Actually, I think this discussion shows how confused, and, therefore, ultimately useless the Mary Sue description has got.
You say about canon Hermione that she didn't strike you as a Mary Sue until Goblet of Fire, when she turns up to the ball looking good on the arm of Viktor Krum. Now, personally, I saw that as something of a cliche - but one which Rowling acknowledged to be a cliche and was playing with, slightly. It doesn't have anything to do, I suggest, with Rowling's psychology, but with how she wants to treat the readers whom she knows will identify most with Hermione.
The cliche image is the librarian with the glasses and the hair in the bun in the 40s film, whom Cary Grant or Humphrey Bogart removes the glasses from, takes the hairpins out of and voila ! Raving beauty city! True, wish-fulfilment, but it's actually intended to make the brainy, underappreciated girl readers (or viewers) feel good as they put down the books or leave the cinema. It's intended to put down all the glamour pusses who everyone else has known to be raving beauties from the beginning, with the less obvious star coming through from behind and waltzing off with the prince.
Now, if a Mary Sue by definition is so stunning that she could expect Krum to invite her to the ball as a matter of course, the idea wouldn't work. It is, actually, a geniune surprise when Hermione turns up with Krum (well, it was for me) and so it works dramatically. Are you saying that for fear of Mary Suery Hermione isn't allowed any of the perks of being the nearest thing to a heroine the stories have? This is not a novel of gritty realism, after all, you know.
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Date: 2003-03-24 09:33 am (UTC)You say about canon Hermione that she didn't strike you as a Mary Sue until Goblet of Fire, when she turns up to the ball looking good on the arm of Viktor Krum. Now, personally, I saw that as something of a cliche - but one which Rowling acknowledged to be a cliche and was playing with, slightly. It doesn't have anything to do, I suggest, with Rowling's psychology, but with how she wants to treat the readers whom she knows will identify most with Hermione.
The cliche image is the librarian with the glasses and the hair in the bun in the 40s film, whom Cary Grant or Humphrey Bogart removes the glasses from, takes the hairpins out of and voila ! Raving beauty city! True, wish-fulfilment, but it's actually intended to make the brainy, underappreciated girl readers (or viewers) feel good as they put down the books or leave the cinema. It's intended to put down all the glamour pusses who everyone else has known to be raving beauties from the beginning, with the less obvious star coming through from behind and waltzing off with the prince.
Now, if a Mary Sue by definition is so stunning that she could expect Krum to invite her to the ball as a matter of course, the idea wouldn't work. It is, actually, a geniune surprise when Hermione turns up with Krum (well, it was for me) and so it works dramatically. Are you saying that for fear of Mary Suery Hermione isn't allowed any of the perks of being the nearest thing to a heroine the stories have? This is not a novel of gritty realism, after all, you know.