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Degree Project
Bachelor’s Degree
Fantasy Fiction from a Gender Perspective
A Study of Gender Differences in Peter Pan and Harry Potter and
the Philosopher’s Stone
Author: Rebecka Ivarsson Supervisor: Billy Gray Examiner: David Gray Subject/main field of study: English Literature Course code: EN2028 Credits: 15 hp Date of examination: 7th^ January, 2019 At Dalarna University it is possible to publish the student thesis in full text in DiVA. The publishingis open access, which means the work will be freely accessible to read and download on the internet. This will significantly increase the dissemination and visibility of the student thesis. Open access is becoming the standard route for spreading scientific and academic information onthe internet. Dalarna University recommends that both researchers as well as students publish their work open access. I give my/we give our consent for full text publishing (freely accessible on the internet, openaccess): Yes ☒ No ☐
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Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Feminist Literary Theory
- The Domestic
- Knowledge
- Motherhood
- Questioning Gender Roles
- Conclusion
- Works Cited..............................................................................................................................
in London, towards the “second [star] to the right, and straight on till morning” to go to the Island of Neverland (Barrie 45). The flight is the portal to another world. Later, during the middle of the twentieth century two English authors wrote some of the most famous works in fantasy fiction; C.S Lewis’s stories about Narnia and J.R.R. Tolkien’s trilogy of the Lord of the Rings , which have had a great influence on fantasy fiction. These novels have increased the interest of fantasy among children and adults all over the world (Mendlesohn & James 44). Fantasy fiction since the nineteenth century has gone through enormous changes regarding the development of female characters (Kaplan 266). In general, most females have played a less prominent role as background characters or assistants to a male hero. However, as in other literature, the development in fantasy fiction has moved forward and more female characters have received prominent roles and some are portrayed as independent heroines with different personalities and strengths (Kaplan 266). The Grimm brothers and Perrault “had a tendency to weaken and desexualize the girl heroines of the oral tales when they wrote them down. The process of reclaiming these heroines to represent contemporary ideals of girlhood has continued ever since” (Kaplan 267). Kaplan believes that female characters have had a more prominent role since the oral folklore traditions were recorded by the Grimm brothers and Perrault (267). Kaplan states “as feminist analysis has shown, the girls of European folktales range from the completely passive (Sleeping Beauty) to the resourceful active heroine (Ashenputtel)” (267). One of the first modern fantasy novels with a prominent female character is Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865). Carroll’s novel was the beginning of a trend for girls to become more prominent in nonfolkloric fiction. Alice is a strong, young character who is neither a sidekick to a boy hero or a victim of love (268). Even though Alice is a strong character, there is not much room for an autonomous female character in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century fantasy fiction (268). Kaplan states, “[n]ineteenth- and early twentieth-century fantasy does not provide a thoroughly feminist space. In many works of this
period, female characters are mostly absent or hold stereotyped roles as mother figures” (268). In J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan (1911) the female character Wendy takes the role of the “mother figure to the Lost Boys and is contrasted to the somewhat cruel and flighty Tinkerbell” (Kaplan 268). In more modern fantasy, on the other hand, many authors portray women as smart, athletic and gifted such as Hermione Granger from J.K. Rowling’s series about Harry Potter (269). Beginning their journey in London, 100 years apart, two young girls are on their way to a place unknown to ordinary people. The girls, who are around eleven years old, are on their way to the greatest adventure of their lives. One is about to go to the island of Neverland and the other is about to go to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The girls are Wendy Darling and Hermione Granger; important characters in the novels about Peter Pan and Harry Potter. Both novels are written in the 1900s, Peter Pan in 1911 and Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in 1997. J.M. Barrie’s novel Peter Pan is set in London where one night, Peter Pan, the fairy Tinkerbell, and the siblings Wendy, Michael and John fly, with help from fairy dust from Tinkerbell, to the island of Neverland. At Neverland, they live together with Peter’s friends, the Lost Boys. Together, they go on different adventures on the island, including fighting against the pirate Hook and his crew. Meanwhile, the process of ageing does not exist on the island of Neverland and the Darling children miss their parents and want to go back to London. The Darling family adopts the Lost Boys, meanwhile Peter, unwilling to grow up, stays in Neverland watching Wendy age and lose her ability to fly. There are seven novels about Harry Potter and his adventures at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone is the first novel in the series and it explains how Harry moves from his aunt’s house on Privet Drive in the suburbs of London to Hogwarts where he meets his new friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. The novel is about their first year together at Hogwarts and together they go through several
models relating to social structure^1 , Södergren discusses how the characters are portrayed, either as individuals or in relation to other characters. The study shows various differences in how the characters are portrayed, for example “Peter Pan […] is associated with qualities such as cockiness, carelessness and courage” (29) meanwhile Wendy is described as “polite, kind, nurturing and easily adapts from the social role of a daughter in to becoming the substitute mother for the Lost Boys” (30). Emily Clark discusses “the manner in which Barrie’s representation of Wendy’s, Tinkerbell’s, and Tiger Lily’s physical attributes and dialogue not only reflects their oppression, but their appropriation of agency for themselves as well” (303). The article concludes that Wendy’s voice is the loudest as she is a middle-class white woman/child. This “reassures the reader that English domesticity continues intact and unquestioned” (317). Clark states that since Peter forgets Wendy after a while it is important that Wendy’s daughter get to go and visit Peter for spring cleaning every spring, which allows her to practice her femininity for her future life as a wife and mother (317). Unlike Peter Pan , many studies have been made about the female characters in the Harry Potter series from a feminist angle. Several collections of articles have been published about Hermione from a gender perspective among them the anthology Hermione Granger Saves the World: Essays on the Feminist Heroine of Hogwarts edited by Christopher E. Bell. Opinions about Hermione being a feminist character are divided. There are two main orientations in the research field: those who claim that the novels are sexist and those who claim that the novels are revolutionary.
(^1) Jane Sunderland’s two models focus on social gender. The first model focuses on how gender is reflected in language depending on if a male or female is speaking while the second model focuses on how gender isconstructed in both written and spoken language. This model is further explained in Sunderland, Jane. Language, Gender and Children's Fiction. London: Continuum International Publishing, 2010.
The study “Hermione Granger and the Heritage of Gender” by Eliza T. Dresang concludes that the gender roles in the novel are traditional and stereotypical and that the novels are sexist. Dresang compares Hermione Granger to other Hermione’s in older literature, such as Shakespeare’s or D. H. Lawrence’s Hermione^2. Dresang concludes that Hermione Granger “remains secondary in her role to the males in her story. […] she does not differ substantially from Euripides’ or Shakespeare’s Hermione’s, although her life is less controlled by men” (240). She suggests that the first four novels in the Harry Potter series sends a bad message about gender roles for children and adolescents who read the novels. In “ Unstoppable Force: Maternal Power and Feminism” Alexandra Hildago examines maternal power, and how the readers can understand Hermione’s maternal power by providing a rich and detailed context (67). Her conclusion is that Hermione adopts a maternal role towards Harry throughout the series and that Hermione is an intellectual character but her most important mothering support is emotional (83). Hildago concludes that since Hermione knows Harry well she provides him with all the guidance and care he needs (83). On the other hand, Sarah Margaret Kniesler concludes in “Alohomora! Unlocking Hermione’s Feminism” that Hermione is a positive feminist role model by analysing her feminist characteristics: her agency, her androgyny, and her relationships with males (89). Her imperfections and her actions are supported by theories about sexual equality which declares that she is a good feminist role model (102). In “Heroes and Heroines: Myth and Gender Roles in the Harry Potter Books”, Michele Fry challenges the stereotypical picture of Hermione as a “female who is left to ‘gawk and gaze’ at Harry’s exploits” (157). The study concludes that Harry and Hermione complement each other, their combined strengths creates a hero that can beat the evil powers of Lord Voldemort (165).
(^2) This can be found in William Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale (1623) and D. H. Lawrence’s HERmione (1981).
The patriarchal system is considered by feminists to be sexist. Even if all women are victims of patriarchal oppression, their needs, desires and problems are also formed by their race, socioeconomic class, sexual orientation, educational experience, religion and nationality (105). In other words, gender is ingrained in society and gender affects how women are treated by others (108). Tyson continues her discussion with the concept of the woman as the man’s Other. She writes about the ideas of the French feminist Simone de Beauvoir:
Men can act upon the world, change it, give it meaning, while women have meaning only in relation to men. Thus, women are defined not just in terms of their difference from men, but in terms of their inadequacy in comparison to men. The word woman, therefore, has the same implications as the word other. A woman is not a person in her own right. She is man’s Other: she is less than a man; she is a kind of alien in a man’s world; she is not a fully developed human being the way a man is (96).
De Beauvoir defines the concept the Other as the opposite to the norm in gender. The norm is the man meanwhile the Other is the woman. The man is the subject meanwhile women are the opposite as they are defined in relation to man. De Beauvoir writes: “She is determined and differentiated in relation to man, while he is not in relation to her; she is inessential in front of the essential” (26). She is the object where her significance is decided for her and not by her. By being the Other sex, Tyson suggests that “women are trying to escape their own freedom to fulfil their own potential in the world, a freedom that they often try to avoid because it is frightening: it demands personal responsibility while offering no guarantee of success or even of well-being” (97). At the same time, women can choose to break free from gender roles and achieve transcendence; a position where she takes care of her own responsibility and chooses
her freedom. However, many women cannot reach transcendence because they are not actively doing something about the situation. Beauvoir states “they do nothing, they do not make themselves be anything; they wonder indefinitely what they could have become, which leads them to wonder what they are ” (320). Tyson explains “In every domain where patriarchy reigns; woman is other : she is objectified and marginalized, defined only by her difference from male norms and values, defined by what she (allegedly) lacks and that men (allegedly) have” (92). De Beauvoir was the first woman to argue that women are not born feminine but are expected to be feminine by patriarchy. From her idea of social constructionism, de Beauvoir stated that “[o]ne is not born a woman; one becomes one” (de Beauvoir 330). Women are not born with maternal instincts but the patriarchy assumptions are that they do. Not all women want to have children and they do not feel comfortable being mothers (Tyson 97). Tyson states: “yet patriarchy tells them that they are unfulfilled as women if they don’t have children, and there is a great deal of pressure brought to bear upon women in order to recruit them for motherhood. Clearly, how can we know what ‘woman’ is ‘by nature’, given that we never see her outside the social conditioning of patriarchy” (97). Mothers or mother-figures are frequently represented in children’s literature (Rauch Gibson 177). There is often, especially in classic books, an older female relative or friend who play the role of a fairy godmother, for example, who supports and helps the protagonist in challenging situations. Maria Nikolajeva states: “Even though a character may have a real mother, another female can be portrayed in the book as a mother substitute, providing food as well as care and love” (118). Children are physically and emotionally dependent on their parents and a part of growing up is to have supporting parents that protects the child (116). The role of the parents are presented differently in various genres. Nikolajeva states that parents often
his family must follow, including Wendy, giving her the role as a caring mother and housewife (16). The end of this novel shows that these structures continue. Wendy promises to go back to Neverland each spring to clean Peter’s home which her future daughter also will do (Barrie 206). Wendy’s brothers’ perception of their sister shows that she is of less worth than the boys and that gives Wendy the position as the Other. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone is written through the eyes of Harry Potter and the characters in the novel are described through Harry’s point of view. Rowling describes how Harry interprets situations and other characters. This is reminiscent of de Beauvoir’s theories about the Other where “[h]e is the Subject; he is the absolute. She is the Other” (26) Harry takes the position as the norm and describes Hermione as the Other since she is a girl. Dresang interprets Hermione as a stereotypical girl in the beginning of the Harry Potter series mainly because Hermione shows emotions, for example when she cries, whispers or speaks with a terrified voice (223). One example is during Halloween, when a troll enters Hogwarts while Hermione is crying in the girls bathroom. She does not know that the troll is in the school and Harry and Ron must save her. In this situation, Hermione has a stereotypical characteristic – a girl in need of help – often described as a damsel in distress (Fry 164). Hermione takes the position of the Other but it is important to remember that it was the actions of the male characters, locking the troll in the bathroom where Hermione is, which led to Hermione being in need of help in the first place. Harry realises this after the incident is over:
‘Good of her to get us out of trouble like that’, Ron admitted. ‘Mind you, we did save her.’ ‘She might not have needed saving if we hadn’t locked the thing in with her’, Harry reminded him (Rowling 192).
After the incident with the troll, Harry, Ron and Hermione become good friends. Hermione is not always the victim and the one that needs to be saved, she saves Harry and Ron several times throughout the novel such as when she puts Professor Snape’s robe on fire to save Harry during his first Quidditch game (205). Like Hermione, Wendy needs to be saved by the boys countless times throughout the novel. One example, is when Wendy is kidnapped by Captain Hook and his crew. Unlike the Lost Boys, who were treated badly by the pirates, Wendy was escorted politely by Hook to the pirate ship, once again putting Wendy in the position as the Other sex (Barrie 144). Still she is a damsel in distress and the only one left to save her and the Lost Boys is Peter. The pirate Smee tells Wendy “I’ll save you if you promise to be my mother” (164). She refuses the offer
- only Peter is capable of saving her - realizing that he is the only one that can bring her back to London again. Both Wendy and Hermione are young girls in need, however what is clearly a difference between them, which suggests that Hermione is a strong and independent character, is that after Hermione is saved, she faces several monsters and challenges where she does not rely on Harry to save her (Fry 164). While Hermione participates in the adventures and helps her friends defeat Voldemort, Wendy gently waits on the side. Mikaelsson writes:
Wendy stands idle on the side while the boys are fighting. When the fight is over she reenters and takes her role as mother and praises each child the same amount, being impressed with what they did and quickly, seeing the lateness of the hour, putting them to bed. (15)
Generally speaking, while Wendy is a passive character, Hermione is autonomous and active, helping Harry defeat Voldemort. Tyson claims, in feminist criticism, that “if a woman is not
the school at night (Rowling 171). Tyson points out that just because men are superior, that does not mean that they are more intelligent than women (86). Critics, such as Dresang, point out that words such as shriek , squeak , squeal , giggling , are stereotypical and that in general only female characters are described in this way (223). Dresang mentions how Hermione and how her “hysteria and crying happen far too often to be considered a believable part of the development of Hermione’s character and are quite out of line with her core role in the book” (223). An example of this is when Hermione overhears Ron and Harry in the corridor:
‘It’s no wonder no one can stand her’, he said to Harry as they pushed their way into the crowded corridor. ‘She’s a nightmare, honestly.’ Someone knocked into Harry as they hurried past him. It was Hermione. Harry caught a glimpse of her face – and was startled to see that she was in tears. ‘I think she heard you.’ ‘So?’ said Ron, but he looked a bit uncomfortable. ‘She must’ve noticed she’s got no friends.’ (Rowling 184)
Hermione is clearly upset and shows her feelings by crying and walking away. Elizabeth E. Heilman argues that this is an example of the novel where the girls are portrayed as emotional and vulnerable (224). Hermione’s reaction is apprehensible since Ron’s words are mean and insulting. While Hermione is described through the eyes of Harry Potter, Peter Pan is told by an omniscient narrator, and the narrator does not leave much room for character descriptions. However, there are some scenes where Wendy is described as friendly and caring and where
she takes on the role as a mother to Peter’s friends and her brothers. In the first chapter of Peter Pan, the reader gets to know that Wendy is considered to be a “delightful” and “tidy” child (Barrie 1–10). The reader also gets to know that Wendy is a young pretty girl with blond hair (Routh 59). Neither Harry and Ron or the male characters in Peter Pan are described this way. Like Hermione, Wendy is a gifted girl. Among all the things she can do is cleaning, reading, sewing, and cooking which are more things than a young girl in today’s society knows how to do. Besides this she is the only one who retains the perception of reality during their adventure at Neverland and understands the importance of doing so. Routh claims that Wendy plays an important role in defining the adventures at Neverland as fantasy and that she is the child “who regards the Neverland as a diversion rather than an escape from the unavoidable business of growing up, she is the reader’s touchstone for recognizing the significance of Peter’s desire for eternal youth” (70). Nikolajeva states that if there is one character that undergoes change in Neverland it is Wendy since she comes back to her real world “with a better insight about herself and the process of growing up” (80). While Wendy has a better insight about growing up, other characters are hindered from developing due to Peter’s offers about an eternal childhood in Neverland (Nikolajeva 64). At the end of the novel, when Wendy has grown up, Peter comes back and he is exactly the same age as he was at the beginning of the novel. Nikolajeva states that “a boy who does not grow up does not change or develop” (64). Wendy does her brothers and the Lost Boys a big favor by getting them back to their normal world in London where they are given a chance to grow up and develop into men. Routh claims that Wendy sticks to reality, which is something her brothers Michael and John tend to forget. Routh argues, by telling stories she continues to stick to the reality and the memory of their real mother and father will not fade away (71).
Wendy states that she is only a little girl and that she does not have any experience at all about being a mother. She is expected to take a lot of responsibility for one who is so young. She is a mother substitute, who provides food, care and love for all children (Nikolajeva 118). Just like Wendy, Hermione is expected to take on the role of adulthood early but compared to Wendy, Hermione is not expected to take a lot of the responsibilities of adulthood. She is served by the house elves at Hogwarts every day, where they give her the food she needs. Hermione travels to Hogwarts at the age of eleven where she needs to learn how to take care of herself and does not rely on her parents. One of her most prominent maternal instincts is in her nurturing of Ron and Harry. An example of this is when Hermione supports and takes care of Ron after the chess game in the hunt for the philosopher’s stone. Routh states that one of the most important features of Barrie’s ‘mother’ is the ability to sew (61). When Peter came to visit the Darling household the first night, he forgot his shadow. When Wendy sews Peter’s shadow on to his foot the first thing that she thinks of is that she probably should have ironed the shadow before she put it back on him (Barrie 30). Another scene in Barrie’s novel where Wendy shows that she got skills in sewing is when the boys are asleep and she finds time to sew:
Wendy’s favorite time for sewing and darning was after they had all gone to bed. Then, as she expressed it, she had a breathing time for herself; and she occupied it in making new things for them, and putting double pieces on the knees, for they were all most frightfully hard on their knees. (Barrie 88)
Nikolajeva argues that Wendy is working hard and Barrie tries to convince the reader that she enjoys this dull and monotonous work (207). Sewing is a skill that most women in the beginning of the 1900s engaged with; meanwhile the man was working hard to provide food for the family.
The mothers in Barrie’s novel reflect a Victorian point-of-view that can be seen as old- fashioned in society today (Routh 59). Wendy reads bedtime stories, sews, cooks and cleans the house, which were typical chores for a woman during the Victorian era. While Wendy assumingly enjoys being a Victorian mother, Hermione would think that such a life is “dull and repressive” (Hildago 75). She has mothering skills, but they are not as prominent as Wendy’s. Hildago argues that Hermione’s most prominent mothering skill is strong compassion, which helps to ease the pain among people around her (69). One scene in the novel where Hermione shows compassion is when someone exposed her friend Neville for a Leg-Locker curse where “everyone fell over laughing except Hermione, who leapt up and performed the counter curse” (Rowling 234). She helps Neville just like she helps and takes care of Harry throughout the series and prepares him to defeat Voldemort. Hildago writes “Hermione guides him through adolescence, helping him mature emotionally and become the student, wizard and human being he needs to be in order to defeat Voldemort” (82). Hermione adapts a maternal role towards Harry, but, unlike Wendy, she does not give up anything in order to do so (82). Wendy gives up her childhood becoming a mother to Peter and the Lost Boys while Hermione helps Harry and still focus on her own life. To help Harry, Hermione uses her brilliance, however Hildago argues that her main mothering skill is not intellectual but emotional (83). At the end of the novel, when Harry needs to find the Philosopher’s stone alone, Hermione encourages him and tells him that he is a great wizard (Rowling 308). Hildago argues that Hermione “has grown through her mothering in ways that go beyond taking care of others to transforming herself into a more powerful and competent person all around” (84). Hermione’s emotional support does not just come with praises, she does, like mothers should do, tell Harry truths that he does not want to hear (84). One example of maternal skills is when Hermione is concerned about Harry’s schoolwork. She tells Harry that the finals are coming up quickly when Harry says “Hermione, the exams are
