Although what with one thing and another, YHB hadn’t expected to read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince for a while yet, it turned out that a copy came to hand almost immediately, and then there was this all-day car ride during which YHB and my Best Reader took turns driving and reading aloud. It worked out rather well, actually, although the first several hundred pages were padded to the point of boredom. Still, around about page eight hundred or so, it settled down, and the last few hundred pages were quite good.
Did I mention that the book is a trifle too long?
Anyway, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this one. Mostly, I liked Harry again; after spending that interminable year with him at fifteen, he appears to be a fairly likable sixteen-year-old. That makes a huge difference. There were also plenty of occasions for Ms. Rowling to do what she does so well, particularly the playful descriptions of magic gone not-quite-right. True, Hermione is the Amazing Disappearing Character, defined entirely by her relationships with men (and boys), but the book isn’t more annoyingly sexist than most other YA books.
On the other hand, it was really very noticeable that there were no interesting female characters in this one. Prof. McGonagall, of course, has diminished to the point of invisibility, although there is some hope she will revive a bit in the last book. The opportunity to make Draco’s doxy interesting was passed up entirely. Molly Weasley was, well, Mrs. Weasley, and great in her way, but not terribly interesting. Tonks was (surprise!) defined by her relationship with men, as was Fleur (who showed no evidence of being a Beauxbatons prize pupil). There were a few minor characters who showed up for a scene, with the Dark Side’s Narcissa and Bellatrix, and Merope (or whatever her name was), and the poor woman who Tom Riddle seduces and kills. And there are a few plot-device females, notably Katie Bell, but really, if you were listing the characters who actually do anything in this book, it’s Harry, Prof. Dumbledore, Voldemort/Riddle, Prof. Snape, Draco, and maybe Prof. Slughorne. What do they have in common? Oh, yes, dicks. Or at least secondary characteristics, as it’s, you know, for kids.
Which, I suppose, brings up Ginny Weasley, but really, did she do much of anything? I mean, yes, she's a hot fifteen-year-old redhead, and Harry falls for her in a manner much less annoying than the whole Cho business, but I'd have a hard time calling her an interesting character.
But I’m grumbling. On the whole, a goodish book, far better than I expected it to be, and good enough to make me anticipate the next book with some pleasure. I oughtn’t complain.
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.
Your point about the female characters being defined primarily through their relationships with males hadn’t occurred to me while I was reading HBP, but now that you mention it, I quite agree. I was wondering if we could pass this off as being due to the story being seen through the filter of Harry-the-teenage-male, whose point of view regarding females might be a reflection of his current developmental/hormonal state. But I think your observation that the female characters don’t actually do much of anything precludes that interpretation, since their lack of action can’t be laid down to how Harry is thinking about them.
Well, by the same token, Ron doesn’t do very much except fret about girls, but you do have a point.
Well, yes, Ron’s pretty lame in this one, too. And I don’t mean to say that Ms. Rowling deliberately chose to make the female characters worthless in this volume, just that she clearly forgot to make a worthwhile female character.
Do you know the woman-test for a movie? I don’t know who came up with this one, but it’s a simple question: Is there a conversation between two women that is not about men? And by about men I mean about relationships with men, not “Madam President, the Speaker of the House has been killed!” See, that would be a yes, while “Madam President, the Speaker of the House is a hunk!” would be a no. Anyway, once you start asking that question, it’s hard to stop, particularly once you spot how few movies get a yes. Books (or at least books YHB reads) are more likely to get a yes, even if the conversation is “Look out m’lady! It’s a G’Kargth!”. I didn’t have the question in mind when reading Half-Blood, but I can’t remember any.
Thanks,
-V.
Interesting discussion of gender roles in HP&HBP. The “woman test” for a movie is a bit difficult to apply to HP, since, as Laura points out, almost everything is from Harry’s point of view, so the book very seldom shows conversations between women in which at least one teenage boy is not also a participant. I also agree that the prominence of relationships in Harry’s talks with his friends is age-appropriate: it certainly fits my recollection of what I and my friends talked about at that age!
The problem with the representation of relationship discussions is that it pretty unvaryingly shows the women to be both more concerned about them and more perceptive about them than the men are. This may be somewhat accurate for teenagers, but it is true of the adults as well, which is very limiting for both the adult men and the adult women in the book.
One of the problems that I have with the books (of which I am very fond, by the way) is that, with the very notable exception of Dumbledore, most of the adults act very much like the children, at whatever stage of emotional development they are at. Perhaps that’s all of complicated adult psyches that children typically see, but I am doubtful about that. Perhaps it’s a typical limitation of YA fiction (of which I don’t read a whole lot), but it still places limitations on the books’ psychological and moral vision that I find occasionally frustrating. In YA fantasy, writers like Le Guin and Lloyd Alexander are certainly not limited in this way.
… even if the conversation is “Look out m’lady! It’s a G’Kargth!”
If we’re counting such conversations, then there’s the argument between Katie Bell and her friend just before the necklace incident. And the conversation between Bellatrix and Narcissa at the beginning.
But I have to agree with Chris, I don’t think that test is fair for this book given who the characters are (age-wise) and what the point of view is (more or less Harry).
Aside: the “women test” for movies comes from the comic Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel. At least, that’s the first place that I saw it. Note that the character who describes the test says that the last movie she saw that passed was Alien — the two women talk about the monster.