First off, I would like to say that Christine Schoefer clearly has no understanding of people or apparently of the entire point of Harry Potter. Had she read the rest of the books past Prisoner of Azkaban, she would see her greivous misinterpretations, but unfortunately, the article "Harry Potter's Girl Trouble" seems to have been written by someone who was woefully uninformed and disconnected from the human condition.
Let's start with the "sexism", shall we? In said article, Schoefer claims that the Harry Potter world is completely dominated by men, putting girls and women completely into "supporting" or "unimportant" roles. This is not only untrue, but insulting to the hard work J.K. Rowling put into these characters. Schoefer says that Hermione Granger, Harry's close friend, is written as someone who only studies constantly and does not even have a real friendship with Harry and Ron, saying that the two boys "begrudgingly" accept her, when in fact, they relied on Hermione greatly. Yes, she was since the first book and through the final insallment, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, a bookworm and a bit of a nerd. But since when is that a bad thing? It never once stopped her from helping her friends or, more often than not, allowing the team to pull off the plan or even saving the day with her own knowledge from her careful research. Why, however, is Hermione so "obsessed" with knowledge? Well, it could be the fact that her parents are both successful dentists, and she herself wants to succeed in life and especially at Hogwarts since she had no prior knowledge to the world of magic as her parents are Muggles. Or maybe it is the simple fact that she is a student at a prestigious school and yearns to do well and prove herself. Which she does on countless occassions.
Schoefer makes mention of the failed Polyjuice Potion in the second book, Chamber of Secrets, in which Hermione mistakes a hair from a girl's sweater with a hair from the girl's cat, thus resulting in a bad, probably painful transformation. But what did Hermione do? Turned the negative into a positive by using her recovery time to do more research and thusly discovering the fact that the creature petrifying people, and the voice Harry was hearing in the walls, was a basilisk. Schoefer also seems upset by the fact that in The Sorceror's Stone (number one), Hermione collapsed in terror at coming fact to face with a mountain troll. To which point I would like to point out that Hermione was upset already at that point and was, most importantly, only eleven years old! How many eleven year olds would be bold in front of such a beast? Very few.
She also mentions Ginny Weasley's blushing, stammering nature around Harry in Chamber of Secrets and still a bit in Prisoner of Azkaban. To which I would remind Schoefer that Ginny Weasley was, in those circumstances, a little girl with a crush. How else was she supposed to act? As little girls with crushes do: nervous and a bit awkward. Had Schoefer bothered to read past Prisoner of Azkaban, she would have discovered that as Ginny grew up, her confidence blossomed and she became a strong individual who could not only defend herself, but also her friends, including the boys. Schoefer seems to find the part where Tom Riddle tells Harry "You have no idea how annoying it is to have to listen to the inane problems of a stupid little girl", but seems to be forgetting that the person saying this to Harry is the young Lord Voldemort, and thusly PURE EVIL. Of course he is not going to care about a little girl's crush and self-confidence issues!
The article also says at one point that there are no women or girls on the side of evil. This was so wrong I literally yelled at the book. Had Schoefer bothered to read past Prisoner of Azkaban, even just into Goblet of Fire, she would have learned that there are, in fact, female Death Eaters, followers of Voldemort. Like Bellatrix Lestrange, Narcissa Malfoy, Alecto Carrow, and even Dolores Umbridge (though not technically a Death Eater, she is definitely evil). There are some VERY evil women in the Harry Potter series.
My point with all of this is that Christina Schoefer really should not be writing reviews or editiorials or what-have-you about characters in a book series when A)she has no idea what she is talking about or most importantly B) reading the whole series before trying to decide what the character development is.
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