Parallel Myths

Is there a Magical Link Between J.K. Rowling and A.S. Byatt?

I'd like to explore here a possible relationship between J.K. Rowling and A.S. Byatt which is of a parallel, archetypal nature. No one would have compared the two authors in the past as their styles are so different. However, shortly after Ms Byatt's seething attack on the Harry Potter myth I was drawn into comparing the two. The Booker Prize winner suggested the Harry Potter books had little depth and their enchantment only appealed to people who can't see past the hollowness of celebrity. I remember her review rather well as I've enjoyed both her Frederica Potter myth and the Harry Potter myth, and I don't see why one myth can't be enjoyed as much as the other.
Having made the obvious connection to Harry and Frederica I chuckled, went online and googled the names together. Strangely the only result which came through was a breathless girl saying she'd taken a copy of one of Ms Byatt's novels out of her mother's handbag and read some of it with much anger (she was a Harry Potter fan). Straight away she cottoned on to the Frederica/Harry connection and then figured the woman must be jealous of Mr Rowling's Potter being more famous. Within days of this mini trendsetter journalists moved in with the same argument.

But there may be another reason for Ms Byatt's enthusiastic critique of Harry Potter. It can be found encoded - almost hidden - in the emotionally loaded symbolism of her novel Babel Tower. This, her second Frederica novel, is set in the swinging mid-Sixties. Its heroine, Frederica Reiver, finds herself in two seperate court cases which culminate together at the end of the book. One case is for custody of her son Leo, the other is for Babbletower, a fantasy novel, which is on trial along with its author, Jude Mason, for obscenity.
As the court case for Babbletower unfolds, the emotional background for the novel's most nastiest scenes are revealed to be based in Jude Mason's own abused childhood. It was spent at Swineburn's Public School for Boys. Jude is described as an Erstwhile Hog of the school. This is the very same school - albeit a reformed one - which Leo will be sent to if Frederica loses her son's case: little Gryffindor will be lost to a potentially grim version of Hogwarts. This is the climax that bridges the two main themes of the novel.
Rowling's and Byatt's myths are like chalk and cheese: there's a world of difference between the chirpy children of Hogwarts and Swineburn's grim abuse. But symbolism is universal and can shift between children's and adult's literature with ease. It looks like Byatt was drawn in to Harry Potter because of her own emotional link to the same symbolism, via two of her main motifs. Her review may not have been based on petty 'jealousy' as suggested by so many columnists. Instead it could be seen as confusion and outrage for Ms Rowling having sent Leo off to a jolly version of Swineburn, in the form of popular Hogwarts. In Byatt's myth Leo is not supposed to go there.

There are deeper reasons then why Ms Byatt might be disturbed by Harry Potter. This frustration may also help to explain why an intellectual like Byatt couldn't discuss the real reason for certain adults making a childish fuss over Harry Potter - herd conformity, often bordering on mild hysteria. The reason some adults rushed out to buy the Phoenix within minutes of its release is because they're simple headed Munchkins: here comes Santa Claus, here comes the Good Witch of the North, here comes J.K. Rowling. However, contrary to what Ms Byatt says, the dull conformity of Potter mania is not driven by the original talent of Ms Rowling. (Much in the same way that Alec Guinness enjoyed the depth of Star Wars but didn't like peculiar, vacuous fans moping about in his garden.)
So perhaps the root reason for Byatt's extreme dislike of Harry Potter can be found in the symbolism of Babel Tower. If she hadn't written Babel, she'd probably have given the Potter myth the worst review of all - silence and indifference.

'Babel' is one of my favourite A.S. Byatt's. I like the way it manages to capture the bubbling up of the psychedelic current in the mid-Sixties along with the establishment's reaction against the new permissive spirit. Jude Mason's novel lies in the middle of both as a measure of society's new freedom of expression. After the court case, Jude suffers a breakdown having had his abused past exposed and relived by the trial. He retires to a flat at the very top of a block of flats. Living as a dirty recluse he is on the verge of dying, but Frederica comes along with her brother-in-law, Daniel Orton and together they carry him down from his tower and take him home to Daniel's bedsit. There they give him a bath, a rebirth of sorts and then he's dressed in Daniel's pyjamas and placed into his bed.
This is strangely similar to when Daniel Radcliffe received news of his first film role of Harry Potter while he was bathing. When his father told him the news he cried tears of delight into his bath. His standing up might be viewed as the breaking of his old embryonic sac - his life changing news needs little comment. While Ms Byatt either subconsciously or knowingly wrote a recapitulation of the breaking of the sac for Jude as fiction in Babel Tower, it's delightful to see a child symbolically rebirth himself into the world of cinematic mythology in exactly the same way. Later Ms Byatt was to suggest that there is little 'real' magic in Ms Rowling's myth of Hogwarts. Well whether there is or not, there's certainly something magical going on with Daniel Radcliffe and his ability to colour his life with synchronicity. Mr Radcliffe appears to dwell on conjouring magic at the moment rather than magic of the Jungian variety, but who knows, perhaps some day he'll admire the archetypal nature of his rebirth if he hasn't already.

Back with Babel Tower, Daniel agrees to look after a well scrubbed Jude until he's well enough to move on. In the last few pages Flower Power is born and blooms all over London. Frederica finally reclaims her son Leo and her own surname of Potter, and goes on to cohabit with John Ottokar. She prevents Leo from having to attend Swineburn.
Cynics might suggest that all myths have enough symbols crammed in to find correspondences with other myths. For sure, symbols can be compared from different myths with interesting effect, but what's so telling about Babel Tower is the manner in which the symbols relate to each other.

The key symbols of Leo and Swineburn culminate and bridge the two main emotional themes of the book. Likewise leonine Gryffindor can be seen as the main symbolic driving force in Hogwarts:

J.K. Rowling	A.S. Byatt
Harry Potter	Frederica Potter
Hogwarts School	Swineburn School
Gryffindor (symbolised by the lion)	Leo (Potter)

Babel Tower has a rich deja vu quality which leaves the Harry Potter reader chuckling, or at least smiling and scratching their head. Twin Riddle indeed. What I'd like to know is, did Ms Byatt actually have this knowledge of the loaded symbolism in Babel Tower when she wrote her funny review of Harry Potter? After all, not all writers know their own mythology in detail. Sometimes such symbolism can resurface in the most strangest manner to haunt our lives.

There's another coincidence which I find quite magical concerning Ms Byatt's review and it's one that involves a patchwork quilt. Byatt's review seemed to be timed to coincide with the release of Ms Rowling's Order of the Phoenix. She suggested the Harry Potter myth was a patchwork of 'derivative motifs' woven in a shallow manner with no real personal depth. However the latest 'patchwork' Potter volume contained a little patchwork quilt itself, sewn together by Hermione and gifted to Kreacher, the house elf. In a touching but typically funny scene, Hermione places her gift into his grubby tiny home. Nothing more was said of the matter and the reader was left wondering if he was now spending his nights snuggled up below Hermione's quilt. We are rewarded with more nutty Kreacher in the last volume of the series as he takes on a more heroic role, but we are never told what he did with hermione's quilt - however it must have made a mark on the wretched soul.
(By the way, if you're a fan of Kreacher and you also happen to enjoy watching Upstairs Downstairs, look out for the character Nanny Webster. The similarities between Kreacher and the nanny are frankly disturbing. But that's another story...)

Seeing as Ms Rowling magically bundled Leo Potter off to her own strange world for a while, perhaps it would be kind of her to ask Ms Byatt to the next Harry Potter premiere. In alchemical terms it would be fitting for Ms Byatt to accept such an invitation - this would help her to come to terms with Ms Rowling's unwitting adoption of Leo Potter. From Ms Byatt's view as a critic, the house elfs would be fun to watch if nothing else and much like real Scotsmen in kilts, the early elfs were rumoured to wear nothing behind their tea towel.