From previous exchanges as well as this one, I am beginning to feel that rape is a particularly sensitive subject with Threeoranges; by which I do not mean that she overrates it, though we have had a private disagreement about matter of fact in a couple of cases, so much as that she reacts more strongly to it than to crimes which she would admit, in cold blood, are equally loathsome. If I were to say, for instance, that the centaurs have tortured, rather than raped, Umbridge - which is the impression I got from the episode myself - I suspect you would feel this as something of a cop-out, even though rape and torture (in so far as they can be separated at all) are equally hideous in their intrusion upon the person, in their abuse of natural relationships, in their infliction of power in its most extreme form.
I do not feel, in fact, that the pointers to Umbridge being raped rather than tortured are very strong; I feel that JKR left it deliberately vague. We know that whatever it was that was done to her was horrible beyond comprehension, horrible, I would say, even beyond the Cruciatus. Her shock is deeper than anything either Harry or Peter suffered; both of them recovered swiftly as soon as Voldemort let go, but Umbridge is still unable to control her terror days after the experience. (And the difference has nothing to do with Harry's heroic temper, either, since the effect was the same on Peter, and he is the least heroic individual conceivable.)
In point of fact, the Centaurs of JKR's world are quite unlike those of Greek legend, especially the legend of the Lapiths. The Centaurs of Greek legend are closely connected with the adolescent stage of male human life; they are, in effect, a mythical archetype for an initiatic society of boys. This is why they appear in the two apparently contradictory role of teachers (the wise Cheiron, who taught the hero of heroes, Achilles, everything he knew, and gave him his mighty spear) and of beast-like rapists. The one aspect represents the Centaur stage of life as seen, shall we say, from below, implying all the good things it will do for a boy to be socialized and initiated - schooled, one might say; the other sees male adolescence as it were from above. Marriage is opposed to the wild, animal and violent lusts of adolescence; as I said somewhere else, in mythology a violent clash symbolizes a fundamental opposition between two principles, with victory being granted to the principle which the ideology regards as superior. (These facts are established by important Indo-European parallels in India, the Celtic world, and Rome, which are too long to go into here.) If you go on reading, Threeoranges, you will find that the Centaurs were wholly and entirely defeated by the Lapiths, so that the abducted young women were, you may be sure, rescued; and, in the ideological sense, the superiority of ordered, social marriage over wild sexuality with no control was established. It is not strange that a great Greek sculptors connected this legend to the god of order and holiness, Apollo (Mary Renault has written some splendid and unusually perceptive lines on this image - The mask of Apollo, chapter 1, page 20 of the British paperback edition): the defeat of unrestrained, violent sexuality is his victory, even though he does not take part in the battle. Incidentally, the two sides of the Centaur nature are show, as so often in Greek myth, by two separate origin legends: the wild, violent, rapist centaurs are the result of a mortal (Ixion) raping the shadow of the goddess Hera, while the initiatic, calm, noble teacher Cheiron is a half-brother of Zeus, being the son of Kronos by the ocean-spirit Phillyra.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-09-26 01:23 pm (UTC)I do not feel, in fact, that the pointers to Umbridge being raped rather than tortured are very strong; I feel that JKR left it deliberately vague. We know that whatever it was that was done to her was horrible beyond comprehension, horrible, I would say, even beyond the Cruciatus. Her shock is deeper than anything either Harry or Peter suffered; both of them recovered swiftly as soon as Voldemort let go, but Umbridge is still unable to control her terror days after the experience. (And the difference has nothing to do with Harry's heroic temper, either, since the effect was the same on Peter, and he is the least heroic individual conceivable.)
In point of fact, the Centaurs of JKR's world are quite unlike those of Greek legend, especially the legend of the Lapiths. The Centaurs of Greek legend are closely connected with the adolescent stage of male human life; they are, in effect, a mythical archetype for an initiatic society of boys. This is why they appear in the two apparently contradictory role of teachers (the wise Cheiron, who taught the hero of heroes, Achilles, everything he knew, and gave him his mighty spear) and of beast-like rapists. The one aspect represents the Centaur stage of life as seen, shall we say, from below, implying all the good things it will do for a boy to be socialized and initiated - schooled, one might say; the other sees male adolescence as it were from above. Marriage is opposed to the wild, animal and violent lusts of adolescence; as I said somewhere else, in mythology a violent clash symbolizes a fundamental opposition between two principles, with victory being granted to the principle which the ideology regards as superior. (These facts are established by important Indo-European parallels in India, the Celtic world, and Rome, which are too long to go into here.) If you go on reading, Threeoranges, you will find that the Centaurs were wholly and entirely defeated by the Lapiths, so that the abducted young women were, you may be sure, rescued; and, in the ideological sense, the superiority of ordered, social marriage over wild sexuality with no control was established. It is not strange that a great Greek sculptors connected this legend to the god of order and holiness, Apollo (Mary Renault has written some splendid and unusually perceptive lines on this image - The mask of Apollo, chapter 1, page 20 of the British paperback edition): the defeat of unrestrained, violent sexuality is his victory, even though he does not take part in the battle. Incidentally, the two sides of the Centaur nature are show, as so often in Greek myth, by two separate origin legends: the wild, violent, rapist centaurs are the result of a mortal (Ixion) raping the shadow of the goddess Hera, while the initiatic, calm, noble teacher Cheiron is a half-brother of Zeus, being the son of Kronos by the ocean-spirit Phillyra.