Might be controversial but I remember the old days in the HP fandom when people claimed that Harry’s abuse wasn’t that bad, and I genuinely think most of that is down to the fact that JKR really downplayed the abuse in the books. I suppose you can argue that from Harry’s POV, it doesn’t bother him anymore because he’s used to it, but that doesn’t mean it should have been written almost as comic relief sometimes.
The way that it feels like literal slapstick comedy scenes were presented when Vernon Dursley tried to whack both Harry and Dudley on the head multiple times throughout the books, and that was seen as almost funny? Especially when it happened to Dudley (which is pretty fucked looking back on it), as if this literal child deserved being hit by his father because… idk he was mean and spoiled or something.
Like, idk if I’m just being overly sensitive here, but I don’t think abuse should be written as light-hearted as it was in the series, especially in a series targeted at children. I remember when there was a whole craze of kids wanting to sleep in their cupboards because of Harry, and I think when you write an example of abuse in a way that makes kids want to emulate it, then you’ve definitely written it wrong. JKR was shocked when she found out kids wanted to do that, but it’s not shocking to me at all, because even when I was a kid and reading the books, I genuinely thought Harry’s abuse was not that bad at all, because it was never really presented as such. It was mostly just written as an inconvenience, or claiming that nothing the Dursleys did could really hurt Harry because they were so “stupid”.
I just want people to acknowledge the fact that Harry’s abuse was severe. We can assume that the way he was treated by the Dursleys at age eleven was the same as how he was treated throughout his whole childhood from the age of one years old. He was shown no love, no kindness, no care and no respect. He wasn’t given anything, he was barely allowed to speak, he was physically abused by his cousin (and potentially by his uncle), he wasn’t allowed to ask questions, he was locked inside a cupboard, his meals were revoked and for God’s sake he wasn’t hugged once. Do you understand that this child had almost definitely and canonically not been hugged by anyone until he reached Hogwarts at eleven years old? This abuse started when he was a baby and while his brain was still very much developing, realistically he should be incredibly fucked up. Babies especially need positive interaction, and I genuinely don’t see the Dursleys ever doing that unless they suddenly switched their entire personalities when he reached a certain age, so we can assume that Harry’s development was severely impacted.
I know that the series was directed at children, so nothing could be too heavy, but at the very least, this shouldn’t have been written in a light-hearted, devil may care way. I should not have seen grown adults on tumblr claiming that other fictional kids experienced way worse stuff and Harry’s abuse was fairly mild. I should not have been a child myself thinking that Harry’s sleeping arrangements sounded quite fun actually. The woman who was apparently a huge advocate for stopping child abuse shouldn’t have written a book where actual child abuse is minimised and viewed as “not a big deal” and mostly just an inconvenience, regardless of whose point of view it was from (we literally could have had a scene where Harry talks about his childhood to a friend or teacher, and they would look at him like “Harry that is not normal nor okay” but his treatment by the Dursleys is basically forgotten about the second he steps foot in Hogwarts because, you know… it’s not useful to the plot or anything).
Idk, it might be a nit-pick, but I really don’t like how Harry’s abuse (and Dudley’s abuse, but no one’s ready to talk about that) is written in the books, and it’s just another example of JKR’s very poor writing in my opinion.
