Archetypes and Stereotypes in JK Rowling's Harry Potter Series

26 Pages·2014·0.3 MB·English

ENGLISH

Archetypes and Stereotypes in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter Series

Johanna Sörensen

BA thesis Supervisor:
Fall 2013 Chloé Avril

Examiner:
Margrèt Gunnarsdottir
Champion
Title: Archetypes and Stereotypes in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter Series

Author: Johanna Sörensen
Supervisor: Chloé Avril

Abstract: This essay explores the archetypal hero and gender stereotypes in J.K. Rowling’s
Harry Potter series. Using both theories about the hero genre and the discussion of the Harry
Potter novels themselves, I argue that despite following the literary structure of the archetypal
hero, and sharing many of the composite hero’s traits, Harry Potter breaks the stereotype and
challenges the traditional hero narrative. I will also argue that Harry Potter goes against many
of the gender stereotypes that often occur in literature. This essay will mainly focus on Harry
Potter and Hermione Granger, but side characters as well to some extent.

Keywords: Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling, heroism, hero, archetypal criticism, archetypal hero,
Hermione Granger, gender roles, stereotypes, femininities, masculinities.
Table of Contents

1. Introduction 1
1.1. Previous Research 3
2. The Archetypal Hero and Gender Stereotypes 6
3. Breaking the Stereotype 16
4. Conclusion 21
Bibliography 22
1. Introduction

In this essay I will explore the archetypal hero narrative and gender stereotypes in the Harry
Potter series by J.K. Rowling. Just as Professor McGonagall prophesized in the first novel,
when talking about Harry Potter - “every child in our world will know his name!”- the series
about the young wizard has become immensely popular among children. The seven novels
have been read by millions of children and adults since the first novel, Harry Potter and the
Philosopher’s Stone, was first published in 1997. There is not one single correct answer to
what it is about the series that interests so many people of different ages, gender and ethnic
backgrounds, though many have tried to find it. Perhaps, Harry’s heroic journey is one that
resonates so deeply within us all since it follows a structure that can be found in thousands of
myths, stories and legends throughout the centuries. The journey of the archetypal hero is
very much ingrained in us from our childhood when we heard fairy tales that follow the same
structure as Harry Potter.
The series follows the orphaned boy, Harry Potter, as he finds out that he is a wizard and
is invited to join Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. There he learns that it is his
destiny to defeat the evil wizard Lord Voldemort who killed Harry’s parents and terrorized
the Wizarding world for years. The reader follows Harry on his heroic journey through the
many challenges and trials that he faces with his best friends Ron Weasley and Hermione
Granger.
In The Hero with a Thousand Faces Joseph Campbell (1904-1987) discusses the
similarities that so many heroes share despite having different settings, themes, characters and
plots. The archetypal hero can be found in so many stories that it seems unlikely that it is a
coincidence; there is something in the hero’s journey that appeals to us all. Campbell
summarizes the journey in its simplest form:

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder:
fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this
mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man. (30)

Harry Potter follows this structure, but can a work that is loved by millions of people be
reduced to such a simple formula? I will explore this phenomenon in this essay. My thesis
statement is that despite following the literary structure of the archetypal hero, and sharing
many of the composite hero’s traits, Harry Potter does in fact break the stereotype and
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challenges the traditional hero narrative. In the first chapter I will look at the ways in which
the Harry Potter series support the archetypes and stereotypes, in terms of heroism, as well as
gender. I will also look at the different features that the classic hero and Harry Potter as a
character share. In order to look at gender stereotypes I will also focus on one of the main
female characters, Hermione Granger, as I believe it will offer a good point of reference when
looking at Harry Potter and his masculine and feminine qualities.
The second chapter will focus on how Harry Potter departs from the archetypes and the
gender stereotypes. The archetypal hero is always male, and more often than not Caucasian.
This applies to Harry Potter as well, but I will look deeper at what separates Harry Potter from
other hero archetypes. In Deconstructing the Hero Margery Hourihan talks about the
archetypal hero, but unlike Joseph Campbell and Northrop Frye (1912-1991) she is more
critical towards the composite hero as well as the archetypal heroic features that exist in many
stories. She mentions that the hero is usually a young white male with qualities of a leader –
brave, strong and beautiful. The hero sets out to rescue the damsel in distress and returns
home victorious. What Campbell and Frye seem to skip over in their own books is the
prejudice and sexism in the archetypal story. I believe, like Hourihan, that the archetypal hero
myth is sexist and favours the white male. This old-fashioned narrative reflects the values of
the time period in which it was conceived; it was a time where women were not held in high
regard. Harry Potter, however, is a more modern story and I will explore if the modernity is
reflected in the way Harry Potter and the women are portrayed.
I have chosen a hermeneutical approach as a method, meaning that I will look at and
analyse passages in the series and then re-evaluate the text as a whole. However, first I had to
choose shorter passages in the seven novels to focus on, rather than looking at the entirety of
the series. The passages I ultimately chose were based on a few criteria: they had to have
some importance to this essay, i.e. passages that are centred on Harry’s heroic features, and
when he deviates from the archetypal hero narrative. The second criterion was that it had to
have been related to differences between gender, i.e. when the female characters and the male
characters were treated differently or unfairly in similar situations. And so I have chosen a
few short passages in the Harry Potter series that focus on the differences between female and
male characters, as well as when the characters abide by certain stereotypes.

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1.1 Previous research

I have chosen to use previous research that deals with the archetypal hero, as well as gender
stereotypes. I selected theses sources based on the fact that they either deal with Harry Potter,
gender or archetypes. I will use archetypal criticism when looking at the Harry Potter series,
and in order to get a better grasp of it I will use C.G. Jung’s and Northrop Frye’s ideas
concerning archetypes. Archetypal criticism looks at images, symbols and themes that recur
in literature. These patterns are archetypes, and exist in many unrelated works of fiction.
Since the stories are unconnected it is rather baffling how similar the structure is despite
having different plots, settings and characters. Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) is considered
one of the forefathers of archetypal criticism. His theory is based on the personal unconscious
and the collective unconscious. The personal unconscious contains knowledge gained from
personal experiences, and the collective unconscious refers to the latent thoughts that are
shared by all mankind from birth. In his essay ”The Archetypes of the Collective
Unconscious” [Om det kollektivt omedvetnas arketyper] Jung writes that,

[Det kollektivt omedvetna] har innehåll och förhållningssätt som mer eller mindre är desamma
överallt, och inom alla individer. Det är, med andra ord, identiskt med sig självt inom alla
människor. (102)

[[The collective unconscious] has contents and approaches that are more or less the same
everywhere, and within all individuals. It is, in other words, identical with itself within all men]1

He goes on to say that the contents from the collective unconscious are what we refer to as
archetypes. Jung sees the archetypes from our collective unconscious, and the archetypes
found in myth and fairy tales as separate ideas. The archetypes in literature have been passed
down from generation to generation, while the knowledge from our collective unconscious is
inborn.
Northrop Frye, however, focuses more on the archetypes’ function in literature, rather
than their origin and what psychological explanation there might be. He says that “[t]he
axioms and postulates of criticism, however, have to grow out of the art it deals with” and that

“[t]he first thing the literary critic has to do is to read literature”, rather than looking at the
frameworks outside of literature, as Jungian approaches prescribes (6). The archetypal hero,
the mother, the damsel in distress, the warrior etc. are all universal figures that can be found

1 My translation from Swedish to English.
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in every culture and in their literature. Frye believes that these archetypes solely come from
literature and not from our collective unconscious.
Harry Potter has been a part of many people’s lives for the past 16 years, and even though
the series is relatively new compared to many other classics, there has been a lot of research
done on the series. In “Harry Potter and the Secrets of Children’s Literature” Maria
Nikolajeva discusses the fact that many characters in children’s literature are one-dimensional
and rather boring; in Harry Potter, however, there is an intricacy and complexity that makes
Harry Potter a very exciting figure, with a mix of “the heroic and the everyday” (225). I agree
with Nikolajeva; despite the fact that the Harry Potter series was intended for a younger
audience Rowling never talked down to her readers by making Harry and his friends into
simple and flat characters. Nikolajeva also mentions that Rowling disregarded many
stereotypes when writing her characters and gave them depth; e.g. Hermione is smart and
brave, something that is usually assigned to the male hero, and Harry is not adverse to
showing emotions of sympathy and compassion, as well as vulnerability, which is seen as
typically feminine (231). Nikolajeva goes on to say that Harry Potter deviates from the
archetypal hero narrative since he is the product of the modern age, and that he does so by
“demonstrating ambiguity in the concepts of good and evil, gender transgressions, and other
tokens of the postmodern aesthetics” (226). In other words, Nikolajeva argues that because
Harry Potter is not wholly good or wholly evil, he does not fit into the archetypal frame of the
hero or the villain, at least according to Frye’s interpretation of the archetypal hero.
Nikolajeva also touches on the subject of inequality in the Harry Potter novels, both in
terms of race and gender. In mentioning “gender transgressions” she acknowledges that Harry
Potter in some ways strays from gender stereotypes. Nikolajeva asserts that Harry Potter is
the classic hero, despite having some traits that deviate from the classic narrative. I largely
agree with this; however, I believe that the traits that break the archetype are too many and
too important to ignore and therefore the Harry Potter books break the stereotype more often
than they conform to it.
I will also use an essay by Elizabeth E. Heilman and Trevor Donaldson, “From Sexist to
(sort-of) Feminist: Representations of Gender in the Harry Potter Series”, when looking at
Hermione Granger and gender stereotypes. They claim that the series both questions “societal
norms” and conforms to stereotypes (141). Although they criticise Rowling for the lack of
substantial female characters, they admit that as the series evolves so does the female
presence in the novels. The female characters grow in number, and their importance increases
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as well. However, they believe that the female characters, especially Hermione, are merely
assistants to the hero. I will look at characters, such as Hermione, and examine if they are
nothing more than an aide to the “real” hero of the story.
In her essay “Archetypes and the Unconscious in Harry Potter and Diana Wynne Jones’
Fire and Hemlock and Dogsbody” Alice Mills looks at Harry Potter from a Jungian
perspective. She believes that the characters in the novels are not only driven by their own
personal experiences, but “also by deeper and more universal forces of the collective
unconscious” (6). I mentioned earlier that the collective unconscious is, at least from a
Jungian perspective, an integral part of archetypal criticism. She also discusses Harry in
relation to Voldemort, and I will explore Mills view on their relationship in the next chapter.

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2. The Archetypal Hero and Gender Stereotypes

In this chapter I will discuss the ways in which Harry Potter conforms to archetypes and
stereotypes. According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, an archetype is an ”original
pattern or model of which all things of the same type are representations or copies”, and a
stereotype is defined as ”a standardized mental picture that is held in common by members of
a group and that represents an oversimplified opinion, prejudiced attitude, or uncritical
judgment”. Archetypes are the foundation for the characters from which individuality grows;
characters that have been reduced to a simplified and predictable version are stereotypes, and
they are seen in a negative manner. Two characters can be built on the same archetype (e.g.
the hero) but be completely different from each other (e.g. Harry Potter and Frodo in Lord of
the Rings), while two characters that are classified as the same stereotype are usually
portrayed in the same manner (e.g. the dumb blonde, or the damsel in distress).
I will apply archetypal criticism to this essay and my main source of reference will be
Northrop Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays, with focus on “Third Essay: Archetypal
Criticism”. Archetypal criticism looks for recurring patterns, images and symbols in literature.
These archetypes can be repeated characters, plots, settings or themes throughout centuries of
literature. As previously stated Jung believes that archetypes come from the collective
unconscious, a shared set of psychic instincts that are with us from birth. Frye, however,
disagrees with Jung and suggests instead that the archetypes can be found in literature and
only then become part of our lives, and not something we all just know instinctively.
According to Frye archetypes are closely tied to myths, and so in order to study archetypes
you must do so in the world of myth. Alan Watts explains the term myth in his Myth and
Ritual in Christianity:
Myth is to be defined as a complex of stories - some no doubt fact, and some fantasy - which, for
various reasons, human beings regard as demonstrations of the inner meaning of the universe and
of human life. (7)

In Harry Potter the archetypes are easily identifiable when judged after certain criteria stated
in both Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism and Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces.
According to Frye there are three forms of myth in literature. The first one, undisplaced myth,
is represented by two contrasting worlds, often heaven and hell, and it contains gods and
demons. The second one which, I believe, corresponds best with Harry Potter is romantic and
usually places “implicit mythical patterns” (139) in a world ruled by human experience; this
myth also idealizes the content in order to contrast realism. The third form, realism,
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emphasizes content and not structure. Frye also divides the myths into genres: the romantic,
the tragic, the comic and the iron or satiric (162) and I will be discussing Harry Potter in the
context of the myth of romance.
Frye states that the closer romance is to myth the main antagonist, the villain if you will,
“will take on demonic mythical qualities” (187). In Harry Potter, Voldemort transforms into a
man with a snake-like face as his powers grow, which would put Harry Potter somewhere in
between romance and undisplaced myth. Nikolajeva claims that the circumstances
surrounding Harry’s childhood makes him a perfect archetypal hero, but not a “genuine
mythic hero” (226).

The Harry Potter figure has all the necessary components of the romantic hero. There are mystical
circumstances around his birth, he is dislocated and oppressed and suddenly given unlimited
power. His innocence and intrinsic benevolence make him superior to the evil – adult – forces. He
bears the mark of the chosen on his forehead, and he is worshiped in the wizard community as the
future savior. (Nikolajeva 226)

Nikolajeva goes on to say that “[t]he pattern is easily recognizable from world mythologies,
even though Harry is not claimed to be a god or a son of a god, which, in Frye’s typology,
disqualifies him as a genuine mythic hero, displacing him to the level of romance” (226). Frye
states that “in the myth proper he is divine, in romance proper he is human” (188).
In his essay, Frye states that in romance “everything is focussed on a conflict between the
hero and his enemy” (187) and thus the hero and the villain are characterized by opposite
traits. The hero has positive traits, such as “spring, dawn, order, fertility, vigor, and youth”
and the villain is surrounded by all these stereotypically negative features – “winter, darkness
confusion, sterility, moribund life” (187-188). The hero is supposed to be a pure being –
strong, kind, courageous, beautiful and always victorious. It is true, as Nikolajeva states, that
Harry has many of the traits that would make him an archetypal hero. Not only the
circumstances of Harry’s childhood, but also how he eventually develops into a dominant
leader. Rowling’s structure of the series can very clearly be seen as a parallel to the archetypal
hero’s journey. The first step of the journey, according to Campbell, begins with the call to
adventure, which in Harry Potter begins when he is invited to attend Hogwarts. The seven
novels then represent the trial and challenges Harry must overcome in order to be victorious –
his real quest is to defeat Voldemort and in doing so he saves everyone, both the Wizarding
world and the Muggle world. Harry is also, like the hero, physically and mentally strong; his
friends look to him when they need a leader. In Order of the Phoenix Hermione comes up
with the idea that someone should teach the students Defense against the Dark Arts, because
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