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Heroes and heroines: Myth

and gender roles in the Harry
Potter books
a
Michele Fry
a
Independent researcher E-mail:
Published online: 01 Jul 2009.

To cite this article: Michele Fry (2001) Heroes and heroines: Myth and gender roles
in the Harry Potter books, New Review of Children's Literature and Librarianship,
7:1, 157-167, DOI: 10.1080/13614540109510651

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13614540109510651

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 Heroes and heroines: myth and gender
roles in the Harry Potter Books
Michele Fry
Independent researcher
e-mail: [email protected]
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The Harry Potter books fit into at least three distinct genres of children's fiction: the boarding
school story, the fantasy story, and the fairy tale or hero quest story. All four of the books so far
have opened with Harry Potter at home with his obnoxious relatives, Aunt Petunia, Uncle Vernon
and Cousin Dudley, the Dursleys. Harry is then called - or recalled - to Hogwarts School of
Witchcraft and Wizardry, where he is required to overcome the Dark Wizard, Lord Voldemort,
usually solving mysteries or completing tasks before his meeting with Voldemort. Finally he
returns to the Dursley household. In his tasks he is helped by his two best friends, Ron Weasley
and Hermione Granger, although Hermione is the more important of the two. Hermione provides
Harry with the skills and knowledge which are essential to his success in defeating Voldemort. In
fact, I would argue that it is impossible for Harry to defeat Voldemort without Hermione, although
critics such as Christine Schoefer, Jack Zipes and Elizabeth Schafer would not agree with me. This
paper argues my case for making this claim.

INTRODUCTION

T
his essay will examine the way J. K. Rowling uses and subverts both
myth and gender roles in the Harry Potter books, with particular
emphasis on the characterisation of Hermione Granger and Harry
Potter, and the way Rowling challenges the stereotypical twentieth century
hero myth through these two characters. I particularly want to challenge the
widely-held critical view of Hermione as a stereotypical female who is left
to 'gawk and gaze' at Harry's exploits (1). As Rowling herself has
observed, 'Hermione is the most brilliant of the three [Harry, Ron and
Hermione] and they need her. Harry needs her badly.' (2)

The role-reversals that Rowling portrays in her novels are hinted at by

Alison Lurie's view of Harry as a male Cinderella (a 'Cinderlad') - the
poor, lonely orphan, abused and despised by his relatives, the Dursleys (3).
Jack Zipes merely sees Harry as one of the mythical heroes, similar to
David, Jack the Giant Killer, Tom Thumb, Horatio Alger and Aladdin (4),
whilst one critic has observed that young fans, in particular, see him as
another Luke Skywalker (5). However, I see at least two characters who
offer a reversal of the normalised gender role, rather than offering the
stereotyped features of female, and male, characterisation that the majority
of texts which oppose the passivity of heroines appear to offer (6).

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The New Review of Children's Literature and Librarianship 2001
 'Sleeping Beauty' and 'Cinderella' are two stories that oppose the passivity
of heroines using such stereotyped characterisation. These stories use
activity, triumph over adversity, and strength to oppose gentleness, beauty
and passivity. Rowling could have used a mere role switch of a similar
nature, making Hermione strong and active, and Harry gentle and passive,
but instead she makes both characters dualistic. Thus, at various times
Hermione is strong and active, and Harry gentle and more passive, or they
switch these positions. This allows Rowling to challenge readers with
different ways of approaching gender, and invites them to question
imposed, socially constructed, modes of behaviour (7). For example, Harry
cries on at least three occasions; after Professor Dumbledore tells him that
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Voldemort could not kill him because his mother had died to save him (8),
after telling Professor Lupin that he has heard his father telling his mother
to take Harry and run from Voldemort (9), and when he is recovering in the
hospital wing after his duel with the returned Voldemort (10).

MYTH AND GENDER ROLES IN THE HARRY POTTER BOOKS

In subverting gender roles, Rowling gives Hermione a very active role in
all four books. In The Philosopher's Stone, Harry, Hermione and Ron go to
find the missing Philosopher's Stone, which is protected by a series of
spells and magical objects, each of which is in a separate chamber. The
penultimate 'test' is a riddle which Hermione and Harry face without Ron,
as he has been injured in a magical game of chess and left unconscious in
the previous chamber. The riddle has been set by Professor Snape and
unless Harry and Hermione can solve it, they cannot enter the final
chamber in which the Philosopher's Stone has been hidden:
'Snape's'. said Harry. 'What do we have to do ?'
They stepped over the threshold and immediately a fire sprang up behind them in the doorway. It
wasn't ordinary fire either; it was purple. At the same instant, black flames shot up in the doorway
leading onwards. They were trapped.
'Look !' Hermione seized a roll of paper lying next to the bottles.
[...]
Hermione let out a great sigh and Harry, amazed, saw that she was smiling, the very last thing he
felt like doing.
'Brilliant,' said Hermione. 'This isn't magic - it's logic - a puzzle. A lot of the greatest wizards
haven't got an ounce of logic, they'd be stuck in here for ever.'
'But so will we, won't we ?'
'Of course not,' said Hermione. 'Everything we need is here on this paper. Seven bottles: three are
poison; two are wine; one will get us safely through the black fire and one will get us back through
the purple.'
'But how do we know which to drink ?'
'Give me a minute.' (11)

Hermione is able to solve the riddle and ascertain which bottles contain
wine, poison or the potions that will enable them to progress from the

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The New Review of Children's Literature and Librarianship 2001
 chamber in which they are trapped. If Harry had been alone at this point,
the reader is left in no doubt that he would have been stuck in the chamber
indefinitely; the logic of the riddle is beyond Harry's understanding.
Hermione proves that she is not only academically very able, but also that
she possesses at least an ounce of logic. After Hermione solves the riddle,
Harry is able to move forward to confront Voldemort and his accomplice,
Professor Quirrell, and to capture the Philosopher's Stone himself.
In Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets, Hermione suddenly realises
that the mysterious voice which Harry has been hearing at intervals during
the year, is the voice of a Basilisk, a legendary snake, inside the pipes that
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are enclosed within the walls of the school. The reason that Harry is the
only one who can hear the voice of the Basilisk is because Harry is a
Parselmouth, i.e. he can hear, and talk to, snakes. The Basilisk is famous
for its murderous gaze but, as Hermione realises, no one who has seen it
has died because no one has gazed directly into its eyes. She rushes off to
the library to verify her theory, and on her way back to Harry and Ron, she
encounters the Basilisk and is 'petrified'. Despite this, Hermione is still
able to pass on to Harry the information she has about the Basilisk's
characteristics:
Harry wasn't looking at Hermione's face. He was more interested in her right hand. It lay clenched
on top of her blankets, and bending closer, he saw that a piece of paper was scrunched inside her
fist.
Making sure that Madam Pomfrey was nowhere near, he pointed this out to Ron.
'Try and get it out,' whispered Ron, shifting his chair so that he blocked Harry from Madam
Pomfrey's view.
It was no easy task. Hermione's hand was clamped so tightly around the paper that Harry was sure
he was going to tear it. While Ron kept watch he tugged and twisted, and at last, after several tense
minutes, the paper came free.
It was a page torn from a very old library book. Harry smoothed it out eagerly and Ron leaned
close to read it too.
[. . .] beneath this, a single word had been written, in a hand Harry recognised as Hermione's.
Pipes.
It was as though somebody had just flicked a light on it his brain.
'Ron,' he breathed, 'this is it. This is the answer. The monster in the Chamber's a Basilisk - a giant
serpent ! That's why I've been hearing the voice all over the place, and nobody else has heard it.
It's because I understand Parseltongue . . . ' (12)

Harry understands the significance of the information he reads on the piece

of paper Hermione has been clutching and which he manages to retrieve
from her hand, and he uses this information to successfully rescue Ginny
Weasley from the hidden Chamber of Secrets, and to face down Voldemort
again.
In Harry Potter and The Prisoner ofAzkaban, Hermione plays a larger role
than she has ever played before. She has been attending two or three
lessons simultaneously throughout the school year - to Harry and Ron's
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The New Review of Children's Literature and Librarianship 2001
 puzzlement. She uses a magical device called a 'Time-Turner', which
Professor McGonagall gave to her at the start of the year. This device
proves crucial to Harry and Hermione in their attempt to save the lives of
Harry's godfather, Sirius Black, and Buckbeak the Hippogriff, not to
mention their own lives as well, as events develop:
'What we need,' said Dumbledore slowly, and his light-blue eyes moved from Harry to Hermione,
'is more time.'
'But -' Hermione began. And then her eyes became very round. 'OH !'
'Now pay attention,' said Dumbledore, speaking very low and very clearly. 'Sirius is locked in
Professor Flitwick's office on the seventh floor. Thirteenth window from the right of the West
Tower. If all goes well, you will be able to save more than one innocent life tonight. But remember
this, both of you. You must not be seen. Miss Granger, you know the law - you know what is at
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stake . . . you - must - not - be - seen.'

[...]
'I am going to lock you in. It is -' he consulted his watch, 'five minutes to midnight. Miss Granger,
three turns should do it. Good luck.'
[. ..] Hermione was fumbling with neck of her robes, pulling from beneath them a very long, very
fine gold chain.
'Harry, come here,' she said urgently. 'Quick !'
Harry moved towards her, completely bewildered. She was holding the chain out. He saw a tiny,
sparkling hourglass hanging from it.
'Here -'
She had thrown the chain round his neck, too.
'Ready ?' she said breathlessly.
'What are we doing ?' Harry said, completely lost.
Hermione turned the hourglass over three times.
The dark ward dissolved. Harry had the sensation that he was flying, very fast, backwards. (13)

Harry and Hermione travel back in time three hours to the moment just
before Buckbeak is about to be executed, and they are able to rescue him,
but throughout this situation Hermione has to keep reminding Harry that he
must not interfere with causality any more than is necessary to rescue
Sirius and Buckbeak. Harry wants to rush into Hagrid's hut to grab Peter
Pettigrew, but Hermione restrains him, asking him what he would do if he
suddenly saw himself rushing into Hagrid's hut. Harry replies that he
would think he had gone mad or that 'there was some Dark Magic going
on'. (14) Hermione replies 'Exactly ! You wouldn't understand, you might
even attack yourself !' (15) Hermione keeps a cool head in spite of her own
emotional involvement; she cares about Sirius' fate just as much as Harry
does, but she is able to separate her emotions from her logic and stay in
control of the situation. Harry wants to interfere, and to do so would have
disastrous, and possibly fatal, consequences. Later Hermione has to restrain
Harry physically, grabbing the back of his robes just in time to prevent him
from rushing over to the Whomping Willow in order to pick up his
discarded Invisibility Cloak (16). In this situation the reader sees Harry
reacting in a stereotypically feminine way, whilst Hermione reacts in a

160 The New Review of Children's Literature and Librarianship 2001

 stereotypically masculine way to the situation; once again Rowling has
subverted gender roles in her characterisation of the two.
Rowling also portrays Harry as frequently feeling fear, uncertainty and
self-doubt throughout the books, starting with his first encounter with
Hagrid, when he tells Hagrid, 'I think you must have made a mistake. I
don't think I can be a wizard', as he recalls the years of oppression and
bullying he has endured from the Dursleys in typical, fairy-tale step-parent
fashion (17), and continuing to his self-doubts about his participation in the
Triwizard Tournament in Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire (18).
Hermione, on the other hand, frequently displays great courage, certainty
and self-assurance, most of which stems from her vast knowledge of
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magic, and of Hogwarts, acquired as a result of the endless hours she

spends reading. Hermione courageously tries to prevent Harry and Ron
from meeting Draco Malfoy for a duel in The Philosopher's Stone (19), and
she also volunteers to steal the ingredients they do not have for the
Polyjuice Potion they plan to make - which entails her raiding Professor
Snape's private store cupboard in his office (20). Rowling's
characterisation of Harry and Hermione is in opposition to the usual
characterisation of heroes - as Margery Hourihan observes, hero stories
typically inscribe the dualism of male/female asserting that what it means
to be human, to be the norm, is to be male, and defining the female as
'other' - different, deviant, and dangerous (21). The essence of the hero's
masculinity is seen in the control he exerts over himself, his world and his
environment. In most popular, twentieth century hero tales, such as the
Biggies stories and the Willard Price Adventure stories, the hero displays
only the traditional gendered qualities, with 'male' being redefined to
exclude everything except strength and aggression. Even in less violent
works, such as the increasingly popular Star Wars novels, the masculinist
stereotypes are reinscribed endlessly (22). The courage of characters such
as Luke Skywalker, never falters, and they never suffer from uncertainty or
self-doubt.

With regard to the portrayal of the lives of women, Rowling has done little
as yet to reverse the conventional gender roles of hero myths; she tells
readers almost nothing of the lives of any of the female characters, except
where they impinge on Harry's life. Typically, in hero quest fiction, women
are little more than symbols; they symbolise events in the psyche of the
hero, despite the fact that women make up more than fifty percent of the
world's population (23). As the hero myth is always narrated from the
hero's viewpoint, women appear only as they are involved in his
adventures, effectively suggesting that women are largely insignificant. It
would, however, be inaccurate to describe Hermione as a symbol or an

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The New Review of Children's Literature and Librarianship 2001
 insignificant character; like Harry and Ron, Hermione's character continues
to develop throughout the books, and she plays an increasingly important
role in Harry's quests throughout, to the extent that she appears almost as
often as Harry in The Goblet of Fire, and it is Ron who is given a lesser
role. It would be fair to say that Hermione drives most of the plot of The
Goblet of Fire; she gives Harry unlimited support and committed
friendship when he and Ron fall out over Harry's participation in the
Triwizard Tournament, and she spends many hours helping Harry to learn
and perfect many of the hexes and spells he needs to know in order to
complete two of the three tasks, in fact, she is so busy helping him to
prepare for the third task, that she even neglects her examination revision:
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Ron and Hermione were supposed to be revising for their exams, which would finish on the day of
the third task, but they were putting most of their efforts into helping Harry prepare.
'Don't worry about it,' Hermione said shortly, when Harry pointed this out to them, and said he
didn't mind practising on his own for a while. 'At least we'll get top marks in Defence Against
Dark Arts, we'd never have found out about all these hexes in class.' (24)

This exchange is particularly interesting in light of the widely held critical

view of Hermione that she is an overachieving swot, and that her studying
habit is a danger to her health (a reference to her overworking in The
Prisoner of Azkaban) (25); Hermione is prepared to do less than well
academically in order to support Harry in his quest to complete the
Triwizard Tournament. It is worth pointing out that Harry respects
Hermione's academic prowess, and never utters derogatory remarks on the
subject - the reader never hears him call her a know-it-all as Ron so often
does (26); Harry recognises that Hermione is the cleverest person in their
year (27); he does not laugh at Hermione's Boggart, as Ron does (28); and
Harry does not comment on her revelation that she has been doing practice
OWL papers, as Ron's tendency would have been (29). It is likely,
therefore, that Hermione knows herself to be Harry's equal, and it does not
seem likely that if she did not feel that Harry regarded her as such, she
would never risk her academic success in order to be a mere 'accessory' to
Harry's exploits (30).

The typical hero quest plot is either circular or linear, with the circular
journey being the most familiar in children's literature, and this is the
journey Rowling uses in the Harry Potter books: at the beginning of each
book Harry leaves the Dursleys to travel to Hogwarts; he encounters evil,
usually in the form of Voldemort in some guise; he overcomes evil; he
recovers and returns to King's Cross station for another summer with the
Dursleys (31). It seems probable, however, that the final book will feature a
more linear plot since Harry will be old enough, at that point, to leave
school and he will no longer be obliged to remain under the legal

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 guardianship of the Dursleys. There is also an expectation that Harry will
defeat Voldemort finally and permanently in the seventh book, which
would mean that it would be safe for Harry to remain in the magic world
rather than having to return to the Dursleys (32).
The hero, paradoxically, struggles to both maintain tradition, and to subvert
it, so that growth and evolution can occur (33), both in himself and in the
community. Harry, like Cinderella (with whom he has already been
compared), must cross boundaries and break taboos - this is the core of the
hero quest - and, as Professor Snape points out, Harry 'has been crossing
lines ever since he arrived' at Hogwarts (34). Although Harry is the hero of
Rowling's books, he is just one amongst many witches and wizards whilst
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he is at Hogwarts: he is good at Quidditch and a natural flier, but he is only

an average achiever in his school work, and he is rarely insightful in the
way he understands or relates to other people (35). Hermione is both more
sensitive and much smarter than Harry - in this she demonstrates Rowling's
use of role-reversal; although, as Rowling says, her 'hero is a boy',
Hermione is quite clearly a heroine, even her name hints at this (36).
Whilst it is true that Rowling's hero is a boy, it is clear that here, at least,
heroism is dependent on female support; this does not mean, however, that
Hermione's role is less valuable than Harry's, as I have already attempted
to demonstrate. Natov observes that Rowling's vision is informed by
gender, insofar as she combines the male quest hero with the feminised
hero of school stories (37). It is to the ideology of gender in the books that I
now turn.

IDEOLOGY OF GENDER
Much criticism of female authors over their use of an interesting male
central character has arisen, as Pat Pinsent notes (38), and a great deal of it
has been directed at Rowling. Christine Schoefer is one of many critics to
accuse Rowling of creating female characters who are silly, downright
unlikable, or mere helpers/enablers (39). She feels that there are no
'brilliantly heroic' girls, and that not one of the women teachers is as wise
and experienced as Professor Dumbledore (40). Schoefer notes that when
Hermione makes the Polyjuice Potion (in The Chamber of Secrets) it only
works for Harry and Ron, and Elizabeth Schafer has suggested that
Hermione is being punished for her risk-taking (such as when Hermione
raided Professor Snape's private store cupboard) (41), but there is no
textual evidence that Draco Malfoy would have talked to Harry and Ron
(in the guise of Crabbe and Goyle) whilst Millicent Bulstrode (into whom
Hermione expected to transform) was with them. Rowling cannot,
therefore, be said to be punishing Hermione, rather she is using the internal
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The New Review of Children's Literature and Librarianship 2001
 logic of the text. Similarly, Nicholas Tucker sees Rowling as employing
stereotyped gender roles, with the boys enjoying the action, and the one
prominent female character 'forever urging caution' (42), but he overlooks
the fact that it is Hermione who steals the essential ingredients they lack in
order to make the Polyjuice Potion, which is hardly a cautious act (43), and
that it is Hermione's idea to make the Potion in the first place, in the hope
of discovering who has unleashed the monster from within the Chamber of
Secrets. He also overlooks the fact that in The Prisoner of Azkaban, it is
Hermione who fetches Harry's Invisibility Cloak after he is forced to leave
it in a secret passage in order to prevent Professor Snape from discovering
its existence (44).
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Fairy tales tend to stereotype female characters so that the majority of them
are presented as either the evil stepmother seeking the young girl's
downfall, or the beautiful but helpless young girl who needs the help of the
handsome prince or another male figure, as in 'Snow White', 'Cinderella',
and many other tales (45). Schoefer sees Hermione in the role of helpless
young girl, particularly in The Philosopher's Stone, when Harry and Ron
rescue Hermione from the troll which Professor Quirrell let in to the school
at Hallowe'en (46). Hermione is likened to a 'Hollywood damsel in
distress', whose 'bookish knowledge' is not sufficient to save her from the
troll, but Harry and Ron do not use magic to rescue Hermione either - they
use diversionary tactics and brawn (47). It appears that Schoefer fails to
notice that Hermione would not have needed rescuing in the first place had
Harry and Ron not locked the troll in the toilets where Hermione was
hiding, and that the only reason Hermione was in the toilets was because
she overheard Ron's unkind comments about her (48). After that incident
Hermione faces the many monsters and horrors she encounters throughout
the books with 'considerable aplomb', and she does not rely on Harry to
rescue her, any more than Ron does (49).

For female protagonists, the issue of her voice is important - it is often a

metaphor for female agency, as Roberta Seelinger Trites notes (50). A
deplorable number of female characters, says Trites, become inarticulate as
they begin to conform to society's expectations, and thus lose their agency.
Feminist protagonists, however, not only remain articulate, but become
more so towards the end of the novel than they were at the outset (51).
Hermione is very articulate, and Professor Snape tries to silence her on
more than one occasion; in her first Potions lesson he actually ignores her
in order to belittle Harry (52), whilst in the Defence Against Dark Arts
class which he takes in place of Professor Lupin, he tells Hermione to 'Be
quiet' when she is trying to give him some information, and then after she

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The New Review of Children's Literature and Librarianship 2001
 starts to answer him (when he asks who can tell the difference between
wolves and werewolves), he calls her 'an insufferable know-all' (53). Not
only is Hermione articulate, she is also outspoken in the cause of justice, as
when she attempts, in The Goblet of Fire, to enlighten the house elves at
Hogwarts about their enslaved condition (54). Readers can, therefore, see
Hermione not only as a strong female character, an essential part of Harry's
life, but also as a feminist protagonist in her own right.

CONCLUSION
Whilst Rowling has characterised Harry as the essentially masculine side
of the conventional mythic hero, insofar as he usually gets to do the
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'heroic' things - such as fighting Voldemort, Hermione is characterised as

the essentially feminine side of such a hero - she is far more sensitive to
other people than Harry. However, their dualism - which sees Harry
displaying self-doubt and fear, as well as strength and courage, and
Hermione displaying coolness and using logic, as well as courage and
strength - together combines to make them one unific hero figure who
overcomes the evil embodied by Voldemort. To see Hermione as a mere
enabler or helper suggests that the reader has failed to read Rowling's
books with an open mind. As I have demonstrated throughout, Rowling has
both used and subverted the traditions of the hero quest myth in order to
challenge its twentieth century stereotypes.

REFERENCES
1. ZIPES, Jack. Sticks and stones: the troublesome success of children's literature from Slovenly
Peter to Harry Potter. New York and London: Routledge, 2001, p. 180.
2. ROWLING, J. K. Harry and me. The Times, June 30, 2000, pp. 2-3.
3. LURIE, Alison. Not for Muggles. The New York Review of Books, December 16, 1999, no
pagination.
4. ZIPES, op cit., p. 175.
5. GRAY, Paul. Wild about Harry. Time, 154 (14), 4 October 1999, pp. 79-88.
6. THACKER, Deborah. Feminine language and the politics of children's literature. The Lion
and the unicorn, No. 25 (2001), p.5.
7. ibid.
8. ROWLING, J. K. Harry Potter and the philosopher's stone. London: Bloomsbury, 1997, p.
217. (Hereafter referred to as Stone.)
9. ROWLING, J. K. Harry Potter and the prisoner of Azkaban. London: Bloomsbury, 1999, p.
178. (Hereafter referred to as Prisoner.)
10. ROWLING, J. K. Harry Potter and the goblet of fire. London: Bloomsbury, 2000, pp. 619-20.
11. Stone, op cit., pp. 206-7.
12. ROWLING, J. K. Harry Potter and the chamber of secrets. London: Bloomsbury, 1998, pp.
214-5. (Hereafter referred to as Chamber.) I find this plot development somewhat implausible
since it seems out of character for Hermione to tear pages wantonly out of library books.

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The New Review of Children's Literature and Librarianship 2001
 13. Prisoner, op cit., p. 288 .
14. Prisoner, ibid., p. 292.
15. ibid.
16. ibid., p. 296.
17. Stone, op cit., p. 47.
18. Goblet, p. 241. (Hereafter referred to as Goblet).
19. Stone, op cit., p. 115.
20. Chamber, op cit., pp. 139-40.
21. HOURIHAN, Margery. Deconstructing the hero: literary theory and children's literature.
London and New York: Routledge, 1997, p. 68.
22. I am not referring, here, to the novelisations of the Star Wars movies, but rather to original
novels set in the Star Wars universe.
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23. ibid.
24. Goblet op cit., pp. 528-9.
25. SCHOEFER, Christine. Harry Potter's girl trouble: The world of everyone's favourite kid
wizard is a place where boys come first. San Francisco Chronicle, January 12, 2000, no
pagination.
26. Prisoner, op cit., p. 130.
27. ibid., p. 9.
28. ibid., pp. 233-4.
29. Goblet, op cit., p. 296.
30. ZIPES, op cit., p. 185.
31. ibid., p. 53.
32. Rowling tells the reader in The goblet of fire that Harry stays with the Dursleys for his own
safety, on the instructions of Professor Dumbledore - see p. 570 for details.
33. NATOV, Roni. Harry Potter and the extraordinariness of the ordinary. The Lion and the
unicorn, 25 (2001), p. 316.
34. Goblet, op cit., p. 242.
35. NATOV, op cit., p. 317.
36. NATOV, ibid., p. 317; Rowling, J. K., Harry and me, op cit., pp. 2-3.
37. NATOV, ibid., p. 317.
38. PINSENT, Pat. Children's literature and the politics of equality. London: David Fulton
Publishers Ltd., 1997, p. 75.
39. SCHOEFER. op cit., no pagination.
40. ibid.
41. SCHAFER, Elizabeth. Exploring Harry Potter. London: Ebury Press, 2000, p. 54.
42. TUCKER, Nicholas. The rise and rise of Harry Potter. Children's literature in education, 30
(4), 1999, pp. 228-9.
43. CHAMBER, op cit., pp. 139-40.
44. Prisoner, op cit., p. 239.
45. PINSENT, op cit., p. 79.
46. SCHOEFER, op cit., no pagination.
47. ibid. no pagination; Stone, p. 129.
48. STONE, op cit., p. 129

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 49. GREGORY, Chris. Hands off Harry Potter! have critics of J. K. Rowling's books ever read
them ?. www.salon.com (3/3/2000).
50. TRITES, Roberta Seelinger. Waking sleeping beauty: feminist voices in children's novels.
Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1997, p. 5.
51. ibid., p. 6.
52. Stone, op cit., pp. 102-3.
53. Prisoner, op cit., pp. 128-9.
54. Goblet, op cit., pp. 327-34.
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