Reflection and Analysis

Hermione's Not as Problematic as Fans Make Her Out to Be (12/31/21)

Note: So, a little background on this reflection in that it was written at the request of a friend who I'd given my reflection on Ron for who asked for a bit of introspection on Hermione's character, and this is what I wrote for them.

I guess the best place to start with Hermione is that while I feel she has definite flaws as a character, more often than not when her flaws are discussed, they're taken majorly out of context while there are others nobody ever talks about.

The one which stands out the most for me is the incident where she sends the birds at Ron because this is often used to demonize her character, to effectively I think put her in the same boat as Ron regarding her behavior. In fact, here is what Sophia Ismaa says about the incident in her blog entry, "Hermione Granger – 10 Reasons Why Your Fave is Problematic". According to her, "Hermione sets canaries on Ron because she feels entitled to him", but it is so bad that "it took a whole damn week for the scars to go away."

Except, that's not why she sent the birds at him, but if the marks go away after only a couple of weeks, they are definitely not scars, but instead mere scratches. More importantly, they've completely ignored his behavior in the moment and instead focuses on his behavior at the Yule Ball for comparison, because apparently the way he handles jealousy is so much better than the way she handled jealousy.

The problem is, as I've said, she didn't send the birds after him because she felt entitled to him, aka jealous. She sent the birds after him because of the way he was treating both her and Lavender, which is right there in the books, her telling him to leave her alone, but also to not leave his girlfriend alone. Ron on the other hand was purposefully attempting to make her feel jealous, but people jump to the conclusion that the way she felt was actually jealousy rather than being upset with how he was treating her.

We also can't ignore the fact Ron is the male in this situation while Hermione is the female, but he is a male violating the personal space of a female in that he outright ignores here when she asks him to go away. My question then is, what is Hermione supposed to do? Is she supposed to put up with what he's doing and sit and take the fact he is openly ignoring her? Is she supposed to be the one to walk away from the situation? Both of these expect women not to fight back against their circumstances, yet Ron isn't at fault in this situation at all because of established male privilege.

Which in turn makes bringing up, "If Ron had done this..." a gut wrenching argument made on this person's part, because Ron is not in this situation female, but instead male and as a male he is strutting around purposefully ignoring Hermione is in the room while talking to Harry while also ignoring his girlfriend, just to make Hermione jealous. And supposedly this female blog writer has "so much respect for Ron now.", because somehow he is innocent in all of this when he did far, far more than kiss a girl as Ismaa claims.

Seriously!

These are the same people who tell us we're ignoring book Ron, yet it's right there if you go back and read the books that Ron is actively ignoring Hermione's existence and choosing not to spend time with his girlfriend just to make Hermione feel jealous, but we're supposed to believe that's what Hermione was feeling because that's how he wanted her to feel, or so everyone jumping on the bandwagon of vilifying Hermione. I'm not saying here violence is the sollution, but what people are really arguing isn't that Hermione shouldn't get away with her behavior like they're thinking, but that Ron shouldn't be getting away with his behavior.

Which, this author talks about how Hermione becomes more and more violent with Ron, who is emotionally abusive towards her which in turn is why I don't ship them, yet they in turn ignore the fact she decked Draco Malfoy back in second year simply because he pissed her off enough to slug him while also ignoring that the earlier incident of him calling her Mudblood wouldn't have happened had she not dissed him getting onto the Slytherin team for Quiditch. Don't forget Ron praised Hermione for using physical violence to stand up to a guy, yet she's now being condemned for using physical retaliation against this same guy.