This hews really close to the Victorian tradition, not just in terms of moving the story along, but in terms of social mores, and the mores of the wizarding world seem to mirror those of Victorian times. Everyone is just exactly what they're supposed to be, and no one ventures outside of that or even thinks of doing so. It's unimaginable. In a lot of Dickens' stories, characters who try to move up the social hierarchy are either portrayed as ridiculous or wind up in some tragic circumstance. Rowling isn't writing with any sort moral instruction in mind, so she doesn't bother with these scenarios, but it's obvious that the wizarding world is far less socially fluid than our own -- a point for which readers have also criticized Rowling's work.
Off on a tangent, but it's always made me wonder why anyone would want to stay in the wizarding world at all. Yeah, magic's great, but a wizard's abilities don't vanish once they're in the muggle world. Why would anyone, especially someone with supernatural abilites, want to say in a world that seems as rigidly defined as the wizarding world does? I'd just as soon get in a time machine to 1850.
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Date: 2007-06-02 10:08 pm (UTC)This hews really close to the Victorian tradition, not just in terms of moving the story along, but in terms of social mores, and the mores of the wizarding world seem to mirror those of Victorian times. Everyone is just exactly what they're supposed to be, and no one ventures outside of that or even thinks of doing so. It's unimaginable. In a lot of Dickens' stories, characters who try to move up the social hierarchy are either portrayed as ridiculous or wind up in some tragic circumstance. Rowling isn't writing with any sort moral instruction in mind, so she doesn't bother with these scenarios, but it's obvious that the wizarding world is far less socially fluid than our own -- a point for which readers have also criticized Rowling's work.
Off on a tangent, but it's always made me wonder why anyone would want to stay in the wizarding world at all. Yeah, magic's great, but a wizard's abilities don't vanish once they're in the muggle world. Why would anyone, especially someone with supernatural abilites, want to say in a world that seems as rigidly defined as the wizarding world does? I'd just as soon get in a time machine to 1850.