ABSTRACT
Despite the global popularity of the Potter novels, Rowling’s work has attracted fi erce criticism from many diff erent quarters. Writing in the New York Times, A.S. Byatt criticised J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series and its readers, describing the former as a ‘patchwork’ of ‘derivative motifs’, and the latter as ‘people whose imaginative lives are confi ned to TV cartoons, and the exaggerated . . . mirror-worlds of soaps, reality TV and celebrity gossip’.1 Frank Furedi argued that the success of Harry Potter was symptomatic of a general, cultural infantilism in late twentieth century and millennial Western society.2 Harold Bloom, Byatt, Furedi and others would have us believe that for adults to read such lightweight fi ction is degrading and infantilising. But are J.K. Rowling’s Potter novels really lightweight, and are readers really infantilised by engaging with them? It would seem obvious, to anyone who has actually read it, that the series begins lightly but darkens considerably as it progresses. My argument in this chapter is twofold: that the lightness of the early books is a quality for which they should be celebrated, and that the increasing darkness and seriousness of the later books demonstrate Rowling sharpening her critique of some aspects of contemporary life, while never betraying the original vision expressed at the outset. 3 Before coming on to discuss this thesis, however, I would like to explore the charge of ‘lightness’ and ‘infantilism’ in more depth, since this is an accusation frequently aired in debates about adults reading children’s fi ction in general.
