I have to tread carefully here. I don't want to stir up a hornet's nest. As all of the other 300 or so posts on this blog will prove, I have a great deal of admiration and respect for J.K. Rowling and I don't want anything I say here to suggest otherwise.
But... I can't help but feeling that her portrayal of female characters in The Goblet of Fire is somewhat problematic.
There, I said it. Sorry.
Hear me out on this. I think we can all agree that the Harry Potter series is overwhelming male in its main characters. Two out of three of the central child characters are male. The main mentor characters for Harry are all male (Albus Dumbledore, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, Rubeus Hagrid among them). The central villains are all male: from Dudley and Draco, to Quirrell and Lucius, to Voldemort, Snape and Peter Pettigrew.
Yes, there is Hermione... but, in Goblet, Harry admits that having Hermione as a friend is fine but is nothing compared to having Ron at his side. Read the passage that follows immediately upon Harry's successful completion of the first task of the Tri-Wizard Tournament. Though Hermione has stood staunchly by him through the trying past several months (while Ron has abandoned him in a fit of jealousy), Harry only has eyes for Ron when their relationship is suddenly repaired. In fact, Rowling herself completely writes Hermione out of the next several scenes.
Yes, there is McGonagall. But her role is almost always secondary to Dumbledore's role. In many cases, she is reduced to playing the stern school marm.
Yes, there is Mrs. Weasley. But her role is almost always secondary to that of Mr. Weasley and her boys. In almost all cases, she is reduced to playing the doting mother.
Yes, there is Bellatrix Lestrange. But she is never anything more than a lieutenant in Voldemort's army, overshadowed at first by Lucius Malfoy.
Cho Chang and Ginny Weasley are love interests and little more.
When you think about it, the three women who stand out most strongly as individuals in the entire series are Petunia Dursley, Luna Lovegood and Dolores Umbridge. And each of them plays a limited role overall.
If that's the background, let's look more closely at the depiction of women in The Goblet. Hermione plays a major role in preparing Harry for the first task but is then basically cast aside when Ron returns to the table. Hermione is left pursuing the house-elf rights subplot while Ron, Harry, Cedric, Mad-Eye, Crouch, Dumbledore, et al continue with the Tournament.
Even though she proves key to taming Rita Skeeter, the focus of the book with regard to Hermione is much more on her appearance (isn't she pretty now that she's shrunk her front teeth and put on a dress!), her romantic life and whether or not she is loyal to the boys. Even Mrs. Weasley turns on her in reaction to Rita Skeeter's fabricated article suggesting that Hermione has thrown over Harry in favour of Viktor. What ever happened to the strong relationship Hermione had developed with the Weasley family and the many instances in which she has proven herself to be a smart, capable and loyal friend to all?
The one female champion, Fleur, is a real disappointment in this book. She is portrayed as haughty and stuck up, known more for her looks than for her skills. Her performance in the first task is given short shrift while she fails to complete either the second or third tasks. Instead of coming across as a real threat to win the tournament, she is presented instead as a vain girl of limited talents who frets over her sister more than her own performance.
The fact that Hermione delights in Fleur's failures, going so far as to make fun of her for failing to get past the Grindylows, makes this portrayal all the more problematic.
Rita Skeeter is portrayed as a scheming, lying, deceitful abomination who will do anything to attract readers.
And don't even get me started on depiction of the idol-worshipping way the girls at Hogwarts react first toward Viktor Krum, then toward Cedric and finally to Harry when he proves himself in the first task.
The fact of the matter is that the female characters in this book gain their identities almost entirely as a result of their relationships with the male characters (they are loyal friends, love interests, mother figures, school marms) rather than as independent beings. This is not true of all of the Harry Potter novels but comes through very strongly, and disappointingly, in The Goblet.
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