Molly Weasley
Feb. 14th, 2010 10:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vickyduckyI think it was at Christmas, quite recently anyway, that ITV showed a new dramatisation of 'Appointment with Death', by Agatha Christie. I can't now remember what (I hope it is onrushing menopause and nothing more sinister that is accounting for my current appalling memory and cognition)but there was something about the adaptation that made me think, 'that can't be right, I bet Agatha Christie didn't write it like that!'. This isn't the first time this has happened to me (Cards on the Table, for example)and so I bought the book and have just started to read it.
In my early teens I read a lot of Agatha Christie novels, but actually I don't think I can have read this one before, none of it is familiar, and in particular I have been struck by one of the characters. She is a pale red-headed girl named Ginevra. I don't know about anyone else, but this is only the second time I've come across this name, the first, of course, being Ginny Weasley. This character is also know as Ginny, but with a J - Jinny. Of course, libel lawyers take note, this could all be a huge coincidence. But what has prompted this whole long post is that this Jinny is part of a large family who are completely and dreadfully dominated by an overpowering, terrible, sadistic matriarch. Which has set me thinking about Molly Weasley and JKR's attitude to her.
Is she a caring, loving, well-meaning but, like all real parents, sometimes mistaken mother figure, or is she an overbearing, bullying harridan? I have fairly mixed feelings about her, mostly because I really don't like her in DH, and I know for her fans the 'Not my daughter, you bitch' line is the apotheosis of her fantastic maternalism but there's just something about it that rings totally false to my ears. But however I, or any other reader, felt about her, I always assumed that JKR had intended her to be seen as a Good Mother, but now I'm wondering if that is so. If she (unconsciously of course) recalled a red-headed Ginevra when writing the Weasleys, maybe she also recalled the malevolent matriarch. Maybe, just maybe, Molly Weasley isn't meant to be the perfect mother, after all.
In my early teens I read a lot of Agatha Christie novels, but actually I don't think I can have read this one before, none of it is familiar, and in particular I have been struck by one of the characters. She is a pale red-headed girl named Ginevra. I don't know about anyone else, but this is only the second time I've come across this name, the first, of course, being Ginny Weasley. This character is also know as Ginny, but with a J - Jinny. Of course, libel lawyers take note, this could all be a huge coincidence. But what has prompted this whole long post is that this Jinny is part of a large family who are completely and dreadfully dominated by an overpowering, terrible, sadistic matriarch. Which has set me thinking about Molly Weasley and JKR's attitude to her.
Is she a caring, loving, well-meaning but, like all real parents, sometimes mistaken mother figure, or is she an overbearing, bullying harridan? I have fairly mixed feelings about her, mostly because I really don't like her in DH, and I know for her fans the 'Not my daughter, you bitch' line is the apotheosis of her fantastic maternalism but there's just something about it that rings totally false to my ears. But however I, or any other reader, felt about her, I always assumed that JKR had intended her to be seen as a Good Mother, but now I'm wondering if that is so. If she (unconsciously of course) recalled a red-headed Ginevra when writing the Weasleys, maybe she also recalled the malevolent matriarch. Maybe, just maybe, Molly Weasley isn't meant to be the perfect mother, after all.
