Hermione helps Ron and Harry with their homework
Wednesday
Following Monday night’s presidential debate, columnist Paul Waldman compared Hillary Clinton to Hermione Granger. I agree that there are many resemblances, but I find one important difference.
First, here’s Waldman:
Debates demand preparation, and for her whole life, Clinton has been nothing if not prepared. She may not dazzle you with improvisational genius, but she will have spent more time doing her homework than anyone else in class (it’s no accident that people keep comparing her to Hermione Granger from Harry Potter). She’s ready to discuss any policy area, and she’s usually at her best when speaking extemporaneously. And once she makes a plan, she knows how to stick to it.
And here’s Hermione in The Sorcerer’s Stone:
I’ve learned all our course books by heart, of course. I just hope it will be enough.
Hermione sometimes gets rewarded for her work, as in this compliment from Lupin in Prisoner of Azkaban:
You’re the cleverest witch of your age I’ve ever met, Hermione.
At other times, she gets knocked down:
“That is the second time you have spoken out of turn, Miss Granger,” said Snape coolly. “Five more points from Gryffindor for being an insufferable know-it-all.”
Sometimes even Hermione seems to take on more than she can handle:
“Hermione, said Ron, frowning as he looked over her shoulder, “they’ve messed up your schedule. Look—they’ve got you down for about ten subjects a day. There isn’t enough time.”
“I’ll manage. I’ve fixed it all with Professor McGonagall.”
“But look,” said Ron, laughing, “see this morning? Nine o’clock. Divination. And underneath, nine o’clock. Muggle Studies. And”—Ron leaned closer to the schedule , disbelieving—“look—underneath that, Arithmancy, nine o’clock. I mean, I know you’re good, Hermione, but no one’s that good. How’re you supposed to be in three classes at once?”…
“On Ron, what’s it to you if my schedule’s a bit full?” Hermione snapped. “I told you, I’ve fixed it all with Professor McGonagall.”
Hermione, we eventually learn, pulls off the feat by means of a “Time-Turner,” which enables her to go back in time.
It’s not surprising that the lead female teacher would aid Hermione. J. K. Rowling, who used her initials so that people wouldn’t know that she was a woman, knows–as McGonagall knows–that sometimes women have to work three times as hard as men to succeed.
A number of commentators, observing the debate, saw Donald Trump as the entitled jock who thinks he can cram the night before the exam (although Trump didn’t even study the night before!) and Clinton as the honors student who has been studying for weeks and tells you about it. Chuck Todd of NBC even accused her of having overprepared. Such criticism, Clare Foran of the Athlantic observes, stems in part
from her willingness to transgress expectations of women. In 2013, Stanford University sociologist Marianne Cooper wrote in the Harvard Business Review that “high-achieving women experience social backlash because their very success—and specifically the behaviors that created that success—violates our expectations about how women are supposed to behave. Women are experienced to be nice, warm, friendly, and nurturing. Thus, if a woman acts assertively or competitively … she is deviating from the social script that dictates how she ‘should’ behave.” This backlash is likely at play to some extent in negative assessments of Clinton. Preparation suggests determination, assertiveness, and a desire for power that does not mesh with old-school gender stereotypes.
And:
It is impossible to separate criticism over Clinton’s ambition from the vast gender disparities that exist in politics. There is no feasible way that the first woman to win a major-party nomination could be a “natural” at trying to win an office that only men have won; there’s nothing effortless about trying to break a long-established mold in American politics. So it’s not hard to see why Clinton might feel pressure to demonstrate that she’s more prepared than her male counterpart—to prove that she’s ready for a position that American voters never before deemed a woman adequately qualified to hold.
And now for the difference I promised. Hillary is not willing to do one thing that Hermione does, which is sacrifice her own ambition while enabling that of others:
“How would it be,” she asked them coldly as they left the classroom for break (Binns drifting away through the blackboard), “if I refused to lend you my notes this year?”
“We’d fail our O.W.L.s,” said Ron. “If you want that on your conscience, Hermione…”
“Well, you’d deserve it,” she snapped. “You don’t even try to listen to him, do you?”
“We do try,” said Ron. “We just haven’t got your brains or your memory or your concentration – you’re just cleverer than we are – is it nice to rub it in?”
“Oh, don’t give me that rubbish,” said Hermione, but she looked slightly mollified as she led the way out into the damp courtyard.
So Harry gets to be the hero of the series and Hermione is relegated to sidekick. Hillary wants to change that.
Further thought: Clinton also resembles Hermione in her concern for working women with children and for the mentally disabled. In Hermione’s case, she is an outspoken advocate for house elves. Just as Clinton boldly declared, in the 1995 Bejing Conference on Women’s Rights, that “women’s rights are human rights,” so Hermione agitates for Dobby and the others while her fellow wizards fail to see a problem.
Yet another thought: I just realize that the debate revealed another link between Hermione’s advocacy of house elves rights and Hillary Clinton work on behalf of women. Clinton noted that one of the slurs that Trump once directed against Alicia Machado, the former Miss Universe from Venezuela, was “Miss Housekeeper.” Here he would have been playing on stereotypes of Latina women as housekeepers.
Just as Hermione, who is the child of Muggles (non-magical humans), identifies with another oppressed group, so is Hillary particularly sensitive to the plight of lower class women. Hermione knows what it is like to be spurned and fights even harder, both for herself and others. Jia Tolentino of the New Yorker points out that such a dynamic is also working with Hillary:
What Hillary actually has to do—and what she has done so far—is make an excruciating series of adjustments around the reality that her opponent’s sexism and racism, his petulance and unbalanced demeanor, has not sunk him, and has, in all likelihood, helped him along. But when the two candidates are next to each other, Clinton’s surreal, specific disadvantages in this Presidential race start to pay out their own dividends. Although she would never talk about it in the way that Trump discusses the victimization of being audited, Clinton carries the ever-expanding knowledge of what it’s like to be dismissed, disrespected, and treated unfairly…Trump’s candidacy may be anomalous, but his tactics, for Clinton, are predictable, even familiar. This is precisely why she was so calm and steely last night—so Presidential. It’s why she can express genuine solidarity with people like Alicia Machado, people whom Trump can barely see.