The Subversive Harry Potter: Adolescent Rebellion and Containment in the J.K. Rowling Novels

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The seven books in J.K. Rowling’s phenomenally popular Harry Potter series bring together a variety of popular genres of young adult fiction: the heroic quest, boarding school fiction, fantasy, magic, and adventure. The series melds all these narratives of boyhood, portraying youthful rebellion as well as cultural containment and an adolescent’s negotiations through these conflicting forces. This detailed study of Harry Potter explores the limits of the formulaic structure of adolescent fantasy fiction like that of Rowling’s and also examines the impulse of exploration, subversion, and resistance contained within the formula. Within the co-existing networks of subversion and containment in the narrative, young adult fantasy becomes an embodiment of the experience of adolescence–its angst, rebellion and also its journey of personal maturation.