Posts by author:

Arabella Figg

Family Ties in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix—Part 5: The Grangers and the Lovegoods

by Arabella Figg February 19, 2013

This continues a series begun last spring. If you’re new to this series, or wish a refresher, see Part 1–The Magical World, Part 2—Institutions and Groups, Part 3—The Trio, and Part 4—The Evanses and Dursleys for this series’ introduction and context. The Grangers The Grangers are Muggles, and Hermione is the only Muggle-born character we [...]

12 comments Read the full article →

Family Ties in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix—Part 4: The Evanses and the Dursleys

by Arabella Figg July 10, 2012

See Part 1–The Magical World, Part 2—Institutions and Groups, and Part 3—The Trio for this series’ introduction and context. The Evanses To understand the Dursley family dynamic, we need to look back and examine Petunia and Lily’s Evans’ family. According to The Prince’s Tale (Chapter 23, DH), Petunia and her younger sister Lily had a normal sibling relationship [...]

8 comments Read the full article →

Family Ties in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix—Part 3

by Arabella Figg June 13, 2012

After exploring family dynamics in Part 1—The Magical World and Part 2–Institutions and Groups, we move on to individual British wizarding families. The posts on these families will be shorter than Parts 1 and 2. To clarify the term “family,” I use it interchangeably in both the exact sense—family through blood and adoption—and broader sense—“found families” [...]

7 comments Read the full article →

Were You Formed By A Fictional Character?

by Arabella Figg June 8, 2012

According to a new study (now unavailable to view) from researchers at Ohio State University, “ cheap zithromax when you ‘lose yourself’ inside the world of a fictional character while reading a story, you may actually end up changing your own behaviour and thoughts to match that of the character”. As an article in The [...]

7 comments Read the full article →

Family Ties in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix—Part 2

by Arabella Figg April 18, 2012

This is the second in a series on the theme of family in OotP. Part 1 gives an introduction to this series and explores the global backdrop of the magical world’s racial/family divisions and interrelationship. A Note on Beings As we don’t encounter veelas in OotP and learn very little about them, I don’t include them [...]

17 comments Read the full article →

Family Ties in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix—Part 1

by Arabella Figg April 3, 2012

If Prisoner of Azkaban is about Harry’s father and Half-Blood Prince is about his mother, Order of the Phoenix is about family relationships. Family Ties That Bind, Choke, and Divide We have many families in Harry Potter’s world, but only four of the ones we meet are intact nuclear families—the Dursleys, the Weasleys, the Grangers, [...]

20 comments Read the full article →

May the Odd be Ever in Your Favor

by Arabella Figg March 9, 2012

This morning I got an email from Sally Beauty Supply. The subject line read: “The Hunger Games Collection from China Glaze. Now at Sally Beauty!” The message said: “Deborah, what will you be wearing to the opening ceremonies?” Although I’ve been aware of the nail polish and the controversy surrounding the color names, I’m still [...]

14 comments Read the full article →

T’was the Night Before Christmas (in a manner of speaking)

by Arabella Figg December 24, 2011

I first discovered this poem in the early 1980’s. It was in a magazine, credited to Roger Devlin, and reprinted from the Tulsa Tribune. There are differing versions on the Internet, and I think the copy I have was abbreviated. Below is the most accurate version I found. I read this aloud at a Christmas [...]

2 comments Read the full article →

← Previous Entries