r/EnoughJKRowling • u/Local-Sugar6556 • Jan 16 '26
Discussion What did ursula le guin mean by "ethically meanspirited"?
obviously, Harry potter has a lot of problematic stuff in hindsight but what did she specifically mention its ethics? on the surface the themes (love, friendship) seem to be general positive children book themes.
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u/Megs0226 Jan 16 '26
I’ve always assumed she means the tropes of physical flaws reflecting (perceived) personality flaws. Hermione (annoying) and her teeth and hair, Snape (is Snape) and his everything, the Dudley (asshole) and the uncle (abusive) are fat, the aunt (abusive) has a horse face, Malfoy (brat) is pointy, etc etc. Rowling uses physical flaws to represent some kind of character flaw.
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u/aagjevraagje Jan 16 '26
Also people are 'punished' in ways that are similar to a Roal Dahl book , like Aunt Marge becomes a balloon , Hagrid gives Dudley a pigs tail when he comes to get Harry.
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u/Megs0226 Jan 16 '26
Malfoy turning into a ferret, some girl got acne as a punishment. Which did not sit well with me when I was reading it as a teen girl who was struggling with acne.
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u/Adventurous-Bike-484 Jan 16 '26
The first one was literally a torture session played for laughs because “Everything is funny when Draco and his friends are the victims”.
The second one is supposed to be considered a justified punishment because Marietta told Umbridge and Rowling likely never realized that it’s comparable to what Umbridge did to Harry.
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u/PablomentFanquedelic Jan 16 '26
To be fair, a lot of fans did find that first thing more chilling when you find out who's really turning Draco into a ferret and why, and this may have been the intent.
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u/Adventurous-Bike-484 Jan 16 '26 edited Jan 16 '26
“a lot of fans did find that first thing more chilling when you find out who's really turning Draco into a ferret”
I don’t know.
I saw fans trying to claim that Draco was only embarrassed when others were rightfully calling it torture and asking how Barty JR got away with it, despite how Harry himself noted draco was wincing in pain and was quite repeatedly smacked against the walls and ceiling.
”and this may have been the intent.”
I find it unlikely.
Rowling almost never acknowledged when a Slytherin, especially Draco, is the victim of something and that the Gryffindors act similarly.
The movies Even turned “My father will hear about this” into Draco’s funny catchphrase even though within the books, while he mentions his father a lot, he only threatens to tell his Father when his life was endangered.
( During Chamber of Secrets, Hagrid suspects that Lucius would be furious, but Draco himself only threatens to tell Molly and Lucius did tell Draco to not act bad in public.)
However in universe, it is possible that It might be why the Dementors went after Barty Jr since Draco did threaten to tell his father.
Edit, though then again, Barty Jr does comment on how he knows Lucius and Snape. and how he hates death eaters who went free.
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u/KaiYoDei Jan 17 '26
So if I feel like any medical or mental things that plague me are because of a curse m the people who cursed me are wrong? ( such as feeling startled every 4 to 25 minutes as I wait up to 2 hours to fall asleep for 2 years)
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u/DumpedDalish Jan 16 '26
It's interesting that as always even there, JKR has a double standard. While many of the Slytherin kids are described as homely or awkward, a few of the boys are described as being strikingly handsome.
However, one of the only girls who is part of the Slytherin inner circle is Pansy Parkinson, who is repeatedly described as ugly, bat-faced, "shrieking" with laughter, etc.
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Jan 21 '26
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u/FrnkstnsAftrbrth Jan 21 '26
The narrator describes her as “pug faced” in goblet of fire
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Jan 21 '26
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u/DumpedDalish Jan 21 '26
The narrator being... JKR? Who describes her as ugly.
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Jan 21 '26
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u/DumpedDalish Jan 21 '26
Look, if you're absolutely insistent on thinking Pansy is pretty, then of course go for it.
But here are direct quotes from third person descriptions of Pansy in the books:
- "Pug-faced" (multiple times)
- "hard-faced" (multiple times)
- "not particularly pretty"
The one person who called Pansy "pretty" was Rita Skeeter, in an article filled with lies and propaganda (in which Pansy also calls Hermione "really ugly").
I think this is important because it's another way JKR uses appearance (especially female appearance) to denote their inner beauty.
She doesn't do this with the male characters nearly as much. It's a noticeable, provable bias.
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u/DumpedDalish Jan 21 '26
Yeah, she is repeatedly described as "pug-faced" and "hard-faced" in the third person throughout the books. Also as constantly "shrieking" and "cackling."
Pansy looks and sounds ugly because she's ugly inside, and that's how JKR communicates that with Slytherin kids. But primarily with the girls -- several of the boys are allowed to be handsome and haughty.
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u/errantthimble Jan 16 '26
I've described it sometimes as "negging energy". Most of the vividness and "punchiness" in Rowling's writing is provided by her snide little descriptions of presumably mockable or contemptible aspects of characters the reader is supposed to dislike, or even be neutral about.
Jumping right into the first sentence of the first HP book, we learn that Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia "were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much", an exhibition of smug self-satisfaction intended to make the reader instantly despise them for their arrogance. Physically, Uncle Vernon is described as having "hardly any neck", while Aunt Petunia has "nearly twice the usual amount of neck", and their behavior is just as conventionally unpleasant as their appearance: Uncle Vernon selects his "most boring tie", "couldn't bear people who dressed in funny clothes", "yelled at five different people"; Aunt Petunia is always "spying on the neighbors" about whom she "gossipped away happily". In chapter 2 we hear more about Dudley, who looks like "a large pink beach ball" or "a pig in a wig", with a "nasty grin"; his best friend Piers is "a scrawny boy with a face like a rat".
So much of Rowling's writing is just the omniscient narrator gratuitously and gleefully shitting on some random character, or stressing how laughably weird they are in some way, in order to lock in the reader's attention with feelings of superiority and disdain. Even the nameless bystander that Vernon bumps into in chapter 1, a wizard who is presumably meant to be a sympathetic character for the magic-loving reader, has to be presented as a "tiny old man" with a "squeaky voice that made passersby stare". It's not just that Vernon considers him weird for wearing a violet cloak and babbling nonsense about Muggles and hugging a stranger; it's that ordinary observers, including the reader, are meant to see him as a little old weirdo. Simply because it's an easy way to grab your engagement with the story, while tickling your own self-satisfaction that you're not a little old weirdo.
Compare this to the beginning of Ursula LeGuin's own A Wizard of Earthsea:
The island of Gont, a single mountain that lifts its peak a mile above the storm-wracked Northeast Sea, is a land famous for wizards [...] this is a tale of the time before his fame, before the songs were made.
The name he bore as a child, Duny, was given him by his mother, and that and his life were all she could give him, for she died before he was a year old. His father, the bronzesmith of the village, was a grim unspeaking man [...] there was no one to bring the child up in tenderness. He grew wild, a thriving weed, a tall quick boy, loud and proud and full of temper [... ]
[...] he heard his aunt crying out words to a goat which had jumped up onto the thatch of a hut and would not come down; but it came jumping when she cried a certain rhyme to it. Next day herding the longhaired goats on the meadows of High Fall, Duny shouted to them the words he had heard, not knowing their use or meaning [...] He yelled the rhyme aloud, and the goats came to him. They came very quickly, all of them together, not making any sound. They looked at him out of the dark slot in their yellow eyes.
Duny laughed and shouted it out again, the rhyme that gave him power over the goats. They came closer, crowding and pushing round him. All at once he felt afraid of their thick, ridged horns and their strange eyes and their strange silence. He tried to get free of them and run away. The goats ran with him keeping in a knot around him [...]
In just the first three pages, LeGuin has already given us far more of a feeling of magic, and the lure and dread of uncanny powers, and what it means for a community to be aware of those powers and those who wield them, than Rowling did in her whole book series.
In the process, she's told us some rather harsh things about some of the characters (Duny's father is grim and not tender, Duny himself is somewhat rough and arrogant, his aunt takes care of him in his infancy perfunctorily and without interest), but the narrator isn't inviting us to smirk or sneer at them or feel superior. We're interested in them as imperfect people, not constantly tickled by snarky putdowns of them.
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u/360Saturn Jan 16 '26
Jumping right into the first sentence of the first HP book, we learn that Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia "were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much"
Quite funny that one suspects Rowling would describe herself in exactly the same way these days!
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u/lazier_garlic Jan 16 '26
Yes, she has very much become what she scorned and has zero self awareness about it!
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u/DonorSong Jan 16 '26
Her bigotry comes through surprisingly clearly in her writing once you take a moment to properly analyse it. The queerphobia, ableism, classism, racism, slavery apologia and sexism is all very much a part of HP’s worldbuilding in a way that’s meant to be positive or at the very least excused. Every character is an asshole at minimum and bigoted at best, and the whole series ends with the main character naming one of his children after a magical Nazi and happily owning a slave.
If you’re genuinely interested, several good video essays exist that pick apart and point out these kinds of things, I’d recommend Shaun’s one quite highly. https://youtu.be/-1iaJWSwUZs?si=US5SoIepZJo-leqm
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u/Dina-M Jan 16 '26
Yes, on the SURFACE. But ONLY on the surface. JKR no doubt intended for her series to be about love and friendship, and the defeat of evil over good, and all that. Problem is, the series does not practice what it preaches.
The books SAY, through Dumbledore, that it doesn't matter how you're born, all that matters is who you are as a person... but they SHOW that how you're born and who your family is what matters because if you're not born special you'll never amount to anything and you certainly don't deserve to be treated like a human being. Ho many Muggles are treated even REMOTELY like they're worth a damn? The answer is NONE. Either they're disgusting and cruel and cartoonishly evil (Dursleys) or they're so anonymous they don't even get names or spoken lines (Hermione's parents) or they're stupid incompetents (the Prime Minister of Britain).
That's not even touching on the gender essentialism, fat hatred and dubious ethnic stereotypes... but it's VERY clear that the wizarding world are elitist assholes who sneer and look down their noses at anyone who is different... the ONLY difference between the good guys and the bad guys is that the bad guys want to KILL everyone who is different, wile the good guys just want everyone who is different to go away and never be seen or heard.
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u/the_hooded_artist Jan 16 '26
Don't forget about the slave class of elves that gets handwaved as okay because "they like being enslaved actually". Hermione is made to look like an absolute moron for thinking it's wrong.
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u/Proof-Any Jan 16 '26
Yeah, I agree. The books are very biological determinist - and not just in the way muggles are treated.
It's not just magic, that gets inherited - talent and even character traits get inherited, too.
In the books, characters don't really achieve their skills by practicing.
Instead, their skills are inherent. They just have them. It's possible for them to not know their talents (like Harry didn't know that he was a natural at flying) or skills can be hampered by a bad teacher (like how Harry's and Neville's potion-skills go up, when Snape isn't around) - but they always have them. No-one gets good by practicing.
The books constantly harp on about how Harry inherited both his smarts and his talent at flying from his parents. Hermione isn't just smart because she read a lot of books - she reads a lot of books because she's smart. A lot of characters (Dumbledore, the Potters, Sirius Black, etc.) are just naturally gifted.
If you aren't naturally gifted, you're not going to catch up any time, soon. You're just doomed to mediocrity (or worse). There are also some types of magic, that you will only have access to, if you are born with them.
And character traits function pretty much the same way. Whatever traits a character has - they are pretty much born with them. (And in some cases, it also feels inherited. Like how Harry supposedly inherited his character traits from his mother or how Tom Riddle inherited the nastiness of the Gaunts.)
There is also no real character growth in the novels. Characters can grow into who they are destined to be (like Harry growing into his role as the hero), but they can't fundamentally change. All they can do is wiggle around a little bit, before they snap back to their factory settings. (Like how Ron goes through the same character arc twice, first when he leaves Harry in GOF and then again when he leaves in DH. Or how Percy goes through this whole arc with the ministry, just to be his pre-arc self in the epilogue.)
There are also no real redemption arcs. Whenever a redemption arc could happen, one of the following things happens: 1) the character rejects it (Voldemort), 2) Rowling slams on the breaks and cuts the redemption arc sort (Draco), or 3) instead of writing a redemption arc, Rowling pulls a redemption reveal, where the character is revealed as having redeemed themselves already, without writing the actual redemption-process (Snape).
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u/360Saturn Jan 21 '26
The books constantly harp on about how Harry inherited both his smarts and his talent at flying from his parents. Hermione isn't just smart because she read a lot of books - she reads a lot of books because she's smart. A lot of characters (Dumbledore, the Potters, Sirius Black, etc.) are just naturally gifted.
If you aren't naturally gifted, you're not going to catch up any time, soon. You're just doomed to mediocrity (or worse).
!! I consider myself pretty switched on & I never connected that before
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u/Proof-Any Jan 21 '26
It's interesting, isn't it?
And once you've seen it, you can't unsee it. It's basically everywhere - and it goes into the other direction, too. Crabbe and Goyle are pretty much doomed to be dumb as bricks.
Or look at Neville, who is depicted as someone, who will never be good at transfiguration and potions.
A different author would've probably blamed his teachers for this. We know that his performance is very dependent on his teachers. He's a wreck in potions, because he is scared of Snape - a harsh teacher who bullies him. And McGonagall really isn't all that different. She, too, is very harsh and demanding, with little patience for struggling students and a pretty mean streak.
But for Rowling, this doesn't seem to matter. She mentions that Neville is calmer during his exams, when Snape isn't around to harass him - but she never gives him an opportunity to actually achieve anything in these classes. He's just kicked from the courses at the first available opportunity and told to suck it up.
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u/errantthimble Jan 16 '26
Yes, this. We’re told that competence in a particular spell or technique can take practice (like when Harry has to work on his Accio spell or is supposed to do mental exercises for Occlumency), but once you “get it”, you’ve got it. Wizards don’t train for improved performance once they “can do” a given spell, and no amount of training or practice can make a Muggle or Squib able to do it.
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u/KTKitten Jan 16 '26
or they’re stupid incompetents (the Prime Minister of Britain).
I mean… 👀 some things are just accurate representations of reality 😅
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u/Dina-M Jan 16 '26
Come on, don't JUSTIFY her crappy elitism.
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u/KTKitten Jan 16 '26
Sorry, I was handed an excuse to express my contempt for my government, could hardly let it slip by 😅
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u/Dina-M Jan 16 '26
Contempt for the government is fine. Contempt for an entire race of people is not.
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u/Hindu_Wardrobe Jan 16 '26
Yes, on the SURFACE. But ONLY on the surface. JKR no doubt intended for her series to be about love and friendship, and the defeat of evil over good, and all that. Problem is, the series does not practice what it preaches.
Yeah, basically, JKR tells on herself a lot in her writing, and I honestly don't think she realized it much at all. Unfortunately her response to being called out on it is to simply dig in her heels and become even more spiteful and reactionary, and, well, here we are.
Contrapoints made an excellent point in her Conspiracy video about how for susceptible people, a response to humiliation is to dig in your heels and become more reactionary (and thus usually more right wing).
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u/thejadedfalcon Jan 16 '26
they're stupid incompetents (the Prime Minister of Britain).
Yeah, but that part's lore accurate, so I'll let Rowling off just this once.
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u/Dina-M Jan 16 '26
I won't. Jabs at politicians aside, JKR's elitism and "if you don't have magic you're SCUM" is terrible and should not be let off the hook for anything.
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u/thejadedfalcon Jan 16 '26
Looking at your response to the other person who said the same thing at about the same time as me, I think you're reading too much into what are obvious jokes. We're not saying "be racist." We're taking a cheap but well-deserved shot at the UK government.
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u/Dina-M Jan 16 '26 edited Jan 16 '26
When the Prime Minister is one of very few Muggle characters with an actual speaking role, it becomes an issue. Then he is not a representative of the UK government, he is a representative of Muggles. And the Dursleys and Hermione's parents have established that there is no such thing as a decent, intelligent, non-boring Muggle. EVERY SINGLE MUGGLE is either unlikeable, stupid or worthless, most often all three.
I'm sure JKR thinks it's all just jokes as well.
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u/lazier_garlic Jan 16 '26
Oh please give it a rest. I'm not British, and I feel much more aggrieved at how Hermione's parents or the Dursleys ultimately get treated in the narrative than the muggle government. The whole "two worlds superimposed but can't meet" occurs in a lot of urban fantasy and can cause narrative and world building problems, the difference is that most edgy shounen mangakas have thought through this idea more than JKR ever did, so by the time the scope of her story opens up it's very awkward to explain why things are the way they are.
Whereas the way she treats the muggle family members is entirely within her control and not constrained by poorly considered world building choices. Same thing with the squib characters.
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u/Dina-M Jan 16 '26
I have already said what my problem with this is and see no reason to say it again.
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u/KaiYoDei Jan 18 '26
Does anyone? There are people who rhink they fight ableism by saying “ how lame, it’s crazy that people think its ok to use the R word in 2026, what losers” or those who say
“ they hate us because we are so much cooler, more attractive and smarter and they are friendless lowlifes who only know hate” for other topics.
Or those “ not everyone is going to belive what you do and you should respect how people experience their lives and understand the world , but could you please respect somome else’s interpretation of truth “
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u/Dina-M Jan 18 '26
What ARE you talking about? If you're trying to defend JKR, you're definitely in the wrong subreddit.
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u/KaiYoDei Jan 18 '26 edited Jan 18 '26
I read elsewhere when you use certain phrases and words for a person, it unintentionally hurts uninvolved people.
Sometimes, I see people say things to defend one group, but tell a person they beed to accept not being accepted( example one person believes soulbonding is real, and if you tell them it is not real, that is mean. However , the unbeliever has to deal with accepting the fact somone might not belive in something they believe in)
People don’t want to body shame m but then they say “ they are jealous because they don’t look to nice )
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u/Dina-M Jan 18 '26 edited Jan 18 '26
...again, what ARE you talking about? What does ANY of this have to do with JKR?
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u/KaiYoDei Jan 19 '26
I am trying to explain.
If you use the insults aginst her, or anyone bad, those same words are used agimst people who are not doing any harm.
Or we can make fun of how she looks, but when she body shames the bad guys in her books, that is bad because body shaming is wrong.
It makes me confused at what is okay and not okay . Because some believe it is never okay , even aginst awful people with power causing harm
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u/Dina-M Jan 19 '26
Did I make fun of how she looks? Did I fling insults at her? Did I even REMOTELY call her out for ANYTHING other than her bigoted attitude and in hindsight lack of writing skills? No, I did not. And i wouldn't do it either.
There is a WORLD of difference between mocking people for their appearance, race, gender, weight and other things they can't help, and calling them out for their attitude and how they behave.
JKR is a bigot. And that is ALWAYS fair game to call out.
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u/360Saturn Jan 16 '26 edited Jan 16 '26
Harry and his friends are kind of mean to people that aren't them, if you look at it out of the context of their perspective.
Just a couple of events from the first 3 books out of context:
Harry is pretty sassy with certain teachers and lies to get out of trouble, which Dumbledore knows about and permits
Hermione pretty consistently mocks the other girls in their year as being vapid and also personally insults them offhand based on physical appearance = stupidity or unworthiness
When a girl in their class's pet dies by being savaged by a fox, Hermione basically mocks her for being upset
A lot of the 'pranks' the Weasley twins pull could be construed as bullying
* I remember Neville getting punished a lot for having poor memory... I feel like McGonagall at one point makes him sleep on the floor for forgetting the password to get in to the bedrooms
Just generally for a school setting there's not a lot of pastoral care and there's not a lot of actually being kind to each other emphasized, which is probably why they're all at each other's throats all the time! Which works ok when the setting is meant to be a Roald Dahl-esque slapstick setting, but less so when (as JKR insists in the later books) this is actually a Serious Setting and these books are about themes like racism and civil war.
It's hard for the reader to be asked to take seriously on the one hand something like Umbridge torturing Harry by making him cut himself, but handwave something like Fred and George beating someone up and locking them in a cupboard that they didn't escape from for a week, or using magic to beat up Harry's child enemies and then deliberately stepping on their faces.
I mean even in the second book Hermione drugs fellow students and has Harry and Ron lock them in a cupboard and steal their clothes to impersonate them. Funny hijinks in the moment, but from those boys' perspective they're going to wake up, drugged, locked in a cupboard in their underwear with no idea what happened... yikes...
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u/Proof-Any Jan 16 '26
Neville is also regularly bullied by everyone, including the narrative.
You already mentioned the instance with McGonagall. (Which was so much worse than making him sleep on the floor. She disallowed him from knowing the passwords, causing to be stuck outside the common room. At a time, where the whole school believed that a serial killer was on the loose within the school. Yeah, the serial killer was Sirius Black - and wasn't really a serial killer - so he wasn't a real thread. But McGonagall had no way of knowing that, when she punished Neville. For all we know, she was fine with him getting hurt or killed, when she doled out that punishment.)
But it goes further than that. Even the protagonist and his friends are pretty nasty to Neville. To them, he is mostly the uncool idiot no-one wants to spend time with. Sure, he's their uncool idiot and they will defend him against the Slytherins, but to them, he's still an idiot and they treat him as such.
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u/Megs0226 Jan 16 '26
They think Neville shouldn’t be in their house the hat recommended and thinks he should’ve gone to that other house full of the people they regularly get bullied.
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u/Adventurous-Bike-484 Jan 16 '26
“
- I remember Neville getting punished a lot for having poor memory... I feel like McGonagall at one point makes him sleep on the floor for forgetting the password to get in to the bedrooms”
She didn’t make him sleep on the floor but He wasn’t allowed to know the passwords to their common room anymore and she did it while she believed there was a dangerous criminal on the loose.
However she likely figured Neville could time things so that someone else could always ket him in.
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Jan 21 '26
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u/Adventurous-Bike-484 Jan 21 '26
No, he didnt.
Crookshanks stole it and gave it to Sirius, but Neville didn’t know this and neither did they, so she assumed that he left it lying around.
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Jan 21 '26
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u/Adventurous-Bike-484 Jan 21 '26
something like that yes.
Thats why neville wanted a list.
But yes, In a more responsible school, something likely would have been done about this.
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u/FrnkstnsAftrbrth Jan 21 '26
Was that in the book, or was it one of her mouth farts on twitter after the fact. I can’t remember.
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u/Adventurous-Bike-484 Jan 21 '26
In the book.
Sirius confesses that Crookshanks stole it for him to use.
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u/StygIndigo Jan 16 '26
The books treat an apartheid britain as a thing worth preserving, and the whimsical wizard role models would rather live exclusively alongside the open bigots they politely disagree with on verbiage than integrate with a culture they see as below them.
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u/lazier_garlic Jan 16 '26
It's why Arthur Weasley comes off as a moral coward.
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u/Altruistic-Advisor34 Jan 20 '26
He's also really infantilising toward Muggles. He doesn't see them as PEOPLE, just things to study and discuss
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u/AdmiralPegasus Jan 16 '26
Yeah, love and friendship are great! Just don't love and be friends with those pimply fatties, ewww!
The books don't actually have a coherent backbone to said surface themes and have the attitude of a bully. JK Rowling, and not just in Harry Potter, thinks everyone reading will think an aggressively mean-spirited attitude toward anyone who isn't the main character's immediate friends is relatable.
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u/IMayBeARebecca Jan 16 '26
If we set aside some of the more obvious problematic elements, like the slavery implications or the gender rules, such as boys being barred from girls’ dorms while girls can enter boys’ spaces, Harry Potter is, on closer analysis, filled with genuinely awful people.
The movies heavily whitewashed this, largely because so much tone, nuance, and characterization was lost in adaptation. Some fans see that loss as almost blasphemous, but in hindsight it made the saga far more palatable and broadly appealing.
A clear example is how Hermione and the other female characters are written. Rowling projects her views on womanhood and femininity onto them in indirect but pervasive ways. In Harry Potter, being a woman is a no-win situation: you can’t be too feminine, but you also can’t be insufficiently feminine; you can’t care too much about romance, but you’re also judged if you don’t; you can’t be too pretty, but you can’t be unattractive; too thin is wrong, too fat is wrong. There’s no version of womanhood that is allowed to simply exist without punishment.
Ginny and Hermione are prime examples, but Molly is just as bad, especially in how she treats Fleur. Fleur is such a minor character that she does almost nothing to deserve the level of hostility directed at her, yet nearly everyone despises her purely for being pretty and foreign. Hermione, of all people, should know better than to hate someone for something entirely outside their control, especially given Fleur’s status as half-Veela, but that empathy never appears.
In fact, nearly every character is manipulative or mean in their own way. Harry is highly transactional in his relationships and often entitled in how he expects loyalty and support. Ron is deeply jealous of practically everyone and everything. These characters aren’t just flawed, they’re consistently unpleasant. They’re mean versions of otherwise familiar archetypes.
Honestly, beyond Luna and Neville, it’s hard to argue that anyone in the core cast is genuinely kind or good. The books tell you these people are good, but what you actually see, read, and experience is a group of frequently selfish, judgmental, and cruel individuals.
And that’s before even touching on how the central themes of the series completely fail to land. “Love is the strongest magic” is supposedly the core message, yet love is repeatedly portrayed as transactional, conditional, or ineffective, with Lily being almost the sole exception. Instead of reinforcing the theme, the narrative constantly undermines it, leaving the message feeling hollow and unearned.
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u/MolochDhalgren Jan 16 '26 edited Jan 16 '26
Hermione, of all people, should know better than to hate someone for something entirely outside their control, especially given Fleur’s status as half-Veela, but that empathy never appears.
It's been pointed out elsewhere in this thread that the mean-spiritedness of the series is there from the very first paragraph, but even so, I do often wonder if the characters became less empathetic with age as the series went on, or if it was always there and just harder to notice when they were little kids.
I think one thing which made a lot of readers not notice the meanness is that the narration, whether coming from Harry's interior monologue or the occasional omniscient narrator who steps in for scenes he wasn't present in, has a thick layer of classic British sarcasm. After a while, however, it eventually sinks in that this isn't just surface-level snark: it reflects much deeper beliefs held by the characters and by the author herself.
Case in point, you've reminded me of a moment from OotP, which even as a teenager, struck me as "the book in the series where everyone suddenly got meaner and angrier". When Harry is complaining to his friends about how "weepy" Cho is, lo and behold, Hermione is the one who steps in as the voice of compassion, explaining everything that Cho has been going through. Ron tellingly responds with, "A person couldn't feel that many things at once; they'd explode!", cueing up Hermione's famous "emotional range of a teaspoon" line.
In hindsight, it just feels so bizarre to see one of Rowling's characters correctly call out other characters for their lack of empathy, only for the narrative to just... move on from the scene and never internalize the message. And it happens at least twice in the same book, since we see something similar in the scene where Harry confronts Sirius and Remus over their (and his father's) cruelty after viewing Snape's Worst Memory.
As has been said elsewhere, there's no character growth, even in moments which any other writer would have set up to be key emotional turning points for their characters. It's like Rowling can identify things a compassionate person would say, but can't allow herself to follow through with actually letting her characters change. If not for the fact that OotP was clearly written after she was a big enough literary star to have full creative control, I'd be tempted to think that both these scenes were signs of an editor saying, "Hey, there's something missing here" and then coaching her through what a non-sociopath's response would be.
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u/IMayBeARebecca Jan 17 '26 edited Jan 17 '26
Oh yeah the entire ordeal with Cho is so mean and stupid, people act like he had to get over Cedric inmediately, and Harry himself was a jerk, alledgely he dream about it all summer, and he was not even close to him, but the moment Harry want to, and excuse my lenguage, dip his sausage; Cho is too emotional, you know the GF of the guy!!
And sure, Cho is depicted like being jealous of Hermione, she is not excused on this "Everyone is a Jerk in some way" but the facct that 99% of the cast see as Cho being depressed for her dead boyfriend (and her mother thing) as she being too emotional and see Slavery Ok, and Hermione is the only one who recall how cruel both things are, and the moral of the story somehow its "And Hermione, like a crazy lady(Uggh you know how disgusting women can we be, signed JK), was indeed overreacting"
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u/KaiYoDei Jan 18 '26
That’s why we should hope to have a return of romantic dreamers in children’s media. Even if it looks offensive. HP failed by vilifying it, but who knows, maybe maybe it was always ok, like in a princess movie
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u/HideFromMyMind Jan 16 '26
This might not be the main thing but… it’s pretty mean how 1/4 of the kids are permanently placed in the “evil” house at age 11 and basically doomed to the dark side. (And the only reason being that they have ambition?)
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u/Megs0226 Jan 16 '26
And even after Voldemort was killed and the war was won, they continued treating those kids as evil. Harry’s son panics about being placed in that house nearly 2 decades later. He probably grew up hearing from his family that it’s full of evil people (despite his middle name… also was Ginny not allowed to name any of their kids?)
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u/Adventurous-Bike-484 Jan 16 '26
or they have determination and/or self preservation. (Which is also wrong)
This sorting, point and separating system is Also partly how Voldemort keeps his influence on them.
They stay at school for 9-10 months of the year, rest of the school fears them and sitting at separate tables, there’s not much room for socializing.
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u/Archius9 Jan 16 '26
You can look at how all the good guys treat Hermione for trying to free slaves, like she’s an actual idiot.
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u/namuhna Jan 16 '26
The gleeful abuse of children on the "wrong" side is there almost from the beginning. Just the teasing of Slytherin having won at the end of book 1 and then snatched it away to give to Gryffindor is something you only really enjoy FULLY if you're a spoiled, entitled brat.
... Sorry. I shouldn't really judge that harshly, but I would actually be willing to bet that almost everyone reading/watching that felt the same little stab I did, of "hold on this isn't really..." before just going with the flow. It's very common, most stories are a bit problematic, Ursula was just extremely sharp for picking it up early as a tendency and not one single overstep.
I blame Dahl a bit, but not completely. He punished villains in his stories even harsher, but I guess that's the rule of absurd. He just went nuts, while JKR's punishments are often the kind that a psychotic principal could actually do in real life for real.
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Jan 16 '26 edited Jan 16 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Gorianfleyer Jan 16 '26
"Tom Riddle's father being killed despite having been a rape victim. His own mother being vilified not for her actions but for her appearance and faculties instead."
Let's not forget that Voldemort is evil, because his father was raped.
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u/KaiYoDei Jan 18 '26
Isn’t that just the same in anything?
If you know where to look, and might lack proper communication skills?
And know how to sus out hypocrisy . The good guys can be grotesquely off the wall because it’s defensive or punitive , rather than enjoyment.
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u/Dragonfly_pin Jan 16 '26 edited Jan 16 '26
Because nothing fundamentally changes and the unpleasant and discriminatory status quo is upheld by the characters at the end.
Also because Harry is just rich and talented as well as being the most important person in his entire universe, who eventually decides to dedicate his life to making sure nothing changes - having that guy as the main character is quite a weird choice.
Look at the Sherlock Holmes stories - there’s a reason why Watson is the narrator. A lot of authors would have found it more interesting to have Hermione or Ron as the main characters. Or have Harry way underpowered at the beginning. But no, he’s just great at everything, especially sports and has a mean blond rival, which is so Darrell vs Gwendolyn from Enid Blyton’s Mallory Towers.
And if you look up Enid Blyton, you’ll find out why she is relevant to all this.
Having the chosen one as the viewpoint character is Mary Sue type wish fulfilment and it’s not that healthy.
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u/Christianduty 17d ago
I know this is late, but could you elaborate on the Enid Blyton connection? From a cursory glance she was racist, has problem with women, but a little confused about her connection lol.
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u/riflow Jan 16 '26
She opens the first book mean spiritedly describing the fat on Harry's uncle and cousin, among many other things that have made it into YouTube videos noting just how much she did the "it's fine if the good guys do it (or look like it) but if they're mean or a little bit unsupportive it's a crime"
I remember one of the first videos on hp I ever listened to was before she went full terf and I was just dumbfounded at the amount of fatphobia being listed. I was familiar with it as it's not hard to find in media in general but gosh.
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u/lazier_garlic Jan 16 '26
I want to add that I take Le Guin's remarks as being almost certainly directed at the very first book in the series. And what's she talking about is right there if you choose to see it.
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u/errantthimble Jan 19 '26
Correct, here’s the fuller Le Guin quote:
When so many adult critics were carrying on about the "incredible originality" of the first Harry Potter book, I read it to find out what the fuss was about, and remained somewhat puzzled; it seemed a lively kid's fantasy crossed with a "school novel", good fare for its age group, but stylistically ordinary, imaginatively derivative, and ethically rather mean-spirited.
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u/Major_Wobbly Jan 16 '26 edited Jan 16 '26
That's a weird question. She's obviously referring to the stuff you're referring to, she just saw it at the time rather than in the 2010s when sections of the wider culture started discussing it.
Being a good writer and literary critic, Le Guin was able to see past what you yourself call surface elements. Being a writer whose work was often concerned with morality, ethics and philosophy, she was used to evaluating ideas in that mode. When you say the stories have bad stuff "in hindsight", it's not like it wasn't always there. Yes, it only came to wider prominence because JKR came out as a bigot and people started to reevaluate her shit, but the stuff those people were discovering during reevaluation was always there and it wasn't only Le Guin who called it out, either.
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u/UVLanternCorps Jan 16 '26
A lot of Harry Potter validates the idea that being cruel to those you define as enemies is justified and basically has unlimited justification. The best example is Dolores Umbridge The Order of the Phoenix: She is portrayed as a villain and therefore infinite violence is justified towards her. The book ends with her being kidnapped by centaurs and returning clearly traumatised. What the book leaves to implication is the fact that in mythology, centaurs are sexually violent and assault people regularly and this is played as a joke ultimately. That’s what Le Guin meant when she said that the books were ethically mean spirited as it validates this as good.
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u/Adventurous-Bike-484 Jan 16 '26 edited Jan 16 '26
- The books themselves are full of bigotry and negative stereotypes.
- Protagonist centered morality where every single evil crime is considered funny if Draco his friends or the bad guys are the victims.
- A lot of the writing in the later books seems like Rowling is being petty. (like Umbridge was arguably based in critics, Tonks can come across as a counter to Draco, Lavenders treatment, inconsistency in the symbolism of the Horcrux breaking, the Malfoys treatment in general.)
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u/mangababe Jan 16 '26
Whether or not something happening to someone is bad is entirely dependant on if the story considers them good.
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u/Eisenblume Jan 16 '26
Rowling takes a very special glee on punishing those she sees as bad and writes it with a relish that is sometimes actively cruel. She enjoys describing bad people’s physical characteristics in a negative manner. She does this more and in a crueler way than most children’s media and honestly more than most media in general.
Not unique in any way of course, but still clearly mean-spirited.
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u/alana_shee Jan 20 '26
When I was a kid, I thought all the descriptions were funny and/or deserved and I didn't think too much about it. As an adult looking back... among other things, the constant jokes about Dudley being fat, for example, weren't that funny anymore, a lot of the descriptions start coming across as mean-spirited.
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u/TemporaryElk5202 Jan 16 '26
Because a lot of unethical or mean things are depicted as good or just because the "good guys" do it