Children's book series imaginatively updates an old-fashioned virtue

By Edmund Kern
Associate professor of history

Originally published in Lawrence Today, Summer 2001

In late 1999 Harry Potter was found on my doorstep in much the same way that J.K. Rowling’s eponymous hero is discovered at the beginning of his tale — unexpected and unlooked for. But, whereas the books were a welcome gift from my wife (who couldn’t wait until Christmas), the infant Harry is seen as a perilous burden by his thoroughly dislikable aunt and uncle, Petunia and Vernon Dursley (who also can’t wait to give him away). My books arrived routinely in Appleton via airmail. Young Harry reaches the Dursleys in the village of Little Whinging via a flying motorcycle ridden by the giant Rubeus Hagrid.

Since I teach a course at Lawrence titled Religion, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe, students — and visiting parents as well — often ask what I think of the books. I am of two minds. As a historian, I see little of note. As a reader, I can’t get enough of them.

The reception of Joanne Rowling’s Harry Potter books has redefined the “literary sensation.” If The New York Times had not banished the titles to a new children’s category, itself the product of Potter-mania, all four would have been on its best-seller list simultaneously. What’s more, the works’ excellence surpasses their wild popularity. And the kids reading the books know it.

Yet, Rowling’s success has been controversial. Some critics and pundits have gainsaid its “greatness” or merit, while champions of morality have denounced its values. Yale’s hostile Harold Bloom pompously denounces the first book, deriding Rowling’s prose as “goo” and “just slop.” These sentiments are more kindly echoed by those who imply the book is “only children’s literature.” Other critics, wisely eschewing the “greatness test,” question Rowling’s failure to challenge accepted norms, her portrayal of central male and supportive female characters, her conventional use of folklore and plot, or other aspects of her style — my favorite, her overuse of dashes. With the exception of Bloom, who is just wrong and should have some fun, each offers something to consider — maybe she does overuse dashes.

A more formidable challenge comes from those who would ban the book under the guise of “protecting” children. (The American Library Association has recorded over 5,000 complaints.) Why? Because Harry Potter is godless and encourages witchcraft. Rowling inadvertently addresses these guardians of kids’ minds in her early portrait of the Dursleys:

The Dursleys had everything they wanted, but they also had a secret, and their greatest fear was that somebody would discover it. They didn’t think they could bear it if anyone found out about the Potters . . . . The Dursleys knew that the Potters had a small son, too, but they had never seen him. This boy was another good reason for keeping the Potters away; they didn’t want Dudley mixing with a child like that.

A page or two later, she again seems to have her critics in mind, writing of Mr. Dursley, “[he] set off home, hoping he was imagining things, which he had never hoped before, because he didn’t approve of imagination.”

Imagination, in fact, proves to be Rowling’s best defense against her detractors. Attacks on the works’ quality and morality are misplaced. The creativity and goodness on display draw kids’ attention and keep them coming back. She writes a simple, fluid, and clever prose, and she gracefully places Harry and his friends in ethical dilemmas that require them to think in complex ways about right and wrong. Her characters might preach, but she never does. Her accomplishment is astonishing — an apt term for a work on witchcraft.

Four books so far (Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) are installments in a projected seven-part series. (As an aside, The Philosopher’s Stone became the historically nonsensical Sorcerer’s Stone in the American edition, which also did away with dozens of wonderful British idioms.)

The books unfold Harry’s place within the Wizarding World and the Muggle World. In the former, we find witches, goblins providing financial services, misunderstood werewolves, envious ghosts, and numerous breeds of dragons, while in the latter, we find everyone else — us “muggles” with lives shaped by corporate business, electricity, and other prosaic concerns. Wizards know about muggles, despite an often-willful ignorance of their ways. (“Muggle women wear them, Archie, not men; they wear these.”) Most muggles are completely unaware of the world of magic or have their memories modified, should they witness something beyond their ken. (Obliviate! is the usual Memory Charm.) Still, the two worlds are alike, with the exciting magical world mirroring the realities of the other: friends and enemies, family, government, eating and sleeping, school, and shopping. The books merge the fantastical and the mundane.

Harry is an orphan whose parents’ death at the hands of the arch-villain Lord Voldemort places him with the Dursleys. He is the most famous person in the wizarding world (though he doesn’t know it), since he alone has survived an attack by “You-Know-Who.” Harry spends ten years neglected by his aunt and uncle and tormented by their horrible son, Dudley, before a letter offers escape to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, where he becomes a student. Although summers return him to drudgery, life at Hogwarts allows him to grow.

Harry befriends Ron Weasley, from an ancient if impecunious wizarding family, whose endurance of Harry’s fame and fortune waivers but never breaks, and Hermione Granger, from a family of muggle dentists, who nonetheless excels at magic and everything else. Harry’s foil is the super-rich and bigoted Draco Malfoy, while oily Professor Severus Snape is always looking to catch him out of line. Hovering in the background is the furtive threat of You-Know-Who. But Harry has his protectors as well, including gamekeeper Rubeus Hagrid, who alternately gets him into and out of trouble, Headmaster Albus Dumbledore, who amiably mentors Harry but possesses unequaled power, and Professor Minerva McGonagall, who doles out wisdom or discipline as she sees fit. Harry’s school house is Gryffindor, one of four in addition to Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin, each with its own insignia, colors, and ethos. The Hogwarts student culture is rich — in both adventure and mischief.

Rowling revels in the details of her work. She chooses names guaranteed to bring a smile to the attentive reader. Whereas Dudley Dursley attends the elite school Smeltings, his parents would relegate Harry to Stonewall High. Witches travel to Diagon Alley or Knockturn Alley for various goods and services. Similar attention is paid to naming minor characters, whether they are the Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge, Draco Malfoy’s henchmen Crabbe and Goyle, the yellow journalist Rita Skeeter, or the ghost Nearly Headless Nick, whose 15th-century execution didn’t quite come off. Sometimes, punning takes place in French (or other languages) as in Voldemort (theft of death) and Malfoy (bad faith). This trend also emerges in the clever mock Latin used for most magical charms such as Locomotor Mortis for the Leg-Locker Curse or Petrificus Totalis for a Body-Bind.

On nearly every page, Rowling puts the vibrant culture of the Wizarding World on display. She invents the poetry-composing Sorting Hat for placing students in the appropriate school houses, danger-laden Bertie Bott’s Every-Flavour Beans, and the soccer-like game of Quidditch, played on broomsticks above the pitch with balls that sometimes attack the players. Blending the magical and mundane, she is at her best:

“Help yourself,” said Harry. “But in, you know, the Muggle world, people just stay put in photos.”
“Do they? What, they don’t move at all?” Ron sounded amazed. “Weird.”


Rowling is also adept at structuring her works. Each book relates one year of Harry’s life and has its own plot line, but through tantalizing concealment and gradual revelation, the author tells a larger story as well. The first and second hew closely to the standard formula of children’s books. They present a series of episodic chapters, which loosely follow a larger narrative arc, and then offer a rapid climax. Both begin with Harry living with the Dursleys, move the action quickly to Hogwarts, follow his exploits there, and end with his dread return. Both are no less enjoyable for all this. The longer third book, too, follows this pattern before diverging radically and extending the climactic scenes over its final third. The reader learns a great deal about Harry’s history and remains in suspense as the resolution of one threat dissolves into the emergence of another. The twice-as-long fourth book explodes the formula completely, becoming a “pivot” upon which the series turns. It begins with an episode in which Harry plays no part, has him arriving at Hogwarts a quarter of the way through, and elaborates at length on his “back story.” It has an engaging plot, but answers questions raised earlier and poses new ones that lead readers into the unknown.

This aspect of Rowling’s shrewd story telling deserves special attention: each book moves the story both forward and backward. The further we travel into Harry’s future, the further we travel into his parents’ past. The stories grow darker as the past beckons and the future threatens. This trend reflects each volume’s increasingly higher level of difficulty. Harry is 11 in the first book; he is 14 in the most recent. Though in interviews Rowling claims not to be writing for any particular audience, her brilliance shows most clearly in the authorial voice she adapts for each book, which matures along with Harry.

Rowling’s voice speaks to children, rather than at them. They thus encounter the chicken blood-and-brandy diet of baby dragons, bubotuber pus, vomit-flavored candy, and (mildly) off-color jokes, along with occasional drunkenness and violence. Life is not pristine. The death of a likable, righteous character proves that acting morally is hard-won and that being good does not guarantee being rewarded.

The voice of frankness in the Harry Potter books liberates rather than constrains. Harry’s universe is governed by rules of his own making, even though events are beyond his control. He is lectured often enough about rules and rule-breaking, but his choices are his own. Subject to unfairness and jealousy, he does not always act with the best of intentions. Not above giving into temptation, breaking the rules, or even acting contrary to explicit instruction, Harry and his friends are no prudes. Yet, empathy, compassion, and toleration motivate them, virtues mostly absent, in contrast, from William Bennett’s preachy (and unappealing) Children’s Book of Virtues. Despite occasional misbehavior, they remain steadfast within what is shaping up as an epic battle between good and evil. By refusing to smother her young readers, Rowling crafts an appealing ethical system, one that children can both relate to and think through.

This accomplishment is striking because Rowling develops an essentially stoic (or neo-stoic) moral philosophy whose chief virtue is old-fashioned constancy — resolution in the face of adversity. Harry’s virtue is the result of conscious choice and attention to what is and is not within his control. Harry worries about who he is but realizes that what he does matters most. And, I believe, so do the kids reading the books.

Walt Disney used to speak of the “four C’s” as essential to realizing dreams: curiosity, confidence, courage, and constancy. Wait a minute. Constancy? You bet. Just dig into Harry Potter and find it anew. The kids in your life already have.

Edmund M. Kern, a member of the Lawrence history faculty since 1992, has also served as chair of the Gender Studies program. A specialist in early modern European history, his studies of witchcraft and witch-hunting have been widely published in professional journals and presented at scholarly conferences. As mentioned above, he regularly teaches a popular course on Religion, Magic, and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe.