|
What is Bartemia Crouch Sr's (Bartie to her few friends) real sin? Is it that she wronged the innocent, that she sent people to Azkban without a trial, and employed the Unforgivables? Or is it that she is a woman in a role that is reserved for men? The ambitious women: that creature with no heart who recurs again and again in fairy tales and mythology, and must be destroyed. Notably, she comes with that stock figure of misogynist literature, the weak, henpecked husband. Mr. Crouch, whose identity has been so submerged by the dominant woman that he is not even given a name, has been symbolically castrated in his marriage, powerless to save his daughter except by dying. The whole Crouch episode must be read as a warning lesson. This is what happens when women are allowed to get too uppity.
|
Previous Next 
