t able to do her part, so I wasn’t happy about that, but it’s a small thing.

There are other little things that would take a little bit away from her strength as a character, such as the omission of the sorting hat song that describes the strength of characters selected for Griffyndor. The other somewhat negative thing I noticed about Hermione is she was a little smoother in the movie than she is in the book, a little more toned down.

But on the whole, I think her whole character was preserved and translated well. She did come across as the brains of the bunch and was as equally willing to participate in the adventures as Ron and Harry were. So I had to look at it and say, yes, as a whole, she was presented as Rowling portrayed her in the book. And I like Emma Watson; she was cast extremely well for the part.

There are still plenty of examples in popular culture where smart, strong women are relegated to support roles. Or they don’t know as much as the men so things have to be explained to them, and, by extension, to the audience. How have female characters progressed in children’s literature?

They are definitely becoming stronger. The main character in Philip Pullman’s popular His Dark Materials trilogy, for example, is a very strong young woman. Twenty years ago it would have been miraculous, but not so much anymore. Nonetheless, it is somewhat unique when the main character is a male and he is very dependent on the knowledge the female is able to provide for him. Hermione isn’t portrayed as the main character but she is the main source of knowledge, even wisdom, I would say, and adds strength in the triumvirate.

Thinking back to the complexity of these books, another thing Rowling has done is to have a number of main characters. There used to be the idea that there had to be one main character, or, if there was a group, the members were acting together. But in this case they have their own lives, their own problems, their own issues. It makes it a many-faceted story, one that people used to think younger children wouldn’t deal with. It doesn’t seem to bother children at all, and it keeps the attention of adults. But it is a little unusual to have a secondary character who is as strong as Hermione and has her own developing story.

What effect has the Harry Potter series had on children’s reading habits?

According to much anecdotal information from parents, teachers and librarians, the books definitely have had a spillover effect. One of my areas of scholarship is the study of adult perceptions of childhood, and my view of digital-age children is that they are capable of much more than adults have sometimes realized. The fact that they’ll read a 700-page book and sit through an almost three-hour movie goes against what a lot of adults have said about children — that they can’t remember plot details, the books are too complex. These books have broken down a lot of these images and brought children and adults together reading things they enjoy.

What about censorship? Is Harry Potter still a popular target in the U.S.?

The only systematic statistics are collected by the American Library Association, and they get them by scanning newspapers and from self-reported instances of book challenges. Last year, Harry Potter books were at the top of the censored book list, and they received the seventh spot on the 100 most challenged books of the past decade, even though they’ve only been out for only half of the last decade. Censored in this case means there was a serious challenge to have them removed, but it doesn’t mean they were actually removed.

At the same time, according to the statistics kept by the ALA, the number of book challenges has dropped approximately 35 percent since 1995 — it may be only because everyone’s turned their attention to the Internet. Still, among those challenges, Harry Potter turns up the most. But it’s my belief that with the Internet and the free availability of information, it’s virtually impossible to block anything from a child who really wants it, so adults should be working on teaching critical thinking skills and good judgment; this is the real way to protect young people.

There was a famous attempt in Zeeland, Mich., when a school superintendent asked for the books to be removed from school libraries. The children took up the cause and protested and ultimately won. This lead to an anti-censorship organization run by kids that is now known as Kidspeak. There will always be some people who fear these books, and maybe they fear them because they are so popular and because kids want to read them — to some it is not good that kids are more astute than once thought.

Which is your favorite Harry Potter book?

Probably the third one, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Actually, I see the entire series as one long novel. I think when the seventh volume is finished it really is one work published in several volumes. They’re so interdependent. It’s not like a lot of series for kids where you can pick one up at any point. You can’t read these out of order.

What happens after the last volume is published? It looks like a lot of fans might face withdrawal.

Definitely — although young Harry Potter fans seem to have an insatiable appetite for rereading the books, and for re-viewing the movies, too, I’m sure. So they may just start over again when the last one is in place. It is a lesson that we all have to learn ultimately: All good things must come to an end. But that is nothing to worry about now — there are three books and possibly five movies to go. By the time they’re done, the original child readers may have joined the legions of adults who are committed Harry Potter fans — and that’s when the classic status takes over!