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  • Heroism in the Harry Potter Series
  • Sarah Minslow (bio)
Heroism in the Harry Potter Series. Edited by Katrin Berndt and Lena Steveker. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011.

The newest addition to Ashgate’s Studies in Childhood, 1700 to the Present series is a welcome contribution to Harry Potter scholarship. Significantly, most of the articles consider J. K. Rowling’s works as a heptalogy, making this one of the first collections of international voices dedicated to the Harry Potter series in its entirety.

Divided into three parts, the book begins by offering an overview of how heroes have been identified and defined throughout literary history. Berndt and Steveker draw readers’ attention to their belief that male protagonists in contemporary fiction lack “qualities which would be described as heroic” (1). They have located a renewed modern-day concept of heroism in the Harry Potter series, claiming “that its ambivalent and multiform heroism significantly contributed to its extraordinary success” (2). Thus the editors state that the aim of this collection is to identify the heroic dimensions of the series to “highlight that fictional [End Page 242] heroism in the twenty-first century challenges stereotypical notions of a courageous, valiant and somewhat simplistic masculinity” and to “consider whether—and how—Rowling’s heptalogy exemplifies the different agendas of heroism suggested by a globalized, pluralist society” (2).

In the absence of “simplistic masculinity,” the challenge is to locate the qualities that define the modern-day hero. The editors start from the basis that a hero in the postmodern world does not require physical strength, simply “a compassionate empathy” (2). Most of the contributors seem to concur that the heptalogy “insists on the worth of values such as sympathy and compassion in any concept of heroism” (5).

In the first four essays, the writers seek to understand the ways in which Harry Potter necessitates a reconsideration of the defining features of heroes. In one of the most interesting chapters, Rita Singer applies a structuralist reading to the heptalogy to argue that the books have not been approached fairly from any theological perspective: “Theological critics . . . have failed to recognize the Christian origin of the underlying systematic structure upon which the entire narrative has been built” (26). Singer argues that the series follows the structure of psychomachia, and she demonstrates that when approached from what she considers a “balanced” theological perspective, the books can be read as promoting the triumph of Christian morals over the seven deadly sins. In this way, the series privileges a conception of the hero as one who embodies Christian morals.

Susanne Gruss argues that Harry Potter has been characterized as a gothic hero. Gruss describes how the movie version of Prisoner of Azkaban diffuses the gothic conventions established in the previous book, Order of the Phoenix. The movie is founded on all the previous books, and Gruss uses Order of the Phoenix as an example of that foundation, then argues that the movie Prisoner of Azkaban diffuses those conventions previously established: “Whereas the novel clearly strengthens the Gothic’s generic impact on the Potter series, its film adaptation softens and outbalances these elements through scenes of social interaction or episodes of comic relief” (47). She explains that rather than becoming more isolated from a social network, Harry is highly “degothicized” in the 2007 film, which “focuses more strongly on Harry’s integration into a social network rather than on his separation from society” (47). In the end, though, he has to face Voldemort alone, suggesting that it is, in fact, the separation from society that defines a hero. However, in a more modern turn of heroism, Gruss argues that Harry blurs the boundaries between the male gothic hero and female gothic heroine because he “fears for his moral integrity,” which is a defining feature of the latter (48). Thus she suggests that the integration of more traditionally feminine qualities, such as sensitivity and compassion, can be found in the modern hero.

Lisa Hopkins makes the case that the series provides a “view of the heroic as something which is achievable by ordinary people, even by those who have not obviously been on a [End Page 243] trajectory towards heroic behaviour,” which links...

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