According to Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, beloved Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore is gay.

Now, I’ll be the first to point out that pretty much everyone involved with those stuffy British private schools is enormously repressed in one way or another. From the mincing, discipline-obsessed faculty members to the foppish dandies that take classes from them, there’s something about them that just makes you think “I bet that guy is a murderer,” or any number of other hidden secrets.

And we’ve all discussed the apparent tendencies of professor Dumbledore, on this site and others (See Meltcast #1: Harry Potter and the Sodomite Teacher).

But this “admission” from Rowling poses an interesting literary question which is sure to be endlessly debated in the halls of English literature classes for no reason at all.

And that question is: If a character is thought to be something by the creator, but never actually manifests that trait in the creation itself–is the character more like what the author considers him, or more like he appears to the audience?

It’s a chicken and egg situation. I’m not suggesting that Dumbledore isn’t gay because I don’t think he should be–quite the contrary: I could care less. But I don’t really think anything in the fiction warrants a definitive sexuality for the character. So the question must be asked: Is he really gay?

It’s the sort of question that has no answer. Fiction is “magical” strictly because the audience can decide whatever it wants about the characters and events that happen. Rowling might as well have said that Dumbledore has an eccentric brother who made millions of dollars in the New York Stock Exchange. It may very well be the case, but it has little to do with the story–and even less evidence for it.

That’s why I have a bit of a problem with Rowling’s deadpan assertion. Don’t get me wrong–she’s free to have creative domain over all her characters. But for her to say something about a character that isn’t backed up by her creative work, it just undermines the very relationship between the reader and character that makes fiction so magical.

That’s all.

Keep reading...