Thinking more about Rowling, fiction, Dumbledore

[pegkerr]

Most of my thinking about what's going on in the blog commentary about Rowling's remarks on Dumbledore is filtered through my experience in writing The Wild Swans, and particularly the difficulties and uncertainties I experienced in writing about a minority community when I'm not of that minority myself.

As I've told several people, I nearly stopped writing the book several times because I was so troubled about whether I could handle the material properly. (And let's face it, a book about sexuality, marriage, death and religion is just fated to include difficult, fraught and explosive material.) No writer should ever hold out for universal popularity, that's clear, and some people have been kind enough to say that I handled it well. But I was immensely troubled by the same issue that I believe a lot of people have latched onto when thinking about how Rowling handled Dumbledore. And yes, I did get some flack about it.

Specifically, I wrote a book where the gay character's story ended in death and tragedy, and the heterosexual character's story ended in rescue, love and redemption. Given the facts of the AIDS epidemic and the structure of the fairy tale I was basing the book upon, there wasn't much way around that, but it really REALLY bothered me, to the point that it almost made me abandon the book entirely. Because I absolutely didn't want that to be the message that people took away from The Wild Swans, that somehow gay relationships were doomed to tragedy, whereas heterosexual ones were not. I don't believe that it true about these relationships in real life.

sistermagpie has posted about this aspect specifically in complaining about Rowling's remarks about Dumbledore, although she has since locked the entry so that I can't see it.

How did I reconcile this in my mind? Well, I didn't ever manage solve it entirely to my satisfaction, really. I tried to show that Elias and Sean's relationship was the most loving one in the book, even more so than Eliza and Jonathan's, really: although Sean did indeed infect Elias, he didn't turn on him and betray him emotionally the way Jonathan turned on Eliza. And I wanted the ending, at the Quilt, to convey at least some hope, to get across the idea that there still might be a chance to save Elias, if we worked hard enough to break the curse (raising money to fight AIDS, medical treatments, etc.)

Rowling said that Dumbledore's falling for Grindelwald "was his great tragedy." I don't think she meant that it was his tragedy because he was in love with someone that was the same gender as him. I think she meant instead that he loved someone who led him into dangerous ideas, and who set up a conflict that led to the death of his sister. I think if Dumbledore was alone for the rest of his life, it wasn't because (in Rowling's mind) he reasoned that it had all ended badly because he had loved a man instead of a woman. But I'll admit that's just my impression, YMMV. I'll be interested in seeing if Rowling comments further to clarify this.

Comments

[rachet.livejournal.com]

Specifically, I wrote a book where the gay character's story ended in death and tragedy, and the heterosexual character's story ended in rescue, love and redemption.


*blink* Ha! Interesting. That didn't even dawn on me until you just now pointed it out.

[cathellisen.livejournal.com]

I read that the tragedy was Grindelwald being who he was - a dark lord. "love is blind" I think she mentioned. She didn't deny that it was love, and she didn't say that it was on the same level as Bella's love for Voldemort (obsessive, power-hungry, and however insane Bella was, that was not a healthy hetero relationship.

[parsimonia.livejournal.com]

I think Dumbledore not (as far as we know) being married/being in a serious relationship was possibly due to him being alarmed at how blind he could be because of love.

I think what he says to Harry at the end of OotP makes a lot more sense now, about how DD loving and caring about Harry and wanting to protect him blinded him to certain dangers. Because the way he talks in that scene, it's as if he didn't expect to be in a position where his love for someone may have affected his otherwise good judgment.

After what happened with Grindelwald, I could see DD making up his mind that he wouldn't let himself be blinded by love again. But then comes along Harry, of course, who was saved from Voldemort by his mother's love, and who DD comes to love as a son/grandson, and just throws that out the window.

[sternel.livejournal.com]

I haven't picked up Wild Swans in a while, but the hope of the last scene is exactly the thing that has stayed with me in the years since I first read it, and the simple fact that Elias was still here -- battered and sick, but still here, and I put the book down feeling that that simple idea, of surviving despite it all, was a triumph instead of a tragedy.

Curiously enough, I can think of several examples of heterosexual couples in Potter that came to tragic and near-tragic ends, most notably Lily and James, whose begetting of a child (stereotypical hetero activity if there ever was one) was the reason for their murders. And I agree with you that the tragedy of Albus' love was not who he fell in love with, but what his beloved did. I wish more people could see that distinction.

(I just spent my morning explaining to an acquaintance that gay =/= pedophile and no, Albus was not feeling Harry up behind the scenes. )

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Sheesh. They might as well assume that Molly Weasley was feeling Harry up behind the scenes; she's on record as liking males, too.

[folk.livejournal.com]

Yeah, what's with all the hugging she does?

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Seems very suspicious, doesn't it? I'm sure Rita Skeeter will have something to say about it.

[folk.livejournal.com]

I totally didn't get "gay relationships end in tragedy" from TWS. Frankly, it's realistic for a gay couple having sex outside their relationship in NY in the 1980s to end up with one or both of them dying from AIDS. I know that enough of our family friends did. And you know how much I love TWS.

I think the problem with JK is the old "tragedy" chestnut, and again with the "I do not think it means what you think it means". It seems like she is using it in the traditional literary sense (i.e., The Tragedy Of Macbeth) rather than the modern sense (i.e., The Tragedy Of A Senseless Accident).

[ame-chan.livejournal.com]

Gosh I didn't take that away from your book at all. I thought Sean and Elias's relationship was loving and tender, and I thought that even though in the end Sean had died and Elias was infected, it was still a very hopeful place.

You wrote a book set in a community and a point in time *in* that community and you did it entirely realistically and with a great deal of compassion. I think, as a reader, for me, the respect, lovingness and compassion that you brought to the task is where the "still a very hopeful place" comes from. You didn't imply one was better than the other at all.

I don't think your story is about gay/straight/whatever, at least not for me. I know it's about what you say it's about since you're the author, but for me, as the reader, your book has always been about love and compassion and that's what I've taken from it.

It sits on the shelf with my most favorite books, it is one of the ones I visit as old friends, the ones that never fail to make me feel better. Compassion has a special place.

[aerden.livejournal.com]

*blink* And...these people who complain about fictional gay relationships ending badly while heterosexual relationships end up happily...They think Snape's relationship with Lily was peachy-keen?

I never even thought about that aspect of it. To me, it was all about Dumbledore'sand Grindelwald's (and Snape's choices.

Dumbledore, who had been thinking things similar to Grindelwald, allowed himself to believe his and Grindelwald's ideas were right until it was demonstrated to him how harmful those ideas were. When he couldn't persuade Grindelwald that the ideas of their youth were wrong, and when he saw that Grindelwald was doing harm with them, he had to kill Grindelwald.

Whether Dumbledore and Grindelwald were gay or not doesn't matter to their relationship. Their choices determined the course of their relationship, not the fact that Dumbledore, at least, happened to be gay. People fall in love with people who seem suited to them but actually aren't, all the time.

Are the consequences of the gay couple's actions in your story appropriate to the actions they took? If so, then I wouldn't worry, and folks should calm down about Dumbledore. I don't really feel that 'Gay people can never be happy' is the message Rowling was trying to get across. Taking responsibility for your own actions is and always has been her message, I think. It's what Dumbledore did, and it's what Snape did. Gay doesn't enter into it.

Chantal

[mayakda.livejournal.com]

I'm still pondering Rowling's announcement.
Is there an openly gay character in the Potterverse? Is homosexuality accepted there?
I don't think Dumbledore had a tragic life. He was unlucky in love maybe, and what happened to his family was tragic, but he devoted his life to his cause and had a deep and lasting positive impact on the younger generation.

[only-sound.livejournal.com]

I agree a lot with what you've said here, and, quite frankly, I've been extremely stressed out by folks wondering why Dumbledore's sexuality wouldn't be addressed in the books. First, not to demean older people, but at 150 and something, he probably isn't on the dating scene much. Second, when he was born in 1850-something, I doubt he had much chance at a healthy relationship. Third, when he was older and more enlightened, who goes LOOKING for love when your entire family and your first love are dead or imprisoned. Love hasn't been very kind to you, at that point.

Sorry for using your lj space to vent.

[wild-patience.livejournal.com]

I thought The Wild Swans was a wonderful book. I had several friends who went to the bath houses in San Francisco in the 1970s (almost our entire tenor section in choir was gay), and they subsequently died of AIDS, so I found it very powerful and it hit me very hard.

Another thing you did right with the book which so many are lacking was you had your female lead in the fairy tale part pray and have religion as an everyday part of her life. So many authors set stories in centuries past when it was expected for people to go to church yet this doesn't seem to be part of their characters' lives.

[huladavid.livejournal.com]

Well, for what it's worth, the same (gay relationships = somebody dying) could be said about Brokeback Mountain.

[cesario.livejournal.com]

Do you mean to tell me there are people who actually think she meant's Dumbledore's tragedy was falling for a dude, not falling for Wizard Hitler?

For serious?

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Oh, believe me, people are saying stuff even stupider than that. I was following the commentary on the post about the Carnegie Hall remarks at Leaky Cauldron but had to stop because I was becoming positively ill. And that's a Harry Potter fan site, and Leaky says that they've been deleting the really cruel and intolerant stuff! Absolutely unbelievable.

[cryptaknight.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I just read her use of tragedy as reference to the fact that one of the things Dumbledore is most famous for- it's on his chocolate frog card!- is defeating "the Dark Wizard Grindlewald." His great love turned into his most villainous enemy, and him having to fight him in a battle that ended up with his former love in prison, seems much more tragic to me than the fact that that love was the same sex.

People are really ridiculous sometimes.