Early Easter Eggs
They must be from J.K. Rowling, because they're making me bounce and bubble and babble. So here is the babbling about the teacher list:
First, here is a transcription of the list:
Transfiguration F Prof. Minerva McGonagall
Charms M Prof. Filius Flitwick
Potions M Prof. Severus Snape
Herbology F Prof. Pomona Sprout
D.A.D.A. F M Prof. Remus Lupin
Astronomy F Prof. Aurora Sinistra
History of Magic M Prof. Cuthbert Binns
Divination F M Prof. Mopsus etc.
Study of Ancient Runes M F Prof. Bathsheda Babbling
Arithmancy F Prof. Septima Vector
Care of Magical Creatures F M Hagrid Rubeus Hagrid
Muggle Studies M F Prof.
This is all so very fascinating. Going down the list, the first thing that strikes me is the struck-through female sign on the D.A.D.A. teacher's place. Is that just the written equivalent of a typo, or did she only decide at that time that Remus would be teaching it. Or that Remus would be a male?!
Next, we see excellent first names for Professors Sinistra and Binns, which I plan to adopt as official unless contradicted.
Skipping the Divination line for now, the next thing I notice is that the Ancient Runes Professor was changed from male to female, which doesn't interest me much. But the next one interests me quite a bit: "Septima" Vector. Along with "Septimus" Weasley who married into the Black family tree, this gives us two more indications that the number seven is very, very important to Rowling. ;) It's more than just using names that mean "seven" -- it's the placement of them. Having the Arithmancy teacher named "Seven" reinforces the particular magical power the number is supposed to have, according to the Bridget Wenlock card. And having a Weasley named "Seven" reinforces the relationship of the number to the Weasleys in general and Ginny Weasley in particular. And, of course, there's the wonderful statement in the Ancient Runes Made Easy book as well:
The symbolic meaning of the number seven is yet to be uncovered.
*happy sigh*
Okay, enough of that, before I trigger a contentious fandom debate between the Septarians and the Duodecimalites!
The next thing that interests me is that on this list, which Rowling said was from the time of writing PoA, the Care of Magical Creatures teacher was first noted as female. Zoot! Apparently when she was writing PS/SS and CoS, she had no plans to make Hagrid a teacher. So, despite the fact that she thought of Hagrid on that very first train journey, despite the fact that Robbie Coltrane has indicated Rowling has told him something about Hagrid's past that hasn't come up in the books yet, apparently Hagrid's role as Care of Magical Creatures instructor is not central to the plot. I can't help wondering if that's one of the reasons Harry and company so cavalierly dropped the course after their OWLs -- they "knew" it wasn't important to the plot!
Finally, I note that the unnamed Muggle Studies teacher seems to be a useful cipher -- male or female as required to make the twelve-person teaching roster (*frowns mightily at the jubilant Duodecimalites*) gender-balanced. I have a pleasant fiction in my mind of this person being female while Quirrell, Lockhart, Lupin, and Snape were instructing D.A.D.A., but turning male during Umbridge's tenure in the position.
But what of Divination? At last I have reached the main point of this post. Because at the time these notes were jotted down, Trelawney wasn't yet planned as the Divination professor. Instead, a character of the name of Mopsus was. A MALE character of the name of Mopsus.
We have heard of this Mopsus before. Here is what Rowling said at some time that I'm not going to bother to link or footnote (you all can Google, right?):
Funny you should say that because at one point there was a blind character who went by the name of Mopsus, and I will let you look him up because there is a mythological connection there, but he sort of that was a very early character and he had the power of second sight, in other words he was a bit like Professor Trelawney, he was a very, very early character, this was when I was drafting Philosopher's Stone, the reason I cut him was he was too good. As the story evolved, if there was somebody who really could do divination at the time that Harry was alive, it greatly diminished the drama of the story because someone out there knew what was going to happen.
So that is why Mopsus went and I have never really replaced him, although I suppose Mad-Eye Moody, had some of Mopsus' characterisation. He has one magical eye because he lost an eye in a fight with a Death Eater, so good question.
Mopsus is, of course, a classical reference to a seer, or two seers, or something like that. Anyway, a very appropriate name.
Why am I going on about this? Well, the prophecy -- or rather, The Prophecy -- is centrally important to Harry's story. It is the reason Harry's parents were killed, the reason Harry became The Boy Who Lived, the impetus for the whole plot. When Dumbledore is about to tell Harry about The Prophecy, he calls it "everything":
Please sit down. I am going to tell you everything.
It is pretty well certain that The Prophecy has a central role in what Rowling refers to as "the heart of it all." And, in Rowling's original vision, this prophecy was made by a man.
Harry is male. The villain, Voldemort, is male. Harry's primary mentor, Dumbledore, is male. Hagrid, the guide who leads Harry into the magical world, is male. Snape, the ambiguous figure so central to Harry's mystery, is male. Draco Malfoy, Harry's foil and rival, is male. Of the five characters that appeared to J.K. Rowling that very first day on the train -- Harry, Ron, Hagrid, Nearly-Headless Nick, and Peeves -- all five are male. And now we find that -- originally -- the seer who started the whole process was male as well.
Is it only me who finds this absolutely riveting? In the very document I quoted above, we see the juxtaposition of the overwhelmingly masculine main characters with Rowling's careful and conscientious balancing of her Hogwarts faculty to have six male and six female teachers. We have seen her carefully integrate her Quidditch teams, establish female Ministers for Magic and Hogwarts Headmasters back for centuries, give Harry one male and one female best friend, make the Hogwarts founders and the current heads of houses two and two, and do all sorts of things to achieve gender equity, to get away from male domination. And yet, at the very heart of the story, in the most important roles, we have (with the exception of Lily) male after male after male after male.
Some of this is inevitable, once you have a male protagonist. His shadow (Voldemort) and his foil (Draco Malfoy) should be male, by most theories of story psychology. Snape's role may require him to be male as well. But it seems clear to me that more than that is operating here. Harry emerged from the depths of J.K. Rowling's unconscious as a male and the story that formed itself to explain him also seems to have been dipped out of a very stream of masculinity. I mean... on that train... ideas flowing like a gift from the Gods... five male characters.
Does this make sense? Absolutely. I don't doubt that Rowling is a sincere feminist, consciously committed to gender equity and to feeding the spirits of little girls with strong, healthy stories and role models. But stories aren't forged by the conscious mind, and the unconscious from whence great ideas come is a deep and murky place. Rowling has fed hers on centuries of fiction, both literary and popular, and very little of that fiction will have suited modern ideas of sexual equality. Her unconscious storyteller will have grown in the dark like a Devil's Snare, feeding on her life-experiences, and Rowling, like me, is in her forties. Her childhood was spent in times very different from what we have now.
Am I going to blame her or criticize her for following her muse instead of her feminist principles? Hell no! I credit her for what she has done trying to achieve gender-equity in her fictional world, but I'd rather have the true story as it came to her, messy and dripping with the detritus of centuries, than the smoothed-off, prettied up, politically correct version she might have made of it.
Personally, I find the tension between the two aspects of Rowling quite fascinating in itself.
First, here is a transcription of the list:
Transfiguration F Prof. Minerva McGonagall
Charms M Prof. Filius Flitwick
Potions M Prof. Severus Snape
Herbology F Prof. Pomona Sprout
D.A.D.A. F M Prof. Remus Lupin
Astronomy F Prof. Aurora Sinistra
History of Magic M Prof. Cuthbert Binns
Divination F M Prof. Mopsus etc.
Study of Ancient Runes M F Prof. Bathsheda Babbling
Arithmancy F Prof. Septima Vector
Care of Magical Creatures F M Hagrid Rubeus Hagrid
Muggle Studies M F Prof.
This is all so very fascinating. Going down the list, the first thing that strikes me is the struck-through female sign on the D.A.D.A. teacher's place. Is that just the written equivalent of a typo, or did she only decide at that time that Remus would be teaching it. Or that Remus would be a male?!
Next, we see excellent first names for Professors Sinistra and Binns, which I plan to adopt as official unless contradicted.
Skipping the Divination line for now, the next thing I notice is that the Ancient Runes Professor was changed from male to female, which doesn't interest me much. But the next one interests me quite a bit: "Septima" Vector. Along with "Septimus" Weasley who married into the Black family tree, this gives us two more indications that the number seven is very, very important to Rowling. ;) It's more than just using names that mean "seven" -- it's the placement of them. Having the Arithmancy teacher named "Seven" reinforces the particular magical power the number is supposed to have, according to the Bridget Wenlock card. And having a Weasley named "Seven" reinforces the relationship of the number to the Weasleys in general and Ginny Weasley in particular. And, of course, there's the wonderful statement in the Ancient Runes Made Easy book as well:
The symbolic meaning of the number seven is yet to be uncovered.
*happy sigh*
Okay, enough of that, before I trigger a contentious fandom debate between the Septarians and the Duodecimalites!
The next thing that interests me is that on this list, which Rowling said was from the time of writing PoA, the Care of Magical Creatures teacher was first noted as female. Zoot! Apparently when she was writing PS/SS and CoS, she had no plans to make Hagrid a teacher. So, despite the fact that she thought of Hagrid on that very first train journey, despite the fact that Robbie Coltrane has indicated Rowling has told him something about Hagrid's past that hasn't come up in the books yet, apparently Hagrid's role as Care of Magical Creatures instructor is not central to the plot. I can't help wondering if that's one of the reasons Harry and company so cavalierly dropped the course after their OWLs -- they "knew" it wasn't important to the plot!
Finally, I note that the unnamed Muggle Studies teacher seems to be a useful cipher -- male or female as required to make the twelve-person teaching roster (*frowns mightily at the jubilant Duodecimalites*) gender-balanced. I have a pleasant fiction in my mind of this person being female while Quirrell, Lockhart, Lupin, and Snape were instructing D.A.D.A., but turning male during Umbridge's tenure in the position.
But what of Divination? At last I have reached the main point of this post. Because at the time these notes were jotted down, Trelawney wasn't yet planned as the Divination professor. Instead, a character of the name of Mopsus was. A MALE character of the name of Mopsus.
We have heard of this Mopsus before. Here is what Rowling said at some time that I'm not going to bother to link or footnote (you all can Google, right?):
Funny you should say that because at one point there was a blind character who went by the name of Mopsus, and I will let you look him up because there is a mythological connection there, but he sort of that was a very early character and he had the power of second sight, in other words he was a bit like Professor Trelawney, he was a very, very early character, this was when I was drafting Philosopher's Stone, the reason I cut him was he was too good. As the story evolved, if there was somebody who really could do divination at the time that Harry was alive, it greatly diminished the drama of the story because someone out there knew what was going to happen.
So that is why Mopsus went and I have never really replaced him, although I suppose Mad-Eye Moody, had some of Mopsus' characterisation. He has one magical eye because he lost an eye in a fight with a Death Eater, so good question.
Mopsus is, of course, a classical reference to a seer, or two seers, or something like that. Anyway, a very appropriate name.
Why am I going on about this? Well, the prophecy -- or rather, The Prophecy -- is centrally important to Harry's story. It is the reason Harry's parents were killed, the reason Harry became The Boy Who Lived, the impetus for the whole plot. When Dumbledore is about to tell Harry about The Prophecy, he calls it "everything":
Please sit down. I am going to tell you everything.
It is pretty well certain that The Prophecy has a central role in what Rowling refers to as "the heart of it all." And, in Rowling's original vision, this prophecy was made by a man.
Harry is male. The villain, Voldemort, is male. Harry's primary mentor, Dumbledore, is male. Hagrid, the guide who leads Harry into the magical world, is male. Snape, the ambiguous figure so central to Harry's mystery, is male. Draco Malfoy, Harry's foil and rival, is male. Of the five characters that appeared to J.K. Rowling that very first day on the train -- Harry, Ron, Hagrid, Nearly-Headless Nick, and Peeves -- all five are male. And now we find that -- originally -- the seer who started the whole process was male as well.
Is it only me who finds this absolutely riveting? In the very document I quoted above, we see the juxtaposition of the overwhelmingly masculine main characters with Rowling's careful and conscientious balancing of her Hogwarts faculty to have six male and six female teachers. We have seen her carefully integrate her Quidditch teams, establish female Ministers for Magic and Hogwarts Headmasters back for centuries, give Harry one male and one female best friend, make the Hogwarts founders and the current heads of houses two and two, and do all sorts of things to achieve gender equity, to get away from male domination. And yet, at the very heart of the story, in the most important roles, we have (with the exception of Lily) male after male after male after male.
Some of this is inevitable, once you have a male protagonist. His shadow (Voldemort) and his foil (Draco Malfoy) should be male, by most theories of story psychology. Snape's role may require him to be male as well. But it seems clear to me that more than that is operating here. Harry emerged from the depths of J.K. Rowling's unconscious as a male and the story that formed itself to explain him also seems to have been dipped out of a very stream of masculinity. I mean... on that train... ideas flowing like a gift from the Gods... five male characters.
Does this make sense? Absolutely. I don't doubt that Rowling is a sincere feminist, consciously committed to gender equity and to feeding the spirits of little girls with strong, healthy stories and role models. But stories aren't forged by the conscious mind, and the unconscious from whence great ideas come is a deep and murky place. Rowling has fed hers on centuries of fiction, both literary and popular, and very little of that fiction will have suited modern ideas of sexual equality. Her unconscious storyteller will have grown in the dark like a Devil's Snare, feeding on her life-experiences, and Rowling, like me, is in her forties. Her childhood was spent in times very different from what we have now.
Am I going to blame her or criticize her for following her muse instead of her feminist principles? Hell no! I credit her for what she has done trying to achieve gender-equity in her fictional world, but I'd rather have the true story as it came to her, messy and dripping with the detritus of centuries, than the smoothed-off, prettied up, politically correct version she might have made of it.
Personally, I find the tension between the two aspects of Rowling quite fascinating in itself.