Harry Potter's Bookshelf

by John Granger

  There is a connection here between Rowling, Shakespeare, and Dickens, especially his Tale. Dickens was a Shakespeare lover, and there was a London Shakespearean revival in the early nineteenth century at a time when Dickens was in love with the stage. He even produced, directed, and played a major part in an amateur production of The Merry Wives of Windsor.

  In A Tale of Two Cities, one of his shortest, most theatrical works, Dickens attempts alchemical drama in the manner of Shakespeare. Tale has all the hallmarks of a Shakespearean presentation of the “resolution of contraries.” It has the five qualities of literary alchemy I noted above, in spades.

  Three Stages of Transformation: Dickens presents his Tale in three books and each corresponds to a stage in the work. The first book, “Recalled to Life,” is about the recovery of a man, Dr. Alexandre Manette, who was “buried alive” in the Bastille and about the darkness in both England and France of the time. The second is about the doppelgänger of Darnay and Carton and how each loves Lucie Manette, the doctor’s doting daughter, who is almost always dressed in white and whose hair gives the second book its title: “The Golden Thread.” Tale’s third book is the crucible of revolutionary Paris, and contains Carton’s spectacular and sublime sacrifice to save the wedded Charles and Lucie. It’s a play in three acts about the resolution of contraries, a play featuring a wedding in the second act and a sacrificial death that “saves” a city in some fashion in the third. Dickens is writing according to strict alchemical formula.

  Dominant Contraries: There are three lines from Dickens that most everyone knows, and two of them are the first and last lines of A Tale of Two Cities (Christmas Carol’s “God bless us, every one!” is the other). The famous opening announces that the book is about contraries and contrasts, in case the title slipped by you: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times . . .” As the title tells us, the novel is about London and Paris in conflict, both on the grand political scale and on the domestic scale of the principal characters.

  Doppelgängers and an Alchemical Wedding

  In addition to creating double-natured individuals, Dickens pairs up characters to highlight qualities of each as foils to one another. Sydney Carton and Charles Darnay are good likenesses of one another but inversions in spirit: Darnay the French aristocrat who has abandoned his caste rather than accept injustice, and Carton the brilliant English lawyer whose drinking and sloth prevent his rise in station. Miss Lucie Manette and Madame Defarge are contrasted as French women of light and darkness to illustrate the possible responses to barbarous times.

  The marriage of Lucie and Charles is the alchemical wedding, but the more important and substantial pledging of troth and sacrifice is made by Carton to Lucie:“It is useless to say it, I know, but it rises out of my soul. For you, and for any dear to you, I would do anything.” (A Tale of Two Cities, book two, chapter thirteen)

  Carton may not be Lucie’s husband, but his confessing his love to her and his willingness to die, not only for her, but to save a life she loves, is his transcendence of self and ego. He is a new man because of love.

  Resurrection Figures

  Throw a rock at a lineup of the characters in A Tale of Two Cities and odds are pretty good you’re going to hit a character who could be said to have died and risen from the dead. The first book is titled “Recalled to Life” because Dr. Alexandre Manette is rescued from his living death in the Bastille. Charles Darnay is rescued from almost certain death, too, by a bizarre legal stratagem of Carton’s that discredits a lying witness.

  Jarvis Lorry describes the effect of his association with the Manettes as being like a Lazarus raised from his tomb. Jerry Cruncher is a grave robber, the meaning of which Dickens is sure to drill home by calling him a “Resurrection Man.” Miss Pross, believe it or not, achieves something like an apotheosis in her sacrificial hand-to-hand combat with Madame Defarge.

  But it is Carton that both rises from the death of his dissipation and drunkenness in anticipation of a greater reward and life that we remember. Having purchased the vapours he needs to sedate Darnay to change places with him, Carton walks the streets of Paris and recalls his hope of resurrection in Christ, his illumination at dawn.

  The Alchemy of Deathly Hallows: The Rubedo and Climax of Harry’s Perfection

  Dickens closes A Tale of Two Cities with the prophetic vision Carton experiences at the guillotine. It includes perhaps the most famous single exit line in all literature: “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.” The end of the Potter epic reflects this—the ending Ms. Rowling says is the best in all literature.

  Like the Darnays, Ginny and Harry name one of their sons for the two men who sacrificed themselves literally and figuratively to save and serve Harry, as Sidney Carton did Charles Darnay. Albus Severus Potter’s bipolar name, serpentine initials, and concerned questions to his father at King’s Cross station in the Deathly Hallows epilogue suggest that he, too, is a Gryffindor/Slytherin union. Albus Severus reflects the greater interior victory of Harry, Severus, and Albus in the last book of the series.

  How does the alchemy in Deathly Hallows bring us to Harry’s final “All was well?” Deathly Hallows, as the last, is the red book or rubedo of the series. As in Romeo and Juliet and A Tale of Two Cities , a wedding has to be revealed, contraries have to be resolved, and a death to self must lead to greater life. We should expect to see a Philosopher’s Stone and a philosophical orphan, as well. The rubedo of Deathly Hallows is the crisis of the whole series—and it is everything alchemical we could have hoped for.

  We start with Bill and Fleur’s alchemical wedding, in which France and England again are married, here in the sitzkrieg before the shooting war with Voldemort’s Nazis begins. The first seven chapters of Deathly Hallows lead up to this union of opposites, of choler and phlegm. As you’d expect, the wedding itself is a meeting of contraries, of solar and lunar. That’s why, in addition to the Gallic/Briton jokes, we have the lunar Lovegoods show up in sunlight-bright yellow. Luna, the moon dressed as the sun, explains that it’s good luck to wear gold at a wedding. This isn’t just loony Luna; everything at the wedding is golden: the floor, the poles, the band jackets, the bridesmaids’ dresses, even Tonks’s hair.

  We have a long way to go, though, before the Slytherin and Gryffindor opposites are united in Harry’s son. The wedding breaks up when Kingsley’s lynx Patronus arrives with the message that Rufus Scrimgeour is dead and the Death Eater blitzkrieg has begun. With this wedding and the death of the first character whose name means red, the real action of the alchemical work in Deathly Hallows begins.

  The rest of the book can be interpreted in black, white, and red stages. The nigredo stage stretches painfully from chapter nine, “A Place to Hide,” to chapter eighteen, “The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore.” Harry’s purification and illumination begin in chapter nineteen, “The Silver Doe,” and end with the trio’s return to Hogsmead in chapter twenty-eight, “The Missing Mirror.” The crisis of the book, and of the series, is in Harry’s return to Hogwarts, the destruction of the remaining Horcruxes, and victory over Lord Voldemort, as told in the last eight chapters of Deathly Hallows.

  The ten nigredo chapters are as dark and gothic as any reader could want. We get a trip to the House of Black, we visit the Orwellian “Magic Is Might” black statue in the new Ministry (accessible only by flush toilet . . . ), and we go camping, where, for some reason, it’s always night, or overcast, or the three friends can’t get along. Ron finally leaves, in a painful dissolution. Ask anyone what the longest part of Deathly Hallows is. The answer is always “the camping trip.” It lasts eight chapters (fourteen through twenty-one) but three are agony, the three after Ron departs.

  The chapters about Harry’s trip with Hermione to Godric’s Hollow are the climax of the nigredo and end with Harry’s crisis of faith. We left Harry at the end of Half-Blood Prince proclaiming that he was “a Dumbledore
man.” In Deathly Hallows, he has his private agonizing doubts. He reads one article by Rita Skeeter and his faith is shaken. He talks to Aunt Muriel and Dogbreath at the wedding, and his faith takes another blow. And now he is struggling to believe in Dumbledore at all.

  At the end of the nigredo, when Harry reads The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore, he denies Dumbledore, denies that he loves Albus, denies that Dumbledore loved him, etc. Harry’s holly-and-phoenix wand has been broken in battle with Nagini and he is left with a broken wand, a broken piece of mirror, and shattered faith. He keeps these fragments, though, in a bag around his neck and close to his heart. He denies Dumbledore, denies his mission, and, in something like despair, he keeps these remnants or relics of the person who once was close to his heart.

  And just when despair is closing in, the nigredo ends with the brilliance reflecting off the Silver Doe in the snow-covered Forest of Dean. This chapter, a meeting of Christian, alchemical, and Arthurian images in one spot, is probably the height of Ms. Rowling’s achievement as a writer. Ron the Baptist saving Harry, Ron’s exorcism in destroying the Horcrux, Harry’s death to self and discovery of remorse, repentance, faith, and love in Dobby’s grave on Easter morning, and the pale dragon in Gringott’s are all images of purification, with water on hand or nearby.

  The white stone on the red earth of Dobby’s grave and the dragon’s “milkily” pink eyes are chromatic signs of the story’s movement from white to red. The rubedo of Deathly Hallows begins, I think, when Harry refuses to listen to Aberforth’s complaints and criticism of his brother, Albus. When Harry shows his faith and his choice to believe, Neville appears to take him into the castle, and the battle for Hogwarts begins. You could say the red stage really begins when Rubeus, the half-giant whose name means “red,” flies through the window of Hogwarts Castle.

  In this battle, which includes Harry’s sacrifice in the Forbidden Forest and his ultimate victory over Voldemort, the contraries are resolved and all the houses sit down at one table. The battle also causes the creation of the “philosophical orphan” when Nymphadora and Remus Lupin are killed. And we get a Philosopher’s Stone, too; Hermione and Ron’s daughter, we learn in the epilogue, is named “Rose,” which is another name for the Stone.

  Three quick alchemical points: The complete transformation in the last novel of the series shows how the world has been changed by Harry’s internal victory and destruction of the scar Horcrux. Lord Voldemort tortures and murders the Hogwarts Muggle Studies teacher in the first chapter of the book. Her name is Charity Burbage and her corpse is dinner for Nagini. Charity or “love” is destroyed by “death.” Harry’s death to self in Dobby’s burial, revealed in his willing self-sacrifice before Voldemort, breaks death’s power. Lily and Harry’s sacrificial and selfless love sustains life and has its victory over death.

  We see a complete transformation in Harry, too. He is a Dumbledore man by confession as the story begins, but his disbelief and lack of trust come to the fore after his fight with Nagini in Godric’s Hollow. After choosing to believe, however, when digging Dobby’s grave he becomes almost Christlike in dying and rising from the dead to vanquish death. Even the near-omnipotent Dumbledore begs Harry’s forgiveness and tells him he has known for a long time that Harry was “the better man.” Harry was made the better man by achieving the Gryffindor/Slytherin union within himself, as demonstrated by his naming his son Albus Severus Potter. He becomes the conjunction of contraries.

  When he fights Lord Voldemort in the Great Hall, Harry has achieved an understanding and perspective that is essentially all-knowing. Voldemort, in contrast, has the limited ego view that we had at the end of every previous book. Remember, to a classicist and postmodern like Rowling, “knowing” is in large part a measure of “being.” In resolving the core polarity of the Wizarding world, Harry both goes to and becomes the circle and cross’s point of origin and metaphysical principle. Becoming relatively omniscient, Harry is the de facto Philosopher’s Stone and, as such, virtually omnipotent.

  Conclusion: Why the Alchemy Matters

  Literary alchemy isn’t something that we were all born knowing. Seeing how it works requires a certain receptivity as well as some serious “slow mining.” It rewards the effort, however, with answers to important questions beyond the meaning of Hermione’s name and why her parents are dentists.

  The popularity of these books cannot be explained, I think, with “what great stories” and how much we love the characters, at least not without an in-depth look at what we mean by “great stories.” It’s not the eloquence of the prose or even the moral viewpoint of the stories, beyond reproach though that may be—how brave and bold is it to be against prejudice and to advocate freedom versus slavery? We read and reread Harry’s adventures because of our profound engagement with these stories and the resonance we feel at our core with their meaning. That level of engagement is a function of artistry, and the alchemy setting the “parameters of magic” and “internal logic” of the series is a key part of Rowling’s artistry.

  More than circles and journeys, literary alchemy imbedded in the fabric of the story gives us both a more profound way of seeing reality and, more important, an experience of that view and reality via our identification with Harry. We join Harry, the hero, as he is transformed by the quarreling couple and the distillation, purification, and crucible experiences he has, and we are transformed by the alchemy of story just as the alchemist was by his purifying metallurgy and Shakespeare’s audiences were by cathartic drama.

  There is one more bit of anagogical artistry that touches on Harry as a symbol of transformational, even sacramental vision. We’ll need to look at the marble bag full of disembodied eyeballs in Deathly Hallows to understand this vision and to explain Dumbledore’s cryptic comments at King’s Cross about reality.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The Secret of the Mirror and the Seeing Eye

  Ms. Rowling’s Debt to the Subversive

  Fantasy Writers of the English Tradition

  Outside of Jane Austen, the most frequently mentioned author in Ms. Rowling’s many interviews is Elizabeth Goudge, and the most frequently mentioned book is that author’s The Little White Horse. Horse was the Carnegie Medal winner for children’s fiction in 1946, but odds are good that you have never heard of this book and, if you have, that you never would have except for Ms. Rowling’s enthusiastic and repeated endorsements of it. Because of her push, the book has seen a great revival and will be coming soon to a theater near you as a major motion picture.

  In interview after interview, Ms. Rowling praises The Little White Horse. She has repeatedly said that it was her favorite book as a child.1 She has said that the book overall is “very well-constructed and clever” and, most important for our purposes, that “perhaps more than any other book, it has a direct influence on the Harry Potter books.”2 Thus, we are obliged to look at The Little White Horse very closely to discover the cleverness of its construction and the ways in which it corresponds with the Potter story.

  The story, in brief, is this: Maria Merryweather, a child orphan accompanied by her tutor, Miss Heliotrope, and little dog, Wiggins, travels from familiar London in 1842 to magical Silverydew valley by passing through a secret hillside tunnel separating the outer and inner worlds. She is welcomed to the palatial Moonacre Manor by her much older cousin, Sir Benjamin. He is a Sun Merryweather. You see, some Merryweathers were born at midday and were thus known as Sun Merryweathers. Those born at midnight were the Moon Merryweathers.

  Though Sir Benjamin is the incarnation of charity and generosity, Moonacre Manor and the valley, as you might expect in the gothic landscape of the story, are burdened by unresolved antagonisms born in medieval times. There is discord between the Sun and Moon Merryweathers and their conflict with Monsieur Cocq de Noir of the Pine Woods and his band of thieves. The Old Parson tells Maria the legend of Sir Wrolf, Black William, and the Moon Princess that explains the conflict.

  According to the tale, Sir
Wrolf was given the village of Silverydew and the estate on which Moonacre Manor was built, but was not satisfied with anything less than the whole valley. In an attempt to win more land, Sir Wrolf offered to buy the Pine Woods Forest and castle from Black William, whose family had owned the forest since William the Conqueror had awarded the land to their Norman clan. When his offer was rebuffed, Sir Wrolf turned the “lovely valley” into something like a “battlefield, with the turf of the green meadows stained red with blood, the harvest fields neglected, and gardens choked with weeds” as the servants of Wrolf and William fought whenever they met.

  Sir Wrolf finally decided to win the Pine Woods by marrying Sir William’s daughter, who, as fair as her father was dark, had been dubbed the “Moon Princess.” At their wedding, she gave him a large tawny dog and brought a necklace of “moony pearls” as her dowry. He gave her a fairy horse, a unicorn that had been caught in the thorn tree on Paradise Hill.

  There was only love and joy in Silverydew until Black William took another wife and she bore him a male heir. The Moon Princess would not inherit the Pine Woods or castle! Sir Wrolf was enraged. In his anger, he revealed that his motivation in courting his bride had been greed and pride, not love. Sir William and his wife and heir disappeared. Equally proud and upset at her husband’s greed and suspecting him of murdering her father, the princess, after giving birth to Sir Wrolf’s heir, left Moonacre Manor on her little white horse. Black William’s descendants eventually returned to living in the forest.