tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22927650.post4214841389591949653..comments2023-09-22T02:24:42.144-07:00Comments on a light inside: Harry Potter and Love: Less-Than-Ideal FamilyJenna St.Hilairehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16528611770211261141noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22927650.post-64958556941575849682014-04-23T20:31:12.133-07:002014-04-23T20:31:12.133-07:00"If Dad raided our house he'd have to put..."If Dad raided our house he'd have to put himself under arrest."--Ron<br /><br />;)<br /><br />The sheer size of the family does add to the Weasley dynamic, I think. The more personalities you introduce, the more potential for conflict. Also, all other things being equal: the more kids mom has, the more pressure lands on her, and the more difficulty she has controlling her household. Especially when said kids are lively sons with a penchant for making magical catastrophes. (Not to mention the spunky daughter who has a run-in with Voldemort early on...)Jenna St. Hilairehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04474588706124865006noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22927650.post-8062932169013771202014-04-23T20:25:54.347-07:002014-04-23T20:25:54.347-07:00Well, particularly considering how magical the fam...Well, particularly considering how magical the family is, I don't necessarily think disorder is vital to interest--granting, of course, that over the extended amount of time we spend with the Weasleys, much perfection would be impressively unbelievable.<br /><br />That said, I do think that Rowling probably chose a lively and deeply-faulty-but-still-loving family structure for interest's sake, partly for humor and partly to portray loyalty, which--for all their open bickering--is the one thing the Weasleys have in almost endless quantities.Jenna St. Hilairehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04474588706124865006noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22927650.post-9784539943500891452014-04-19T08:13:29.017-07:002014-04-19T08:13:29.017-07:00The dominant husband and painfully subservient wif...<i>The dominant husband and painfully subservient wife—now that I've seen, and if the Weasleys had been that, I would have responded with visceral dislike</i> <br /><br />Yeah, me too. :( <br /><br />My feelings about the "hen-pecked" thing are complicated. One way it works from a story perspective here is that it lets the reader get a glimpse of, I guess you could say, Wizarding values and the W.World's relationship to the Muggle world via Arthur's eccentric interest in Muggle technology and Molly's (and the Ministry's) disapproval (and Molly isn't just being a killjoy for the sake of it, either: Arthur really could lose his job from some of the stuff he does, and I have no idea how easy it is to change careers in midlife, or what the W. World's welfare system even looks like. <br /><br />And I agree with <b>Christie R</b>. Honestly, a large family <i>without</i> any visible conflicts would be either super creepy or too unrealistic to care about. Lauranoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22927650.post-13021404725262324382014-04-18T01:58:20.931-07:002014-04-18T01:58:20.931-07:00So here's a question from an authorial perspec...So here's a question from an authorial perspective: wouldn't it be less interesting if the Weasley family had been more ordered toward the ideal? From the perspective of a writer trying to gain interest, a close-to-perfect family would have been . . . well . . . boring. NOT that those families are boring in real life, not at all, but if characters don't have faults then we don't really have a story to tell.Christiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18107748184124761940noreply@blogger.com