No happy families

[sistermagpie]

I was reading something today that brought up that old HP argument, Weasleys vs. Malfoys and it once again made me ask:

Are there any really happy families in HP canon?

The point of this post is not to judge families for being happy or not, or play them off each other. It’s that JKR seems to see all families as being combinations of love and tragedy, comfort and pain. It's pretty realistic that way. Nobody really seems to escape family fucking them up. Even Amos Diggory, whose love of his son seems so total in GoF, would probably come across as flawed and sometimes hurtful if we saw him interacting with Cedric in canon (the first time we see him he's embarrassing his son, actually, though it's obvious he's just really proud of him). Is Luna's interest in her father's paper due to a genuine shared mind, or is she trying to draw closer to the parent she has left the only way she can—through his newspaper rather than himself—since for all we know he's withdrawn into that and left Luna coping with the loss of her mother on her own. (She herself could have retreated into her fantasy beliefs to cope with pain--maybe he has too.)

This usually seems to come down to the Weasleys vs. the Malfoys, and what often happens is someone will say that the Malfoys are "better" and someone else will say Malfoy-fans are just crazy and the Weasleys are one big happy family. The thing is, though, the Weasleys aren't one big happy anything--and that's not said as a big trash of the Weasleys or a compliment to the Malfoys. They just aren't. They love each other, sure, but they also have a lot of tension simmering under the surface--and that's canon. Percy's exile is not a case of a bunch of shiny happy people betrayed by their suddenly alien son, shaking their heads in bewilderment. That blow up is built up over a few books with lots of antagonism of Percy and from Percy.

A lot of families could have weathered that fight between Arthur and Percy. But part of the problem is that Percy has apparently said what he's not supposed to say--that the family struggles financially and maybe this isn't just because Arthur is too noble to get the promotion he deserves. That’s not just about money—money can stand for a whole lot of other things, and I think it does here. In GoF the twins are, according to Ron, becoming very obsessed with money, and turning to blackmail. This doesn't have to make them DEs or evil, but I think there’s frustration there coming out in a different form. When Percy says what he says everyone has their own resentment ready to throw back at him, including Arthur. He's not just offended on principle that Percy doesn't trust Dumbledore. Basically, you don't have a family where one person is hated and hates without some well of real resentment to draw on there. The Weasley siblings are often described as damaging each other, and among the ones we see there seems to be a clear distinction between the aggressors who are sometimes too aggressive (Ginny and the Twins) and the resentful passive ones (Percy and Ron). This doesn't make the Weasleys a "bad family" as opposed to a "good one." It just says that families can hurt each other more than outsiders can--and that seems to be a pretty big theme of the series.

The Malfoys, by contrast, can sure be held up as sticking together. Draco, at least up until book VI, seems to have no criticisms of his father like Percy has of Arthur. But the Malfoys, to understate the point, have problems of their own. There's the fact that the kid is taught to be bigoted and to value cruelty and to believe in a psychopath, obviously, but also by HBP I can imagine that Draco could also be realizing that even on a personal level his family has fucked him up. He's followed his father blindly for years, just like his father wanted, and Lucius has led him straight into a dark alley and disappeared. He’s also an example of a kid really trying to be his father and simply not having it in him. So on the surface, the Malfoys are a pretty bad family, but they still do manage to also produce some form of the positive side of family: they do actually seem to love each other and want to do right by each other to an extent (at least Draco and Narcissa do, since we don't see Lucius' reaction to the crisis in HBP, but I think he has some basically good impulses towards his family mixed in with all his bad ones). The most important thing Draco really has to draw on is the same thing as the Weasleys do--despite the faults, there's love there. When everything else is breaking down in HBP, that appears to be the only thing that really keeps him going.

Neville is another Pureblood family often contrasted with the Malfoys, but there again you've got these relatives who seem to be at the heart of all of Neville's problems. People cheer when McGonagall tells Neville his grandmother should learn to be proud of the grandson she's got instead of the one she wishes she had, but jeez, to me that line is frankly humiliating! Would you want some teacher to tell you your grandmother is disappointed in you? Not that Neville doesn't know that already. I was recently talking about his boggart scene and I really do think that part of the point of Snape/Neville is that Snape isn't just a mean teacher but also a symbol of the way he's seen by his family. His grandmother seems to constantly be comparing him negatively to his father, not even giving him his own wand to use.

But on the other hand, that doesn't mean she doesn't care about him. Some of her harshness is probably tied to her grief over her son, which she shows in a different way that Neville does. She seems to share some of Snape's ideas about tough love, taking Neville to see his catatonic parents (possibly frightening him by doing that) and pushing him to talk about them because to not do so, for her, is to be ashamed of them (while Neville is not ashamed but finds it painful). He seems to get good presents from his family--thoughtful presents. He and his gran do seem to talk. And more than that, Neville has his mother, who is just sentient enough to show him she loves him (which is why theories that the Droobles Gum Wrapper are a clue to some mystery are so wrong--the gum wrapper is the ultimate example of "it's the thought that count" and its meaninglessness is what makes it so damn meaningful). ::sniffles over Neville::

Barty Crouch Jr., for all the judgments of the main characters, also comes from a family that includes both pain and love. His mother loves him, obviously, but I think his father probably did too. Re-reading the scene where he's stumbling around in the woods, saying it's his fault and introducing his son who’s gotten "12 OWLS," I can't help but think that yes, he too loved his son just as he hurt him. I think when he says it's "his fault" he is speaking about Barty's being a DE as well as Barty escaping. As a control freak, I think Crouch would see this as the case even at the time--and perhaps see Barty in Azkaban as some attempt to fix things. That's why this man, whom most of the Weasleys consider to be a complete failure as a family man, manages to inspire such devotion in their own black sheep, Percy. Ron often darkly suggests Percy would "pull a Crouch" and not protect his family even if they've committed a crime. Ironically, while Percy rejects the family, he has not turned them in for anything and distances himself from Scrimgeor's attempt to use the family on Christmas (I’m not saying Percy does nothing bad to his family, just saying that it’s not this, exactly). Meanwhile those who claim to think family should stick together offer no such universal acceptance of Percy. It's the "good" side of the Crouch family that keeps Barty alive and helps him escape.

The Blacks, of course, are as crazy as you get, but there too yeah, I'm seeing love and pain, not flat abuse. I believe Kreacher when he says Sirius broke his mother's heart, and when Sirius talks about Regulus as being an idiot I do hear him trying to kill lingering feelings he has for his brother: Why did you have to be so stupid? Sirius is ultimately destroyed by a family that has already been destroyed, and this is partly because he keeps feeling hurt by them and trying to hurt them back. He's "waging war" on the house where he grew up, and all that's left of it then is a crazy house elf who keeps enacting these scenes of family love that to Sirius are obscene, a screaming portrait and a mad cousin who knocks him through a curtain. Had Sirius been able to come to terms with his family, accept them as part of himself, he probably would have lived and had a happier life. He ran away from them once, and when he was brought back and couldn't run away they won. And it’s the same on their part—they blast him off the tapestry, and in the end he’s the only one left in the house.

Perhaps in the afterlife the family will be somewhat healed--at least I hope so. I can't help but see Sirius and Regulus finally making up two halves of a whole--two brothers and two Shadows, etc. Sirius was good but ultimately impotent and kept from doing anything. Regulus was the bad one but possibly able to act in the end. (Personally, I can't help but always picture Sirius as actually being the favorite despite being the black sheep, but that's a different essay.)

The Durlseys are meanwhile another family at an extreme. All their abuse gets pushed onto Harry, the stand in for the family Petunia has lost. Dudley is so little chastised he's confused when he's described as abused. His parents always say he's right, always say he's great. Anything he can't do isn't worth doing. They make excuses for him. And he's totally fucked up.

And of course we see what appears to be one snapshot of the Snapes at home and...yeah. Not so good there. And yet the Snape Harry liked came out of his mother's textbook—there’s those hints of love. (Not to mention, do Dumbledore and Aberforth talk? I think JKR said Dumbledore's family is important, yet they're never seen together despite living nearby--is Aberforth even at the funeral that we hear?)

The happiest family in the Potterverse appears to be the Potters--and it's no shock that this is because they're dead. Harry almost seems to get his strength from the way he was given a gift of that pure familial love of the mother for her child--a love that all of these mothers also have--and then the woman obligingly died before she could fuck it up by having to deal with her kid as he grows up as a human. So Harry still has both the love and the pain. Hagrid, btw, is probably another good example of that type of thing. His mother left him when he was small, and he seems to seek to fill that hole she left through animals. But I think that the animals he chooses are supposed to be significant that way, not just because his mother, too, was kind of monstrous but because Hagrid's ideas about his animals are, well, pretty fucked up. In his way he's a bit like the Dursleys cooing over Dudley and defending everything he does even when he bites or squashes some kid by sitting on him. It's an idealized version of parent/child relations (or sibling relations with Grawp) and as such not a completely good thing. Harry, too, sort of has this problem since for all we're told about his capacity to love he's actually not that good dealing with people. Harry tends to have great waves of affection when people are pleasing him and feel very betrayed when they let him down--which makes sense since that has been his experience of love: you were perfect, and then you were gone.

Phew! That was a lot longer than I expected it to be. I just started babbling about families. The basic idea being that this is why it drives me crazy when any family gets made one-dimensional either way, because it seems like it really goes against canon to both say a family is just completely negative or to say a family--usually the Weasleys--is ideal. I honestly don't even know if JKR *could* write One Big Happy Anybody's Family, because she just seems too aware of how people, especially families, fuck each other up and hurt each other. It’s not just that Voldemort comes from a bad family and Harry from a good one, it’s that while Harry’s family was good and then gone, Voldemort’s was just always gone. (Which of course probably means he never bonded and a sociopath is an expected result, but anyway…)

Comments

[onomatopoetry.livejournal.com]

First, a little note; in Harry/Cedric shipping, (yes, I have hung out in that part of fandom a bit. The movie sort of forced me to. Eh. But I digress) the Diggory family relationship is generally portrayed as a little strained, as Cedric doing the High Profile thing more out of loyalty to his father than because he really wants to. Personally, I find that a less-than-satisfactory way of explaining a Hufflepuff "hero" (or high profile kid, champion, what you will) but it's interesting that that corner of fandom sort of unanimously made that decision.

Second: yeah, the Weasleys have always struck me as not at all as nice as people tend to want to describe them. And I like that. The first lines from a character we hear about them is Ron expressing frustration. But we -and Harry- have also learned that Ron's frustration is often combined with, and standing in front of, affection. I find this typical of the whole family; they argue and bitch and hiss and yell (Molly's temper really is off the normal scale, but I don't have the energy to think about that right now) but they do love each other. Even Percy; they do all the crappy things because they believe that they know what is best for the other(s) (Percy for the entire family, for Percy, Arthur Ron for Ginny, Molly for the twins, and for Bill [the hair scenario] Ginny for Bill [although she doesn't tell him] etc.) What is that if not typical family behaviour, although it's driven in absurdum by their cheer number, the magic, and the tense situation?

I was going to say something on how Fleur fit in here, but I was too tired.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

That's really interesting about Harry/Cedric--and it makes sense to me. There is some of that in Cedric, the way his father seems to be far more into his successes than he is, and tends to exaggerate them where Cedric doesn't.

I like that about the Weasleys too. I think we lose a lot when people want to basically take a certain idea *about* the Weasleys and make it the truth. It seems like Percy's unforgivable sin was stating the obvious about their financial situation--and in a lot of families that just wouldn't be an issue, but it seems like there's a lot of pressure there to buy into a single idea of how they've come to be the way they are, so it's taboo to suggest something else. I think it's almost that this same idea, that they're a big happy family, is what makes them put pressure on themselves. Like maybe they identify with their family so much the family just becomes really stressful.

[luleh.livejournal.com]

Wandered over here from hither and thither and this is a total non sequitur but you've just made me wonder about something:

Re-reading the scene where he's stumbling around in the woods, saying it's his fault and introducing his son who’s gotten "12 OWLS,"

Another kid who probably used a Time Turner! Both Bill and Percy got 12 Owls and Hermione would have been on course to take 12 OWLs had she kept Divination and Muggle Studies, for which she would have needed the Time Turner. So we've got 3 kids who likely used Time Turners for 3 years, unless Hogwarts changed the structure of classes when Hermione started her third year. And if those 4 students did it, I'd have to think a few ambitious Ravenclaws did it too.

Anyway, great essay. I especially like what you have to say about the Blacks. One of the reasons I hope R.A.B. is Regulus is because it makes the story of that family all the more interesting and tragic. Both brothers working for the same cause yet they each thought the other was working against them. Hmm, Sirius knew Regulus was a DE but did Regulus know Sirius worked for the Order?

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I thought of exactly that when I read that line again--wait, how do you get 12 OWLS again? It's kind of neat to think of other kids doing it and sticking with it.

Hmm, Sirius knew Regulus was a DE but did Regulus know Sirius worked for the Order?

I don't know...but then, even if he did there might have been a lot of reasons he wouldn't think he could go to him or maybe didn't want to go to him.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

I have a theory, by the way, that Percy is indirectly a Jane Austen allusion (Jane Austen, Rowling has said, is her favorite author, and we see she has worked other references in, e.g., Mrs. Norris). I believe she modeled him on Mr. Collins in Pride and Prejudice. Certainly Percy's pompousness is an object of ridicule to his family, just as Mr. Collins' is with the Bennett family. Compare Percy's letter in Order of the Phoenix, suggesting to Ron that he should cast Harry off as a friend to Mr. Collins' letter to Mr. Bennett when Lydia runs away with Wickham.

[fungus-files.livejournal.com]

I really like that theory, and could fairly easily see Barty Snr as a Lady Catherine figure as well. I guess one of the main points of difference, which would take the characters in different developmental tangents is that Mr Collins seems quite oblivious to the Bennetts' ridicule whereas Percy is, if anything, hyper-aware of his 'outsider' status in his own family?

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Hee--I'm re-reading P&P at the moment so that analogy is especially good for me right now. (Haven't gotten to the letter, but now I'll be thinking of it when I get to it.) Oh my, that really is Percy all over, isn't it! And yet I would say that Percy also has those hints underneath of something else. I can't imagine Mr. Collins ever dashing in to do something brave as Percy sometimes does, and he's telling Ron to throw off Harry, who in his eyes probably isn't on the same level as a brother at all.

[fungus-files.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this. Enjoyed reading it. I was particularly interested in what you said about the Crouch family and how Percy was drawn to Barty Snr as a role-model. I always thought Percy felt his father's 'hypocrisy' of bending the rules and hoarding (enchanted) Muggle artifacts more than any of the others. It works well that Percy'd find Barty's black/white principles refreshing and even inspirational, especially when compared to the often chaotic nature of his own family. I've often wondered about the nature of Percy's ambition - what exactly was he hoping to achieve? A name for himself that countered what he perceived as Arthur's embarrassing legacy? Was he more interested in the power-plays or the attention? I like finding fic that sports Percy's POV because he seems a much more intriguing figure precisely because he rejected/was rejected from what's often designated as the 'good' family in HP.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I can't help but be sympathetic to Percy on that account. I don't have his need for everything to be black and white, but he seems to try so hard to be good and see the reason behind rules, and his father's casual breaking of them and writing them to suit his purposes really does put Percy in a bad position. I can't respect Arthur as a Ministry official, and I can see why Percy doesn't.

Yet you're right--what is it that Percy wants? We keep hearing about his ambition, but what drives him, exactly? Has he become important in the Ministry? Because he doesn't have the charisma to be a real leader, it doesn't seem to me. He seems to really like doing work, even grunt work nobody else wants to do, and he likes it so much it bores other people.

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

Wow, amazing essay looking at all the families.

I as well really like JKR's handling of families. Love and hurting each others, isn't it what it's always about ?

I really like your drawing the connection between Crouch and Percy, that does make perfect sense. I adore Percy, I always felt bad for him, and things have been going from bad to worse for him.

Sirius and Regulus is always one of my favourite tragedy. I agree with you, I can't picture Sirius not being the favourite one, even while being the one everyone yelled at. I think it goes on par with Sirius' personnality. I can't imagine Regulus not thinking he's always second rate to Sirius.

I do wonder what kind of relationship Petunia and Lily had. Can't have been easy.

Then there's the one you didn't mention, Bellatrix and Narcissa... I see love as well as defience there as well. Bella might be the fanatic cruel DE she is, but she's still going with her sister, complaining all the way, and helping her as she secures Snape's help.

Given that Aberforth is first mentionned as someone who's a shameful family relationship (even in a jocking Dumbledore's fashion) i bet there's a measure of defiance there, as well, yes.

(and yayfor being able to use my icon spot on ♥)

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah-I forgot to mention Bella and Cissy, but I loved that scene. Bella's as crazy as ever, but you can see she still has this relationship with her sister. It almost makes it all the more weird because it's kind of, err, normal. To a point--I mean, she's a little too willing to sacrifice her sister's kid to Voldemort, but then, that in itself could be a strange and wonderful story as well. If Bellatrix has been teaching Draco Occlumency and thinking that here she's got the son she never had. Weird.

Sirius and Regulus is always one of my favourite tragedy. I agree with you, I can't picture Sirius not being the favourite one, even while being the one everyone yelled at. I think it goes on par with Sirius' personnality. I can't imagine Regulus not thinking he's always second rate to Sirius.

I can't help but see it that way, with a kind of East of Eden idea. Sometimes the one criticized all the time really is the one who's the favorite. Regulus isn't even mentioned until book 5, and then it's to be dismissed. Nobody seems to think much of him. I always imagine that the best thing he did at home was just to not cause trouble. He defined himself against Sirius, being the one who wasn't the bad one, but I just feel like he was always aware that Sirius was more loved. Actually, I think there's sometimes some of that going on with Percy as well. He's trying to be the good one, but he may feel like he's the least valued all the time, no matter how many times Molly uses him as an example for the Twins.

I love that icon!

[black-dog.livejournal.com]

They fuck you up, your mum and dad!

I think you're dead right -- there are no genuinely happy families in the Potterverse. And maybe the most puzzling thing about that is how it squares with the "love" theme. Why does JKR go on and on about Lily's love, when she's also so busy subverting Harry's initial idolization of his parents and his infatuation with the smothering love of Molly Weasley? Why is the sacrifice of Barty's mother one of the most genuinely tragic stories in the book, when the male Crouches themselves are so worthless and unworthy of it? What's the point of love when it creates family relationships that turn poisonous, or smothering, or into a mockery?

It's possible to read this as deliberate sentimentality -- families are a mess, but at least people are trying to show love. Or, just the opposite, to read it as deliberate irony -- for all the hype it gets, love is a pretty futile thing. Or else again, as a clear-eyed meditation on the contradictions of the world -- people do fall in love, and do, also, consistently mess up the people they are closest to, and both things are just part of the way things are.

I can't decide which of these JKR may intend. I'd like to believe she's just taking an honest measure of human nature, in all its messy contradiction, but she really does seem to privilege love: Harry's capacity for it as well as Lily's sacrifice. And she really does seem to have a soft spot for the Weasleys, despite the mercilessness of some of ther characterizations.

Bad faith on the author's part? Or is there a better explanation?

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I honestly do not know what she means! Because if I were going to pick the thing that seems lost, it's the love part, not the people hurting each other part. It's easy to see how JKR sees people interacting with each other (often badly), but it's hard to imagine exactly how she pictures the idea of love *except* as a big dramatic sacrifice. And yet that seems to lead to ruin at times too, like with Sirius.

Can Harry ever show that impressive a capacity for love? Because that would seem to suggest he would be able to find love for Snape, Voldemort and Draco--people like that. Or else all he'll have to do there is forgive them and it will be his great love for his loved ones which isn't really that impressive of a thing. Most people in canon do that. Draco seems to have plenty of capacity to love his loved ones. What's special about Harry?

I wonder if it's tied to the Slytherin "problem" being that they choose to save their skins, as contrasted to the Gryffindor recklessness in running in to sacrifice themselves. I hope that's not supposed to be the big thing there, because I don't really think that's love and I'd hate to think that that kind of thing will be that important, especially since it seems like Slytherins are quite capable of love and sometimes effect me more than the good guys on that score.

[spoke.livejournal.com]

So much here that is obvious, yet I didn't think about it before. Especially with the Crouchs (es?) and the Blacks. Sirius makes so much sense as a favorite.

(And you might be able to tell from this that Neville is a favorite)

People cheer when McGonagall tells Neville his grandmother should learn to be proud of the grandson she's got instead of the one she wishes she had, but jeez, to me that line is frankly humiliating! Would you want some teacher to tell you your grandmother is disappointed in you? Not that Neville doesn't know that already.

One thing I've had to backtrack to stick in here - it needs to be taken into account that McGonagall is the Head of House. She is supposed to take more interest in her own students, and be able to sympathize with them more easily than she would a student from another House. Not that any of the Heads should ignore students not of thier own House, but - try to picture Snape helping a Gryffindor with a crisis. Um. I just scared myself. XD

That said:

I think part of the reason people react that way is just because Neville does know, and it's... he can't get around that to become his own person as long as Gran is this un-critizable figurehead. (Like Arthur!) All the interaction we see between McGonagall and Neville goes along the lines of Neville wilting or being depressed, and McGonagall trying to comfort him or prop him up, in her own hard-edged way. All we hear from her, to Neville, is "You can do. You are good enough." etc

The problem is, the whole time McGongall is taking the wrong tack - she thinks he needs to be told he's good at what he does do, but that's not the problem. He knows where he's good, he just doesn't want to be good there, he wants to please Gran. So when she says that line, the reaction isn't 'oh noes she has embarassed him!' but 'WOOT! Finally, someone has told the boy he doesn't have to be what Gran wants!'

I've got to wonder if he's ever heard this from other members of the family - the impression I get from McGonagall and Gran is of two very, very strong willed and intimidating, matriachal figures. It'd be kind of hard to stand up to a woman like that, which is maybe why that line had to come from McGonagall.

And now I totally want to see those two throwing down. Because I am nuts like that. XD

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah--that's totally how I read that line of McGonagall's. It just surprises me because that's really a huge thing she throws out there casually, you know? Because just as you said, Neville *has* always been trying to be what his gran wanted. It's such a huge thing, but it's never really said. Another kid might have been totally freaked out--or defensive!

McGonagall vs. Mrs. Longbottom. That would be tough. But then, I think McGonagall is like her in a lot of ways as well. I think Gran, too, takes that sort of "buck up, stiff upper lip" attitude in sometimes the wrong way for Neville. I wonder if Snape is kind of the dark side of that, in his way.

[winningstreak.livejournal.com]

I'd always thought that Hermione Granger's family was the most stable- even though not much was disclosed about them except that her parents are dentists. Although I found it odd that Hermione wasn't mentioned to ever write letters to her parents like Ron ...did....didn't he...? Or maybe it was mentioned, and I should just go reread the series again.

[latxcvi.livejournal.com]

I'd always thought that Hermione Granger's family was the most stable

But are they really? As the books go on, Hermione increasingly distances herself from her parents, to the point where she doesn't even spend summers with them as of GoF-HBP. And is it in GoF or OotP where she starts out spending the winter holidays with them but then basically flees back to the Weasleys?

Hermione comes across to me as someone who's been so assimilated into WW culture that she's almost completely repudiated her Muggle heritage at every turn, to the point where she's spending pretty much the *entire* year away from her parents/the Muggle world. And I can't help thinking that she wouldn't be so insistent on that if everything was stable and satisfying at/in her actual home.

[copa-cetic.livejournal.com]

There are no perfect families in real life, and I'm glad that there really are none in canon either. I like the Weasley dynamic better than the Malfoy one, but the Weasleys have their fair share of problems.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Yes, I like it better this way too. The Weasleys are often almost described entirely through their conflicts--that's why it surprises me when people are just like, "They love each other!" That just doesn't seem to cover it!

[seductivedark.livejournal.com]

Good essay! It's got my mind going in all sorts of directions! Hopefully, I'll be able to compartmentalize, but if I babble and go off on tangents, you're forewarned.

The happiest family in the Potterverse appears to be the Potters--and it's no shock that this is because they're dead. Harry almost seems to get his strength from the way he was given a gift of that pure familial love of the mother for her child--a love that all of these mothers also have--and then the woman obligingly died before she could fuck it up by having to deal with her kid as he grows up as a human.

Oh, my, yes! My mother was an orphan. Her mother died when she was two, and she remembers the morning that she and her sister couldn't wake her up. My mother is 84, so that's a long time to hold a memory so vividly. Her father died when she was nine, and he had taken her and her sister to an orphanage when their mother died, simply because he couldn't take care of them at home and work at the same time. He visited at least twice a month.

My grandparents were perfect. My mother 'would have been grateful to have had a mother' to tell her what to wear, talk about the facts of life with her, coach her in things they both enjoyed like basketball, and so on. Reading Harry Potter always reminds me of my mother because Harry sees his mother in much the same way. If only, if only, if only, and he would have been happy. There would have been no fights about hair or clothes or friends. No sainted parent would. Even seeing friends in the RW, or its fictional equivalent, having trouble with their parents, doesn't stop the overwhelming fantasy of the perfect family. My mother thought she wasn't as good as her mother would have been, because we fought. She had to work. Yadda, yadda. She completely missed that her friends and peers were going through the same thing with their kids, and Harry doesn't seem to absorb the troubles in the Weasley family, he's just happy to have a family. I can imagine that our perceptions of Percy are colored by Harry's shock, and his orphan filter which says that Percy should have been grateful to have a mother and a father, OMG! and he's throwing that away!

I mentioned a family I know similar to the Blacks, in another post here. But, this: ...and a mad cousin who knocks him through a curtain makes me wonder about the inter-family relations with the Blacks. They're all as fucked-up as the Malfoys seem - blindly following a Dark Lord who 'leads them by the nose' into crimes and hell. And, we know that Bellatrix refers to her cousin Sirius in a very impersonal way - the animagus Black. Yet, there does seem to be an undercurrent tying the two Black families together on a subterranean stream. They *notice* each other, they care at some level, in a way that isn't selfishly concerned with how Cuz makes them look. There wouldn't be that intensity if it wasn't family.

And, same with Petunia. Her hatred for the WW is visceral. Jealousy, sure, as we saw in the hut on the rock in PS/SS. But, it eats at her. She's conveyed this hate to her family because it's easier to give this sort of thing since it attacks on such a primitive level. She's too interested in Lily's 'horrible boy', in her turning teapots to gerbils or whatever animal it was, in her irrational fear of Harry becoming the same thing so strongly that she tries to crush it out of him. Why does she care so much? Was it the crushing of her own natural feelings when Lily suddenly became 'different'?

to be continued...

[seductivedark.livejournal.com]

...continuing...

I think Augusta Longbottom is afraid. She fears, more than anything, that Neville will end up like his parents and she'll have lost everyone. He's such a timid mouse, she's worked on him to keep safe maybe even before his parents ended up in St. Mungo's. She had to know he might have been The One, she did everything she could to prevent that. And while she might say things which lead Neville to believe she would prefer the hero to the schmuck, I personally think she would have coddled Harry just as much if she'd been given him to raise with Neville. My grandmother lost all but one of her children before she died. It's a tragic thing, as Theoden says, for a parent to have to bury a child. It isn't natural. And Augusta didn't even get the closure of a funeral - her son and daughter-in-law are living in a half-dead world, there to see, 'whited sepulchres', ghosts of the past. And, she's dumped this fear onto Neville. When he's brave, he's not only fighting his friends or DEs, he's fighting a lifetime of opposite training.

And, I've always seen Lucius as being a doting parent, in an authoritiative sort of way. He wants to be proud of Draco. He pushes him, maybe in the same sorts of ways as Crouch, sr. pushed jr. Draco, so far, has followed blindly. But, he's at an age where kids are rebelling, as jr. did, and he's had an eye-opening revelation about his father's guru. I think the entire Malfoy family has had that revelation, even Lucius sitting in Azkaban. Narcissa can seek Snape's help; Lucius can only hope she will. She seems to be the one who wants to keep Draco tied to her apron strings, while Lucius wants to set Draco free and be inspired by his perfect flight. Despite their skewed political views (which seems to color the way a lot of people see the family), I do think they're close, and loving in their own individual ways.

Speaking of family, my second-born has just gotten off the freeway and is on the way here. So, my mind has slipped off anything else I was going to say, probably to the relief of anyone slogging through this! :D

[ishtar79.livejournal.com]

Excellent essay. I agree, I find Rowling's portrayal of families very realistic, which is why I'm baffled when people single out any HPverse family as a model of 'perfection'-because like you said, families are not perfect. Even the most functionning ones. And I just realised that word, so often applied to families, seems to imply an 'in spite of'. As in 'this family is functionning *despite* its members driving each other up the wall on a regular basis'.

Perhaps in the afterlife the family will be somewhat healed--at least I hope so. I can't help but see Sirius and Regulus finally making up two halves of a whole--two brothers and two Shadows, etc. Sirius was good but ultimately impotent and kept from doing anything. Regulus was the bad one but possibly able to act in the end. (Personally, I can't help but always picture Sirius as actually being the favorite despite being the black sheep, but that's a different essay.)

OMG, yes. I've only recently succumbed to the appeal of Regulus (I blame lilith_morgana's fic, but there's something about the perfect symmetry of Sirius and Regulus' experiences that I find fascinating. It's all about choices, and lost opportunities, and the two halves being stronger as a whole. And my own conviction that if those two brothers hadn't fallen off so completely, a lot of tragedy could have been prevented.

The only time I feel even vaguely sympathetic towards Neville is when seing the way his grandmother treats him. There is undoubtedly love there, but it's just a perfect illustration of how much unreasonnable expectations can crippled a child.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that seems to be an unfortunate thing about HP fandom whatever the subject, that people get into this extreme thing where a family is either loving/good or has problems/bad. I just really don't think JKR naturally writes too many relationships that don't include some abuse of power. I was recently reading somebody somewhere making a comment about how she calls Snape a "bully" and so that's a criticism, which it is, but it just never fails to amaze me how "bully" is the central idea of everything in the books. You're either a bully, a victim, or a protector from bullies. The second group grow into either one or the other, and the first and last are sometimes indistinguishable. It's no wonder the ideas of Slinkhard (the author of Umbridge's textbook) is presented in such a strange way in canon, imo.

I loved Regulus since we just heard about him in OotP, but oh, he and Sirius are becoming more and more interesting to me. I'd love to hear their story. I think we might hear more of it in the last book. Regulus is ready to shine there.

[cutecoati.livejournal.com]

I honestly don't even know if JKR *could* write One Big Happy Anybody's Family, because she just seems too aware of how people, especially families, fuck each other up and hurt each other.

I won't even start commenting on your essay - apart from saying that it is simply excellent! Your grasp of details, of background is as spot on as ever. Whether JKR does it on purpose or not - her families ring (generally) true to me because every single of them has their problems (and unless she doesn't want me to "like" one more than the other - who cares about "liking"... :D)

The only family I'd like to add a few thoughts to are the Weasleys - for me, a stereotypical model of the "worthy or diligent poor", an ideal created in the 16th century especially by the Reformist churches, which includes a good deal of judgement - people/families who were found worthy of receiving charitable assistance, who were innocent of their miserable (financial) status yet had to fulfil all the new family ideals of the Reformation [/quits being history nerd]. I can see most of these ideals being reflected in the Weasleys (down to the considerable amout of children) - but does this make them "better"? In no other family, I've detected such a strikt set of rules than within the Weasley family (okay, we know more about the Weasleys than about most of the others, but still) and such immediate punishment whenever a member dares to defy one or more rules - sending a howler to Ron (= humiliating him in front of ALL his school mates AND the professors) was an action worthy of old Grandma Longbottom, but it was Mrs Weasley... And: supporting (or at least tolerating) her daughter's behaviour towards her son's fiancée, being not too overly friendly to Hermione when she first meets her (unlike towards Harry - I do not detect some hidden mudbl- ah, Muggle-born issue there, do I? After all, dear Mr Weasley treats Muggles as if they were cute but backwards pets) - it seems that it's rather hard to be accepted by this oh-so-sweet-and-warmhearted family, and that it's rather easy to be expelled. Fits with aforementioned model... have I mentioned that love was introduced as the new ideal family bond back then? So, I wouldn't say that they don't love each other, they surely do (but so do the Malfoys, I kno believe), but love can be as efficient a means to exert pressure as anything else, and even more so...

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Thanks--and yes, I totally agree with all your thoughts on the Weasleys (and appreciate the historical background!). I think for many people it's difficult because all these families have elements of real families, so sometimes people fall into the trap of saying that it reminds it of their own family and therefore it is "normal." They just don't have the same perspective--which doesn't make them wrong either, it's just things they see as "the way families are" are often not the way "families" are at all but just the way this family is. As someone not from a family like the Weasleys I do notice the way they all seem to have to define themselves through the family and agree on so many things. Their treatment of Percy just seems bizarre to me. Not that I don't understand it from their pov, but it's just not the way I would react to him at all. I don't think it's the job of family members to "fix" Percy the way they seem to feel they should do, or to have to appreciate the Twins' jokes or whatever.

It's just something that's so constant with the Weasleys is how the dominant ones shut the others up, often with the suggestion that what they're saying means there's something wrong with them they need to fix right away.

[sarahtales.livejournal.com]

Every day in every way I find myself loving your brain more and more.

Also I was going to quote Philip Larkin but Black Dog beat me to the punch. (pfwa. Outdone at every turn! I shall have vengeance!) So I will utilise pop culture and say Everything's wrong, wrong, wrong... but that's all right.

I really do love the family dynamics of the HP books. Dynastic madness is so much fun. (It's a reason I read the Forsyte Saga and hardly noticed the politics: I was just marveling at the way individuals reacted to each other - and loving Soames so much ohmygod.) I think it's deliberate, and I think things will be fixed - but not *wholly* fixed, and I wouldn't want them to be.

The entire Percy thing made me happy because I thought it should have debunked the perfect Weasleys myth, but I also want him back because one of the few nice things the twins do is shove him into his jumper and clearly want him for Christmas in CoS - so different from their behaviour in HBP. I don't think Percy and the twins are ever going to be absolutely OK, but I do want them to find some kind of peace. And resentment.

It's also one of the things that makes me react badly to people calling Draco an abused child, because my immediate response is that 'He's not abused - unless everybody is' and yet he is badly messed up by his upbringing. But I love that HBP confirmed what always seemed obvious to me - that Draco loves his family, that Narcissa loves her son.

Also one of the more interesting familial parallels to me, just btw, is Narcissa/Regulus and Sirius/Bellatrix. Because they do seem to be the sets of siblings who, well. Sirius and Bellatrix both obviously emotionally disconnected from their family, either to follow the Dark Lord or the Way of James Potter. And they're both unhappy and very not mentally balanced. Of course, of the more connected ones, Regulus is extremely dead, but Narcissa is alive, saner and still fighting for her son.

Families are cool! And I kind of want to see you and musesfool sit and talk about the Blacks, and this comment has no real resolution, but much like families, goes on and on painfully. With love!

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

My brain loves you back.

It's kind of bizarre that Percy *doesn't* seem to debunk the happy Weasley myth. It's like the true Scotsman: All the Weasleys are happy in their family! But Percy isn't. Then he isn't a true Weasley! Like Percy is just this mole on the clear face of Weasley instead of, you know, part of the family by definition.

I can't be the only one who seriously wants to know more about how the Blacks operate because they sure do seem to be obsessed with each other, yet we didn't even hear about them till book V. Think about PoA now--oh, Sirius Black is on the loose and Malfoy has nothing to do with it...btw, did we mention they're cousins? Sirius talks like he's got nothing to do wtih Bellatrix but I honestly don't think that's true. I mean, he tells Harry he hasn't seen her since he was "Harry's age" but I think he's being vague. I just don't believe anything Sirius says about his family. And besides I think even if I hadn't seen any of my cousins since I was 15 I'd still have plenty I felt about them.:-)

[schemingreader.livejournal.com]

Great essay. I have wondered whether young witches and wizards derive their power from unhappy childhoods. It seems that the most magically powerful ones were the most miserable as children: Tom Riddle, Harry Potter, Severus Snape, Sirius Black. I don't know about Dumbledore, though.

Makes more sense to me for them all to be at least somewhat unhappy, if there is a connection between this unhappiness and the discovery of magical power.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

There does seem to be a connection between that, doesn't there? I did a post once about how magic worked in the WW, and there seems to be two ways: in one sense it's just practical in that you know the right word and you say it and it works. The other way is more symoblic and it's often linked to some sort of emotional state. That definitely seems like what we're talking about here.

[pilly2009.livejournal.com]

Coming in a bit late, but I did want to say that I really liked this comparison of all the different families in HP. You're very right that JKR doesn't write about truly happy families, which is what I think is one of the main strengths of the series, her completely real, and yet extreme take on family and familial love.

I adore the Weasleys myself, but think that one of the main reasons the Weasleys are so often seen as the ideally happy family is due in large part to their being a large family; in addition to the kind, underservingly-poor stereotype, there is also often a stereotype of the Large, Happy Family in popular culture. When the topic of "large families" is introduced, my mind immediately jumps to families like the Von Trappes (in the Sound of Music), the March girls from Little Women, the Cratchets from Dickens', even the Large Family that Sara Crewe enviously observed in A Little Princess. Generally, large families are portrayed as unrealistically-happy ones, and this is something that I think has become stereotyped, so that when the few (like JKR) write about large, somewhat dysfunctional families, there is some projection of the stereotype onto the real thing. I'm thinking of the way the Bennet family was portrayed in the recent adaptation of Pride and Prejudice: as a happy, if crazy and improper family, whereas in the book we see that there are a lot more problems within that family.

Basically, you don't have a family where one person is hated and hates without some well of real resentment to draw on there ... I believe Kreacher when he says Sirius broke his mother's heart, and when Sirius talks about Regulus as being an idiot I do hear him trying to kill lingering feelings he has for his brother: Why did you have to be so stupid? Sirius is ultimately destroyed by a family that has already been destroyed, and this is partly because he keeps feeling hurt by them and trying to hurt them back.

I have to admit that although the Blacks really had to grow on me post-OotP, they fascinate me when I consider the family dynamic. I personally can't write off Sirius's split with his family as simply an angry kid becoming furious over his parents being OMGSOUNFAIR!11, but neither can I simply write it off as his becoming fed up with his parents' dark political views and stepping out because of them.

I really think it had to be a certain mixture of both, it couldn't have just been one or the other, because for all that it's dealt with in the series, running away and breaking from one's family seems to be seen as a huge deal for JKR. Even with Harry and the Dursleys, a relationship practically defined by mutual anger and/or hatred, it was depicted as near-cataclysmic when he packed up and left in PoA -- it's possibly the peak of all the anger we've ever seen him direct towards them, the summer in which he hated them most of all. Sirius's disgust with being trapped back in Grimmauld's Place is compared (not by Sirius himself) to Harry's being back at Privet Drive just after he thought he was shot of the Dursleys' forever, only in Harry's case, we know exactly why such a happenstance would be distasteful to him.

To some extent, I see Percy and the Weasleys to the nth degree in Sirius and the Blacks. From the sheer force of his personality alone, I have trouble believing that Sirius would let his brother or cousins treat him the way Percy's siblings did him, but I can imagine that there would be the same sort of tension and frustration on all parts.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

This is a great description of both families, I think--I agree with both of them. My ideal big family is the Stantons in The Dark Is Rising, who are pretty ideal. But then, we don't see them as much as the Weasleys.

I have certainly seen the type of problems the Weasleys have in other big families; it's just often a really natural thing. The Bennetts are a great example, too, of this sort of thing being romanticized when in canon it obviously isn't. Lizzie and Jane are both hurt by their family being what it is, and it's not even that ideal for them. There's times where they don't particularly like their family members either.

I personally can't write off Sirius's split with his family as simply an angry kid becoming furious over his parents being OMGSOUNFAIR!11, but neither can I simply write it off as his becoming fed up with his parents' dark political views and stepping out because of them.

Absolutely. Running away is a huge deal and nothing that could be done lightly. I think we see that with Sirius. I don't agree with explanations that simplify it too much or put all the blame on one side (even if obviously Sirius' family's views really were insane and good to get away from!). Sirius has a very strong personality and I think when you strip the family dynamics down you'd see that being as much of a factor as anything else. Sirius *is* a Black no matter how he wants to define himself against them. He and Percy probably both think they have to cut themselves off from their families to avoid being the things in them they dislike (and vice versa) but it would be more healthy to be more accepting.

[kylandra.livejournal.com]

Awesome. I hate when the Weasleys are talked about as just some perfect family, just as much as when the Malfoys are talked about as just horrible, because it seems so much more important and powerful to me that they're just families, with their share of good and fucked up.