Unrequited??
Oct. 21st, 2007 07:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elementsA lot of other people have already said all the other stuff I might be saying here, and I am of the school that says Jo only gets to definitively label something as canon if she's written it into the books, and in any case in my mind Dumbledore and Grindelwald had a relationship in canon since the day I read book 7. I mean, my first reaction to the news was "well, duh!"
But, why exactly do people think JKR said she believes Dumbledore's love for Grindelwald was unrequited?
According to everything I've seen, including this transcript of the relevant section, JKR didn't say anything about unrequited. She said that Dumbledore's love for Grindelwald was tragic. She said that Grindelwald let Dumbledore down terribly. Well, duh.
Say you're young Albus Dumbledore, and you fall in love with someone amazing and captivating, whose magnetism leads you both down a path of irresponsibility and arrogance that eventually kills your little sister. And then your wonderful, amazing, captivating boyfriend disagrees with you that the death of your sibling is a sign that maybe the two of you need to reassess your level of hubris, and leaves you, and then some years later becomes such a horrifically dark wizard that you're forced to fight him. I'd say that kind of counts as being terribly let down. I'd think that alone qualifies as tragic.
There's a lot we don't see in book 7 about Dumbledore's time with Grindelwald. I see no reason whatsoever to presume that JKR's clarification of her mindset when writing Dumbledore should change any aspect of my reading of that relationship.
Albus Dumbledore and Gellert Grindelwald were fabulously, dizzyingly, destructively and utterly in love. When it ended, it shattered Dumbledore, and his behavior throughout the series bears its marks. Albus Dumbledore's great tragedy is that, after having his heart so unutterably broken, he never did quite learn how to love without hurting the people loved again.
eta:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ursamajor provided this Newsweek article which I'm assuming is the source of the misperception. Sloppy journalism on Newsweek's part, then, but JKR still didn't say "unrequited" herself.
But, why exactly do people think JKR said she believes Dumbledore's love for Grindelwald was unrequited?
According to everything I've seen, including this transcript of the relevant section, JKR didn't say anything about unrequited. She said that Dumbledore's love for Grindelwald was tragic. She said that Grindelwald let Dumbledore down terribly. Well, duh.
Say you're young Albus Dumbledore, and you fall in love with someone amazing and captivating, whose magnetism leads you both down a path of irresponsibility and arrogance that eventually kills your little sister. And then your wonderful, amazing, captivating boyfriend disagrees with you that the death of your sibling is a sign that maybe the two of you need to reassess your level of hubris, and leaves you, and then some years later becomes such a horrifically dark wizard that you're forced to fight him. I'd say that kind of counts as being terribly let down. I'd think that alone qualifies as tragic.
There's a lot we don't see in book 7 about Dumbledore's time with Grindelwald. I see no reason whatsoever to presume that JKR's clarification of her mindset when writing Dumbledore should change any aspect of my reading of that relationship.
Albus Dumbledore and Gellert Grindelwald were fabulously, dizzyingly, destructively and utterly in love. When it ended, it shattered Dumbledore, and his behavior throughout the series bears its marks. Albus Dumbledore's great tragedy is that, after having his heart so unutterably broken, he never did quite learn how to love without hurting the people loved again.
eta:
ursamajor provided this Newsweek article which I'm assuming is the source of the misperception. Sloppy journalism on Newsweek's part, then, but JKR still didn't say "unrequited" herself.![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-22 12:00 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-22 12:15 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-22 12:16 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-22 12:45 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-22 12:11 am (UTC)I mean, your reading totally works. And it's beautifully written as well. And I agree with it. It just kind of stuns me as well, though, because it stands in such stark contradiction to the themes of the books.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-22 12:22 am (UTC)I think JKR's personal politics have gotten a lot farther along in terms of progressivism than her unacknowledged internal attitudes. She doesn't think she has a problem with queer people, and I'm sure she'd be surprised to hear that reading of her, but she isn't tuned in to her remaining subconscious attitudes that shaped what she actually wrote. And for all her years now of being a writer, she hasn't entirely learned that it actually does carry more weight when you show instead of tell.
I just see her as an old-fashioned British lady with lots of old-fashioned proprieties, who thinks she's being forward-thinking by allowing one of her characters to be gay. She may even have thought that she totally wrote him that way (which she in fairness totally did, apart from the critical element of actually acknowledging it). I imagine that in her cohorts, this kind of thing gets discussed delicately. Uncle so and so has a gentleman roommate, and the like. So she may think she all but clonked us over the head with this (and as a corrolary, with Remus/Sirius and other ships, hehe), because to her that's what being open about someone being gay *is*. Not saying it's right, but that's my reading of her.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-22 03:19 am (UTC)*loves*
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-22 12:49 am (UTC)Remus & Sirius? Hurray, they got to be lovers for all of a bit of their young adulthoods and then one miserable year before Sirius's death? Feh. Being queer leads to unhappiness, children. Remus's attempts at and discomfort with the heteronormative life he then tries with Tonks are equally devoid of lasting happiness. Feh.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-22 12:38 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-22 12:43 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-22 12:49 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-22 12:55 am (UTC)Yeah, the rabidity of fannishness of most of my flist is of the "rearrange rest of life due to arrival of new canon" mentality, which is beyond what most even very hardcore fans outside of an involved fandom community would ever do. I didn't dare go online until I'd finished the book, which was one big part of why I chose to spend a day of my vacation in England reading it right when it came out, but that's a rather freakishly strong level of devotion and not something I should assume all the HP lovers on my flist would have.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-22 02:22 pm (UTC)character-assassinatingmarriage with another character who was REALLY COOL until the whole het thing.Ahem. Not that I'm bitter about Remus or anything.
HI ERICA.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-22 02:31 pm (UTC)HI. I have all these tabs open to comment to you. :/