English Literary Characters: Harry Potter Books


Figure 1.--This is the first official publicity for the Harry Potter movie. One HBC reader believes that the maroon of the scarf seems a little too dark. (Ms. Rowling consistently describes the Gryffindor house colors as "scarlet and gold").

The most popular litteary sensation of 1999 were the success of the Harry Potter books. Harry is an orphaned English boy training to be a wizzard. He has taken the literary world by storm. Harrey Potterisms have begun to enter the lanuage. One nice aspect of the Harry Potter books is how they have interested many boys who are not avid readers. Harry attends the Hogwarts School and is often pictured in English school uniforms. Subsequent volumes also proved popular with young readers. The characters did not stand still, but aged with each new volume.

Author

Joanne Rowling, now more commonly known as J.K., was born in Chipping Sodbury located near near Bristol The family included her parents and younger sister Di. Joanne as a younger child grew up in Yate and then Winterbourne, both near Bristol. Her father helped build airplane engines at the Rolls Royce plant. When Joanne was 9 years old, the moved to Tutshill, near Chepstow which was on the border of England and Wales. Joanne was called Jo within her family and by her friends. She was a good student. uring her senior year, she was the top girl in her class. Rowling mentions that she was a lot like her character Hermione Granger, Harry's rather serious, studious friend. Rowling adds, "I was neither as clever or as annoying (I hope!)." She liked English and foreign languages at school. She had several favorite books. One was Manxmouseby Paul Gallico, about a strange creature that had a mouse's body, rabbit's ears, and monkey's paws. Another was the children's classic, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe as well as other volumes in C.S. Lewis's Narnia series. She graduated from public school with top honors in English, French, and German. She then studied French at the University of Exeter, earming a degree (1986). She worked as a secrtary. One of those secretarial jobs was with a publishing firm, where part of her job was to mail out rejection letters to would be authors. The secretarial jobs paid the bills. From the beginning she wasnted to write andc tell stories. Her first story was "Rabbit". Rowlings Rabbit had measles, at age 5 or 6 years. After a while she began working on adult novels. She did not finish any of the ones she began. Then she began wirking on Harry Potter (1990). The idea for the depressed. orphaned junior wizzard cane when she found herself on a delayed train between Manchester and London. Soon after she went to Portugal to teach English. While there she continued working on the idea. She returned to Britain and settled in Edinburgh, Scotland where her sister lived (1993). She had married in Portugal, but the marriage did not work out. She was left with a baby, Jessica, and no job. She had aifficult time supporting herself and Jessuca, but it was at this tiome that she finished Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (It was renamed Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone when published in America. Her publisher suggested that she add a middle initial to her name. S chose "K" because her grandmother was named Kathleen.

Text

In the first Harry Potter book , Harry is first described as wearing "..old clothes of (his cousin) Dudley's, and Dudley was about four times bigger than he was." Later the Hogwarts uniform list is given ( plain black robes and pointed hat; black winter cloak with silver fastenings); Rowling gives the impression that Hogwarts students wear ordinary street clothes under their robes.

Illustrations

The "street clothes" are picked up by (U.S. edition) illustrator Mary GrandPre, who usually depicts Harry in a a white shirt and rugby shirt, jeans and white sneakers. The British cover of Book 1 shows Harry in traditional English school uniform, including a red-and-yellow striped scarf (he's only shown from the chest up; scarlet and gold are the Gryffindor House colors) Neither depict the black robes/ hats described above, but several foreign translations do (eg. the French edition Philosopher's/Sorcerer's Stone)

Merchandise

Most of the WB- authorized merchandise so far has been based on GrandPre's illustrations; Harry is depicted as he was on the US "Stone" cover. However, some of these do show him wearing the black robes and hat over these clothes.

Movie

Spy photos have been posted on the Net showing groups of "students" (extras) in Hogwarts uniform; under the black robes they wear gray shirts, house-color striped ties, and gray sweaters with house-color trim. In other words, fairly typical English school uniform , and not a pointy hat in sight! In every pic I've seen, the robes completely obscure the lower half of the uniform, so I can't comment on the boys' trousers.

HBC readers have assessed the publicity photographs for the upcoming Harry Potter movie. He believes that the maroon of the scarf seems a little too dark. (Ms. Rowling consistently describes the Gryffindor house colors as "scarlet and gold"). The house shield was invented for the movie. The books only describe (and, on non-US Engilsh editions, show) a school shield with all four house animals. In the above image, it is not clear if Harry is wearing a robe or a cloak. Hallelujah! His glasses aren't broken! Since they can be fixed magically. Harry's glasses were fixed in Book One (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone). Right after she meets Ron and Harry on the Hogwarts Express, Hermione fixes them with an incantation, "Oculus Reparo". So, they would have no reason to show them still broken while he's at Hogwarts since they were repaired before he ever got there for his first year.

You can just make out the patch the Gryffindor house badge is embroidered on; this actually explains away an inconsistency with the text. (The uniform list calls for plain black robes and cloak).

On a related note, a HBC reader asks, "Do you know of any real English schools where a house badge, not the school one, takes pride of place on students' blazers or sweaters?" If that's unique to Hogwarts, well, JKR has said it's the only wizarding school in Britain, so one's house would seem to have more importance in a culture where everyone went to the same school. HBC reports that English boys always wore the same school badge, regardless of their house. At many schools the boys might wear colore bages that were pinned or sewn on to their jumpers to ientify their houses.

Another comment gleaned from the HPforGrownups eGroup. The blue glove is likely required for safety reasons when handling the owl and may be bluescreened out and replaced with Radcliffe's bare hand in the actual movie.

Historical Setting

Due to a set of dates given in "Chamber of Secrets", most hardcore fans consider Harry's first year at Hogwarts to have been 1991-92. I consider it unlikely that WB will bother to "dress" the Muggle-world sets back a mere 10 years or so. Note, too, that many things about the "wizarding world" in these books are outdated in a stereotypical-olde-England sort of way.

The Movie

The Harry Potter films are based on the Harry Potter series of books by British writer J.K. Rowling. A HBC reader reports that the film is "Great fun". Another reader writes, "he boy's do not wear the traditional English short trouser uniforms or caps. This is not a decission by the film makers, but reflects the illustrations in the Rowlings books. Presumably as Rowkings wrote the books at a time when British school boys mostly wore long pants, that must have reflected her decisssion." As the story is sent in contemorary times, the uniform does accurately reflect what British school children were wearing at the time the books were published.

Importance

J.K. Rowling is a marvelous story teller. The Harry Potter stories are imaginative and exciting. The mix of heroic child characters, magic, and villans had a wonderful appeal to young minds. I would have thought that boys in particular would have been drawn to the Potter stories. We notice, however, that girls also enjoy them. The importance of the Rowling stories is not really the literary merits which are considerable. Rather it is the strength to which she has drawn young readers to reading. As any teacher knows, reading is the major step in a child's education. For the most part, children who master reading skills and enjoy reading will do well, not only in school but in life as well. Those who do not are going to have trouble. We know of few authors who have so powerfully captured the imagination of youthful readers.







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Created: October 28, 2000
Last updated: 9:18 PM 11/8/2010