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The power of origin - heritage, species and gender in the Harry Potter books
2002 (English)Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (One Year))Student thesis
Abstract [en]

J.K. Rowling emphasizes on the importance of taking care of our friends as well as working against unjust and oppressing powers in the books about Harry Potter. Additionally she calls attention to the significance of having the courage to stand up for what is right, even if it turns out to be the harder option. On the other hand she displays certain oppressive features. In the books we can find that the major factors that promote power in the wizard world are heritage, species and gender, as the top positions in the wizard world hierarchy generally are occupied by male, pure-blood wizards. The hierarchy of the beings in the magic world is very complicated since there are intelligent non-human beings and human looking non-intelligent creatures. Racism in the books mainly concern muggles, mixed bloods and creatures of other kinds of species, and we can see that racism under some circumstances is a much accepted viewpoint and is well established in wizard society. Additionally we can see that the women follow the roles defined by our western Christian culture and therefore mostly come second to the men. Stereotypes are common among both male and female characters, but as the female stereotypes traditionally are weaker than the male stereotypes, the women comes out inferior to the men.

Abstract [en]

J.K. Rowling emphasizes on the importance of taking care of our friends as well as working against unjust and oppressing powers in the books about Harry Potter. Additionally she calls attention to the significance of having the courage to stand up for what is right, even if it turns out to be the harder option. On the other hand she displays certain oppressive features. In the books we can find that the major factors that promote power in the wizard world are heritage, species and gender, as the top positions in the wizard world hierarchy generally are occupied by male, pure-blood wizards. The hierarchy of the beings in the magic world is very complicated since there are intelligent non-human beings and human looking non-intelligent creatures. Racism in the books mainly concern muggles, mixed bloods and creatures of other kinds of species, and we can see that racism under some circumstances is a much accepted viewpoint and is well established in wizard society. Additionally we can see that the women follow the roles defined by our western Christian culture and therefore mostly come second to the men. Stereotypes are common among both male and female characters, but as the female stereotypes traditionally are weaker than the male stereotypes, the women comes out inferior to the men.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2002. , p. 29
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:kau:diva-53880Local ID: ENG D-12OAI: oai:DiVA.org:kau-53880DiVA, id: diva2:1102440
Subject / course
English
Available from: 2017-05-29 Created: 2017-05-29

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CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

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Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • apa.csl
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf