Emily Cho
ENGL 207*
Dr Shelley King
The Dysfunctional
Family in Rowling’s Harry Potter and the
Prisoner of Azkaban and Hoban’s The Mouse and His Child
(Essay Topic #4)
Creating “worlds of their own, with particular kinds of boundaries separating them from the larger world”, families ideally provide encouragement and protection for each of their members (Handel, xxiv). In J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, however, the Dursleys and Aunt Marge fail to fulfill their roles as Harry’s primary caregivers. In Russell Hoban’s The Mouse and His Child, the father mouse is unable to give his child all that he needs and longs for. In these two children’s stories, the expectation that families will provide physical support, emotional support, and encouragement for their children is not met.
In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the orphaned Harry is physically neglected by his only living relatives, the Dursleys. Harry’s Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia, and cousin Dudley think that by endorsing Harry’s non-existence in their lives, their fear of non-Muggles would disappear. Treating Harry like a wild animal, the frightened Dursleys physically confine Harry to their home and do not allowing their nephew any contact with the outside world. When Harry finally runs away from the Dursleys, he panics because his family never gives him Muggle money. While forcing Harry to stay indoors, the Dursleys also encourage Harry “to stay out of their way, which Harry [is] only too happy to do” (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, 24). Shunning communication and distancing themselves physically from Harry, the Dursleys fail at being the loving family that Harry needs and craves. By giving Harry little to eat and old clothes to wear, the Dursleys continue to treat Harry as non-human, because Harry is in fact not an ordinary “human being.” In The Mouse and His Child, the father and child toy mice stand “upright with outstretched arms and joined hands” (The Mouse and His Child, 2); thus, the father and son cannot distance themselves from each other physically like the Dursleys distance themselves from Harry. The father mouse, however, is unable to provide for his son physically. In the beginning, the mice are both smartly dressed and they live in a beautiful dollhouse. As time passes, the mice’s clockwork deteriorates and their clothes become ragged. The mouse father makes no attempt to brighten their physical condition. Just as Harry in Harry Potter feels lost with no Muggle money, the mouse child feels lost at being deprived of clothing and shelter – the mouse child is alienated from the world because of his father’s inability to provide him with the basic necessities of life. When the mice are smashed by a cat, the tramp fixes them and “the mouse and his child [are] whole again” (TMAHC, 14). Are they truly “whole”? This family of father and son are still vagabonds – wanderers who have no place to call “home.” The concept of “home” is intertwined with that of “family.” In Harry Potter, Harry’s “home” is a prison; however, in The Mouse and His Child, the mice lack a physical “home.” Thus, the families in both stories lack something that is crucial to their physical existence. In order to repair the toy mice, the tramp modifies the mice’s clockwork. Instead of dancing around in circles with his son, the father mouse now pushes his son backwards before him. This physical act of pushing his son backwards is similar to the Dursleys’ banning Harry from going outside – these forceful motions reflect the families’ inability to foster healthy physical and emotional growth in the children.
Families are expected to love their members unconditionally, but the Dursleys’ ignorance prevents them from appreciating their nephew. Although they unknowingly protect Harry from Voldemort, the Dursleys pose a threat to Harry’s well-being by physically abusing him. A young and vulnerable boy such as Harry, although stout-hearted, can hardly love an uncle who advances on him with a raised fist and who says: “You’ll get the stuffing knocked out of you, won’t you?” (HP, 21). Harry’s Aunt Marge takes the Dursleys’ physical abuse of their nephew even further and unmistakably treats Harry like an animal. Not only does Aunt Marge force Harry to carry her heavy suitcase upstairs for her, she has also “whacked Harry around the shins with her walking stick to stop him beating Dudley at musical statues” (HP, 19) and set her dog Ripper on Harry until it is past midnight. This type of physical abuse highlights the problems this dysfunctional family faces. The Dursleys and Aunt Marge hide their fear of the unknown – Harry’s magical powers – by keeping physical control over their nephew. While not controlling as a parent, the father mouse allows outsiders to control his family of two in The Mouse and His Child. Day and night, the father and child mouse walk in ovals at the Muskrat’s bidding. This powerless father succumbs to letting outside influences to physically abuse his family and he does not try to reason with C. Serpentina when the latter refuses to help them out of the mud. The father mouse brushes aside his responsibility by saying, “We are helpless, as always” (TMAHC, 104). He watches helplessly while his son’s “glass-bead eyes [grow] ever dimmer and more tired” (TMAHC, 108). Although the father mouse has good intentions, he fails his role as a caregiver to his son by not finding physical comfort for his family.
Withholding emotional support from Harry, the Dursleys in Harry Potter exclude their nephew from the warm embrace of their family. Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia have pet names for their son Dudley, but they rarely acknowledge Harry’s existence, much less call Harry by his name. The Dursleys also never mention Harry’s birth parents and hope that “if they [keep] Harry as downtrodden as possible, they would be able to squash the magic out of him” (HP, 8). By stripping Harry of his identity, the Dursleys abuse their nephew emotionally. Before Aunt Marge’s visit, Uncle Vernon says to Harry: “As Marge doesn’t know anything about your abnormality, I don’t want any – any funny stuff while she’s here” (HP, 20). He continues to tell Harry that he has told Marge that Harry attends St. Brutus’s Secure Centre for Incurably Criminal Boys. This direct verbal abuse has a crippling effect on Harry. Although Harry hides his pain well under his silence, he longs for a real family, and he especially longs for his dead parents whom he dreams about. Without his parents’ permission, Harry is not allowed to visit Hogsmeade during the school year at Hogwarts. Thus, in order to get Uncle Vernon to sign the permission form, Harry must abandon his moral values and play along with the Dursleys’ demeaning lies about him during Aunt Marge’s visit. In The Mouse and His Child, the father mouse deprives his son of a close emotional bond by being laconic. What the mouse child wants and needs is a warm and loving family, and a mama who would sing lullabies to him. Although the father mouse knows his son’s wishes for a family, he does not attempt to fill the missing mother’s role and does not comfort his son with lullabies. While kept as Christmas decorations by a human family, the two mice talked with other toys, but rarely with each other. The adult mouse is truly a “tired father” who is so emotionally drained that he cannot satisfy the emotional needs of his “tiny, lost, and hopeful child” (TMAHC, 95). In Harry Potter, Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia withhold information from Harry, leading to Harry’s emotional turmoil. Similarly, the mouse father in The Mouse and His Child does not answer his son’s questions about where or what they are. By being ignorant about his world, the father mouse is unable to pass on knowledge to his son, and this sets his son’s emotions in turbulence, because his son needs a sense of identity and of belonging. As the elephant remarks: “Obviously the child isn’t being properly brought up…But then how could he be, poor thing, without a mother’s guidance” (TMAHC, 6). The elephant is not speaking only of the mouse child’s need for a mother’s guidance, but also of his need for the nurturing emotional love of a mother which the mouse child is missing.
How can Harry Potter not be emotionally hurt when Aunt Marge takes every opportunity to criticize him? Giving him demeaning glances and speaking derogatorily of Harry’s parents, Aunt Marge declares Harry to be “mentally subnormal” (HP, 25). Moreover, she continues to berate Harry’s parents and compare his dead family to animals: “You see it all the time with dogs. If there’s something wrong with the bitch, there’ll be something wrong with the pup” (HP, 24). The reference to dogs and animals does not cease, and it is Aunt Marge who is a beast. She takes aim at Harry’s most vulnerable spot – his love for his parents – by lying, “They [Harry’s parents] died in a car crash, you nasty little liar, and left you to be a burden on their decent, hardworking relatives!” (HP, 27). Such a huge emotional impact results in Harry running away from “home”, something that he would never dream of doing had his “family” been emotionally supportive. In The Mouse and His Child, the father mouse blames himself for his child’s wishful thinking: “It’s nonsense, and yet it’s not that child’s fault. Our motor is in me. He fills the empty space inside himself with foolish dreams that cannot possibly come true” (TMAHC, 35). The mouse child senses his father’s guilt and helplessness and, although the father mouse is unable to provide strong emotional support, the child reacts in nearly the same manner as Harry in Harry Potter. Like Harry who finally runs away from the Dursleys, the mouse child uses the energy that he has accumulated from emotional pain to take action. The mouse child tackles infinity, tries to discover the secret to self-winding, and leads other animals to freedom.
Believing that if “they kept Harry as downtrodden as possible, they would be able to squash the magic out of him”, the Dursleys try to squelch Harry’s ambitions and dreams (HP, 8). In a healthy family, the parents or guardians are glad when their children are studious. This is not the case with the Dursleys. They do not support Harry in his education, and they even keep his schoolbooks and wand locked away. To keep up with his academics over the summer holidays, Harry is forced to complete his schoolwork stealthily in the middle of the night. By never mentioning Harry’s parents, the Dursleys also discourage Harry from following in his parents’ footsteps. The Dursleys have nothing to gain from keeping Harry ignorant, perhaps except obtaining satisfaction from keeping Harry less knowledgeable and intelligent than their own dear son Dudley. This form of favouritism has the opposite effect that the Dursleys desired, for Harry becomes more determined than ever to integrate into his surrogate family – his family at Hogwarts. In The Mouse and His Child, the father mouse persists in telling his son: What chance has anybody got without a territory! (TMAHC, 45). Without their own territory, and without the ability to be self-winding, the toy mice are helpless. This, however, spurs the mouse child on to fighting for their territory and to searching for a means of becoming independent. Passive and pessimistic, the father mouse discourages action. He encourages his son to flow with kismet and let things be. The father’s failure to encourage his son’s progress sparks rebelliousness in the mouse child, who takes up the war cry and leads the wood mice away from their shrew captors. It is also the mouse child who rescues the Caws of Art from the weasels, and it is he who comforts his own father: “Just let it happen. Your line” (TMAHC, 67). The mouse child is wise beyond his years, absorbing the philosophical gems of the Muskrat and of Uncle Frog. He tells his father that he is ready to figure out the concept of infinity: “The child is father to the mouse. I’ll do it” (TMAHC, 105). His father, however, discourages him from tackling this deep matter, saying to C. Serpentina: “My son is only a child. Let me do it” (TMAHC, 103). This discouragement can be seen as a selfless act, because the father mouse may wish to protect his son from the harsh realities of the world. This statement, however, can also be seen as coming from a father who does not believe in his child’s abilities. After enduring the many years of discouragement from his father, the mouse child is confident he can prove his father and C. Serpentina wrong: “If I’m big enough to stand in the mud all this time and contemplate infinity, I’m big enough to look at the other side of nothing” (TMAHC, 110).
In Harry Potter, the Dursleys
do not behave like Harry’s natural family at all.
Forbidding Harry to talk to his neighbours and to communicate with his Hogwarts friends, the Dursleys not only discourage Harry from excelling academically, but they also wish for him to suffer socially. They have no wish to see Harry succeed in life, whether it is in the world of wizards or in the world of Muggles. They do not encourage Harry to learn about his birth parents, and they do not know much about their relatives James and Lily Potter either. As Sirius Black – Harry’s godfather – tells Harry when the latter rescues him from the Dementors: Harry is “truly [his] father’s son” (HP, 303). It is a pity that the Dursleys do not see the good qualities in Harry or in Harry’s parents. With their minds closed to the possibility of loving their nephew for who he is, the Dursleys provide absolutely no encouragement for Harry to pursue his life goals. In The Mouse and His Child, the father mouse turns his son down every time the latter asks for a family with the elephant and the seal, dismissing his son’s proposition as an impossible quest. The father is also pessimistic and thinks that his son should think in the same way as he does. When Mrs Crow asks if the toy mice danced, the mouse child replies “We used to dance” but the father adds, “But now we walk… and behind us an enemy walks faster” (TMAHC, 56). The father continues to voice his discouragement throughout The Mouse and His Child, saying, “Why not give up the struggle? I can hold on no longer” and “We had our hopes, and they are gone” (TMAHC, 118). When they are about to regain their territory, the mice meet Manny Rat. Instead of fighting tooth and nail for their lifelong goal of having a territory of their own, the father mouse whispers to his child, “Good-bye, my little son!” (TMAHC, 148). Without the encouraging words of Uncle Frog and Miss Mudd, the mouse child may well have faltered in the very end because of his father’s discouragement. Fortunately, like Harry Potter, the mouse child does not give up and he remembers these words: “Let us persevere even though the prospects are uncertain” (TMAHC, 109).
Cornelius
Fudge, Minister for Magic, says to Harry in Harry
Potter: “[The Dursleys] are your family, after
all, and I’m sure you are fond of each other – er – very deep down” (HP, 38). This sentiment
echoes throughout Harry Potter and the
Prisoner of Azkaban and in The Mouse
and His Child. “Fondness”, however,
can be seen in various levels. In Harry Potter, the Dursleys
are fond of hoping that their nephew Harry would lag behind their Dudley
academically and socially. They enjoy crushing Harry’s spirit by neglecting and
abusing him. In The Mouse and His Child,
the father mouse is fond of his little son, but he is inept at keeping his
family of two stable. Being a passive
and pessimistic parent, the father mouse, like Harry’s aunt and uncle, fail at providing
the mouse child with physical support, emotional support, and moral
encouragement. Although they are family, the Dursleys
and the mouse father provide a dysfunctional setting for Harry and for the
mouse child, forcing their children to grow up painfully faster.
WORKS CITED
Handel, G. Introduction to the first
edition, 1967. In The Psychosocial Interior of the
Family. Ed. G. Handel and G.G. Whitchurch.
New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1994. xxiii-xxx.
Hoban, Russell. The
Mouse and His Child. New York: Harper & Row, 1967.
Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the
Prisoner of Azkaban.