I n t e r p r e t a t i o n1 7 3Evangelicals made, treating their offspring as wayward and unre-
generate. It can also be found in some modern horror movies.
There is something about the otherness of children that makes us
think of aliens and evil spirits, as in ET and The Exorcist. The child
as spooky is the modern equivalent of the child as sinful. Freud
gave the name of the uncanny to things which were both strange
and familiar. Yet if it is a mistake to imagine that all children spew
multicoloured vomit at the slightest opportunity, it is equally a
mistake to treat them as pocket- sized adults, as people did before
what has been called the invention of childhood. (Children in
English literature begin with Blake and Wordsworth.) In the same
way, differences between ethnic groups need to be registered, but
not to the point where one makes a fetish of otherness and
obscures the vast amount they have in common.
Another noteworthy aspect of the books is the number of sylla-
bles in the names of the major characters. In England, upper- class
men and women tend to have longer names than their working-
class compatriots. A profusion of syllables can signal other kinds of
affluence. Someone named Fiona Fortescue- Arbuthnot- Smythe is
unlikely to hail from the backstreets of Liverpool, while someone
called Joe Doyle might well do so. Hermione Granger, whose first
name is fairly common in English upper- middle- class circles, and
whose second name suggests a large country house (grange), is the
most refined of the trio of protagonists, with no fewer than six
syllables to her name. (Some Americans mistakenly pronounce
‘Hermione’ as having only three.) Harry Potter, the conventionally
middle- class hero, has four neatly balanced syllables, which is
neither excessive nor ungenerous, while the plebeian Ron Weasley
has a niggardly three. His surname evokes the word ‘weasel’,
meaning a treacherous or deceitful individual. Weasels are not