I have been VERY busy finishing the edition of a collective volume which gathers together my students’ essays on their experience of reading the Harry Potter series. This volume is called Addictive and Wonderful, a phrase borrowed from the essay in it by Marta Canals, and will hopefully be available on the internet soon. I’m publishing it on the UAB’s repository as part of my personal campaign to vindicate the free dissemination of academic work, or, rather, of knowledge.

The volume runs to about 72,000 words, a full book. I decided, though, NOT to contact any publisher. I don’t think this is a product to be welcome by a commercial or academic publishing house, I shudder just to think of the mess involved in asking Ms. Rowling and Warner Bros. for permission to publish anything on Harry Potter for profit, and I simply want publication to happen as I still teach the Harry Potter elective. My students are currently presenting to their classmates what they wrote for my benefit, and their reward will be the online publication. My own reward is how beautiful the volume is, trust me…

I’ll say more about the collection when the volume is out. In the meantime, let me focus on a curious point in my students’ memoirs about Harry Potter: the role of aunts. Though most of the 56 essays mention parents, to my surprise a very nice total of 14 mention aunts. Only 3 mention uncles… and very differently. I am an aunt myself, meaning that though childless and not particularly fond of children, I’m finding great personal fulfilment in the role (see the following post…). My four nieces are readers (not my nephew…) and it is for me particularly rewarding to choose books for them. I’m actually waiting for the eldest to be 11 to buy her the first Harry Potter book. After reading what my students have to say about aunts, I wonder whether I can still wait for 18 more months…

In Addictive and Wonderful, aunts are seen to do their ‘duty’ by their nieces and nephews and buy Harry Potter books for their birthdays and Christmas, sometimes following the children’s suggestions but also because they know Harry and seek to please them. In one case, a boy who was abandoned by his father with his great-uncle and aunt, whom he calls the Dursleys, is amazed when Aunt Dursley buys him a Harry Potter book –for that is the only real present he ever got from her (apart from socks…). In another touching case, the aunt is only a few years older than the niece and the first Harry Potter book is also the first present she gives the little girl. For the little girl, in her turn, this is the first ‘real’ book she gets. Other aunts, described as ‘avid readers’ keep an eye on what might interest their nieces and nephews and inform the parents, usually the mother. In some cases, it’s the other way round: aunts buy what parents suggest.

Four of the seven aunts described as ‘avid readers’ not only buy some of the books or take the children to see some of the movies: they share the whole experience, also ‘avidly’. A girl explains how her aunt got so interested in the books that she decided to learn enough English to read them in the original version; the girl followed her in this, borrowing the volumes from her aunt. A second girl is fortunate enough to share not only the books but the eight films as well with her aunt. Another girl names her aunt as an example of a person of a different generation also interested in the series. As proof that Harry Potter actually interested three generations, a fourth girl mentions a paternal aunt, who bought her niece the books on condition that she could borrow them!

Uncles, in contrast, are far less visible. A boy explains that his uncle and aunt, his godparents actually, gave him the first book as a Christmas present. The second uncle mentioned is employed at a printing press, and he simply gives his niece a pile of books, among which the first Harry Potter. The third uncle is mentioned but for exactly the opposite reasons why the aunts are mentioned. A girl recalls how her uncle upset her by declaring: “You’re wasting your time. You don’t really think you will be interested in Harry Potter in a few years, do you? By the time the last movie comes out you will be around 18. You will have long forgotten about it.” Contradicting her short-sighted uncle, she writes: “But I think that is exactly the reason why I feel so attached to the saga. I grew up with it.” A view most students subscribe.

Only 14 of the 56 essays are by young men, as this happens to be the ratio of men to women in class (actually I invited 2 students not registered in the course to submit essays). It is then quite logical that I have referred here mainly to essays by girls. The fact is that aunts are mostly mentioned by girls (boys very often mention mothers), and it might well be that we, aunts, manage better to form steadier relationship with nieces than with nephews. Part of that relationship consists, it seems, of making books available and even sharing them with our nieces. At least, I haven’t come across an example of an aunt sharing Harry Potter with her nephew, though the sample surveyed might not be extensive enough. Alternatively, boys who have reading mothers seem not to require reading aunts, whereas girls are happier to get as many reading females in the family as they can.

Ironically, though the supply of nice aunts seems to be quite satisfactory, the demand for nice uncles is by no means covered. A girl writes about Sirius Black, my own favourite character in the Harry Potter series and seemingly everyone else’s (apart from Hermione for the girls) that Sirius was “the uncle I always wanted.” Absolutely!! In the saga Sirius buys Harry a spectacular flying broom for Quidditch, but I can very well see him giving Harry… the first Harry Potter book and sharing the whole experience with him. The uncle I always wanted, indeed.

Professor Freud, poor thing, had no idea really…

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