{"id":89481,"date":"2024-06-04T03:00:31","date_gmt":"2024-06-04T07:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=89481"},"modified":"2024-06-04T10:22:20","modified_gmt":"2024-06-04T14:22:20","slug":"j-k-rowlings-most-convincing-and-true-to-life-villain-in-the-harry-potter-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2024\/06\/04\/j-k-rowlings-most-convincing-and-true-to-life-villain-in-the-harry-potter-stories\/","title":{"rendered":"J.K. Rowling’s most convincing and true-to-life villain in the Harry Potter stories"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m with Jon Miltimore<\/a> on this — J.K. Rowling’s most disturbing and best-written villain isn’t “He Who Must Not Be Named” or any of the other (frankly cardboard-y) magical villains … it’s Dolores Umbridge, a career bureaucrat who could have been drawn from any western civil service senior management position:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Umbridge, portrayed in the films by English actress Imelda Staunton, isn’t some apparition of the underworld or a creature of the Dark Forest. She’s the Senior Undersecretary to the Minister of Magic, the man who runs the government (the Ministry of Magic) in Rowling’s fictional world.<\/p>\n

Umbridge wears pink, preaches about “decorum” in a saccharine voice, smiles constantly, and resembles a sweet but stern grandmother. Her intense, unblinking eyes, however, suggest something malevolent lurks beneath. And boy, does it.<\/p>\n

“The gently smiling Dolores Umbridge, with her girlish voice, toadlike face, and clutching, stubby fingers, is the greatest make-believe villain to come along since Hannibal Lecter,” horror author Stephen King wrote in a review of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix<\/em>, the book in which Umbridge is introduced.<\/p>\n

Umbridge’s “Desire to Control, to Punish”<\/strong><\/p>\n

What makes Umbridge so evil that King would compare her to Hannibal Lecter, the man widely considered the greatest villain of all time?<\/p>\n

I asked myself this question, and I believe the answer lies in the fact that Dolores Umbridge is so real \u2014 and in more ways than one.<\/p>\n

First, it’s noteworthy that Rowling based Umbridge on an actual person from her past, a teacher she once had “whom I disliked intensely on sight”.<\/p>\n

In a blog post written years ago, Rowling explained that her dislike of the woman was almost irrational (and apparently mutual). Though the woman had a “pronounced taste for twee accessories” \u2014 including “a tiny little plastic bow slide” and a fondness for “pale lemon” colors which Rowling said was more “appropriate to a girl of three” \u2014 Rowling said “a lack of real warmth or charity” lurked below her sugary exterior.<\/p>\n

The description reminded me of another detestable literary villain: Nurse Ratched, the despicable antagonist of Randle Murphy in Ken Kesey’s magnificent 1962 novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Kesey’s description of Nurse Ratched conjures to mind a character much like Umbridge.<\/p>\n

“Her face is smooth, calculated, and precision-made, like an expensive baby doll, skin like flesh-colored enamel, blend of white and cream and baby-blue eyes, small nose, pink little nostrils \u2014 everything working together except the color on her lips and fingernails …”<\/p>\n

While there are similarities in the appearances of Dolores Umbridge and Nurse Ratched, their true commonality is what’s underneath their saccharine exteriors.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m with Jon Miltimore on this — J.K. Rowling’s most disturbing and best-written villain isn’t “He Who Must Not Be Named” or any of the other (frankly cardboard-y) magical villains … it’s Dolores Umbridge, a career bureaucrat who could have been drawn from any western civil service senior management position: Umbridge, portrayed in the films […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,4,8,28],"tags":[1137,1508,122,139,134],"class_list":["post-89481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-britain","category-bureaucracy","category-media","tag-harrypotter","tag-jkrowling","tag-movies","tag-psychology","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-nhf","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89481"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89481\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89506,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89481\/revisions\/89506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}