Reflections of a stormy petrel

THE LONG SHADOW

A man and a boy sat on the roof of a great grey mansion that frowned like a harsh master over the small terraced houses that surrounded it on every side. The air was hot and sultry, a bitter unmoving summer sulk, hot and secret with the makings of a storm; a thick, low, grey wall of cloud hung closely above them; and the city stretched before them with its mass of lives, each little group withdrawn behind its veil of brick and glass.( Read more... )

In her private life, JK Rowling is a fairly typical, though not slavish, member of the moderately educated left. Her honesty to her own imagination, though, has been leading her in all sorts of directions which seem increasingly incompatible with the ordinary sort of left-wing attitudes prevalent in Britain. In her private life, after a few traumatic years as a single mother, she lends her face to the group that represents single-parent families; in the novels, there are no single-parent families at all, and the most attractive family by far is the largest. In her private life, she is a feminist; in the novels, she delivers a strikingly attractive picture of not merely male, but patriarchal authority and wisdom. In her private life, she talks nonsense about Susan Pevensie “discovering sex” and C.S.Lewis “punishing her” for it; in Goblet of Fire, she delivers a delightful and truthful account of Harry and co. fumbling towards the other sex – and if she gets the details of male love totally wrong in Half-Blood Prince, she at least continues with a picture of teen-agers growing towards heterosexual love and marriage. One in which, by the way, and contrary to contemporary clichés, sex as such is of very minor importance indeed – so much for teen-agers’ supposedly rioting hormones. In her private life, she has clearly stated that she does not approve of boarding schools (in their peculiar British form, with its class and political overtones, as “public schools”); but the novels are based on a brilliant and magnetic vision of all the peculiar glamour and romance of this very peculiar British institution, to the point that they have actually contributed both to an increase in the number of boarding school students, and to a tendency in the British state school system towards a closer imitation of “public schools”. And then there are the Umbridge chapters of Order of the Phoenix, with Umbridge teaching “non-violent conflict resolution and negotiation”, and Harry leading an underground class in the use of weapons; one might practically be reading a tract by an American right-to-bear-arms supporter.

Now, I think there is evidence elsewhere that JKR does tend to react to her readers’ concerns and interests. The whole Tonks and Remus affair seems to me to have been put in to address fannish shipping concerns – or because, as I would argue, it was a most attractive and charming pairing. JKR found it, found it attractive, and used it – but less felicitously than kikei or pandoraculpa, possibly exactly because it was imitative. The revelation of Blaise Zabini’s identity and background is in my view less successful (here I tread on poisoned ground: some scumbag deliberately lied about my views in f_w, to make me sound like a racist, leading to the most unnecessary flamewar I ever fought) but reflects just as much a reaction to fannish concerns. The mere throwaway name of the Slytherin had roused more fan interest than any other minor character, not exluding Grindelwald; owing, as I argued long ago, to the fact that it suggests two of the “coolest” nationalities possible, French and/or Italian. (There was also a pathetically ignorant attempt to prove that someone called Blaise could possibly be female; of which, the least said, the better.) I think that the sudden revelation of a wholly different descent represents JKR’s irritation at all the froth generated by a mere name. So JKR does, in my view, react to reader concerns.

I think, however, that with the growth of her success and influence, a much more basic anxiety must have touched her mind. However little she may read of criticism, review and debate – and she could never keep up with the cataracts of argument that take place daily across six continents – she must have started to notice that most of those who dislike her world, treat her as ideologically unsound, or attack her writing, tend to come from the media and literary left; while many of her keenest and most outspoken defenders not only come from the right but have a decidedly conservative axe to grind. Most of all, she must be clear in her mind – for she is not stupid – that her own work does provide them with plenty of ammunition.

So, I think, she decided to do something to balance matters.

In one feature, she has done it with such artistic integrity and insight that it has gone unnoticed. The Dumbledore family, broken by tragedy that turns brother against brother and hag-ridden by secrets, makes a striking counterpart to the Weasleys, and heavily qualifies what had been so far an almost one-sided view of the family as a fortress. And at the same time, she manages to slip in, credibly and imaginatively, a classic left-wing topic – unhappiness and oppression come from outside, from “society”. The Dumbledores are ruined by the brutal and stupid assault on their daughter, and by the oppressive Ministry laws that force the father into Azkaban and the mother into taking the family into virtual concealment. As a result, circumstances deprive brilliant young Albus of the intellectual companionship that is his natural environment, forcing him back into the restricted world of his brother; and his brother, in turn, develops the surly and very negative attitude that will haunt them both. This leads in turn to Albus being seduced – whether sexually or not it does not matter – by Grindelwald, a breath of fresh air to the virtually exiled teen-ager. It is not, as in the most shallow and doctrinaire left attitudes, exclusively the fault of society; the arrogance of Mrs.Dumbledore, the resentment of Aberforth, make their own contribution to the picture of unhappiness and constriction; but the primary impulse is from an oppressive state of society. And as it is done with such a light touch, with such keen observation and truth to life, that we never even stop to think about the socio-political message it conveys. Also, to that extent, it shows that a left-wing viewpoint has something to say about society that is not merely escapist or doctrinaire, that it is grounded in real experience. Oppression does exist. People may be ruined and twisted from outside as well as from inside. Lives may be ruined by burdens they are not responsible for. All this is very true and very good.

However, the supposed revelation of Dumbledore’s homosexuality, though much more resonant, is far less felicitous. Of course, it has drawn a shower of praise from the usual suspects, from the detestable Peter Tatchell to, alas, my friend avus; and that is, in my view, just what JKR intended. She was not happy with the party tinge her work was acquiring – very much against her conscious will – and decided to reposition it in the most visible and blatant way. Whether she had always intended Dumbledore as an aged homosexual, or whether this is something she retconned into the previous six novels, is not relevant here; the point is that it is done so badly that it works against her conscious purpose. I have nothing against Potterverse characters being gay (though I do object to the perversity of switchknife and the like, who seem incapable of touching any male character without making him, not so much a homosexual, as an arse-bandit). My favourite candidates for the role, as I repeatedly said, are Harry himself, Dudley, and Moody, but I have no great objection to Dumbledore being one if you insist, ma’am. The point is however that there is nothing in Dumbledore that tends to suggest it.

As a homosexual correspondent pointed out on superversive’s LJ a while back, being homosexual does not just mean occasionally falling for pretty boys (or girls) or even having the occasional mad passion or great lifelong love. It means that your whole way of looking at the sexes, that is at the whole of society, is different. For ninety-seven per cent or so of mankind, the possibility of desire between (unrelated) man and woman is so natural that it is taken for granted, being factored in into professional, commercial, working, social relationships of every kind and quite across the board. Notice, for instance, how often married couples will consort with other married couples. It is at the heart of everything that is peculiar in the interplay of the sexes, from the conventions of chivalry to the cultural fear of rape.

For the remaining three per cent, however, this permanent potential for sexual desire is vested in their own sex. A homosexual man invests his own sex, especially the younger and more handsome of them, with what medieval English called daungier – the power and danger of possible attraction. Does anything that Dumbledore does tend to suggest it? It is possible, of course, to answer in the positive. He can be said to be virtually idolatrous towards handsome, green-eyed Harry Potter, and at the same to hide away from him – especially in Order of the Phoenix - with exaggerated caution, as a man would from a possible object of attraction. The problem is however that none of these things is ever presented as in any way strange or excessive or out of the norm. If Dumbledore admires Harry, then so do the rest of us. If Dumbledore keeps away from Harry, we know he has the best possible reason – with Voldemort in Harry’s mind, Harry is a possible spy at court. What is more, Dumbledore takes immediate measures to remove the problem, ordering Harry to study Occlumency.

But whether or not JKR actually meant it from the beginning, the fact is that the supposed revelation of Dumbledore’s sexual tendencies could not have been worse managed. First, as I pointed out last time, it rests on an odious fallacy, rooted mostly in female suspicion and jealousy – that passionate male friendships must have something sexual at the bottom of them. Second, its impact on Dumbledore is wholly negative. There is none even of the reparative function that, in my view, homosexual passion does afford to damaged spirits. It is quite literally a seduction into evil. It allows Grindelwald to suspend Dumbledore’ sense of morality and critical intellect, drives him to a fraudulent world of sick fantasy and the most debased kind of wish-fulfilment and ego tripping, connects him, in short, with everything that is vicious and depraved. And it leaves Dumbledore with a permanent suspicion of himself – worse, with a sick disgust of himself and his motives – that makes him permanently less effective as an opponent of evil. If an anti-gay campaigner had wanted to present a profoundly negative view of homosexual passion, he or she could not possibly have done a better job of it.

As I said, Peter Tatchell and the usual suspects are cock-a-hoop. What is it about a certain kind of fanatic, that always leads him to applaud everything that is most contrary both to his interests and to his beliefs?