Content area
Full Text
Bell, Christopher E., ed. Hermione Granger Saves the World: Essays on the Feminist Heroine of Hogwarts. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2012. 223 pp. ISBN 978-0-7864-7137-9. $40.00.
A great deal of thanks needs to be given to Christopher Bell, the editor of Hermione Granger Saves the World: Essays on the Feminist Heroine of Hogwarts. He invites every reader to recognize the dialectical tension between masculine and feminine cultures and participate in the struggle for women's rights within patriarchal societies. His hope is that his collection, "will demystify and contextualize feminism, proving to the reader that regardless of race, class, geographical location, sexual orientation, education, life station, or yes, even gender, you too can be a feminist" (Bell 12).
Bell's introduction, written with Julie Alexander, sets the stage for a collection of essays intended to engage three types of readers: young academics, casual intellectuals, and those sitting on the fence about feminism. Over the course of Hermbne Granger, the reader is exposed to an amalgam of solid textual analysis, light theoretical probing and, in some rare cases, unfortunately vague and disappointingly shallow book reports. It is important to note, however, that the vast majority of this book is fun, quirky, and intellectually stimulating. If one has not taken the time to think about the implications of Hermione Granger's character are in the past, chances are likely that he or she will take the opportunity after reading some of these essays.
Bell's strategic organization of the eleven essays within this book allows the writings to build on one another and develop some of the more heady concepts within feminist theory. He breaks the collection into five main parts, each containing either two or three essays: the first sixty pages after Bell's introduction of the text, "Hermione: An Introduction," is a primer on Granger as a character, dissecting both film and book portrayals in three essays. The second section deals with Granger as a woman ("Hermione as Woman"), followed by the third section focusing on her educational pursuits ("Hermione as Scholar"). Some of the most coherent arguments and page-turning chapters reside comfortably in the second, third, and fourth sections of the book. In the fourth section, "Hermione as Warrior," the essays revolve around Granger as a...