Cardboard Cut-Outs

[sistermagpie]

So Salon.com did article on Phoenix Rising here.

There were two bits in particular that made me think and want to response.

The first quote was this:

At this point, the "prefect" in charge of the room for the night, a writer who calls herself Fyrdrakken and who'd been knitting quietly through the readings and interview, piped up to offer, "Some of the women are cardboard caricatures. A lot of people don't like Hermione at all. She is self-righteous and kind of creepy." Maudlin nodded.
Hermione? A cardboard cutout? The smartest in the class, with the frizzy hair and muggle parents, the responsible girl who maintains friendships with the irresponsible boys, the girl who has the good taste to pine not for our dashing hero but for his red-haired, dunderheaded friend? "A lot of people don't like Hermione at all?" This was heartbreaking.

I was interested in this common idea that the female characters are cut outs--though basically this author is just having her first experience running into people who don't like her favorite character. Hey, my favorite character gets called a "little cumstain"--I feel your pain. Get used to it.

My feeling on the female characters is that no, they're not cardboard--at least no more than any other character is. JKR writes all her characters basically the same way. I remember someone wonderfully once saying that listen, Snape was cardboard too--he was just very thick cardboard. Rowling seems to generally create characters around a central conflict, and writes them in a way that they can pop off the page right away. (My favorite example of how well she does this will probably always be Amos Diggory in GoF--he gets one scene early on that sets up just how devastated he's going to be hundreds of pages later. I can't read his first scene now without thinking: ouch.)

What I would say about the female characters in general is just that the male characters tend to...drive the story more, somehow, often by being fuck-ups. People have noticed, for instance, how Lily is "better" than James, but that this sort of just leads to Saint Lily saving Harry while James gets to make things happen and be a far more dynamic character even while acting like a dick.

Of the main student girl characters, for instance, Luna is no less developed than Barty Crouch or Neville, but she's a bit self-contained. She's weird, and appears to be comic relief for Harry and get him in the Quibbler. Ginny is one character whose characterization I do have issues with, but leaving that aside as strong a character as she has, she's basically again self-contained and appears to support Harry. Even with her experience with Voldemort in CoS, she doesn't drive things.

Hermione's an even more interesting case. She's a major character, and she's got plenty of issues and drives and flaws and strengths. But still, she's self-contained. For instance, compare her to Sirius. Sirius pulled a stupid Prank on Snape. This Prank is still driving a lot of things in the plot. He and Snape are still bristling at each other, creating tension. Harry himself is affected by this Prank. He circles back to it in OotP and in Snape's Pensieve learns more about the relationship again. It's very personal and still happening.

Hermione, by contrast, is far more efficient but also--I keep using this word self-contained, but I just really mean that if you're looking at the story of the books she's not taking actions that go all over the place, but ones that have limited effects. For instance, while Sirius pulled one bad Prank on Snape with bad results, Hermione has faced a number of female adversaries and taken care of all of them in a way that is so far totally efficient. She and Rita clashed in GoF, and Hermione took care of her--so much that in the next book she controlled Rita to write the article in the Quibbler. So far, at least, her relationship with Rita does not seem to be as messy as Sirius/Snape. Likewise, Hermione hated Umbridge and took care of her with the centaurs (with some luck involved--her planning wasn't so great there). Marietta ratted out the DA and Hermione's curse took effect. These events don't have the same emotional impact as the more dramatic emotional clashes between the Marauders and Snape or Barty and Barty Jr. or whoever.

Also it's Harry who is the one to deal with a lot of these things. Harry is angry to see Umbridge at the funeral, and presumably Hermione still hates her, but it's not making the plot sprawl out or creating ugly emotional fall-out. We've never even heard about Hemrione's reaction to her own hex on Marietta. It's Harry who has a fight with Cho, which partly encourages him to go into the Pensieve, which leads to his learning of Snape's Worst Memory.

So while I do think there is often a troubling dismissal of women in slash fandom, it actually doesn't surprise me that people are more interested in male/male relationships within the story. I remember asking jlh once why Sirius/Remus was considered so canon when everyone talked about Sirius/James being best friends, and she said because Sirius/Remus was the relationship with the conflict and the betrayal. I think that perhaps something that draws people to female characters less in terms of stories is that they're just less messy. Their roles in the story often are as helpers to men--which doesn't have to be a bad thing. Ron helps Harry too, and that doesn't make him subservient. (But I think also there's a reason that as much as many people hated the Traitor!Ron trend, Ron's character could support such an ugly personal betrayal in ways I don't think Hermione's does as much.)

I don't hate het. It's just I can see why there's often more to work with with male characters. It's not that there aren't interesting dynamics between any m/f characters. (I love Draco/Pansy, and Pansy is also a character more there for support.) I just wonder if that is more what people mean when they casually say the females are cardboard and the men aren't.

Okay, I was going to go on to the fanfic part next, but maybe it should be two posts. There's tl;dr and then there's wtl;dbf (way too long; died before finishing)

Comments

[jewelsong.livejournal.com]

James gets to make things happen and be a far more dynamic character even while acting like a dick.

I love how you put things. So succinct, so true! *grin*

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

He really just does make a great dick!

[sunnyskywalker]

This is a great point. How female characters are drawn isn't the only issue - it's also how female characters affect the plot, how female characters' actions affect them rather than the male characters, how female characters relate to male characters, and how female characters relate to each other.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Right--and I don't know if it can be over-simplified to be sexist or not. But I do think there's ultimately an imbalance when it comes to the male and female characters, even in cases where the female characters set things in motion. Merope, for instance, essentially started the whole story by doing something active, but even then she later died once Riddle was born, so her story was sealed off at that point. Lily died after giving Harry life, as did Mrs. Crouch die to give Barty Crouch a second life.

[montavilla.livejournal.com]

I see what you're saying. For example, I can't help thinking about how in CoS, Hermione has the plan to brew the polyjuice potion which seems like it ought to further the plot. But what really happens? The Trio comes to a dead end. All they "discover" is that Malfoy isn't the Heir.

And Hermione doesn't even get to make it that far. The plan immediately backfires on her by giving her a cat face and tail.

I would say that Hermione moves the plot forward in OotP, though, by creating the D.A. A whole lot of things happen because of that--none of which carry on to the next book, however.

And we have Umbridge pushing things along as well.

[ellecain.livejournal.com]

I remember someone wonderfully once saying that listen, Snape was cardboard too--he was just very thick cardboard.

*snickers* Despite being a Snape fan, I love this quote! Because he is a caricaure most times (come on, he is/was the stereotypical Mean Teacher at the Boarding School). I remember this great post on HPfGU by someone called Neri which was basically JKR's recipe for an anti-hero. I recall it often because it was so hilariously true. And yeah, he's a complete ass, but he drives the plot forward like no one else can! It was basically his eavesdropping on the Prophecy that's the starting point of everything... (Or so I like to kid myself)

though basically this author is just having her first experience running into people who don't like her favorite character.

Yep, I feel her pain too. It's lucky for her she likes the character who's gets the Seal of Author Approval. Still this article was much better IMO then the Guardian (or was it the Observer?) one that appeared after Lumos last year.

D'oh!

[ellecain.livejournal.com]

... caricature. I fail at typing.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Heh! It's so true. But it's not like it's bad that Snape's thick cardboard because he works. I think it's in Orson Scott Card's book about fantasy writing where he says that in an Event story (which is what this is) character "development" isn't always necessary. There's a difference between development of character and creating memorable characters. Snape just has to be Snape and stuff happens. He doesn't have to be overly complicated or change over time. In fact, most theories that claim he's going through all these changes I think make the story weaker and not stronger.

[kerosinkanister.livejournal.com]

I did a post on my interpretation of how women view the female characters a little while ago. You might possibly find it interesting. I've got to run (got a pass to see "Knocked Up") but I'll comment on this later since you definitely brought up some interesting points.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Cool! Have commented over there...

[misscake]

I've often wondered if perhaps, simply because she is a female trying to write from a male perspective, she purposely downplays the female characters.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

That's possible. I remember reading a thing with Diana Wynne Jones where she said she had to start writing males because she was just too distracted by the physicality writing females. Like she always felt in their bodies too much. It's possible Rowling feels a little freer with the males.

[threeoranges.livejournal.com]

But that said, why did she feel the need to write from the male perspective in the first place? ;)

Men = dynamic, women = men's support system/enablers. It's a very good reading.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

You know, also I think one of the few canonical ships that people by and large respect is James/Lily.

Anyway, I like what you're saying about the girls, but I think there's also a sort of reverse thing that goes on, that people who are interested in female characters might not read HP in the first place (I know that Hermione really pulled me through that first book) and I think that the real dead spot in the book isn't so much the girl kids but Lily's friends. As you say, it is James's actions that really drive events, and Lily only ever seems to be reacting, rather than acting. Which can also be said of Ginny, unfortuantely. But I really wish we had a bunch of women running around talking about Lily.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

It really is a big hole. Women friendships in general, to me, seem very different in terms of what we get. And maybe that's because we see them through Harry's eyes, but basically what he sees is giggling. And even Hermione and Ginny are, imo, bonded over men. They're like sisters in law and their fight right before the H/G happens seemed totally natural to me--Ginny was staking her position via Harry. Cho and Marietta seem completely foreign to him and there's nothing wildly romantic about their sticking together. Lavender and Parvati remain shallow even while Ron goes out with Lavender--Dean and Seamus I think already have a more interesting dynamic to play with just because of the issues they've each individually had with Harry and what we can see glimpses of on the side. (Like when Harry drops Dean from the team and you wonder what he and Seamus are saying about it; or when Dean eventually brings Seamus to the DA.)

It just doesn't compare to the type of thing we get with the Marauders. Lily, like Ginny--and even like Hermione to an extent--does not exist with that kind of social bond with other women. Hermione has it with Harry and Ron, which is important, but Ginny just sort of has references to "friends" to prove she's popular with none of the importance on the individual.

That reminds me--somebody recently told me a friend of theirs believed that the guys on Entourage were all "aspecs of one guy." Which I think is silly, but what he really meant was that they fell into that familiar 4-guy pattern that seem to make up a balanced whole. I don't think women's relationships are thought to break down quite the same way, but still James' friendships form an actual family everyone rightly acknowledges, which makes Lily almost become the Wendy-character to their Lost Boys.

[go-back-chief.livejournal.com]

It is annoying when people throw around terms like "2-dimensional" and "cardboard cut-out" without explaining what they mean with it. I remember a lot of pre-HBP annoyance about how people used to say that about Draco -not that I didn't think he could be called that, just that I felt that if he was such a 2-dimensional and cardboard, then you could say the same about pretty much any charactger in the book.

I think you're spot on about the female characters being self-contained (and often helpers to the male characters). What's more is that there also seems to be less room for development for all of them. I find your comparison between Luna and Neville interesting, because in the two books Luna has been in, they've pretty much been as big characters, and as important and well, kind of a similar type of character (both schoolmates, both outsiders, both have tragic background, both "sort of friends with Harry" but never quite let in the group), but Luna seems more complete than Neville. I mean, she's not that affected by people teasing her, she seems strangely self-assured in a way Neville just isn't. Which also means that it probably would be easier to write fic about Neville, because you have much more leeway when you develop him.

And you always have to develop the main character in your fic, otherwise there's no story. It's hard to develop someone if they're already too "mature". And that's a big problem with Hermione-fic, I think, moreso than Luna, even. Because while she has her flaws, she already knows pretty much everything. What is left for her to learn? A friend of mine wrote a thesis about "the hero's journey" and how writers few writers took female characters through that kind of journey, and she used HP as one of her examples. She said something about Harry being the classical example of a hero who had to go through his journey, learning all the stuff he needed to learn to grow up and develop. Then she compared him to the biggest female character Hermione, and came to the conclusion that there just wasn't the same room for development for her, because she was already the best at everything. "The only way left to develop her would be to humble her," she'd written. And while I don't think you can compare Hermione to Harry, who, after all, is the protagonist in the book (and the only protagonist -it's not likie she and Harry are both the main characters!), and thus should be more "incomplete" and develop more, you can compare her to Ron.

And if you do, what do you find? Same thing. Ron isn't the protagonist, but it wouldn't be very difficult to write him a "hero's journey" of his own, where he learns all the stuff he needs to learn, becomes more self-confident and develops just as Harry does in HP. Because Ron isn't "already complete and self-sufficiant" the way Hermione, and for that matter, Luna, is. I think you could do a fic with a hero's journey for Hermione, too, but you'd have almost invent new issues for her. Unless you're just going to write about her being "humbled".

[go-back-chief.livejournal.com]

Oh, I forgot to add, the only case in the book I can think of straight offf the bat where this isn't really the case, if you compare a female character to her male equivalent, is with Petunia/Vernon. In that particular case, I'd say it's Vernon who is the more self-contained character who doesn't really havve any room for development.

[seaislewitch.livejournal.com]

*smiles at you happily and you know why*

Hmmm...interesting point. In real life it seems that men make a mess of things a lot more often than women, and that doesn't make the women involved any less important or valued. I suppose it boils down to your point of view of the situation. Since the story is about Harry, it's only natural that some of the people, like say...Pansy, for instance, are seen as background/supporting/self-contained characters. In fiction world, Pansy has her own life, but it would be too weird if Harry knew about it, you know? LMAO We don't know much about Hermione's life outside Harry's vision either. I suppose I like to write Pansy because I can imagine her life outside the pages of the canon.

(I really do need to finish my 'essay' on Pansy.)

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Hee! *waves Pansy flag*

You're right, it doesn't make anyone less important to be supporting others--it doesn't even make them female. Crabbe and Goyle are also shown mainly as background to Draco, and while they on their side have their own DE connections through their fathers, Pansy is more proactive and independent it seems to me.

What I like about Draco and Pansy is what I see in their dynamic in canon. I am interested in their friendship, the way they seem to protect each other's insecurities and work together. (I was kind of upset by interpretations of the train car scene I saw after HBP that said Draco was dismissive of her--I don't see him being dismissive at all. Sure he's got his big manly job to think about and is imagining himself as an adult, but I don't think Pansy would consider herself shut out of that just because it's something he has to do for himself.)

I also kind of find it fascinating that she gave Draco a Pansy, actually. Not just because Hermione's also got a hate-on for her starting around GoF but because it's a slightly different dynamic than the Trio. It interests me the way that Draco's introduced with these two omnipresent guy friends, but that he early-on develops a close friendship with a girl.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

I think there's something very Victorian about Rowling's characters, and I actually think a Victorian reader would understand them a little more than we do -- and expect less from them. The characters are not just Victorian in who they are but in the social positions they represent. The Dursleys are a satire on middle-class airs that could have been pulled straight from the pages of Punch. As the warm-hearted matron of a large brood, Mrs. Weasley emboides all the solidity of an idealized working class. And Lily is a model for all gentlemen's wives, the household angel who brings out the best in her husband. Almost all of Rowling's characters could be straight out of a Dickens novel -- Harry too, of course, who's just the latest in a long line of noble orphans (I imagine that Victorian readers would never expect Harry to be anything but noble. Orphan or not, he is, after all, the son of a gentleman.)

What happens, at least for me, is the same thing that happens in a lot of Dickens' novels: the story becomes far more interesting than the characters, women and men. I think it's fandom that expects more from these characters, and has enriched them more than Rowling has or ever intends to. Whether she's doing it on purpose or unconsciously, she seems to be drawing from a very Victorian, Dickensian tradition, so criticizing her characters for being flat seems to miss the point, like criticizing David Copperfield for being dull -- which he is.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I think you're absolutely right. It's like a post I did a while ago on chess pieces, which I think Rowling calls on her characters to do. They have to be what they are to do what they do to move the story along. Like Dickens this means some of them are very dramatic--but it doesn't make them always deep. Magwitch or Estella in Great Expectations, for instance.

It's in fanfic where people are often more complex in themselves, but I think that's also why it's not so odd that a female reader might not be particularly interested in the female characters. I think each of the characters only really contain a couple of spins that they can really support strongly, and if you're not interested in the things that you can do with what they represent, you go to another one.

[mad_maudlin]

Hey there. I'm the Mad Maudlin mentioned in the article, and I think you do a great job here articulating what Fyrdrakken and I couldn't when we were put on the spot. Across all my fandoms, very few female characters "spark" for me the way males do, and their self-contained nature is a very big part of it. Hermione isn't a character sometimes so much as a plot device. You compare Hermione to Ron, but you know, even Ron has ongoing character drama that carries over from book to book--his frustration with his family and his feelings of inadequacy. They're not exactly plot-driving conflicts (except a bit in GoF) but they're there, at least, which is more than we can say of Hermione--in the end, she's too much like a jumble of traits without a sense of "personhood."

One thing I did mention to Ms. Traister, but which she apparently felt no need to include in the article, was that I relate much better to some female characters outside of HP--the women of Firefly, for instance, and Teyla on Stargate: Atlantis. They spark for me, probably because they are much less self-contained and more integrated into the plot. (I have other gripes about the article, but this clearly isn't the proper forum. :-))

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Hey there. I'm the Mad Maudlin mentioned in the article,

Cool!

You compare Hermione to Ron, but you know, even Ron has ongoing character drama that carries over from book to book--his frustration with his family and his feelings of inadequacy.

Absolutely. I was having a hard time really articulating the difference but I think it's there. Like...Hermione's conficts that run from book to book I suppose come down to Ron himself if you assume she's liked him for a while. But that's basically a case of her wanting something--the same thing--and just working on getting it. While Ron, meanwhile, has this character vulnerability that makes him do unexpected things or get emotionally wonky and need to prove things to himself or lash out at other people. Hermione lashes out with Ron when she's jealous about Lavender, for instance, but it's just specific to that incident. She's angry because she wants to be with Ron and she's letting him know it.

Even Ron's development with Lavender is more character driven for Ron. If he did feel inexperienced or that he needed to prove something, it's still believable that he got himself entangled with this other girl for those personal needs. Where as Viktor/Hermione, from what we see, is more Hermione just juggling another thing well. She's asked to the ball, she dresses up nicely, Viktor likes her, and she handles that while still obviously mostly concerned with Harry. When Ginny announced that Hermione had snogged Viktor, it didn't make their relationships seem any more emotional to me. And where Ron (and Harry) both fumble through the situations they get themselves into with Cho and Lavender, Viktor just stops being mentioned in HBP in terms of Hermione. She didn't seem to be dating him in OotP, it just seemed like he liked her and she continued to correspond with him.

Heh--I didn't know I had that much to say on that.

One thing I did mention to Ms. Traister, but which she apparently felt no need to include in the article, was that I relate much better to some female characters outside of HP--the women of Firefly, for instance, and Teyla on Stargate: Atlantis. They spark for me, probably because they are much less self-contained and more integrated into the plot.

Hmmm. "Interesting" that wasn't included because by not including it she sort of implied something about your relating to women characters that wasn't true...

[malafede.livejournal.com]

What I would say about the female characters in general is just that the male characters tend to...drive the story more, somehow, often by being fuck-ups.

I like how you put this. Something that makes me uncomfortable when people try to hold up Rowling's writing as feminist is that the characters with the most visible arcs, for the good or the bad, are males. Though I actually have high hopes for Hermione in book 7: both for a take on her character that touches on the good and bad sides alike -- I think that stuff about Marietta will come up, and I think Rowling isn't actually pushing her as "mature" in the text, just competent but socially stunted -- and for being the drive behind a big subplot (House-Elves.) Ginny is a character where you have the seeds for a good arc, but the execution seems to have failed the premise. And even then the big plot-related role she has (Tom's diary) puts her in the position to be saved by Harry.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Yes, the whole label of "feminist" or not is really hard to pinpoint. The whole thing that's sexist in things in general is that male characters can be whatever they want because they're not really ever seen as representing their gender, where as females tend to be judged on all sorts of qualities they're supposed to have. Sometimes this leads to some odd ideas. Like I remember once somebody comparing a relatively minor female character to Snape and showing how it was so feminist because she was better than he was in so many ways. And it was true but...she was still a minor character that did very little in the story, while Snape's flaws made stuff happen. You could say the same about any story where you have a whole bunch of soldiers at the center of the story, and they all have girlfriends at home that write to them and are paragons of virtue. Who cares if the girls are supposed to be great? The men are still the ones you'd want to read about.

But then, of course, if the women do make mistakes there will often be people saying they're being portrayed badly etc. Male characters are just given more freedom, imo.

[idlerat.livejournal.com]

OMG, dude, you're right. Brilliant. It's a classic, really- the trouble with the pedestal is you can't move anywhere.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

LOL! Yes!

[gina87.livejournal.com]

(My favorite example of how well she does this will probably always be Amos Diggory in GoF--he gets one scene early on that sets up just how devastated he's going to be hundreds of pages later. I can't read his first scene now without thinking: ouch.)

I know exactly what you mean. I thought the same thing when I reread GoF.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

It's like painful to read that scene now. She really did a good job there.

[kaskait.livejournal.com]

I agree with your points.

The women in HP, simply float around the storyline which is driven by the male characters. The whole storyline had its genesis in the ancient men Salazar Slytherin and Godric Gryffindor. I suppose Rowena Ravenclaw and Helga Hufflepuff were just along for the ride. We know that Godric felt betrayed by whole fallout with Salazar. But do we ever know how Rowena and Helga felt?

It is the same with the current female characters. But there is a subtle difference with Hermione. I have the suspicion that Rowling is keeping her movements secret on purpose. For example the Timeturner. I believe that Hermione has a secret for each book that we aren't privy too. Unfortunately these secrets always concern Harry's safety. I wish I felt sure that Hermione has a goal that doesn't include Ron or Harry.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

OMG, that's hilarious. I never thought about the two female founders but yup, here we go. Though to be fair they were all fighting before Slytherin left. It just seems that Gryffindor (who was the one first linked as Salazar's bff) is going to keep that feud going the most.

That's interesting about Hermione--she does seem to be the one with secrets, definitely.

[akissinacrisis.livejournal.com]

As a het shipper, I often get annoyed with the 'the females are cardboard' thing you see sometimes, but I've got to say that this is very well-written. I agree with everything you've said. People call the female characters weak which annoys me with a passion and isn't the case - they're just together.

Hmm. This had made me think. And it's rational and well-reasoned, rather than the 'I HATE MY OWN SEX' attitude you can't help but get from some slashy posts. Well done.

And I love what you said about JKR's characters - I think it's probably the best thing about her books is the way the characters can be fully formed with a few sentences.

[akissinacrisis.livejournal.com]

Oh, and - I really think the 'Lily hole' is intentional. I honestly think that Harry's going to be 'punished', sort of, for focusing so much on his father when the big Lilyrevelation! comes in Book 7.

(Although, if it really is that she was doing it with Snape or whatever, then there'll be more problems with that.)