“Ah, music," he said, wiping his eyes. "A magic beyond all we do here!” ― Dumbledore to the Great Hall, J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone B and I finished Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (HP1) and as he put it, "Watched two whole Harry Potters, um, tonight (last night.)" This morning, B asked me to sit down at Guy's desk and blog, AKA sit in the office, so he could sit on his new favorite perch and be with me. He climbs the handles of a four-drawer, gray double file cabinet barefoot about ten times a day now. Any movement break during virtual school, first thing in the morning... Today: "This is my breakfast table." When he was one-and-a-half, I would watch him closely, hovering while he scooted down our 20-year-old, sometimes dog-hair covered carpeted steps on his bare belly in his diaper (ewwww,) but I'd watch him and he would descend, toddle to the door, and wait like the cat. I'd open it to our sunny, summer cul-de-sac, and he would make his way along the porch rail to his Little Tykes trampoline and jump for a few minutes before toddling inside to begin his busy day. How long is it going to be 'till Valentine's, he wonders this morning? About four months, bud. He asked me to blog, and I told him I didn't really have anything to blog about, so he suggested the movies. "How about we watched two movies?" Well, JK Rowling and, yes a fantastic feat - double features. Recent news controversies about JK Rowling gave me a new way to think about the story I know so well. And I wonder -- how do the themes of the story relate to J K Rowling's political stance, and why do people depend on her to be a moderate feminist? A most obviously, and therefore least likely to be repeated, feminist theme in the story: I'm reappraising the significance of the power of mother's love. Anyone who is upset with JK Rowling for publicly aligning with right-wing feminist politicians also probably remember her as a phenomenal single-mother and working author, like Harriet Beecher Stowe, who thanks friends in her dedications -- the people who made it possible for her to go out on a limb and publish the first book. I appreciate the strength and patience of her stoic female characters like M Mc Gonnagal, and realize now that as a child, maybe dependable adults in my life, well the way I remember them... it's like I went through a distracted period where I lived, trying to define myself, depending fiercely on my conceptions of other adults, saturated among the memories of many people - who were all in all... a bunch of "Flat Stanleys." Saturated and struggling to turn the tide towards adulthood, self-mastery and independence. Relying on people who I expected wouldn't change. One day I see how beholden to me I expected them to be. I feel a little selfish. I want to be nothing like Harry Potter. But that's absolutely in parentheses, and double-double coated in awestruck admiration. J k Rowling? Mother's love matters absolutely. Take it from another mother. And not just any... other... mother.... (Sorry, riffing on Harry Potter quotes there…) I’m a young mother who has grown up as the Harry Potter story became a phenomenon, and I’ve witnessed a little bit of JK Rowling using her voice in different genres, expanding on feminist issues. There’s the riveting and dubious middle-aged single-mother character in The Casual Vacancy, who is living in a fantasy world following a boy band in the news, dreaming of meeting the boys, and kind of perversely in love with one of them, and then the edgy and cool, independent sisters, Queenie and Tina, who have eachothers’ backs as they find love in the 20’s in “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,” and don’t skip over another companion to the Harry Potter-verse, Tales of Beedle the Bard, where Rowling adopts the voice of Albus Dumbledore in the introduction as she tells girls basically to know where you are coming from, and defend your stance with confidence. Can you pick and choose ideas you agree with when you align yourself with a highly opinionated feminist? Well people are critical of JK Rowling now, not just for supporting someone who is anti-trans, but also begin to regret that her tales are too normative? What could be more unique than a bunch of witches and wizards? LGBTQ issues are central to daily debates that I witness in the news and media and to me, their representation is intrinsically linked with feminism and African American rights. All of these ideas are swirling around and reidentifying and my first-hand report is that elementary school children are debating gay and trans issues after school. I am inclined to celebrate her stories for what they are, for the ways her stories have propelled human rights, and must add, that The Casual Vacancy contains no shortage of color. The movies have given me new way to think about the story. They include little opinionated snippets, like M McGonagall on the House Quiddich Cup. The story is chock absolutely full of soul... busting with laughter. The movies are fun and they add another layer of magic. Re-reading the first couple books with a child has been a wonderful pleasure. When children ask questions, suddenly those questions become the important ones (I hear Dumbledore chuckle in my head.) Last night, I'll admit, B was more focused on Ginny questions in the story. Harry Potter is an epic tale, so there's always some different angle for my son to ask about or consider. I'm happy my son thinks the stories are so cool. He is excited to learn about love and crushes as a little 5-year-old, which is new and exciting. I never would have guessed it, but part of being a mom is not getting surprised by anything. It's not that I'm numb to all new situations, but... its like some great mom-memes I see where 200 tasks are going at once and then the blender spews all over the kitchen ceiling. And of course it had to happen. But, I get nervous when we read and there is talk of killing and terrorism. Lots of topics might be too mature for a little one, and the story is so rich. Full of good, bad, boring and funny. I balance my concerns out with knowing that almost as many people who have eaten at McDonalds this week have read Harry Potter or seen the movies at some point, so I don't know... somehow the issues have all been absorbed by the wide world. They reflect it well, which is a hallmark of its success. And also, the other kids are reading it. And hey, Grimm's Fairy Tales were originally pretty terrifying. Even Disney movies are! What makes Harry Potter different from fairy tales or Disney movies? Reading Harry Potter again makes me think about college English, about epic poetry and the oral tradition of medieval poetry - when long rambly, rhyming verses lent themselves to memorization and verbal transmission so stories could be spread far and wide. When paper was technology, not tissues. And spelling? A matter of opinion. And the skill of writing a mark of privilege. And you know what? It still is, and as much as I and my son wish we could have walked through a barrier and hopped aboard the Hogwarts Express last September the first, the magic of sharing the story, of reading and enjoying, is undeniably powerful. "How about Star Wars drools?" he suggested for a topic this morning. Nice. For a very-Carrie Bradshaw (not Carrie Fisher) ending to my blog post (I will have more than one, which is a technique my son became exasperated with during the HP1 conclusion last night) I was thinking about exposing my son to the epic story. B kept making sure how old everyone was. And I was remembering Edmund Spenser, or Swann, or since I read the first few chapters of The Three Musketeers, of Don Quixote, and I wondered something: As our life expectancy continues to lengthen, are our epic heroes becoming younger? In my own experience, I'm just not sure... In War & Peace, Natalya Rostov is definitely a heroine and also a very young child coming of age amidst epic controversy. (She's 8-ish.) In Tolstoy's world, the heroes are all deeply flawed and vivid and wonderful. A reader is invited into a theatre of controversy and immersed in the complex story. I can see eyes alight with excitement and feel heads tossing in a grand party like great carriage horses waiting in the snow. But it's a story without one clear protagonist. In fact, my professor asked us to look at the novel as a precursor to the long, modern TV episodic dramas like "Game of Thrones." So far, B and I aren't rushing through the Harry Potter series, because 1) there's no need, and 2) it really is a long scary journey looming before Harry, and 3) I don't want my son to zoom through the series without taking enough in to understand the plot. I feel sure he has no frame of reference for a lot of the humor in the books, and I just want to make sure that he can string together all the moments and understand the story well enough. So we have been poring over the first three books. We did read them all through once, and now he likes to choose one or another and pick a scene, or he will say, "I don't care which part we read!" And sometimes he will quickly change his mind. And we are beginning to work our way through the fourth. My son lives in two homes, and I'm thrilled Harry Potter, and chapter book reading in general are an activity shared between both homes. This fall, I finally finished a TV show that was beyond my maturity level when I watched it on Wednesdays in high school. I followed the show for years, but when the protagonist's life got too emotionally complicated, AKA when she faced a second major disappointment in love, I stopped watching. So for years I was feeling like TV dramas have no aim and they just fizzle out when people lose interest, but now, I'm really amazed by the story arc and relieved that I finally reached the resolution of the story. I told all my cousins that learning the show's ending changed my outlook on life. Anyway, I was dreaming and thinking about how life can be a big muddle, when suddenly my mind landed on the controversial and dark literary figure George Gordon, Lord Byron. His longest work, Don Juan, an epic-style poem, was written in a satirical vein based on a prominent political figure. In Manfred, a play, I, a student, was asked to consider the tradition of dark literary characters - Christopher Marlowe's Faust, or the Devil in Paradise Lost, that inspired its hero's composition. Manfred is sated by his knowledge of the ways of the world. Aside from that, I was also directed to consider the ways Lord Byron's biography related to Manfred, since he lent dark humor, and cast controversy over his fashionable society. As a side note, I don't think there are many poems more beautiful and simple than So We'll Go No More A Roving. By the time we got to Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, we were left to ponder the long poem within it's contemporary context. Among Romantic poets, a long, autobiographical poem was kind of the thing to be writing, a staple. Poets attempted to reach back into their childhood memories and shed light upon formative experiences. Shelley and Wordsworth talked of being impressed by nature's majesty. The poems took the form of mini-epics, divided into books or cantos, and following a dramatic arc. With Shelley, the emphasis is on being swept away or overwhelmed, and with Wordsworth, the experience is uplifting and gently chastising. In Lord Byron's case, Childe Harold isn't uplifted or overwhelmed by nature and solitude, but rather, responds to politics, gossip, s-e-x and controversy, and simultaneously acknowledges and encourages- solidifies the infamy of a dramatic figure. Also, Child Harold is poingnant in a mix of contemporary verbal expressions dressed in the formality of an older heroic style of poetry and knight's garb. I thought this poem was going to be about a child. I had just finished studying contemporary Poet Laureate, Wordsworth, who often celebrated children, depicting in his ballads their innocent experiences with tragic child-mortality, and their abundantly receptive relationship with nature. Childe Harold is definitely an adult. The title kind of creeped me out when I first heard it. I was picturing one of those Medieval baby portraits, where the baby's face looks about 50 years old (well, 30 in those times.) Or a baleful child monarch. Harold is a young adult, a kind of knight or warrior, who must reinvent himself after being cancelled by society. (Just learned that term this week -- gotta throw it out there.) But, I guess he still views himself eternally as a child, or rather, he looks back upon his formative years, his old decisions, and feels weary or disappointed. Is Harry Potter's epic adventure anything like the pilgrimage of Childe Harold? The only real points of comparison I can make after all are that both figures deal with "waking up famous," and don't feel deserving of their fame. But where Child Harold relishes bitterly in infamy, Harry Potter, a child, faces temptations or must resist against public opinions, and he never veers too far from his course. He stays true to himself and his friendships. Also, perhaps, like Childe Harold, a Romantic knight, any young witch or wizard who takes up a wand is liberated from modernity, transported to an unplottable, anachronistic castle and taught a way of living that is uniquely of of its own time and necessity. Should I read Harry Potter with my son? Sure, and more than once, probably, if he's too young to take it all in the first time. And taking our time, yes -- that seems to be a good prescription. The books are available for us to binge our way right through, but I trust that like other things I love, my son will love them because I do, and the important magic is just that - in sharing experiences.
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AuthorWe are Kieran and Michelle, two 32-year-old William & Mary grads living in Virginia. Archives
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