Harry Potter and Beyond: On J. K. Rowling's Fantasies and Other Fictions

By Tison Pugh

Harry Potter and Beyond explores J. K. Rowling's beloved best-selling series and its virtuoso reimagining of British literary traditions. Weaving together elements of fantasy, the school-story novel, detective fiction, allegory, and bildungsroman, the Harry Potter novels evade simplistic categorization as children's or fantasy literature. Because the Potter series both breaks new ground and adheres to longstanding narrative formulas, readers can enhance their enjoyment of these epic adventures by better understanding their place in literary history.

Along with the seven foundational novels of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and Beyond assesses the extraordinary range of supplementary material concerning the young wizard and his allies, including the films of the books, the subsequent film series of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, the theatrical spectacle Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, and a range of other Potter-inspired narratives. Beyond the world of Potter, Pugh surveys Rowling's literary fiction The Casual Vacancy and her detective series featuring Cormoran Strike, written under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. Through this comprehensive overview of Rowling's body of work, Pugh reveals the vast web of connections between yesteryear's stories and Rowling's vivid creations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
• Release date: Jun 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781643360881

Tison Pugh

Tison Pugh is Pegasus Professor of English at the University of Central Florida. He is author or editor of over twenty books, including Harry Potter and Beyond: On J. K. Rowling’s Fantasies and Other Fictions; The Queer Fantasies of the American Family Sitcom; and Innocence, Heterosexuality, and the Queerness of Children’s Literature.

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Introduction

J. K. Rowling, Children’s Literature, and the Genres of Harry Potter

Joanne Rowling was born on July 31, 1965, with J. K. Rowling conjured some thirty years later. The publishers of her Harry Potter novels were, as Rowling declares, wary of me being a woman because they feared that boys would not read a book with a woman’s name on the cover.¹ Rowling therefore abbreviated the J of Joanne, adopted the K of her grandmother Kathleen, and the fictional construction of J. K. Rowling emerged. And so Joanne Rowling is not J. K. Rowling, which is a masculine (or at least androgynous) representation of herself, and neither is she Robert Galbraith, the name under which she has published a series of murder mysteries featuring investigators Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott. Yet by whichever name one calls her, Rowling has skyrocketed into the popular consciousness as the author of the phenomenally successful Harry Potter series. In the process, she has sold hundreds of millions of copies of her novels, launched two blockbuster film series, inspired a seemingly endless array of merchandise, including games, toys, clothes, and school supplies, and sparked an online fan community both enthusiastically passionate as well as sharply critical in their responses to her creations and achievements. Rowling’s impact on contemporary popular culture is unparalleled, with her Harry Potter novels transcending the realm of children’s fiction—an oft-contested categorization—to reveal both her engagement with a wide range of literary traditions and her reformulation of these fields.

J. K. Rowling: A Brief Biography

Many biographical accounts of Rowling’s life shoehorn her experiences into the classic narrative arc of a rags-to-riches story similar to those of fairy tales and Horatio Alger’s novels, in which poor yet plucky protagonists succeed through their inherent worthiness. Anne Treneman writes everyone thinks of Rowling’s life as a fairy tale and, in many ways, it has been, and Malcolm Jones calls her a real-life Cinderella.² The truth is a bit more prosaic, as Rowling’s roots are decidedly middle class. Her parents, Peter James and Anne (née Volant) Rowling, met on a train traveling from London’s King Cross Station to Arbroath, Scotland, in 1964. They married on March 14, 1965, and resided in Yate near Bristol. Joanne was born four months following in nearby Chipping Sodbury General Hospital. Her sister Dianne joined the family in 1967. Peter Rowling worked as a production engineer in a nearby aircraft engine factory—a steady and remunerative position that surely protected his daughters from the fairy-tale fate of being dressed in rags.

An avid reader, Rowling’s mother Anne strongly influenced her daughter’s precocious start as a storyteller. At five years old, Rowling began her education at St. Michael’s Church of England School in Winterbourne (whose headmaster at the time, Alfred Dunn, shares his initials with Hogwarts’s headmaster, Albus Dumbledore). Her interest in the literary arts soon became apparent when, at merely six years old, she wrote her first story about a rabbit named Rabbit. Approximately four years later, the Rowlings moved to Tutshill, a small village in South Wales—with this location memorialized in Rowling’s wizarding world by the Tutshill Tornadoes, a Quidditch team.³ Here Rowling attended Tutshill Church of England Primary School, where she encountered the formidable Mrs. Sylvia Morgan, a teacher who assigned her to the dim row after she failed a math exam on fractions. Rowling reportedly modeled the strict pedagogical style of Severus Snape after Morgan’s methods.⁴ At eleven years old, Rowling wrote The Seven Cursed Diamonds, a story with its title tellingly suggestive of her future plot device of Voldemort’s Horcruxes. Rowling continued her education at Wyedean Comprehensive Secondary School, which employed her mother Anne as a lab technician. During her adolescent years, Rowling enjoyed pop-culture entertainment such as Grease and recording artists such as The Beatles, The Smiths, REM, The Clash, Marianne Faithfull, and Siouxsie and the Banshees.

In 1982, Rowling applied to the University of Oxford but was denied admission, enrolling instead at the University of Exeter where she majored in French and Classics. For her third year she studied in Paris and graduated soon after, reportedly with a 2.2 out of a 4.0 grade point average.⁵ Martin Sorrell, an Exeter professor of French, recalled that Rowling gave the appearance of doing what was necessary to pass her courses, with Rowling agreeing that she did no work whatsoever.⁶ She later described herself as experiencing a distinct lack of motivation at university.⁷ To improve her employment prospects following graduation, Rowling enrolled in a bilingual secretarial course and worked a string of temporary jobs until Amnesty International hired her to assist in documenting human rights conflicts in Francophone Africa. During this period, she frequently rode the train from London to Manchester to visit her boyfriend, and on one of these journeys the kernel of the Harry Potter story germinated. She moved to Manchester in 1990, where she worked for the city’s Chamber of Commerce. Her mother, who had long suffered from multiple sclerosis, died in December that same year.

Desiring a dramatic change, Rowling moved to Oporto, Portugal, in 1991 to teach English as a second language with the Encounter English Schools. While there, she roomed with Aine Kiely and Jill Prewett (to whom she dedicated Prisoner of Azkaban) and also met her first husband, journalist Jorge Arantes. They married on Friday, October 16, 1992, with their daughter Jessica Isabel Rowling Arantes born on July 27, 1993, but they separated soon after. Rowling succinctly described their marriage as short and catastrophic.⁸ (In a droll allusion to this ill-fated union, Professor Trelawney warns Lavender Brown, Incidentally, that thing you are dreading—it will happen on Friday the sixteenth of October [PA 104].) Leaving Portugal, Rowling moved with her infant daughter to Edinburgh, Scotland, where her sister Dianne lived. Here Rowling finished her manuscript for Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone—the British title of Sorcerer’s Stone—while supplementing her income with welfare benefits and enrolling in a teacher-training course at Moray House School of Education at the University of Edinburgh. The grinding effects of poverty, coupled with her concern for providing for her daughter as a single parent, caused great hardship. In an essay detailing her support for single parents, tellingly titled I Am Prouder of My Years as a Single Mother Than of Any Other Part of My Life, Rowling recalls the emotional exhaustion she experienced owing to the cultural stigma attached to single motherhood: However defiant I might feel about the jobs I was doing round the clock (full-time mother, part-time worker, secret novelist), constant bombardment with words like ‘scrounger’ has a deeply corrosive effect.⁹ Rowling has candidly described her struggles with depression during this period, mentioning that she considered suicide but sought professional medical care to treat this condition. In depicting Harry Potter’s encounters with Dementors, Rowling captures the devastating isolation and pain caused by depression—The cold went deeper than his skin. It was inside his chest, it was inside his very heart (PA 83, cf. DH 256–57)—in a striking example of her experiences influencing her art.

At this low ebb of her life, Rowling’s fortunes turned dramatically when the Christopher Little Literary Agents signed her as a client. Following a round of rejections, the publishing house Bloomsbury contracted Philosopher’s Stone, reportedly after eight-year-old Alice Newton, the daughter of chairman Nigel Newton, read some sample chapters and praised the book to her father—Dad, this is so much better than anything else—and demanded more excerpts.¹⁰ In another positive omen, the Scottish Arts Council awarded Rowling an £8,000 writer’s grant. Philosopher’s Stone was published in the United Kingdom in June 1997, and part of the success of the Harry Potter franchise is likely owing to the fact that it won the Nestlé Smarties Book Prize, Gold Award, and was also distinguished as the British Children’s Book of the Year—with these prizes generating publicity and positive reviews for her nascent series.

Scholastic Press purchased the rights to publish Philosopher’s Stone in the United States for approximately a hundred thousand dollars, with the retitled novel delivered to US bookstores in September 1998. The Harry Potter phenomenon soon exploded. The six following novels in the series were published in rapid succession: Chamber of Secrets (1998), Prisoner of Azkaban (1999), Goblet of Fire (2000), Order of the Phoenix (2003), Half-Blood Prince (2005), and Deathly Hallows (2007). Similar to the critical reception of Philosopher’s Stone, Chamber of Secrets and Prisoner of Azkaban were awarded the Nestlé Smarties Book Prize, with the latter also designated the Whitbread Children’s Book of the Year. The film franchise began in 2001 with director Chris Columbus’s adaptation of Sorcerer’s Stone and culminated in the 2010–2011 release of David Yates’s two-part adaptation of Deathly Hallows. Alongside these many books and films arose the rags-to-riches story line of Rowling’s life, as the royalties from so many books, the commissions from so many ticket sales, and the profits from so much merchandise made Rowling a very wealthy woman. As Rowling herself has pointed out, there is nothing particularly rags-to-riches or fairy-tale-like about growing up in the middle class: The early stories neglected to mention that I come from a middle-class background, I have a degree in French and classics, and that working as a teacher was my intended bridge out of poverty.¹¹ Yet this fantasy endures due to her stratospheric rise from impoverished anonymity to international fame over the course of a few years.

While any rags-to-riches account of Rowling’s life inaccurately surveys its trajectory, it is an appealing story to tell, and those who desire to view Rowling’s life as a fairy tale also point to her growing contentment with her personal and family life. Almost a decade after her disastrous marriage to Arantes, Rowling wed Dr. Neil Murray in 2001, with whom she has two children: David Gordon (born 2003) and Mackenzie Jean (born 2005). Still, any such attempt to revive this rags-to-riches trope and to fit Rowling’s life into a generic narrative arc will inevitably fail. She is estranged from her father, stating, It wasn’t a good relationship from my point of view for a very long time but I had a need to please and I kept that going for a long time and then there … just came a point at which I had to pull up and say I can’t do this anymore.¹² As this strained relationship demonstrates, Rowling’s life has been filled with happiness and sadness, joy and pain, triumphs and setbacks, and any attempt to narrate her life into a predetermined story line will fail to capture its complexities.

Following the publication of Deathly Hallows and the apparent conclusion of the Harry Potter series, Rowling turned her attention to new literary endeavors. In 2012 she published The Casual Vacancy, a novel detailing the consequences of the death of a parish councilor in a small English town. Writing under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, she inaugurated her Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott series of murder mysteries with The Cuckoo’s Calling (2013) followed by The Silkworm (2014), Career of Evil (2015), and Lethal White (2018). In addition to these forays outside of the Harry Potter world, Rowling’s fantasy series continues to expand. The Pottermore website, established in 2012, features Rowling’s additions to the lore of Harry Potter, including such collections as Hogwarts: An Incomplete and Unreliable Guide (2016) and the Short Stories from Hogwarts series, which includes the volumes On Heroism, Hardship, and Dangerous Hobbies (2016) and On Power, Politics, and Pesky Poltergeists (2016). With John Tiffany and Jack Thorne, Rowling collaborated on the play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, and she is penning the screenplays for the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them series, which currently includes Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016) and Fantastic Beasts: Crimes of Grindelwald (2018), with three more films planned for production. With such prolific output to date and this rate of production, it is striking to realize that Rowling’s greatest works may still be yet to come.

While pursuing her extraordinarily successful writing career, Rowling has energetically contributed to a range of philanthropic endeavors, primarily those dedicated to alleviating poverty and deprivation. In 2000, she established The Volant Trust, named in honor of her mother, to support women, children, and vulnerable families, particularly those who are sexual abuse survivors, young mothers, and asylum seekers.¹³ She also has donated liberally to the Centre for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Edinburgh, now named the Anne Rowling Regenerative Neurology Clinic in honor of her mother. Rowling was appointed Ambassador and later President of Gingerbread, an organization that supports and advises single-parent families. In 2005 she founded the Lumos Foundation (formerly known as the Children’s High Level Group), which seeks to end the mistreatment of institutionalized children and for which she serves as Life President. Rowling spearheaded this cause after reading an article in the Sunday Times documenting the practice of imprisoning disabled children in caged beds. As she stated in recalling her reaction to a photograph of a young boy so cruelly confined: This touched me as nothing else has because I can think of nobody more powerless than a child, perhaps with a mental or a physical disability, locked away from their family.¹⁴ By directing the royalties from The Tales of Beedle the Bard (2007) to Lumos, Rowling has helped thousands of children escape such barbaric treatment.

In addition to The Tales of Beedle the Bard, Rowling has donated other writings to support charitable causes. At the request of the anti-poverty foundation Comic Relief in 2001, she penned short books ostensibly contained in the Hogwarts Library, including Newt Scamander’s bestiary Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Kennilworthy Whisp’s sports guide Quidditch through the Ages, thereby raising millions of pounds for its efforts. She has written a variety of short stories and essays directed to charitable endeavors, including the foreword to the anthology Magic (2002), with proceeds directed to the National Council for One Parent Families; an untitled short story about the Muggle police confronting Sirius Black and James Potter for the collection What’s Your Story: The Postcard Collection (2008), with proceeds directed to Dyslexia Action and English PEN; and the foreword and an essay for Dear Me: A Letter to My Sixteen-Year-Old Self (2011), with proceeds directed to Doctors without Borders. Rowling channeled the royalties from The Cuckoo’s Calling to The Soldiers’ Charity, declaring with her protagonist Cormoran Strike in mind that writing a hero who is a veteran has given me an even greater appreciation and understanding of exactly how much this charity does for ex-servicemen and their families, and how much that support is needed.¹⁵

In recognition both of her Harry Potter novels and of her charitable endeavors, Rowling has been honored with prestigious awards and commendations. In addition to the prizes bestowed upon her books, she has been inducted as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 2000, and in 2008 she won the Lifetime Achievement Award at the British Book Awards and the James Joyce Award of University College Dublin. That year, she also delivered Harvard University’s commencement address, speaking on the subject of The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination, with her oration thereafter published as Very Good Lives (2015). In 2009 French President Nicolas Sarkozy bestowed upon her the French Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur, and in 2010 she received Denmark’s Hans Christian Andersen Award. She participated in the opening ceremonies of the London 2012 Summer Olympics by reading from J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, and in 2016 she was honored with the PEN America Literary Service Award. Numerous educational institutions, including Dartmouth College, St. Andrews University, the University of Edinburgh, the University of Exeter, and the University of Aberdeen, have awarded her honorary degrees.

Rowling’s political views run strongly to the left. She supports Britain’s Labour Party and endorsed Prime Minister Gordon Brown (2007–2010) as affable, funny and gregarious, a great listener, a kind and loyal friend.¹⁶ She has decried the rise of populism and nationalism across Europe and America, lambasting right-wing figures such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin and France’s Marine Le Pen. In Rowling’s opinion, Donald Trump, the Republican President of the United States of America, is a fascist in all but name.¹⁷ She has criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and endorsed a two-state solution for the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians, while also joining the signatories of a public letter denouncing cultural boycotts against Israel as detrimental to the peace process.¹⁸ Rowling advocated for Scotland to remain a member of Great Britain during its 2014 independence referendum, with 55% of voters agreeing with her, and she opposed the national referendum on Brexit—Great Britain’s departure from the European Union—that nonetheless passed with 52% of the vote on June 23, 2016. Rowling frequently expresses her political views on her Twitter account, with sharp, sardonic, and sometimes snarky responses to political leaders and their pronouncements. Rowling strongly supports multiculturalism and, in a passionate defense of its benefits, she summarizes her lineage by describing herself as the mongrel product of this European continent and thus as an internationalist.¹⁹ In this appeal to universality, Rowling echoes the conclusion of her Harry Potter series in which the magical world unites wizards, centaurs, house elves, and others to vanquish the threat of Voldemort and his Death Eaters.

Notwithstanding these personal endorsements of multiculturalism, many readers have found Rowling’s treatment of race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, and other related issues sharply limited. Characters of color are relegated to the margins of the Harry Potter story lines, and her depiction of European wizards colonizing the Americas in Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry deploys unsettling tropes of Indigenous peoples as uncivilized. Rowling announced Dumbledore’s homosexuality to her fans, but she does not noticeably depict this aspect of his identity in her novels, thus closeting this character for unexplained reasons. In a tweet on December 19, 2019, Rowling voiced her support for Maya Forstater’s anti-transgender beliefs. In a controversial case, Forstater’s position as a tax expert at the Center for Global Development was not renewed owing to her anti-trans statements, with judge James Tayler ruling against her, writing that she is absolutist in her view of sex, and concluding that it is a core component of her belief that she will refer to a person by the sex she considered appropriate even if it violates their dignity and/or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment. The approach is not worthy of respect in a democratic society.²⁰ In response to these events, Rowling tweeted, Dress however you please. Call yourself whatever you like. Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you. Live your best life in peace and security. But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real? #IStand WithMaya #ThisIsNotADrill. Given Judge Tayler’s eloquent rebuttal against Forstater’s disregard for the reality of transgender experience, Rowling’s endorsement of her position evinces a narrow view of the dignity and rights of trans people.

It would, of course, be an exaggeration to say that art imitates life in Rowling’s fictions, but one can note certain correspondences between her politics and her literary themes. For instance, it appears that she discreetly yet tellingly snubbed another Republican President of the United States, George W. Bush, in a scene from Half-Blood Prince when the Muggle Prime Minister is waiting for a call from the President of a far distant country whom the narrator describes as a wretched man (H-BP 1).²¹ The Strike and Ellacott mysteries, set in present-day London, also feature moments of pointed political commentary. In contrast to Rowling’s criticisms of Republican Presidents of the United States, the narrator of Career of Evil, peering into protagonist Cormoran Strike’s thoughts, honors Barack Obama, a Democrat, as the United States’ immaculate President (CE 317). The Silkworm’s narrator first quotes Kenneth Clarke—Great Britain’s Justice Secretary (2010–2012) who advocated reforming Britain’s legal aid services in order "to discourage people from resorting to