The Narrative Structure: Magic Only As a Means
Many critics note that cheap popular fiction reduces every conflict to emotional squabbles, character flaws, or communication breakdowns—never to class struggle or systemic oppression. Such stories teach us to believe that every personal failure or loneliness stems from “not having grown enough”, rather than from being born into an unequal, violent, hyper-competitive social order. These works degenerate into vulgarity precisely because they abandon history’s dimension and simplify conflict into a private journey of self-discovery.
Some scholars argue that most mass-market and YA fiction employs what they call a “residual structure”.
This approach preserves old moral codes and panders to contemporary anxieties, yet it refuses to confront the fundamental issues posed by social change. At its core, the popular-literature market uses emotional storytelling to obscure the processes of social reproduction, convincing readers that individuals can transform themselves without transforming the world. In these critics’ view, the function of mainstream YA novels is threefold: to make “working-class kids” believe that hard work alone can overturn structural inequality; to make “middle-class kids” believe that failure stems from character flaws rather than social injustice; and ultimately, through “emotional growth” and “private problem-solving”, to neutralise any awareness that might point toward revolutionary change.
From this vantage, a “coming-of-age” narrative must rest on the trinity of social– historical–class conflict. Otherwise, it remains a mere “petty tragedy” played out within bourgeois domestic confines.
Some have noted that the wizarding community’s technology lags far behind contemporary Muggle society, but I prefer to see that as intentional. Rowling deliberately casts the magical realm in a nostalgic light—one reminiscent of Europe between 1789 and 1945. Observe the recurring imagery: shadowy, rain-slicked alleys
(Diagon Alley); trains bound for distant frontiers (the Hogwarts Express); song-laden taverns (the Leaky Cauldron); banned newspapers (The Quibbler); pirate radio broadcasts (Potterwatch); revolutionary cells (the Order and D.A.); feathered quills; dust-encrusted photographs; secret offerings of flowers in wind and snow to the nameless dead. Together, these motifs evoke an age of revolutionary Europe: the long streets, the rain-soaked lanes, and The Internationale on our lips. The Phoenix’s reappearance, oppression and uprising, romance and revolt, war and universities—all these threads follow a line of 19th- and 20th-century European literature.
If we strip away the magic and summarise the plot in social terms, the saga becomes clearer: two twenty-somethings in the resistance fall to fascist bullets, leaving an orphan raised as a servant—almost a slave—by his mother’s relatives. At school, he endures taunts from the elite (Malfoy and his kind) yet finds protection in his parents’ comrades (Moody, Lupin) and, above all, the headmaster (Dumbledore). He inherits their fiery zeal for revolt.
From Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix onward, the pattern recurs: a resistance group fights fascist resurgence; government bureaucrats, themselves infiltrated, mount purges and censorship in the educational sphere; they plot to arrest an orphaned hero and even seize its leaders. In response, students form their own cell, drive out the regime’s sadist headmistress, and force the old power to step down. The newly elected leadership fears grassroots defiance even more than fascism, and soon, fascists stage a coup to turn the old government into their puppet. Then the resistance group mounts an armed revolution to reclaim power while recruiting from students and training fresh cadres.
Amid this grand canvas, we find intimate counterpoints—Lupin and Tonks, for example. A working-class intellectual stricken with a rare condition and a policewoman fall in love and join the outlawed resistance. They marry in a humble inn in the Scottish Highlands. Though duty often keeps the man away, their love remains sweet. Then the country fully succumbs to fascism; their newborn child is their last joy. Both parents perish on the front lines of the anti-fascist struggle, giving their lives for a future they will never see. This story is not the staple of liberal fiction but belongs in the barricades, the field hospitals, and the prisons of the 19th and 20th centuries—not in white-collar romance novels.
Even the quieter moments carry ideological weight: Harry and Hermione, on the run, dance in a tent to folk songs spinning from an old gramophone—yet they are not lovers. Such scenes illuminate Rowling’s own convictions. Across the series, pure romantic love is almost always bound up with comradeship; sometimes they are comrades first, lovers perhaps later. Among characters of stature, fully depoliticised romance is virtually absent.
All these interwoven threads address the central themes of YA fiction—growth, trauma, love and death, the meaning of love in the face of mortality, and the narration of personal wounds. They lay bare the author’s mindset and her underlying ideological commitments.
From An European Tradition: Written by a Francophile
Rowling’s affection for France and its culture is no mere fancy. She has long confessed to being a Francophile. Even Gryffindor—her clearly favoured house—is the only one whose name draws not on Anglo-Saxon roots but on a French-inspired coinage. Though not strictly French, “Gryffindor” carries a hint of mediaeval European flair, linking it to French heraldry and the chivalric tradition.
Consider first the house teacher’s embrace of chivalry. France was the cradle of knight culture: the land of Joan of Arc and the Templars. French knights were more than warriors; they saw themselves as champions of justice, honour, and the Catholic faith, sworn to defend the common folk. The chivalric code—knightly conduct—ran deep in mediaeval French courtly life. The image of “a knight in shining armour” has long been bound to moral imperatives: protecting the weak, upholding right, and resisting tyranny. These very values animate Gryffindor’s spirit.
However, Gryffindor is not a solitary embodiment of nobility. It is a complex—sometimes conflicted—mix of aristocratic valour, populist politics, and outlaw lifestyle. Its members are at once elegant and erudite, upholding noble courage and honour, yet passionately devoted to freedom and equality. They defy convention even as they champion collective solidarity and mock authority. In this, they depart from the Hollywood stereotype of the lone Western hero.
In fact, many Gryffindors live more like Parisians than Brits or Americans. Across Western Europe—especially Paris—cafés have long functioned as hubs of political debate, scholarly exchange, and civic engagement. These public salons host conversations on politics, philosophy, art, and daily life. French intellectuals have been inseparable from public political participation; this café culture is a defining feature of French urbanity, where spirited discussions of current affairs and ideas are the lifeblood of society.
In the Harry Potter saga, that same ethos appears whenever characters engage in public debate—over the Ministry’s treatment of Harry in Order of the Phoenix, or in the secret D.A. meetings. These gatherings—in the Room of Requirement or the Leaky Cauldron—evoke clandestine cafés where underground politics and scholarly discourse flourish. The atmosphere of covert resistance feels akin to Parisian cafe life, where both dissidents and scholars might plot change over strong brew.
One of France’s most enduring historical hallmarks is the role of secret societies and revolutionary movements in shaping national politics. The French Revolution, driven by groups like the Jacobins, forged a revolutionary spirit that remains central to France’s identity. The idea of organised, often covert resistance to a powerful—frequently authoritarian—state has long roots in French tradition.
In the Harry Potter series, we see a parallel structure: Dumbledore’s Army and the Order of the Phoenix are underground networks fighting the Ministry’s oppressive policies, especially in the Order of the Phoenix. The D.A. mirrors French revolutionary cells—students from different houses uniting against unjust authority, risking everything. Their secret political action, conducted in shadows to challenge tyranny, resonates deeply with the history of the French revolutionary struggle.
The Ministry of Magic begins as an institution serving the public benefits, but over time it becomes increasingly corrupt and authoritarian—especially under the sway of figures like Cornelius Fudge and Dolores Umbridge. This mirrors the bureaucratic classes of Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, who often defended the status quo—using administrative machinery to hold power while suppressing revolutionary movements. In France, Germany, Italy, and beyond, the bourgeoisie—who controlled the bulk of the economy—wielded immense influence
over political institutions, even as they faced growing pressure from socialist and revolutionary forces.
One of the Order of the Phoenix’s pivotal moments arrives when Harry, Ron, and Hermione—and soon Ginny, Neville, and other students—found Dumbledore’s Army. They recruit pupils from every house into their cause, an act of collective political resistance to the Ministry’s oppressive rule. Their alliances and schisms with the Order of the Phoenix and the Death Eaters form a pattern of factional politics: different camps (Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, even Slytherin) uniting against a common foe.
The D.A.’s secret structure, its covert operations, and its commitment to defying tyranny echo the actions of the French Resistance during World War II, which operated clandestinely under Nazi occupation. Such grassroots insurgency—small-scale groups determined to overthrow a far larger authoritarian power—is deeply rooted in France’s history and culture, and it reverberates throughout Gryffindor’s activities in the series.
Moreover, France’s media have long participated in political struggle—through pamphlets, revolutionary newspapers, and later through modern presses. French politics has been inseparable from the press and public discourse; using media to sway public opinion and shape narratives has marked many French movements. This closely parallels the Daily Prophet, The Quibbler, and the propaganda battles waged by competing factions in Harry Potter.
In many respects, the political configuration in Harry Potter—Ministry of Magic, Order of the Phoenix, Death Eaters—forms a classic “tripartite matrix” of bourgeois bureaucracy, revolutionary forces, and fascism. Europe’s unique political evolution—shaped by the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution—made this triangle a recurring theme in its history. From the French Revolution onwards, the struggle among monarchies, liberal bourgeois republics, grassroots revolutionary movements, fascist movements, and bureaucratic states has defined European political life.
Compared with Europe, the United Kingdom and the United States possess few historical memories of “tripartite matrix politics”; such dynamics are rare in American history.
American revolutionary movements—those of 1776 or 1861, for instance—have always centred on ideals of liberty and self-rule, rather than on direct clashes among multiple factions vying for power. In the United States, though periods of bitter political polarisation have arisen, the nation has never suffered internal divisions to the same degree among these three distinct forces. For example, the American Revolution was a relatively unified uprising against the British Crown, and the Civil War was fundamentally a struggle between North and South—scarcely resembling the complex, multi-sided political battles that have characterised Europe’s history.
