J.K Rowling and Agatha Christie

[bobquasit]

While re-reading the Harry Potter series and watching the movies, I was struck by the ways in which J.K. Rowling's style resembles that of Agatha Christie. They share an intensely English, insular outlook - and rather a nationalistic, even racist one

Comments

[donnad]

I was under the impression that Beauxbatons was a girls only school and Durmstrang a boys only school and Hogwarts was the the co-ed school. So naturally the boys only school would be overflowing with testosterone and the girls only school very feminine. I never thought of it as stereotyping, but that is a good point. But I don't think the it's so much stereotyping the French or the Germans, but rather female and male stereotypes.

[bobquasit]

Well, the names themselves are rather revealing! Unless I'm mistaken (which is certainly possible, I failed French several years in a row), "Beauxbatons" translates to "beautiful rods", which is a very Gallic name for a girls's school. And Durmstrang seems an obvious mashup of "sturm und drang" - which encapsulates a view of Germans, Russians, and other eastern Europeans that I've seen in many older English novels.

I think you're right about the girls school/boys school point, but I'm not 100% sure - I thought there were a few mannish, hulking female students of the East German bodybuilder-type among the Durmstrang attendees in the movie. But of course, Rowling isn't responsible for that.

[klyfix]

For what it's worth, the nice TV Tropes people have a bunch of "National Sterotyping Tropes" pages. I've recently been amused by the "Anime Land" page which has as an illustration a chart of "What Japan Consists of According to Anime" with over half of Japan being "Perfect, Overdeveloped High School Girls" and most of the remainder about evenly divided between "Average Guys Who Get Those Girls." "Tentacle Monsters," and "Ninjas."