Chapter 12: Harry Potter and the Four Kinds of Love

I must tell you before hand that despite the title, Dr. Poe only had time to talk about three of the types of love (Storge, Phila, Eros, and Agape) and also a great big thanks to Alice of Rabbiton for generating most of the content for this post. I almost don't have to post sound bites anymore because of her semi-verbatum note taking. 
Without further ado, lets talk about love!


- V. B.


Love

"Love is most powerful when it is absent" - Dr. Hal Poe

C. S. Lewis vs. J. K. Rowling

C.S. Lewis wrote The Four Loves. The English language uses the one word love to describe four different experiences, and he compares it to the Greek language that has different terms for different experiences.

We keep seeing the theme of love in the Harry Potter series, and it’s considered one of the most powerful forms of magic. This is also why Voldemort will ultimately be defeated. Rowling keeps coming back to love, and we see it in subtle ways.

Storge

The first kind of love Lewis talks about is storge. This is a mother’s love; it’s the kind of protective, affectionate, nurturing, caring kind of love, and we also see this kind of love with animals.

- Mrs. Weasley loves her children ferociously, and she’s expresses her love through anger with her boys for taking the enchanted car. She was worried about their safety, and a mother’s love sees every possible scenario (which drives her crazy). She just cares, and we see it over and over again. Her reaction is a barometer of the depth of the storge, as to how a person reacts to any given situation. Love manifests itself in different ways. She seems to be constantly “nagging them” but it is showing a close relationship between the mother and the children.

- Lewis says there is a falleness to three of the loves as well, and a mother’s love can turn wicked and obsessive. Petunia is this sort of mother. Her kind of affection is creating a dreadful person in Dudley. This highlights the "darker side" of love.

- Lily Potter shows the ultimate expression of the mother’s love: to die to protect the child. 

- In that sense of the storge being the affection, the nurture, the caring, we also see Hagrid manifesting this in the stories. He’s generally this way to all students, but specifically towards Harry. This also extends to animals and the care of magical creatures.

- Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy love Draco tremendously. We see Narcissa playing a critical role in the entire series. Without her and that particular plot, Harry would’ve been discovered alive and Voldemort might never have been defeated. Anyone can manifest this trait. Adolf Hitler had selective storge, for he loved children and animals. Lewis says storge is selective since there are mothers who can care for their own children but not the children others. Unlike the Wesleys, the Malfoys they do not nurture their son they just expect results from him. They give him what he wants, but not the love that he needs.

-  McGonagall and Dumbledore deeply care for the students. McGonagall has this hard exterior, and we sometimes see it crack. She’s so gruff, but things happen to melt her. At the very beginning of the story, she is the one who doesn't want to leave Harry with muggles. She’s also always the first one on the scene. The movie doesn’t do this right, but when Hagrid lays down Harry’s dead body, McGonagall is the first one to cry out.

-Dumbledore is seen as a defense. Nothing’s going to happen while Dumbledore’s here. The students keep talking about the rage and anger Dumbledore had when the dementors try to harm Harry, and this is a new side of him they’ve never seen.

- It is said that Snape did not grow up in a good family situation and was not “well cared for.”

- Compare the Weasley family and the Malfoy family:

·      The Weasley’s have a lot of children, while the Malfoy’s only have Draco.

·      The Malfoy’s are rich, while the Weasley’s are poor.

·      The Weasley’s are always nurturing and caring for their children, while Draco is seen as an extension of Lucius and must live up to his expectations.

- Compare the Potter family and the Riddle family:

·      Harry and Tom are both orphans.

·      Harry’s parents loved each other, but they didn’t like each other in the beginning. Lily thought James was everything Serverus said about him. She thought that because it was true, and we see James change as he grows up.

- The Grangers are muggles, as were the Evan’s family (Lily’s parents). Snape’s mother is a witch, but his father was a muggle. The Evans and the Grangers are supportive of their daughters doing something different. The Snape family situation is quite different; Snape doesn’t grow up with a happy home life. We don’t see any sign that Snape had the kind of nurturing that Hermione and Lily had. In fact, we see in the pensieve that Snape had the appearance of a child that hadn’t been cared for. This is a big dynamic because it has to do with one of her biggest concerns: How you raise your children? 

This is a key concern for Rowling because she is a single mother who has to raise her daughter and provide for her. The whole business of the family is a huge matter. Rather effectively, she’s planting the idea in the hearts her readers of what a family should be like, even when it’s no longer portrayed in other medias because they are too caught up in what families do look like. The books were taken to the heart of a generation, and they create the strong expectation of what should happen and what we can do to make the world a better place.

Phila

Philia is the second kind of love. It’s considered brotherly love or friendship. Friendship is a huge issue in our culture, and school is a self-selecting society. People who are interested in the same things you’re interested are easy to find and eager to be your friends.

- Harry had no friends when he went to King’s Cross Station in his first year. He had Hadgrid, but the generation difference makes him a different kind of friend.

- Friendship is profoundly important, it starts in the first book, and it continues all the way through to the end. This eases us from the first stage of adolescent development into the second stage of friends. Harry has no parents, and he must move from the dependent relationships to the independent relationships. The kind of friends you have and the quality of those friends kind of determines how that transition will be.

- Ron and Hermione are Harry’s close friends. Lewis talks about different levels of circles of friends. He has close friends, then he has Neville, Seamus, and Dean Thomas. It’s a growing circle, and by the end of the book, we know who the larger group of friends are. There are certain names, however, that keeps reoccurring.

- When we get to the Order of the Phoenix where we see Dumbledore’s Army. Luna says that Dumbledore’s Army is almost like having friends; this implies that she’s never had friends before. In the Deathly Hallows, her room is decorated with pictures of her friends and the word "friend" written on the wall.

- Christ tells the disciples at the Last Supper that they are his friends, not servants. If you want to do something for God, develop the capacity to befriend people.

 In comparison to friendship, we have the dark side of it. We have the “unfriend”, which is a mock corruption of friendship.

- Crabbe and Goyle are not really Malfoy’s friends, but his servants. This comes to a head in the Deathly Hallows in the Room of Requirement. There’s rebellion, and they don’t listen to him anymore. They’re not really friends, and quite frankly they don’t really know how to be friends.

- Wormtail is a pathetic attempt at being a friend. He’s a betrayer, a Judas.

- Voldemort has no friends, and this is an indictment of his incapacity to love at any level. He uses people, and he is subhuman. There is no quality of friendship when it comes to the death eaters.

- Lewis wrote about the "inner ring." Sometimes you sacrifice true friendship to be in the inner ring.

Eros

The erotic form of love and passion is Eros.

- Ron’s regard for Hermione is growing. Initially, it doesn’t have to do with her, it just arises when someone says something about her. The relationship is still just pals, but Harry doesn’t react in defense of Hermione the same way Ron does. This sort of gives Ron away.

- As the books continue, the trio gets older. Those seven years pretty much encompass sixth grade through twelfth grade. In the books, we see the sudden changes with people over the summers. Romantic love finally enters in to the series, and we begin to see it in the Chamber of Secrets. Percy was caught kissing Penelope Clearwater, and Ginny has a huge crush on Harry.

- Harry and Cho Chang soon develop a relationship. There are all these things going on at the end of early adolescence, moving into middle adolescence.

- Ron soon grows jealous of Hermione’s relationship with Victor Krum. It then progresses another kind of level, where Harry and Cho kiss each other. This is “tame sex”. Rowling is setting the boundaries of what you do, and she’s reigning in the expectations, how far you go, and what is normal/how you should feel about it. What is appropriate, when is someone being overbearing, etc. In a weird way, she’s setting sexual morals, which no one else does. She’s redefining what’s normal, in its absence. 

(Although I see what Dr. Poe is getting at here, I can't agree with him completely. Even though kissing might be considered "tame," I personally can't agree that having high school sophomores kissing is an acceptable "norm" to say is ok. Of course I know that some high schoolers are up to much worse than kissing, but at the same time I don't think that kissing is an envelope worth pushing. My first kiss will be at my wedding, and I'm proud to say it! - V. B.)

- Ginny soon has a different boyfriend with each book, sometimes two or three. Snape had a crush on Lily the way Ginny had the crush on Harry, and he never, ever got over it. This goes from Eros to something deeper because it’s not just desire; she was also his best friend, and his only real friend. That’s a powerful, powerful combination.

- James and Lily had an ambiguous relationship. Draco Malfoy and Pansy Parkinson are (according to Dr. Poe) engaging in hanky-panky. Ron and Lavender Brown have a "strictly snogging-based" relationship.