That's a fascinating perspective, and I'm glad you shared it! It certainly has given me something to think about. And I'm still musing as I write this, so if I say anything that makes no sense, please bear with me.
The thing that interested me most about your perception of Maud's character development is that in some ways it's the opposite of my own. I was just lamenting to Erica yesterday that when I re-read TPMA now all I can think of is how totally "off" Maud's character seems to me, and how obvious it is that I didn't really know what she was like at the time, and how I'd really like to rewrite the whole thing (though I won't) to fix all the problems I see with her characterization. Now you come along and say that you think her characterization was actually the best in TPMA. It would be terribly disconcerting, if it weren't so funny. :)
All of which is not to say that you're wrong. It's true that Maud is at her most independent in TPMA; she's certainly her most focused, in the sense of having a clear objective and ambition, in that story; and she has an air of self-confidence (especially in the first chapter) that is definitely not present to the same degree in the later stories. In TPMA she has "action heroine" written all over her, and even her failures are mostly due to idealism.
And yet, as I was writing the second story of the trilogy, it was as though Maud were quietly but persistently telling me, "I'm not really like that, you know. You just think I have to be that way because I want to be an Auror. But maybe I don't want that, after all." Once I stopped trying to force her to conform to my expectations and started letting her be herself (metaphorically speaking, of course, but I don't know how else to explain that part of the creative process), she turned out to be a good deal quieter and more self-effacing than I'd anticipated.
I had thought, you see, that Snape wouldn't be interested in someone unless she was as driven in her own way as he was in his; that in order to work together they had to be doing the same thing, or something very like it; and that he wouldn't respect her intelligence unless it was mingled with a fair bit of Slytherin cunning. But eventually it started to dawn on me that perhaps Maud wasn't Snape's younger, slightly more honorable equivalent, but in fact his opposite -- and that it might be better that way.
Snape isn't just the "darkness" in the trilogy, he's a sucking black hole and he knows it. Sure, he saved Maud's life, but what has he done for her lately? Not to mention his marked tendencies toward high-handedness and ruthless manipulation -- if Maud were a tough-minded modern heroine, she'd have told him where to get off long ago. But in fact Maud isn't really looking out for her own interests when she begins the relationship: she's committing herself to supporting Snape as a kind of moral cause. She knows that she has strengths that he lacks -- among them a better emotional support system and a correspondingly greater capacity to love unselfishly -- and that he needs those things in her, even if only to know that they exist and are waiting somewhere for him, if he's going to make it through the next couple of years.
In the interests of making Maud a dynamic and exciting character (if she ever was one) I have to agree that PR and IWS are less effective than TPMA. But I couldn't help but feel that by letting her settle down a bit and step away from the spotlight, I was also letting her be more human. Yet at the same time she becomes less ordinary, because she starts to represent a principle as much as a type of person; but I won't go into that, because if it's not clear or at least reasonably implicit in the story itself then it's just fatuous to try and explain it after the fact. Plus I have rambled quite enough already. :)
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The thing that interested me most about your perception of Maud's character development is that in some ways it's the opposite of my own. I was just lamenting to Erica yesterday that when I re-read TPMA now all I can think of is how totally "off" Maud's character seems to me, and how obvious it is that I didn't really know what she was like at the time, and how I'd really like to rewrite the whole thing (though I won't) to fix all the problems I see with her characterization. Now you come along and say that you think her characterization was actually the best in TPMA. It would be terribly disconcerting, if it weren't so funny. :)
All of which is not to say that you're wrong. It's true that Maud is at her most independent in TPMA; she's certainly her most focused, in the sense of having a clear objective and ambition, in that story; and she has an air of self-confidence (especially in the first chapter) that is definitely not present to the same degree in the later stories. In TPMA she has "action heroine" written all over her, and even her failures are mostly due to idealism.
And yet, as I was writing the second story of the trilogy, it was as though Maud were quietly but persistently telling me, "I'm not really like that, you know. You just think I have to be that way because I want to be an Auror. But maybe I don't want that, after all." Once I stopped trying to force her to conform to my expectations and started letting her be herself (metaphorically speaking, of course, but I don't know how else to explain that part of the creative process), she turned out to be a good deal quieter and more self-effacing than I'd anticipated.
I had thought, you see, that Snape wouldn't be interested in someone unless she was as driven in her own way as he was in his; that in order to work together they had to be doing the same thing, or something very like it; and that he wouldn't respect her intelligence unless it was mingled with a fair bit of Slytherin cunning. But eventually it started to dawn on me that perhaps Maud wasn't Snape's younger, slightly more honorable equivalent, but in fact his opposite -- and that it might be better that way.
Snape isn't just the "darkness" in the trilogy, he's a sucking black hole and he knows it. Sure, he saved Maud's life, but what has he done for her lately? Not to mention his marked tendencies toward high-handedness and ruthless manipulation -- if Maud were a tough-minded modern heroine, she'd have told him where to get off long ago. But in fact Maud isn't really looking out for her own interests when she begins the relationship: she's committing herself to supporting Snape as a kind of moral cause. She knows that she has strengths that he lacks -- among them a better emotional support system and a correspondingly greater capacity to love unselfishly -- and that he needs those things in her, even if only to know that they exist and are waiting somewhere for him, if he's going to make it through the next couple of years.
In the interests of making Maud a dynamic and exciting character (if she ever was one) I have to agree that PR and IWS are less effective than TPMA. But I couldn't help but feel that by letting her settle down a bit and step away from the spotlight, I was also letting her be more human. Yet at the same time she becomes less ordinary, because she starts to represent a principle as much as a type of person; but I won't go into that, because if it's not clear or at least reasonably implicit in the story itself then it's just fatuous to try and explain it after the fact. Plus I have rambled quite enough already. :)