Harry Potter's Bookshelf (27 page)

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.

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

 

 

 

 

 

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.

In each generation a Moon Princess returns to Moonacre to unite the two sides of the family; her Moon Merryweathers with the Sun Merryweathers. And in each generation she succeeds, but only temporarily. She then goes away like the original Moon Princess.

Maria is this generation’s Moon Princess, and the Old Parson believes she can unite the opposites and resolve the contraries of centuries. Maria takes up her part as Moon Princess with gusto. On her first day at the manor she had discovered a painting over the fireplace mantel that “showed a little pure-white horse and a brave-looking tawny animal rather like Wrolf [Sir Benjamin’s lion in residence] cantering along a forest glade together.” She asks Sir Benjamin the meaning of the words carved in the mantel, “The brave soul and the pure spirit shall with a merry and a loving heart inherit the kingdom together.” He tells her it is the family motto and “perhaps, a device for linking together those four qualities that go to making up perfection—courage, purity, love, and joy.”

Maria, consequently, sets about uniting the divided lion and unicorn by linking these four qualities and undoing the sins of Sir Wrolf. She agrees to marry Robin, the poor boy who is the son of Loveday Minette, the Moon Princess of the previous generation who had quarreled with Sir Benjamin before her marriage to him.

The biggest challenge of the book, of course, is reconciling the descendants of Black William, the evil poachers and thieves in the Pine Woods led by the evil Monsieur Cocq de Noir, to the Merryweathers. Maria makes two trips into the forest to confront Monsieur Cocq de Noir and convince him to give up his evil ways. The first ends disastrously with the castle lord trying to capture Maria and Robin and throw them in his dungeon. Only the return of the first Moon Princess’s pearls, which he believes are his by right and proof that Sir Wrolf did not kill Black William ages ago, will make him change his evil ways. Maria finds the string of pearls hidden in the Moonacre Manor well and discovers Black William’s secret cave and ship that prove that Wrolf did not murder William. Eventually everyone agrees to reconcile.

All of the separated and quarreling couples are then united. Loveday Minette and Sir Benjamin, Miss Heliotrope and the Old Parson, Maria and Robin, all pictures of the lion and the unicorn, all marry and live happily ever after. Now that we have a basic understanding of
The Little White Horse
, we can see the many ways in which it corresponds with the
Harry Potter
tales.

The shades of
The Little White Horse
in
Harry Potter
range from the trivial hat-tip in items like living chess pieces to the scaffolding of the stories and the symbolism of the principal character in each. Ms. Rowling wasn’t kidding or even being especially generous when she said
The Little White Horse
has a “direct influence on the
Harry Potter
books.”

Obvious echoes include the evil lurking in the Pine Woods behind Moonacre Manor that Sir Benjamin tells Maria she is not allowed to enter and the Forbidden Forest bordering Hogwarts. The evil men in
Horse
’s forest are referred to as “they” by the good guys for most of the story just as He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named remained a nameless taboo through the
Potter
epic. More important, the great chasm and conflict in the world is between the descendants of Black William and Sir Wrolf Merryweather in
Horse,
which sees its equivalent in the Wizarding world divide between the Houses of Godric Gryffindor and Salazar Slytherin, two of Hogwarts’s founders.

To bridge this divide, both worlds require alchemical magic. Moonacre Manor has its quarreling couple of Sun and Moon Merryweathers (Sir Benjamin and later Robin as the sun, Loveday Minette and then Maria as the moon), the brave soul and pure spirit unable to join themselves into a union that will help them “inherit the kingdom together.” Every page of
Horse
, it seems, includes at least one and often-times more than one mention of this essential polarity of gold and silver, sun and moon, flushed and pale, or hot and dry versus cold and moist.

Harry’s world is similarly represented with Ron and Hermione as a sulfuric and mercurial quarreling couple in a world with a central division and antagonism. Both the Wizarding world and Silverydew valley require a savior from the “outer world,” and Maria Merryweather and Harry Potter could be fraternal twins in this respect. Both are orphans who become aware at a young age that they belong in a world hidden within the mundane existence in which they have grown up. Maria travels by carriage through the tunnel to Silverydew valley and Moonacre Manor; Harry passes through the barrier at King’s Cross Station for the Hogwarts Express train to Hogwarts castle and Hogsmeade. Both are secret passages to a more wonderful, magical place where the orphan-saviors have a great destiny.

Maria soon learns that the people of the village think she is the prophesied deliverer, the Moon Princess of her generation: “Be you the one, my dear?” they whisper to her after her first trip to the Silverydew church (
Horse
, chapter three, part two). Harry, “The Boy Who Lived,” of course, is known almost universally as the “Chosen One.” And this is only the beginning of their list of likenesses: