Bloody brothers and suffering sisters: The Duchess of Malfi and Harry Potter

In this chapter, the author suggests that siblings in the Harry Potter books are often a source of tension and trouble, and that at least some of the sibling relationships in the book are explicitly and emphatically pathologised in ways which, she propose, are directly informed by John Webster’s Jacobean tragedy The Duchess of Malfi. She explores the Harry Potter stories are unusually dark for children’s books, and they are in fact not an unlikely place to find echoes from long ago. The Potter books are as interested in the past as in the future, and indeed the entire trajectory of Harry’s career bears a surprising resemblance to family history. Harry and Hermione Granger are only children: Hermione was originally intended to have a non-magical younger sister, but she never appears in any of the books. The Harry books too are interested in the historical and social consequences of colonialism.