JK Rowling’s Biases and how they’ve Affected the Harry Potter and Marauders Fandom
(Warning: This is a long post.)
For being a story that covers themes of discrimination, equal treatment and anti-genocide, the Harry Potter series has a lot of hidden racism, sexism, ableism, transphobia, homophobia etc. hidden in between its pages. One of the main purposes of the Marauder’s fandom, at least in my interpretation, is to try to combat these issues. We’ve tried to bring in a more diverse caste, coming up with racial headcanons for characters, incorporating more homosexual relationships and making more characters trans in order to explore their lives and combat Rowling’s transphobia, but there are still a lot of biases that the fandom has unwittingly adopted due to Rowling being the mother. JK Rowling's exclusive definition of ‘feminism’ has been explored in detail in reference to her transphobic views, however I think it is also important to explore how these biases held by the author have impacted her writing, and as a result, the Harry Potter and Marauder’s Fandom.
The way JK Rowling writes women in the Harry Potter series is very telling. While she claims that she writes female characters who are ‘empowering,’ further analysis proves that she does anything but. To me, one of the biggest examples of this is Moaning Myrtle. A girl who is so known for how annoying she is, that she is called by that title more often than her actual name, which is Myrtle Warren. Her characterization is an annoying, borderline creepy teenage girl ghost who is constantly crying and complaining, and always getting in the way of the main characters. She is occasionally helpful, but for the most part, she is just treated as a nuisance. My problem with this is that when I looked more into Myrtle’s backstory, it became very clear to me that she had every right to complain and cry due to what happened to her.
The official canon story of Myrtle is that she was a muggle-born wizard who was sorted into Ravenclaw. Due to her glasses, acne and all around annoying disposition, she was frequently bullied to the point of isolating herself in the girls’ bathroom so that she could have the privacy to cry. On one of these occasions, she heard someone outside of her stall, a boy, and stepped out to scold him only to be instantly killed. This is Myrtle’s account of her death. From there, an investigation is laid out at Hogwarts in order to find the cause of her death. Upon finding an Acromantula in the possession of a half-giant student, Hagrid, it is decided that he was the cause of her death and he is expelled. Tom Riddle, a half-blood boy who helped discover this, is given an award. The problem with this, is that it is very clear that the Ministry did not do their research.
The first thing that stands out to me about this case is that they had a first-hand witness that they did not use. Myrtle is a ghost, and it is canon that she was delighted to tell anyone about her death. I would imagine right after the events she would be less delighted and more desperate for justice, but it is still reasonable to assume that she could have been interviewed about the cause of her death. They literally had access to the victim’s first-hand account, and they didn’t use it. How do we know? Because people don’t just instantly die upon seeing an acromantula. If that were the case, when Aragog was discovered, several ministry workers would have died, and Hagrid himself would have to have some kind of magical exception. While Acromantula’s are dangerous to wizards and cause death, they do not provide the instant death that Myrtle describes. Instead, they likely wrap their victims in webs and eat them alive. As seen with Nearly-Headless Nick, the Bloody Baron and the Grey Lady, ghosts will still sustain the injuries that caused their deaths. Moaning Myrtle’s ghost has no injuries, no bite marks, no missing limbs, no spider webs, so clearly, this was not death by acromantula. If second year Hermoine Granger was able to figure this out, professional aurors and ministry workers should have too. So why didn’t they?
There is a layered answer to this question, but the core of it all is racism. The Harry Potter series explores racism using the metaphor of blood purity. Rather than going into the difference of treatment people receive based on color of skin, it highlights how something as simple as magical parentage can completely change how people are treated and how valuable their lives are. For the purpose of this analysis, keep in mind that the main minority groups that are highlighted in the wizarding world are those whose magical abilities and humanity can be questioned. It has less to do with appearance, and more to do with purity. In Moaning Myrtle’s case, she is not pure. She is a muggle-born, and so according to the general prejudice of the wizarding world, her death is seen as less important. Essentially, due to the fact that she is part of a minority group, one that is ‘less-powerful’ and therefore less important, her murder case is swept under the rug and treated as inconsequential. In the real world, this phenomenon is known as “Missing White Woman Syndrome.” When a white woman or girl goes missing, the media coverage for her case is extensive. This is even more true if she is attractive, able-bodied and from a middle-class family. However, when women and girls of color go missing, the cases are treated as less important. Both in the UK and the US, the majority of missing person’s cases to make the news are of white women and girls, even if there are just as many of not more women of color who have gone missing. What this tells the general populace is that white women are seen as a more tragic loss to society than the loss of a woman of color. (If you would like to further research this phenomenon, I encourage you to watch this video on the subject. It is very short and is made by a white crime sociologist. If you would prefer a more extensive breakdown, this video breaks down this subject as well as several others that relate to it, and is made by a Black woman with a lot of knowledge on the subject.)
If Myrtle was pureblood in the magical world, her murder case would have been seen as much more tragic. It would have likely become an urban legend that the entire school still talks about even in Harry Potter’s day, a case that people know all the intricate details about and make their own little magical true-crime podcasts on. Instead, most students don’t even know how she died, or care. They don’t know that she was murdered, or that her accused murderer was literally the man hired to be their groundskeeper. What I really want to know is, did Myrtle know about that? Did she know that Hagrid was literally there at Hogwarts, living a good life and generally unaffected by the murder accusations thrown at him? If a man was accused of murdering a white girl, or in this case a pureblood girl, would it be possible for the general populace to allow him anywhere near their children without putting up a massive fuss?
Another problem is, did Myrtle actually believe Hagrid did it? Did anyone actually bother to tell her when her murder case was supposedly ‘solved?’ She’s a Ravenclaw student, and they are known to be good at solving riddles and finding hidden messages. Would Myrtle actually believe that it was Hagrid and an Acromantula who killed her? If she was told this by the ministry, why didn’t she mention this to Harry in the recounting of her death? My best interpretation is that either no one actually bothered to tell Myrtle, or that she knew they were wrong. Here’s the thing: if I was accepted to a prestigious school and told it was one of the ‘safest places on earth’ and told I would learn magic there, and then I was bullied and murdered there, and people didn’t even bother to tell me about the resolution of the case or solve it properly, I think I would be pretty annoyed. And, I might start to have something of a victim complex. I might cry a lot, and whine and complain that everyone hates me, especially since there’s so much evidence. I was murdered, and hardly anyone cared. That would sting. She was lied to and told it would be safe, and then she was murdered. And yet every time she whines and cries, it is chalked up to her just being ‘annoying.’ See the problem?
What makes this case even more disturbing is the underlying racism in the accusation of Hagrid in the first place. Hagrid is again, a part of a minority group. He is a half-giant, and is overall a pretty sensitive person who has a strange obsession with the odd and misunderstood magical beasts. On the other hand, Tom Riddle was a known purist, as it is canon that in his years of Hogwarts he created a group of pre-death eaters known as the Knights of Walpurgis. With this clique, he would bully and humiliate muggle-born students on a regular basis. So who sounds like the individual more likely of murder? A low-intelligent, well-meaning but overall useless half-giant, or a cruel, competent half-blood human who was attractive, ambitious, and had a whole life ahead of him to live? Everyone has seen how reluctant authorities are to convict young men of SA or abuse, especially when they have so much potential. But this is only the case when these young men are white. If they are of any different race, people will rush to paint them as horrible villains the minute they get the chance, even if there is not enough evidence to back up the claims. Returning to situations in the real world, this was often the case of lynching black men during the Jim Crow law era in the United States. White men who did not work for the law would see a black man have an affair with a white woman and paint it as assault, because there was no way that a white woman would actually consent to be with a man like that. They would kill innocent black boys like Emmett Louis Till for things as simple as talking back to a white lady, because they were seen as guilty from birth. This again reflects into the Harry Potter universe, since it became so easy for Ministry workers to accuse Hagrid despite the evidence. Not only that, but they rewarded Tom Riddle since he was the one to ‘discover’ Hagrid’s guilt. The only reason Hagrid did not get a harsher punishment is because his victim was just as meaningless and useless to the wizarding society as he was.
If you didn’t already hate Dumbledore enough, it should also be said that he knew about everything the whole time. He suspected Tom Riddle, enough to keep ‘an annoyingly close eye on him’ his remaining days at Hogwarts, and yet he said nothing. The year that these events occurred was 1943. Dumbledore defeated Grindelwald, the cause of a massive world-wide wizarding world, in 1945, two years afterwards. Before this, if we are to believe the events of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them to be canon, he was still an active participant in hunting Grindelwald and had several epic battles with him. In 1932 he had the Qilin bow to him in order to elect him as the next Supreme Mugwump (this scene was ridiculous to me but it is canon), meaning that he had a reputation. He had a reputation of being a powerful and intelligent and well-meaning wizard, so if he had spoken up and said something about Myrtle’s case, people would have listened. He intervened in areas of the law plenty of times during the Harry Potter series, but while teaching at Hogwarts decided not to get involved when an innocent girl was killed and an innocent half-giant boy was expelled and blamed for it. But he did feel the need to keep and eye on Tom Riddle. So he knew. He just did nothing.
What really bothers me about this is that Myrtle Warren’s characterization in the Marauder's and Harry Potter fandom remains mostly the same in comparison to how JK Rowling wrote her. I’m not saying she’s not annoying. She is. I’m not saying the bath scene with Harry in the fourth book wasn’t creepy. It was. What I am saying is that no matter how annoying, weird, pathetic or even creepy Moaning Myrtle is, the fact that she is still only characterized for that is really sad to me. No one (as far as I’m aware) has tried to explore the true tragedy behind her story, and the injustices she was forced to face and just accept. Just because she’s annoying does not mean she deserves what happened to her, yet many fanfic writers still write her as nothing more than an annoying teenager to be ignored and forgotten. I want to be clear, I’m not blaming anyone for this but JK Rowling, just be careful about the kinds of biases you are embracing when you continue to write a character the way that JK Rowling did. I should also add as a disclaimer that I am white, so it is very fair to say I may not have a perfect perception of these things either. If there is anything that you would like to add to this, please do! I would love to see this become a big philosophical discussion.
