Harry Potter (Feminist Friend or Foe?)

Since the first book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone came out in the United States in 1997; it and the six subsequent volumes have been on the New York Times bestsellers list continuously. Harry Potter no longer solely exists in books; he is everywhere dominating our world and our children’s worlds, which is why it is important to analyze just what Harry Potter is teaching our children. Although the Harry Potter series has been critiqued and analyzed by journalists and academics alike, there are fascinating gaps in the analyses. Perhaps the most rousing of these gaps is the virtual lack of attention to the ways in which J. K. Rowling has constructed gender, and the agency of the female characters, within the texts. The purpose of this book is to address this rousing gap, by critically deconstructing the representation of women’s agency by the female characters in the Harry Potter books 2-6. The study draws on all of the pre-existing theories, frameworks, underpinnings and themes that came out of the analysis that were set forth in the pilot study/first book that critically deconstructed the first Harry Potter book. There are many different books that discuss the Harry Potter phenomenon, but rarely do they analyze the books through a social justice lens, specifically looking at gender.