181

Chapter Seven
The Riddle of Fminine criture in
J. K. Rowlings Harry Potter and
the Chamber of Secrets (1998)
The second novel of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Chamber
of Secrets is a transitional novel. The heroic quest structure of the rst novel
reects male rites of passage as Harry receives his summons from the magic
world to enter school, when he also enters the wider world of capitalism
(money, trading cards, the best broomstick, etc.), peers and sports, and the
lineage of his parents. By the third book of the series, adolescent concerns
begin to predominate (Trites, Harry Potter). Whereas Books 1 and 3 con-
cern Harrys relationship with male mentors, Chamber of Secrets brings Harry
face to face with an unknown force that critic Alice Mills, in Harry Potter
and the Terrors of the Toilet, says is less tamable than the dark lord. Tell-
ingly accessed through the girls bathroom, the chamber of secrets reects the
unknown depths of adolescent girls, one of whom has opened the chamber
with her fminine criture. New to Hogwarts, Ginny Weasley reaches out for a
narcissus in the form of an old yet interactive diary; her confessional writing
crosses worlds, just as Charlottes liminal web writing has the uncanny ability
to give life. In Chamber, however, Ginnys ability to give birth with her writing
is dangerous. It awakens the Byronic character Tom Riddle, giving him more
and more power as her diary moans birth him.
The idea that Tom is an older, sexually mature Harry is implied when Tom
himself points out similarities between them; teachers also compare the two
boys, suggesting the novels anxiety about adolescent development looming
on the horizon. Indeed by later books, especially Harry Potter and the Half-
Blood Prince, Harry will himself experience his own desire for Ginny as an
animal within hima creature over whom he has little power. By embedding
Ginnys Persephone story in Book 2 of the series, Rowling uses the abduction
182 The Myth of Persephone in Girls Fantasy Literature
as a mournful farewell to pre-adolescence, after which the agents of darkness
ascend. Several of Ginnys feelings recapitulate Harrys own concerns in the
rst novelconcerns with being abandoned, with meeting wizarding expec-
tations, with being teased. But the opening of a bloody chamber suggests
further concerns with the demands of the adolescent female body, when its
heretofore sealed chambers open in menarche and in penetration. The novel
literally overows with wetness, weeping, and ooded girls bathrooms as
Ginny quietly begins descent.
The Persephone myth in Chamber of Secrets denes developmental rhythms
for both Ginny and Harry, who witnesses Ginnys descent and return. Hardly
a disinterested party, he has a vested stake in negotiating Persephones return
and exorcising the demon lover, partly to oust the rival and partly to pro-
long childhood and seal the chamber. Not coincidentally, in this novel Harry
nds home bliss and mother-love in the Weasley home, a home he has never
known. Like Alcotts Laurie, who more than anything desires membership
in the March family, Harry seeks honorary membership in the Weasley fam-
ily, which functions like the Sowerby family in The Secret Garden. They lack
the money to maintain their large family, yet they represent an abundance
of food, nurturance, and play for Harry. They embody the purest of blood in
the most modest of circumstance. Rather like the Sowerby children are com-
pared to wild horses or puppies that feed upon the moor, the Weasley children
represent pleasant pandemonium for Harry; coming from a muggle house-
hold obsessed with order and conformity, Harry enjoys the Weasley mess, the
recurrent explosions from the twins room, the ghoul banging the pipes in the
attic, and the animal resonance of a house that looked as though it had once
been a large stone pigpen (32) with several fat brown chickens roaming the
yard. The home signies not only acceptance of magic but of natural fertility
and nurturance of family chaos. For Harry, Mrs. Weasley is mother earth.
Moreover, the Weasley home represents for Harry unity between magic and
muggle worlds; Mr. Weasley reveres all things muggle. The chamber threat-
ens this harmony, harmony seen in the Weasley garden or enchanted car that
meshes worlds. Rowling repeatedly associates the red hair of the clan with the
sun. Ginnys red hair bleeds into her face, which is always ushing or turn-
ing scarlet, glowing like the setting sun (43). Upon news of her abduction,
Harry has a vision of the sun sinking, blood-red, below the skyline (295),
whereas Ron comments on Ginny being pure-blood. Ginnys separation from
home makes the sun set and bleed, but ironically it is Harrys arrival there that
ushers in sunset.
However idyllic, the aboveground world has limits. When Mrs. Weasley
wishes the boys to de-gnome her garden, she consults a book by Gilderoy
Lockhart, after which Fred whispers to Harry, Mum fancies him (36).
Throughout the novel, Lockhart stands for surface irtations, surface without
substance. The heartthrob of all the ladies and female students, even Hermi-
one, who is attracted to him because he represents her beloved books, he has
Fminine criture in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets 183
cultivated an image for himself by writing multiple textbooks and pretending
to have executed the magical feats described in them. He uses Harry to answer
his fan mail and to further his photographic fame, assuming that Harry has
similar ambitions for a purely surface life. Chamber of Secrets uses Lockhart to
draw distinctions between an aboveground world of irtation and an under-
ground world of sexual secrets and deeper emotions, where Ginnys writing
communicates things the aboveground world silences.
Even within the Weasley world, Ginnys silences and squeals question the
harmonic nature of home for her. The world that welcomes Harry is not a
world that nurtures Ginny. Hints of Ginny playing apart from Demeter
abound, even in the initial pages. Ginnys small squeal (35) upon seeing
Harry associates her with the cry of a pig in the house identied with pig-
pen in Harrys mind. This squeal substitutes for her ability to speak, just as
the cry of a pig traditionally substitutes for the cries of Persephone, which her
mother cannot hear. Ginnys clumsiness, her awkwardness, and her inability
to speak around Harry go unnoted by her family, except by Ron, who nds it
odd (40). Showing the insensitivity of an immature boy, Ron tells Harry that
Ginny is the rst member of a Potter fan club, thus displaying her crush and
disrespecting her privacy.
The boys absorb Mrs. Weasleys attentions. When they return with Harry
and the enchanted car, they cowered as her rage broke over them (33). This
trope of rage as female ood recurs throughout the novel, as compensation for
lack of control. Although Mrs. Weasleys rage at her sons seemed to go on for
hours (33), she immediately turns her polite attentions to Harry and offers
him breakfast. If Mrs. Weasleys rage at her boys preoccupies her, so does her
pleasure at their hunger, which she satises with her vast cooking. She does not
work outside the home, but her multi-tasking magic contributes to her status
as a domestic goddess. Her only daughter is easy to miss. Ron misses Ginnys
sorting at the school, which is telling. The Weasley home is a matriarchy over
which Mrs. Weasley presides; even her husband acts boyishly, enjoying the
adventure of the car before his wifes demeanor makes him admonish his sons.
In the newspaper reports about the enchanted car, Mr. Weasley makes no com-
ment but his wife told reporters to clear off or shed set the family ghoul on
them (222). Mrs. Weasley howls at any threat, denitely not content to tightly
fold her lips, a la Mrs. March. At Hogwarts, Percy continually threatens to
write to Mum if anyone steps out of line, demonstrating the trumping power
of her authority. In one crucial scene, Mrs. Weasley sends to Ron a smoking red
howler, composed of all capital letters and therefore resembling the disembod-
ied howling of Ginnys writing and the basilisks oating voice.
Whereas Ginny shares the important condition of Persephone in being
Demeters only daughter, she is in a world preoccupied with sons. Symboli-
cally, the boys have a large order for Lockharts books in their school supply
list, whereas Ginny earns second-hand robes and books. Ginnys mother says
that theyll manage the expense of Ginny starting school by Ginnys sacrice:
184 The Myth of Persephone in Girls Fantasy Literature
I expect well be able to pick up a lot of Ginnys things secondhand (44).
The placement of the line following the boys need for Lockharts books sug-
gests that the aboveground reverence for surface knowledge and for males
precludes the needs of Ginny and makes her vulnerable to the dangerous nar-
cissus, which, appropriately enough, presents itself in the second-hand books.
Toward the end of the novel, Ginny admits that she found the diary inside the
second-hand books purchased by her mother, (330), as if the mothers neglect
of Ginny creates the conditions under which Ginny claims an unwanted book
as her voice. Much like Mary of The Secret Garden feels she can claim a garden
because no one wants it, Ginny claims a discarded object with an embedded
connection to the mother as much as to the dark arts.
Although it might seem that the underground danger at Hogwarts is male
text that seduces the innocent virgin, the interchange between Lockharts
new, glossy books and Ginnys old, unwanted, second-hand books denes
the two worlds of Ginny as an aboveground world of male text/image and an
underground world of ancient, female, oral knowledge. These two worlds co-
exist in the very bookstore in which Ginny obtains her books and Toms diary.
In the shop where the star Lockhart signs his books, Ginny acquires her
second-hand things, noted by Mr. Malfoy as he reaches into Ginnys cauldron
and nds from amid the glossy Lockhart books, a very old, very battered
copy of A Beginners Guide to Transguration (62). Later we discover Tom
Riddles old diary is easily slipped into the pile, a symbol for neglected female
education. Tom Riddle lists Ginnys complaint about second-hand things as a
higher priority than her crush on Harry.
The association of the underground chamber with diary-writing and voice,
strong conveyances of female traditions, is strengthened by the novels obvi-
ous correspondence with Genesis and with the Medusa myth, as observed by
Michelle Yeo. We can also compare Ginnys story with Half-Blood Prince, in
which Harry himself encounters the risks of an old potions textbook; although
the oral knowledge inscribed in the margins of his book comes close to mur-
der, the association is hardly sexual. Unlike the near-rape of Ginny implied
in the imagery of penetration, pregnancy, and birth at the end of Chamber
of Secrets, Harrys use of Snapes old potions book advances his school career
and allows a communication device with a male mentor from whom Harry
has much to learn.
Embodying the blind spots of the sun, Lockharts presence and books pre-
clude acknowledgment of real dangers; for example, Lockharts books pre-
vent Hermione from packing her Hogwarts, A History (148), which could have
taught her about the chamber. The basilisk is a blinding agent, suggesting a
blind spot of the school as wellits failure to hear girls and recognize their
complex emotions. Even as Lockhart engineers a pink Valentines Day cel-
ebration, sending cupids after Harry in an insipid ritual, Ginny is staring
from the diary to Harry, looking terried (239) because she and only she
understands the depth into which the surface world cannot delve. The very
Fminine criture in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets 185
real opening of passages and chambers within or through girls involves the
recognition that pink Valentines veil underground plumbing, fertility, sexual-
ity, and menstruation, evident in the skin-shedding of the basilisk as well as
the aming red of Ginnys hair passing into the chamber. Upon his descent
into the chamber, Lockhart immediately loses his memory as if he cannot
exist there and as if, in contrast to the powerful memory of youth in the diary,
he symbolizes ageage that forgets the terrors of adolescence, age that cloaks
desire with vapid sentimentality. Further, Lockhart and the photographer-
boy Colin Creevey embody the dangers that may befall Harry if he skims the
surface rather than deal with female emotions residing through the pathway
of the girls chamber, where another girlMoaning Myrtleforever lives to
bemoan the story of the neglected teen girl. The haunting of Myrtle suggests a
vicious cycle of female tidal waves that wash over but do not teach schools to
listen. After all, Myrtles oceanic oods are only repetitions of Mrs. Weasleys
ery words, which turn Ron crimson as though a tidal wave had just passed
over them (88). The howls of a Demetrian gure are a xed feature of the
Persephone myth; in this case those howls have modeled for young girls the
only powers available to them in patriarchal settings.
Ginny, Myrtle, and the Recurrence of Weeping
Ginny is open to penetration by the underworld because, in her unconscious
view, her mother has deserted her and taken her stand on the surface. Even
as the Weasley family drives to the train station, it becomes evident that Mrs.
Weasley sees what she chooses. She wonders at the roominess of the car, blind
to its enchantments. The family returns for Ginnys diary, suggesting she is
already writing and that Tom Riddle has already been invited in. When Tom
Riddle reveals to Harry the woes of Ginny poured into the diary, the order
is: 1) her brothers teasing, 2) how she had to come to school with second-
hand robes and books (309), and 3) her anxiety about unfullled desire
for Harry. Harry is third on the list, and the rst two are precise mirrors of
Harrys story in the rst book, where he is the butt of Dudleys torment and
a cast-off, undervalued child himself. Teasing is a serious matter throughout
the novel. The dangers of teasing and neglect suggest that Chamber of Secrets
is a rewriting of the rst book from a girls point of view, when teasing can so
easily lead to sexual violence.
Indeed a telling parallel between Dobby and Ginny reveals that the cham-
ber of secrets is the secret of the dispossessed in even the best wizarding fami-
lies. The eyes that Harry sees peering at him from the dark recesses of the
Weasley home echo the eyes of Dobby he has seen peering at him from out-
side the Dursley home. Heading to Rons room, Harry just caught sight of a
pair of bright brown eyes staring at him (40)Ginnys eyes. Similarly, at the
Dursley residence he sees [t]wo enormous green eyes had appeared among
186 The Myth of Persephone in Girls Fantasy Literature
the leaves (10) of the hedgesthe eyes of Dobby. In the eyes and silences
of these gazes are secret chambers of feelings and resentments, not to men-
tion desires. Both gures worship Harry. Given the slightest attention, Dobby
goes into convulsions about Harrys greatness; merely asking him to sit down
sends him into orgiastic worship of his idol. The link between the two sets of
secretly worshiping eyes suggests a more meaningful theme, however. Dobby
is a houseslave of a great family. Dobby tells Harry of his pillowcase, Tis
a mark of the house-elf s enslavement, sir (177), which invariably calls to
mind Ginnys hand-me-down robes as sites of shame.
Harry connects Ginny and Dobby later, after Ginny has almost revealed
her knowledge of the chamber to Ron and Harry, but is prevented by Percy:
Harry suddenly realized who Ginny looked like. She was rocking backward
and forward slightly in her chair, exactly like Dobby did when he was teeter-
ing on the edge of revealing forbidden information (285). There are clues
about Ginnys knowledge throughout the novel: she looks pale (122), she is
crying (157), she is distraught (185) at the attack on Colin Creevey, and she
looks terried (239) at Harrys acquisition of the diary. These unuttered clues
of vast emotion mark the odd, doting Dobby. Both Dobby and Ginny are
inadequately clothed and improperly cared for in their homes. Both expose
the power dynamics implicit in pure-blood households that privilege certain
people over others. Dobby is forbidden to speak ill of his family despite the
second-hand clothing, and, although unhappy, Ginny clearly cannot speak
unkindly about a loving, close-knit clan. Dobby must punish himself for
speaking ill of his family; penetration by Tom, not to mention the ink-stab-
bing by Harry in the nal scene, seems a similar punishment of Ginny, who
has used the diary to speak ill of her family.
A major source of Ginnys discontent is her brothers tendency to tease. A
ood of teasing courses through the Weasley household, led by the jokesters
Fred and George. The way in which Fred and George immaturely express their
concern for Ginny makes Harry, who knows about victimization, uncomfort-
able. For example, when Fred and George try to cheer Ginny by hiding and
jumping out at her, and by covering themselves with fur or boils (185) to
scare her, Harry feels they are wrong and even Percy threatens to write to
Mrs. Weasley about it. Both Ginny and Harry nd teasing to be an insensitive
means of victimizing others. Percy ends the teasing by threatening Mum,
the ultimate weapon, but Mum is never summoned and Ginny never gets any
help from her brothers. Even when Ginny is about to reveal her knowledge of
the chamber to Ron and Harry, Percy cuts her off because he presumes she is
going to reveal his secret. However manipulated she is by Tom, she is heard.
The terrible effects of teasing crystallize in the gure of Moaning Myrtle,
who becomes a mirror for Ginny. Ginnys emotional ink is presaged by the
eternally weeping, ooding Myrtle, who died after retreating to the girls
bathroom when she was being teased about her glasses. Her sensitivity is a
source of humor in Chamber of Secrets, but her vulnerability to the basilisk
Fminine criture in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets 187
symbolizes the schools internal problems of hazing, victimizing, and bully-
ing. Myrtles wails echoing off the bathroom walls are similarly echoed by
the great ood of water that invades the corridor, extinguishes candles, and
leaves both walls and oor soaking wet (229). The diary is thrown through
Myrtle, a telling reminder of Myrtles symbolic connection to Ginny, who has
used the diary for weepy retreat. Harry does not understand why throwing
something at Myrtle might hurt her, interpreting pain as physical, whereas
Myrtle interprets the action as teasing, to which she was obviously accus-
tomed in life. Not only are Ginny and Myrtle similarly teased, but also Ginny
has unleashed a ood on the entire school with her fminine criture. Taken
together, the moaning of Ginny and Myrtle suggests female composition of
tears, blood, and abject uids of the toilet, which French feminist Kristeva
associates with the abject body of the female and with a semiotic commu-
nication system that erupts or overows into ofcial sign-referent meaning
systems (the symbolic order).
Myrtle resembles the role of Hecate, the moon goddess in her cave, who
marks Persephones abduction and Demeters grief. Hawthornes The Pome-
granate Seeds opposes the cave goddess with the sun god in Ceress search.
The dismal Hecate loved to take the darkest view of things (131) and
never would have a word to say to other people, unless they were as melan-
choly and wretched as she herself delighted to be (127). In contrast, Gilderoy
Lockart resembles Hawthornes Phoebus, a gay, light, frivolous young fellow,
[who] will only smile in your face. And besides, there is such a glare of the sun
about him, that he will quite blind my poor eyes, which I have almost wept
away already (129). Phoebus, a beautiful young man, with long, curling
ringlets, which seemed to be made of the golden sunbeams (129), tries to
remember Proserpina, but he cannot retain ideas other than himself, like Gil-
deroy Lockhart, whom the children consult and who claims to know all about
the chamber, but who clearly cannot face the dark wet places of female moon
goddesses. The melancholy gures embody memory, whereas Lockhart excels
in the charm of memory loss.
Hawthornes Hecate invites Ceres to share her cave rather than seek Pros-
erpina, just as Myrtle invites Harry to share her toilet, demonstrating Rowl-
ings warning against the internalization of victimization. Even while the
other ghosts are having parties and celebrating deathdays and hunt expedi-
tions, Myrtle is sensitive, emotional, and mournful, presuming that the other
ghosts call her names like fat or moping Myrtle behind her back (135). A life-
time of teasing becomes an inner voice. No diary can address her concerns; it
slips through her. Her unclean uids mirror the waves of ink and blood that
spill out onto Harry at the end of the novel, germinating from a chamber that
sends forth messages about pure and impure blood. Myrtles uids are equally
unclean because they are associated, argues Mills, with toilet training, with
an inverted bullying tradition in which a sexually aroused female dominates
bullying, and with the female body.
188 The Myth of Persephone in Girls Fantasy Literature
These unclean uids are linked to the amniotic uids of birth. While it
would seem that Ginnys blood is pure and her virginal status precisely what
Tom needsMudblood himselfhis point of view is not accepted and it is
his ink that stains. Not only is the nearly unconscious, exhausted Ginny giv-
ing birth to Tom Riddle in the bloody chamber, when we learn that she has
been pregnant (so to speak) but not showing for some time, but also birth
imagery recurs on the surface. When Harry and Ron emerge with Ginny and
nd Mrs. Weasley by the domestic reside, [f]or a moment there was silence
as Harry, Ron, Ginny, and Lockhart stood in the doorway, covered in muck
and slime and (in Harrys case) blood. Then there was a scream (327). This
birth is Ginnys rebirth; her mother screams and names her Ginny! The
striking aspect of this naming, however, is the way it reinvokes the mythic
elements of order arising from chaosbirth from a womans moans into the
civilized reside, blessings conferred upon civilized order.
As Harry discovers, the truly unique element of the diary is that it is
absorbent; like an enormous sponge, it remains perfectly dry even if u-
ids spill upon it. It is blank to Harry, Ron, and Hermione, but a catharsis
object for someone in pain. Its absorbency enables Ginny to go around the
school quietly. However, Harrys immediate attachment to the diary sug-
gests kinship. Like Ginny, Harry knows what second-hand status and mer-
ciless teasing feel like. Tellingly, Harry turns to the diary when he didnt
think he could stand Fred and George singing, His eyes are as green as a
fresh pickled toad one more time (240). His withdrawal mimics Ginnys
and Myrtles. Fred and George continually make fun of Harry as the Heir,
shouting in the corridors, Make way for the Heir of Slytherin, seriously
evil wizard coming through . . . [Harrys] off to the Chamber of Secrets for
a cup of tea with his fanged servant (210). Ginny objects: Oh, dont, she
wailed every time Fred asked Harry loudly who he was planning to attack
next, or when George pretended to ward Harry off with a large clove of
garlic when they met (210). Ginnys objection conveys the novels major
denition of maturity. Teasing is a litmus test. Characters who tease are
differentiated from those who are uncomfortable with teasing. Further,
treatment of Myrtle differentiates the maturely sensitive children from the
immaturely insensitive, which, in turn, teaches us how to read the story of
Ginny as a warning about teasinga cumulative, uncontrollable persecu-
tion that can open dark chambers.
When we discover that Ginnys writing has transgressed the boundaries of
the diary, appearing in blood on the very walls of the school, we realize that
the target of a victims rage grows. Ginnys feelings of victimization and aban-
donment recycle the feelings of a girl from fty years earlier, and the diary is,
like the chamber, a very old vehicle for unleashing repressed feelings, presum-
ably also for Tom Riddle, an abandoned child haunting the school. The school
has ofcially denied the existence of the chamber, turning a blind eye to its
recurrence, but the haunting of Myrtle in the schools plumbing attests to the
Fminine criture in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets 189
sort of peer problems inherent in schools, especially when teams, houses, and
families compete for recognition.
Myrtles dilapidated bathroomcracked mirror, chipped sinks, scratched
and dangling doorssuggests neglect of maintenance and therefore under-
valuation of female in the school. Although dead, her depression suggests
the suicidal teen, the dirty secret of a school placing high value on success and
glory. Myrtle weeps throughout the making of the potion, and the disgusting
polyjuice transformations indicate puberty (Mills 5). The composition of a
younger girl, Ginnys diary suggests a cyclical return of what the school wishes
to repressunruly feelings and bodies identied as female. Ginnys diary
overtly connects to Myrtles ooding when she tries to dispose of it there, but
although Myrtle cannot use a diary and therefore cannot be quiet, the diary
has really returned hometo the womb of the abject.
For telling reasons, then, Myrtle guards the gates of the chamber and she
bears witness to both descents and returns. When crying her eyes out (157)
earlier in the novel, Ginny resembles Myrtle, but upon Ginnys return from
the chamber, she practically becomes Myrtle. Her brothers response to both
Ginny and Myrtle demonstrates that he cannot really heed the warning, still
very much an insensitive boy like Fred and George. For example, when Myrtle
asserts that she would welcome a deceased Harry into her toilet, blushing
silver at her articulation of desire, Ron expresses disgust (Urgh!) and
insensitively adds, Youve got competition, Ginny!, a teasing offered as
inappropriate because tears were still ooding silently down Ginnys face
(326). Rons reaction of disgust and his joke miss the point that the weep-
ing Ginny and the ooding Myrtle share the toilet, like the desire for Harry,
and that mocking a brave female confession is not wise. Ginny bears a piece
of Myrtle, and she nds no solace. Her dangerous diary has been violently
stabbed and her voice cut off until she is once again condemned to silent sobs.
Although she has returned, it is not clear she is in a better situation, but more
able to cope with it perhaps. In fact, on the train home, she reveals that she,
too, can tease. She reveals the secret tale of Percy kissing his girlfriend and
asks her brothers not to tease him, knowing perfectly well that they will; at the
revelation of information on Percys love life, Fred looked like his birthday
had come early (341). Whereas Ginnys family is not going to change, Ginny
gains the ability to occupy a different place in it. She speaks and she joins
her siblings in ganging up on Percy, therefore deecting issues from herself.
Smoothly telling Percys tale to Harry, she joins the surface worlds view of ir-
tation. Given the equation of surface with Lockhart, whom Ron now misses, it
is not clear that developmental challenges have been effectively met.
Although he is older than Ginny, Ron isin the vein of Fred and George
very much a boy, and various images of Harrys resistance to development
similarly suggest that Harry, too, wishes to seal the chamber against develop-
ment. Rowling humorously suggests that the novel is moving toward but not
ready for adolescence in her portrait of the mandrakes, which are remedies
190 The Myth of Persephone in Girls Fantasy Literature
for the petried. Traditionally, the motif of being turned to stone by an effect
of Medusa signals phallic sexuality (Yeo 7), but here being petried suggests
arrested development, affecting those who do not look directly at the seduc-
tive basilisk. The mandrakes, which symbolize precocious development, are
remedies. They begin as babies, but they quickly become moody and secretive
(234) and they even throw a party (251), which delights Professor Sprout, who
argues youll know they are mature when they try to move into one anothers
pots. Harrys disgust with the mandrakes at the beginning of the novel evokes
his disgust with fertility and infancy. He is disgusted by the ugly baby with
green, mottled skin bawling at the top of his lungs (93) because he is not
ready for it. Whereas the teacher rmly slaps a teething plant to put it in its
place, Harry struggles with a fat mandrake who does not wish a new pot
who resists growth rather similarly to Harrys failure to understand Ginnys
crush on him.
The novel draws careful distinctions between who can and who cannot
appropriately address Myrtle. Whereas Myrtle and Ginny embody female
emotion, Hermione is immune. Hermione continually tries to appease her
and speak nicely and brightly to her, whereas someone like Ron, with less
manners and maturity, does not. For example, when Harry tries to solicit
information from Myrtle about the cats attacker, Myrtle admits she was feel-
ing too suicidal to attend. She then remembers, woefully, that suicide would
be impossible because Imthat Im Already dead, said Ron helpfully
(15657). This insensitive completion of her sentence makes her jump back
into her toilet with a mufed sob, but while the boys are stunned, Hermione
only shrugs and notes that on the scale of Myrtles behavior, this retreat is
relatively cheerful. The more worldly Hermione is neither stunned nor deeply
affected by Myrtle. She is the sort of stone-cold girl opposed to the emo-
tional Myrtle. Hermione brilliantly lights a waterproof re in the bathroom,
and Myrtle cannot harm her (183). Yet Hermione spent her own time weeping
in a girls bathroom in the rst book of the series, which critic June Cummins
has read as a transitional moment, possibly menarche, because Hermione
retreats as an equal but in the bathroom is rescued as a damsel in distress.
Imagery of the boys piercing the large smelly troll with their wands suggests
an encounter with something foreign, abject, and female. In Chamber, how-
ever, the opposition between Myrtle and Hermione suggests that they are two
sides of one coin that cannot make the transition to full sexual maturity. Both
are Mudblood in a novel concerned with pure bloods and heirs. Both are
therefore sites of illegitimacy.
Hermiones inability to transform into Slytherin resonates with the fact
that she has been called Mudblood; as a girl and as a muggle, she compen-
sates with determined skill and study. As she engineers the potion, Hermione
had a steely glint in her eye not unlike the one Professor McGonagall some-
times had (213); indeed she is equated with Minerva, female wisdom born of
Zeuss head rather than of woman. Even when petried, Hermione grasps in
Fminine criture in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets 191
her hands knowledge; the scrap of paper she holds tells Harry and Ron about
the pipes. Whereas Harry ies by the seat of his pants, Hermione deconstructs
the Magic of magic by her erce library research. While she can engineer the
polyjuice potion and help masquerade the boys, following the recipe perfectly,
she cannot make the transition completely. She can only partially transform,
and the front of her robes bulging (187), as she steals ingredients from Snape,
gives the promise of transformation, but the animal form that results suggests
her inherent limitations. Surprisingly parallel in blood and unsuccessful tran-
sition to adolescence, Myrtle has a privileged view of Hermione when Hermi-
one attempts the potion-induced change, viewing her rst and revealing facts
about her animal form. The two girls suggest that there are various ways to
cope with uncontrollable changes in the female bodya steely stoic stance or
indulgence in tearsbut neither is sufcient. Hermiones social maturity and
ability to navigate the male world depend upon denial of the secret chambers
of the female body. She becomes a stone unmoved by the seductive voice from
the chamber. In contrast to Ginnys silences, Hermione asks her teacher in a
clear voice about the legend of the chamber, suggesting that, in her view,
female secrets can be brought to light with cold logic.
However, even the stoic and proper Hermione has fallen for Lockhart
because he is a textbook writer and presumably a key to knowledge: We
can actually meet him! Hermione squealed. I mean, hes written almost
the whole booklist! (59) The use of the word squeal, identical to the ini-
tial outburst of Ginny in the Weasley pigpen, seems a deliberate repetition.
Even when Lockhart lets out the pixies and unleashes chaos, then deserts the
children, Hermione defends his pedagogy. Hermione outlines his lessons
in hearts, blushing furiously (95) when discovered, and she is reading an
unusual book for hernot a textbook or guide, but Voyages with Vampires,
a title suggesting a teen romance novel. Hermione wants to keep her permis-
sion slip to check out restricted library books only because it bears Lockharts
signature (164), just like she sleeps in the hospital ward with his card under
her pillow (228).
The contrast between surface and depth ever-present in Chamber of Secrets
is a matter of type of writingnewspapers and textbooks are surface, diaries
depthbut also a matter of writing versus voice. Lockhart has written books
of which he knows nothing himself, as noted by Ron. Hermione believes he
has done all the things claimed in his books, but Ron mutters he has only
said he has done those things (103). The diary, too, can reveal partial truths.
The voice, however, is a direct expression of desire and feeling. The voice is
always a crucial matter in the Harry Potter books because incantations depend
upon clear articulation of the desired spell. For example, when leaving the
Weasley home, Harry speaks unclearly and ends up in Knockturn rather
than Diagon Alley. Emphasis on the incorrect syllable can entirely change
the spell. The trope of the diary and the disembodied voice (250) roam-
ing through the school plumbinga voice that has refused the boundaries of
192 The Myth of Persephone in Girls Fantasy Literature
the bodysuggests its intimate connection to the moans of Myrtle, the tidal
waves of Mrs. Weasleys howler, and the cries of Ginny expressed through the
textual dark lord. The link between the basilisk and Ginnys voice calls to mind
Gilbert and Gubars interpretation of the Eve-Satan connection. Together, the
(parsel)tongue of Ginny and Tom runs riot in the school.
The Androgynous Voice(s) of the Byronic Hero
The disembodied voice is the voice of a seducer. Its quality jars with the envi-
ronment of Hogwarts, mimicking the sort of sexual predator most feared by
an academic institution. Of ambiguous age, it could be an adult or a symbol
for adolescence that has not yet arrived but wants very much to enter. The
rst time he hears the voice, Harry hears its sexual overtones, Come . . .
come to me. . . . Let me rip you. . . . Let me tear you. . . . Let me kill you. . . .
(120). It asks for consent, in the convention of the vampire that must be
invited to enter. Harry cannot confess to hearing the voice because he might
be suspected of being mad or dark himself, which suggests the posture of
the sexually molested child sworn to secrecy. This posture mimics the shame
Harry feels in Order of the Phoenix, when another disembodied voice tor-
tures himthe adult female voice of the raging Madame Umbridge. When
we learn that the Chamber voice speaks parseltongue, explaining why no one
else can hear it, it certainly seems like the voice has seductive designs only on
Harry, the unique recipient of a voice that can speak in tongue. When que-
ried about how she died, Myrtle says she heard a boy speaking in a different
language, and that the sound of the boy is what most got me (299). Harry
hears not a boy but a disembodied voice of unclear gender. This disembodied
quality is important.
While we know that Ginny has a crush on Harry, and while we learn
that the chamber has been opened by her diary writing, it remains unclear
whether this seductive voice is a repressed Ginny or the voice of the dark lord.
Vampire literature certainly provides a precedent for understanding the pos-
sessed female as sexually desiring. In Bram Stokers Dracula, there are really
two Lucy guresvirginal, pure Lucy about to be married to Arthur and
sexual, vampire Lucy expressing her hunger for him and his kiss. As pure
Lucy changes, the teeth looked longer and sharper . . . and [she] said in a soft
voluptuous voice, such as I had never heard from her lips: Arthur! Oh, my
love, I am so glad you have come! Kiss me! (194) This plea is mild compared
with the fully formed vampire-Lucy at her tomb, who invites him, Come
to me, Arthur. Leave these others and come to me. My arms are hungry for
you. . . . Come, my husband, come! (254) If the demonic voice is an inner,
albeit unconscious, voice of Ginnys, then the voice expressing desire for Harry
echoes the vampire story we already know, which ends with the need for males
to violently dele the womans body.
Fminine criture in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets 193
Tom Riddle blames Ginny for opening the chamberfor initiating the
relationship with the stranger when she opened her heart and spilled all her
secrets to an invisible stranger (309). Tom Riddle knows more about Ginny
than anyone else; in the manner of a male addressing another male about
how a girl was lured into a relationship, in order to obtain a desired endpoint
(usually sex), Tom describes more than once how boring it was to listen sym-
pathetically to her, but he reluctantly secured her trust to achieve his goal. In
other words, Tom admits to being a womanizer. Ginny is happy to conde in
him because she is isolated; he quotes her words, No ones ever understood me
like you, Tom (309). In his view, his everlasting patience is worth it for even-
tual penetration and control; therefore, in a familiar story, his sympathy is a
warped foreplay. The hungry look Tom presents to Harry suggests that as
an older teen, he is passing down unauthorized male behavior, teaching Harry
how to trick girls into sex. The way he describes Ginnys subsequent entries, as
he got her to act for him, sounds like he had her do acts of violence against the
school only so that her diary would interest him more. It may be that females
do not interest him at all.
The unconscious Ginny can be viewed as an object of exchange between
men, as both an exchanged body and a way two men exchange information
about being male. This interpretation allows a reading of Harrys stabbing
as the violation of Lucy in Dracula. Like Lucy, Ginny has already been pen-
etrated and possessed, but that is not enough. Not only does Lucy receive a
promiscuous infusion of blood from three men, as if they share her, but the
orgiastic quality of the dismemberment of Lucys body is a disturbing scene,
justifying a sort of gang rape:
Arthur took the stake and the hammer, and when once his mind was
set on action his hands never trembled nor even quivered. Van Helsing
opened his missal and began to read, and Quincey and I followed as well
as we could. Arthur placed the point over the heart, and as I looked I
could see its dint in the white esh. Then he struck with all his might.
The Thing in the cofn writhed; and a hideous, blood-curdling screech
came from the opened red lips. The body shook and quivered and twisted
in wild contortions; the sharp white teeth clamped together till the lips
were cut and the mouth was smeared with a crimson foam. But Arthur
never faltered. He looked like a gure of Thor as his untrembling arm
rose and fell, driving deeper and deeper the mercy-bearing stake, whilst
the blood from the pierced heart welled and spurted up around it. (259)
Vampire-Lucy, who freely expresses sexual desire, is unclean and must be
punished for the restoration of virtue. Similarly disturbingly, if we read the
diary as an important means for Ginny to express herself and what cannot be
said aboveground, it makes sense that Harry, like a pure noble knight, should
restore the virginal Ginny (the sealed chamber) and eventually marry her, just
194 The Myth of Persephone in Girls Fantasy Literature
as Arthur did Lucy the favor of stabbing her so that Lucy as we had seen
her in life is restored, a holy calm that lay like sunshine over the wasted face
and form (259).
Harry stabs the diary and enjoys a similar spurting: Ink spurted out of
the diary in torrents, streaming over Harrys hands, ooding the oor (322).
After this abbreviated violence, Ginny awakes with a faint moan and they
return to the wet oor of Moaning Myrtles bathroom covered in blood
and slime. The parallel imagery of the tidal waves of ink, blood, and Myrtles
moaning wetness suggests a common hostility toward the female body and
an intensely misogynist desire to penetrate and kill the disembodied voice,
if interpreted as expressing female desire. We know that the chamber hosts a
monster that periodically sheds its skin (303), like the female body sheds its
uterine lining, and thus the initiation of blood and concern with the purity
of blood make sense as a rendition of menarche. It would make sense that
Tom Riddle would seek a pure-blood witch who is menstruating but still vir-
ginal, the perfect chamber for his gestation, because he needs to rebirth him-
self as a pure blood. For Tom, the pure blood would be his maternal lineage,
reclaimed and strengthened through the pure Ginny. Tom voices his disgust
for his background and Harrys Mudblood mother, suggesting the chamber as
a vehicle for purifying an heir, Ginnys body a means to do so.
This interpretation is not complete, but it allows us to understand aspects
of the birth imagery in the chamber. In the chamber, the disembodied voice
becomes the voice of the vampire, who looks not a day older than sixteen
(307) although he attended school fty years earlier. Ginnys aming-red
hair and newly acquired vampire face, white as marble, and as cold (307),
signies her passing of blood to the vampire. The entire chamber becomes a
womb as Ginny lies inert and the boy inside grows stronger. The gestation,
however, is incomplete without Harry, whom Tom Riddle has most wanted
to meet all along. While Ginny faces a sinister maternity as punishment for
desire, descent into the chamber allows both Tom and Harry to revisit the
body of the mother. As Mills argues, [t]he abject horror felt by the boys
towards Myrtle is the obverse of Harrys fascination with his mothers body in
the rst book (7). Chamber of Secrets equates birth with monstrosity.
The confrontation between Tom Riddle and Harry revolves around their
maternal legacies. Tom sees in Harry strange likenesses, even their appear-
ance, but he concludes there is nothing special about Harry, only the action of
his mothers sacrice. The ght for the body of Ginny is really a ght for the
body of the mother, which is a ght Tom Riddle will always lose. If one charac-
ter is idealized, it is Lily Potter. Everyone is devoted to her, just like everyone is
devoted to Lilias Craven in The Secret Garden. The concept of ancient magic as
nurturance is equally pervasive in both novels, and both change undead boys
ideas of abject birth chambers.
Toms clear envy of Harrys mother accords with the myriad of abject birth
images in the chamber. The emergence of the basilisk from a huge black
Fminine criture in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets 195
hole, slithering up from its depths (317), suggests the great serpent is a
child birthed by Tom Riddle and Ginny, who have poured their souls into
one another and awakened the monster. What goes wrong with the basilisk is
Toms inability to control it. Tom forgets the healing powers of the phoenix,
odd for such a brilliant wizard, and when he commands the basilisk to leave
the bird, it swayed, confused (319), a miscarriage or sign of unnatural male
birth, void of Ginnys consent. In contrast, a womb comes to Harry in the
form of the sorting hat, which births for Harry the sword. The hat is a womb
that births children into their surrogate families (their houses), and through-
out the novel Harry consults the hat about his true identity. In the chamber,
the hat responds to Harrys youthful plea for help, contracts, and unloads
the sword, reifying his Gryfndor line. Harry remains the boy who lived,
protected by various agents of the mother, largely by resisting the adolescent-
rapist Tom and refusing the seductive basilisk. Like a hungry, blind newborn
that Tom the father cannot control, its mouth stretching wide, wide enough
to swallow [Harry] whole (320), the basilisk represents the devouring womb
because it was not correctly conceived. The abject womb imagery is echoed
when Tom Riddle, who believes Harry to be dying, says that in death Harry
will reunite with your dear Mudblood mother (321). Death to him is reab-
sorption by the polluted mother, but in the chamber Harry is starting to see
the difference between good and bad wombs. Signicantly, Dumbledores hat
is an empowering womb.
The discourse of racial and familial purity here is a British perspective on
Hitler, who so ironically valued Aryan appearance. The chambers reference to
selecting and sorting pure from Mudblood disrupts the idyllic unity of them
in Harry, who blends the two worlds but remains insecure about his skills.
Revisiting the sorting hat, which divides the children, is an important portion
of Harrys journey into the underworld in quest of Ginny, the pure. However,
the equation of unclean diary ink, impure blood, and abject orices with Tom
Riddle suggests a queerer way of reading the chamber.
The androgynous ambiguity of the disembodied voice, as it speaks to
Harry in the school, is the critical crux of Chamber of Secrets; if the voice is
really under the command of Tom, then its homosexual invitation is unmis-
takable. Homosexual overtones certainly appear later, when Tom comes
out of the diary to Harry and Harry alone, but they are present earlier. The
diary in Riddles voice asks Harry Potters consent before it absorbs him, and
Ginnys unconsciousness could signify her irrelevance as Tom seeks his real
prize in Harry. The language of shame and unnaturalness surrounds Tom
Riddle throughout the series. In Chamber, it is strikingly odd to hear how
the brilliant, sophisticated, clever, handsome boy (329) named Tom
Riddle resembles Harry. Comparison suggests the boy Harry might be facing
queer temptations. Harrys questions about whether he is true Gryfndor to
Dumbledores hat, nurturing property of a gay man comfortable with himself,
could be understood as the need to establish sexual orientation and avoid the
196 The Myth of Persephone in Girls Fantasy Literature
sort of shame Tom vaguely presents by being ashamed of his birth. Loyalty to
Dumbledore draws the phoenix, which helps Harry resist the pseudo-Gor-
gon. While Dumbledore cannot supply the sword (phallus), he can supply the
womblike tool from which Harry can draw it himself.
The sorting hat offers to Harry choice. It reminds Harry in Dumbledores
ofce that he chose his house. Dumbledore later tells Harry, It is our choices,
Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities (333). This
discourse of nature and nurture takes on the cast of sexuality in the cham-
ber, where Ginny and Tom offer pathways. As the chamber puts pressure on
the children to ponder what they truly are, Harry worries more and more
about whether he is like the dark lord. It is not homosexuality per se that is
shameful, but Toms response to male desire is. The series tackles many types
of difference and prejudice analogous to homosexual difference, and critics
observe the analogy between Harrys discovery of his magic identity and a
coming-out story (Bronski; Pugh and Wallace). Toms story in Books 2 and 6
reveal an aborted coming-out story, a story of a different, unsupported child
who turned monstrous and split his soul into various school objects, suggest-
ing unresolved school issues. Harrys choice to verify his Gryfndor ori-
entation, and to reject the abject diary with the basilisk fang, suggests on the
one hand penetration and expulsion of the abject female or queer, but, on the
other hand, the free choice of Gryfndor that Dumbledore encourages with-
out judgment. As the soul of Tom and Ginny, the diary has shown Harry more
than he wants to knowhis androgynous desirability.
His masculinity, his childhood, and the family he loves are all restored
when he returns Ginny to her parents. He, rather than Ginny, narrates
the entire experience, so little has changed in her treatment. Dumbledore,
taking the role of Zeus, negotiates her return by completely erasing Gin-
nys agency, demonstrating how completely the maintenance of institutions
depends on the sacrice of daughters. Yet clearly it depends on some sacri-
ces in sons as well.
Grounds for Negotiation
The ending reunion with the mother communicates Ginnys shame at what
she has expressed, at the world she has entered without her mothers knowl-
edge; like a classic rape case, the confrontation with adult judges is yet another
victimization. The scene resembles a young girl faced with the shame of preg-
nancy. Her parents astonishment and outrage mirror Demeters demanding
question of Persephone, did you eat the pomegranate? Dumbledore has to
remind the Weasleys that Ginny may need medical or therapeutic care, and
he ultimately ends the scene by stressing its not your fault, a stock line for
crisis counseling of rape victims. However, by representing the institution,
Dumbledore also stands for the erasure of female grief, quickly assuming
Fminine criture in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets 197
Ginny succumbed to a powerful wizard and needs merely a nice cup of hot
chocolate to heal. This only replicates the fact that Ginny barely gets to tell her
own story. Harry speaks [f]or nearly a quarter of an hour (328), while she
merely weeps.
Like Persephone when she gets to give her own account of how she was
playing with others and merely by chance came across the narcissus, Ginny
does have a few very meaningful lines that critique her parents reactions.
After a reside embrace of the children, Mrs. Weasley exclaims incredulously,
Whats our Ginny got to do withwithhim? (329) The comment reveals
a one-dimensional view of Ginny and utter surprise at any depth or transgres-
sion. Her father, however, interprets Ginnys selection of the diary as a direct
insult to his training of her: Ginny! said Mr. Weasley, abbergasted. Havent
I taught you anything? What have I always told you? Never trust anything that
can think for itself if you cant see where it keeps its brain? Why didnt you show
the diary to me, or your mother? A suspicious object like that, it was clearly
full of Dark Magic (329). His words sound like a comment about trusting
men whose brains may not be in the places you can see (what daughter has not
heard a similar statement from old-fashioned fathers?). In response, Ginny
explains her Winnicottian objecthow she found it inside one of the books
Mum got me (330), and how she did not believe anybody wanted it. This is
not a direct response to either parents concerns, but it does allow her to point
out that the diary seemed to come from her mother, that the second-hand
books are also to blame, and that she had every right to an unclaimed object if
her parents saw t to hand it to her. Similar to Persephones response of yes,
I ate the pomegranate, but I didnt want to, Ginnys response diffuses blame
and reveals that a more complex set of circumstances lurks behind selection
of any girls narcissus.
Yet the Chamber of Secrets is not exclusively Ginnys story; it is also the
story of a pseudo-mothers descent and return: Hagrids. Like the gardener
Ben in The Secret Garden, Hagrid has some past secrets, he simultaneously
invites and forbids the children knowledge, and he, too, serves dead or absent
mothers, taking in all sorts of motherless creatures. Just as Ben is a York-
shire man and therefore a little piece of the Sowerbys (earth mother) on the
grounds of the patriarchal space, Hagrid is a little piece of Weasley on Hog-
warts soil. Hagrid is the red-headed mother that Harry can nd at school.
Hagrid delivers and weeps over the infant Harry in Book 1, crossing gender
lines with his maternity on a motorcycle. Hagrid brings Harry his birthday
cake, and he continually adopts beasts like dragons, three-headed dogs, and
ancient spiders. With the tender heart of a mother, he cannot see children as
monsters. His cottage embodies liminality, like the girls bathroom, but one
that is warm and reminiscent of the Weasley pigpen. Like Dickon of The
Secret Garden, who would be equally at home in Buckingham Palace or in a
mine, says Dr. Craven, Hagrid crosses boundaries and worlds, from Knock-
turn Alley to Dumbledores inner sanctum. Symbolically, his own mother was
198 The Myth of Persephone in Girls Fantasy Literature
a giant, and the ancient spider Aragog embodies the unusual sort of mascu-
line maternity inherent in Hagrids composition. A surprising earth mother
with a wand hidden in his pink umbrella, Hagrid is a vehicle of negotiation for
Harry as deep chambers invariably open.
The clearing of Hagrids name from the terrors of the chambers open-
ing suggests compensation for the terrors of transgendering and abject womb
imagery we nd there. Abject births have no meaning to Hagrid, who sees
the human qualities of everyone. Though a phallic mother himself, though
transgendered, transspecies, and welcoming of monstrous or unnatural male
births, Hagrid ultimately had nothing to do with the chamber. He bypassed it.
He therefore exists quite apart from the vicious recurrence of moans, oods,
and tidal waves emanating from it. While developmental terrors of the bodys
plumbing seem hardly resolved in the novel, a symbol of maturity can be
found in liminal spacesjust outside the grounds. In the school itself, the
most Byronic character is an artifact of the schools history of teasing, too
Professor Snape. In contrast, Hagrid, if nothing else, teaches care of all magi-
cal creatures, even if its a subject in which few actually enroll.