So I was re-reading the Harry Potter series recently and realised that Ron is kinda toxic.
To the point that even Dumbledore knew he was going to chuck a tantrum and then want to come back…
If the series had been written more recently, especially the last few books, I think Ron would be portrayed differently OR Hermoine would not have chosen him.
What are your thoughts, or other examples?
Edit: What are YOUR examples of books or characters that YOU feel haven’t aged well?
by Grumpy-Mama
20 Comments
Harry Potter, I read first 3 books but it feels nasty reading a series about love when the author is a bigot.
But I do feel like Hermoine was kinda bullied for no reason in at least the first 3 books
The biggest one is twilight.
So the werewolf man falls in love with a baby. Lol
There’s a lot wrong with Harry Potter books in hindsight but I do think you’re being too harsh on Ron. Moody and temperamental, yes. Toxic? I’d say that’s a bit much.
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Nothing bothers me now about HP that didn’t also bother me when I read it. I think mostly it “aged” because of things JKR said.
To me, the treatment of House Elves and suggesting that what Snape felt for Lilly was “love” were the biggest errors.
Ron gets a lot of hate for being the only normal person in the trio. The other two are self-insert or wish fulfillment characters.
Can you guys talk about anything besides harry potter for the love of god
Ron isn’t “toxic.” He is a realistic nuanced depiction of a well intentioned but flawed teen. We see him with his family, friends, adults and peers and understand why he is the way he is.
That’s the sort of thing skillfully written novels do. They present the reader with psychologically and morally complex humans.
I vaguely remember reading a book called The Indian in the Cupboard as a child. Hadn’t thought about in in upwards of 25 years, when we received an interlibrary loan request for it (I’m a librarian). I flipped through it and ooof, the language in there did not age well.
Professor Henry Higgins makes Pygmalion/My Fair Lady really, really bad because of all of the disparaging comments he makes about women.
Ok I’ll go. I recently reread Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins. I still enjoyed it but I think the male gaze is so pronounced. I mean the female characters are intelligent and reasonably multifaceted and have agency and yet the male characters pretty much do nothing but stare at their boobs. The inherent goodness of sensuality is a theme of the book, but I don’t feel like the female side of that theme was well written. I don’t remember feeling that the first time I read it.
*A Town Like Alice* is usually the first one I think of when this topic comes up. WWII was one of my special interests throughout my childhood and I read it when I was maybe 13.
There’s definitely some interesting stuff in there, and my memory is of it being quite a page-turner, but bloody hell, the racism. Dear God, lol.
I’m glad I read it, just for the experience and the opportunity to form my own opinion, and I wouldn’t instantly judge someone else for liking it. But I wouldn’t reread it because I find that especially after the first read, that kind of language and attitudes turn most books into a depressing slog.
Thomas Harris – Silence of the Lambs
A young female trainee being the favourite of a powerful FBI chief, bring sent in to prison to tempt Lecter and being semi-assaulted by another prisoner when he flung semen on her. Talk about being exploited and used.
“or Hermione would not have chosen him” 🙄
Why is there this obsession with saying things like this, as if Hermione isn’t also a flawed character? You sound like the people who’ve seen the movies but haven’t read the books. The fact that you refer to what happens in DH as Ron having a massive tantrum also makes you sound like you haven’t read the book.
The book “M.A.S.H.”
I wouldn’t single out Ron, even though things like enthusiastically endorsing slavery should’ve felt antiquated already in the 90s and way before it, but there are a lot of things about Harry Potter that haven’t aged well. And things that weren’t ok even in the 90s (and btw I was obsessed with Harry Potter when the books were coming out.)
I’m not talking about “all straight white students” but stuff like the wizarding world seemingly not having democracy and no one having a problem with straight up segregation by blood status in Hogwarts. House Slytherin seems like the equivalent of an all-white house consisting exclusively of children with neo-Nazi parents with no “inferior blood” allowed, a literal echo chamber. The entire society seems patriarchal as hell, like are there any female characters who both work and have children? (In the books proper, not the sequel I refuse to read.)
Even some of the magic is stale but that’s obviously not JKR’s fault and more of an interesting observation. Like wow a pen that writes everything you say imagine if we had that… I also think kids these days would lose their minds if they were to be sent away to a castle with no internet access at age 11.
Also Snape’s an incel, sorry about it.
Man, there is a lot more in HP that hasn’t aged well/was rotten to begin with.
-All of our main characters, bar Hermione, are okay with slavery. In fact, Harry himself is a slave owner, and Ron’s whole family wishes they were slave owners. But the slaves LIKE being enslaved, and Harry isn’t abusive towards his slave, so it’s okay. And Hermione is OBVIOUSLY in the wrong for starting an abolition movement.
-The banks, and therefore all money in the wizarding world, are controlled by hook-nosed, greedy little men with ties to the mob. There were multiple rebellions by the goblins for equal rights, which were all violently ended without those rights being achieved.
-A woman described in the most un-womanly way possible uses magic to change her body in order to sneak into places she’s not allowed and spy on people.
-Lycanthopy being stated as an AIDS allegory, but with one of the two main werewolves being an unwilling victim and the other being a predator actively trying to spread it.
And those are just the things I can think of off the top of my head. People like to say JK Rowling turned bad in recent years, but if you go back and read the books with any kind of critical lens, you can see just how terrible a person she’s always been.
*Sigh* I can’t wait until this hyper-presentism fad passes. I look anxiously forward to the day I can say it “didn’t age well.”
The use of the word toxic is toxic
Lolita.
*runs*