endangers his closest friends. Leading toward the final battle at the Ministry of Magic, readers recognize the mistakes Harry makes as he disengages with his school community and withdraws into the world of his dark dreams.

Readers' sympathy is stretched the farthest when they discover Harry enjoying his ventures into Voldemort's mind: "The truth was that he was so intensely curious about what was hidden in that room full of dusty orbs that he was quite keen for the dreams to continue." Even though a certain level of curiosity seems normal, Harry quickly falls into the traps of vanity and self-importance as he chases after Voldemort's thoughts. Voldemort capitalizes on Harry's mistakes and, in the process, Harry causes permanent damage to the wizarding community. Harry had certainly made mistakes in his previous years at Hogwarts, but it is not until his fifth year that his own ego begins to affect his otherwise generally selfless decision-making. Presenting her hero in this more negative light allows Rowling to add depth and drama to her narrative. Harry's actions also become more difficult for readers to predict, adding interest and complexity to what could have been a simplistic, childish story.

Harry's constant companions, Ron and Hermione, also find different roles in this installment. Usually the loyal sidekick and the brainy bookworm, Ron's and Hermione's respective roles fade throughout this school year as a result of Harry's increasing isolation. Readers expect the three friends to solve the book's mystery together, as they have in previous novels. This year, however, Harry excludes his friends from his troubles. From the beginning, when they meet again at Twelve, Grimmauld Place, Harry vents his frustrations by yelling at his friends. Throughout the novel, Harry chooses to lash out at Ron and Hermione rather than invite their help in solving his problems. Readers may find this choice distasteful because the three friends have found such success working together in the past. When Harry ultimately makes his fateful blunder by believing Voldemort has captured Sirius, Hermione's remarkably accurate warning echoes in readers' ears: "[D]on't you think you've got a bit of a—a—saving-people-thing?… Voldemort knows you, Harry!… What if he's just trying to get you into the Department of Myst[eries]?" If Harry had not responded to Hermione's reasonable, and correct, prediction by flying into a rage, perhaps he would have avoided his tragic error. The exclusion of his faithful friends from Harry's internal struggles, and Ron's and Hermione's subsequent reactions, gives readers a new perspective on these well-known and well-loved characters. It also marks the end of Harry's—and the series'—reliance on the teamwork of childhood and the beginning of his isolation and singularity of adulthood.

Dumbledore further confounds readers' expectations in the novel. Nearly omniscient in every other book, Dumbledore knows all about Harry's exploits, both legal and otherwise, and seems to hold (and withhold) the answers to all of Harry's questions. But in this story, Dumbledore's absence becomes more noticeable than his presence. While Harry excludes his friends from his troubles, he deeply longs for his mentor's advice. Much to Harry's disappointment, Dumbledore continues to evade his company. In the end, readers are again disturbed to find that Dumbledore commits an error as fatal as Harry's: he suppresses crucial information that could have saved Sirius Black's life. "For I see now," Dumbledore confesses, "that what I have done, and not done, with regard to you, bears all the hallmarks of the failings of age…. An old man's mistake." Dumbledore's god-like image shatters by the end of The Order of the Phoenix as readers witness his fallibility and increasing frailty. This character change forces readers to reconfigure their understanding of Hogwarts as a secure place under Dumbledore's reign. Rowling's undermining of Dumbledore's authority shifts the power structure in the wizarding world, leaving Harry Potter more alone than ever.

Harry's godfather, Sirius Black, also undergoes a change in characterization throughout the novel. In the previous books in the series, the mature Black offered Harry his only true father figure. However, Rowling diminishes Black's reputation in The Order of the Phoenix by depicting him as a moody and selfish adolescent. Why does she present Black in such a negative light when he dies at the end? Revealing the chinks in Harry's godfather's armor is not at all unexpected, as many critics point out, because Harry must learn to become independent of the godfather whom he resembles so closely. But Sirius represents a small respite from an exhausting and challenging world for Harry. Could Sirius have not left the wizarding world with his godfatherly tenderness intact? Rowling's presentation of Black's faults, like Dumbledore's, causes Harry's world to become less stable, and readers' expectations to be continually challenged.

Severus Snape embodies a final conundrum. Rowling continues to taunt readers with his mean-spirited treatment of Harry in their public and private meetings, but once readers witness Snape's own childhood trauma, they feel sympathy towards him, and perhaps even begin to understand why he is what he is. Harry feels a similar, though tentative, connection because of this shared humiliation. In the end, though, Harry refuses their bond, vowing to himself that "he would never forgive Snape … never." Presumably, Harry feels such anger toward Snape, because Snape was unhelpful during the violent battle with Voldemort and the Death Eaters. However, readers may not blame Snape so harshly. It is at this point that they may feel an uncomfortable distance and near-judgment of Harry, whom they have championed and sympathized with since his first year at Hogwarts.

Such complex threads of character development keep Rowling's narrative multidimensional and thus worthy of literary considera-tion. Critics Bloom, Safire, and Byatt deny this achievement, however, citing the text's popularity as evidence of less-than-discerning readers and citing the work as greatly over-praised and under-scrutinized. They explain away Rowling's massive adult readership as evidence of immature grown-ups seeking the comforts of childhood. It is, however, in Byatt's concluding comments about cultural studies that these elite critics' true objection seems to lie. Byatt blames the Rowling "phenomenon" on "the leveling effect of cultural studies, which are as interested in hype and popularity as they are in literary merit, which they don't really believe exists." This obvious aggression toward the inclusive values of cultural studies may explain the threat some critics perceive in Rowling and their wholesale rejection of the nearly monopolistic cultural popularity she enjoys.

The last thirty years have brought vast changes to the academic world as scholars have sought to break open the closed and male-dominated realm of higher education. Wanting to recover female, multi-ethnic, and multi-classed presences for serious study at a university level, academics now examine nontraditional texts with academic standards previously reserved for classics. In literature, for example, critics review letters, diaries, and even recipes of women and people of color as a way to recover and fully understand those voices. Because only the privileged and educated individuals in most societies found time or avenues for artistic endeavor, groundbreaking academics attempt to include marginalized forms and voices to redefine what might be considered art. Part of this movement includes the new practice of reading what the masses read and considering popular work alongside more traditional art. This dynamic is the "leveling" of which Byatt speaks, and it is the threat Rowling presents to the body of so-called great literature.

What Bloom, Safire, and Byatt fail to recognize, it seems, is that Rowling's novels are not considered good literature exclusively or even primarily because of their popularity. Few, if any, serious analyses of Rowling's texts state that the novels are worthy pieces of literature solely because so many adult readers love them. Some certainly take the cultural studies standpoint that their massive popularity should cause critics to take notice of Rowling's work, but the final judgment of the "Harry Potter" series still depends upon a set of literary criteria. It is not, as Byatt claims, that scholars of Rowling do not believe in "literary merit"; it is instead that they believe merit may be found in the most unusual, and potentially popular, places.

In his Wall Street Journal article, Bloom contemplates the "Harry Potter" books and rightly asks, "Why read, if what you read will not enrich mind or spirit or personality?" The deeply textured characterization found in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is one of the reasons that the novel can be called greatly enriching. Rowling's books do not, as Bloom, Safire, and Byatt claim, lull readers into an entertainment haze. Instead, they cause readers to think about how characters have grown over the years and to ponder their unpredictable and potentially precarious fates in the final books.

Source: Laura Baker Shearer, Critical Essay on Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, in Literary Newsmakers for Students, Thomson Gale, 2006.

In the following excerpt, Byam argues that the Harry Potter series compares favorably with other classic British novels, and deserves attention and respect for its "adult" literary merits.

Often, great success brings controversy: such is the case for the Harry Potter series. After the first two novels in the series had been published, it was already very clear that their author, J. K. Rowling, had engaged a new generation of readers, especially among the elementary-school-age crowd. It was also apparent that adults were reading the books in huge numbers, and I became interested in this phenomenon—as well as eagerly anticipating each book in the series for my own part.

However, it is the cult status of the series among adults that has drawn much criticism and created controversy since that time. Many debates, inside of the academy and out, have focused on whether or not the Harry Potter books are "just" children's books, and whether they have literary merit. This controversy erupted most spectacularly in the New York Times's placing of the Harry Potter books on its "Best Seller List."

Because the huge, long-term success of the Harry Potter books placed the books in the series atop the list and left little room for books aimed strictly at adult readers, the New York Times decided to put them into a newly created children's best-seller list. Commenting on this decision in July of 2000, Charles McGrath, the editor of the New York Times Book Review, stated:

The sales and popularity of children's books can rival and, in the case of the Harry Potter books, even exceed those of adult books … With a separate children's list we can more fully represent what people are reading, and we can clear more room on the adult list for adult books.

Some regarded this as an attempt to quash adult interest in the series by sending out a message to readers that the Harry Potter books are really children's fiction and that adults were not supposed to read the series. Also, placement on the new children's list did a disservice to the series by not reflecting how many copies of each book sold each week compared to "adult" best-sellers.

At the very least, the New York Times's decision to create a separate children's bestseller list was a strategy to shift attention away from the Harry Potter series. At this point in time, 7 July 2000, "one or more of the three books in the J. K. Rowling Harry Potter series [had] commanded spots on the adult fiction bestseller list for 81 weeks to date." Removing the Harry Potter books from the adult bestseller list was a marketing decision designed to obscure the fact that the series was still outselling top adult fiction and that no other children's book approached it in sales at the time.

I side with those who believe that the Harry Potter series not only deserves the attention it is getting because of its imaginative qualities and compelling storyline, but also because of its "adult" literary merits. I will argue here that the Harry Potter series fits well into "the great tradition" of British novels that is still taught in college classrooms, beginning with Samuel Richardson, continued by Jane Austen, and culminating in the efforts of Charlotte Brontë and Charles Dickens.

Perhaps it is the sense of "fun" and the comedic element that we encounter—especially in books one to four of the series—that makes some people think that the books are not for adults, and that they do not fit into the "great tradition" of the novel. In many cases, the problems and even tragedies that Harry encounters are resolved or diminished and not left for readers to ponder, as in many other classic British novels. While this pattern of resolution is less typical of "adult" classics, it should not be used as a reason for knocking the Harry Potter series out of the "adult" fiction category. Critics may have judged the series by the first two or three books, prematurely placing it in the children's literature category. The New York Times's decision came in July 2000, before Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban could be properly digested, and three years before the publication of the most "adult" book—in terms of content—to date, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

Another reason some critics think the Harry Potter books are not for adult readers is simply because the hero is not grown up. True, the character of Harry is an adolescent—but so are Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, and Charles Dickens's Pip and Esther Summerson when we first meet them, to name a few. As of yet, the series has not followed Harry to adulthood, but this should not be a "requirement" for adult fiction either. Furthermore, with the publication of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Rowling has introduced us to a "new" Harry—one who is entering turbulent teen years and experiencing all the angst, doubts, and troubles that we see in "classic" British novels.

A central topos that links the Harry Potter series not only to the archetypal hero in literature, but also to other canonical British novels, is the figure of the orphan. It is no coincidence that King Arthur and Harry Potter are both orphans. The orphan is also a common feature of the Bildungsroman, or novel of education or development, in which a character must develop in society, and find his or her own way in the world. The protagonist of the Bildungsroman is often an orphan, since being parentless enhances his or her necessary independence: the orphan can be exposed to unusual circumstances and is freer to act within them than a "normal" protagonist would be.

The orphan has audience appeal because he or she is alone in the world and has often suffered great trauma; the reader thus usually sympathizes with the character and roots for him or her. Harry Potter lives with his aunt, as do Jane Eyre and Esther Summerson (although she does not know it), while Pip lives with his sister. All of these children have a family connection to their lodgings, but they also live in misery because of how they are treated. They are often deprived of food (as in the cases of Harry and Pip) and enclosed both literally (Harry in the cupboard; Jane in the Red Room) and psychologically by their "families." They must endure cruel behavior: Harry is beaten by his cousin Dudley, Jane is struck by her cousin John, and Pip is physically abused by his sister, Mrs. Joe.

In another crucial novelistic motif, the character or characters to be unraveled are, like the protagonist, orphans. Each serves as a literary double or doppelgänger of the protagonist. The psychological double does what the other character would like to and acts on similar impulses; the doppelgänger represents a spirit that can adapt its form (as Voldemort literally does). The double and doppelgänger functions represent a possible future for each protagonist.

The doppelgänger motif is prevalent in many "great tradition" novels. In Jane Eyre, Bertha and Jane are psychological doubles in any number of ways, from drawing blood from their victims, to seeing their images in the glass, to their association with fire, and their connection with Rochester. In Great Expectations, Pip's doubles are Magwitch and Orlick. Perhaps Pip's greatest challenge is to acknowledge his psychological and literal connection with Magwitch, the banished criminal. Furthermore, Orlick's assault on Mrs. Joe is often interpreted as an acting out of Pip's psychological desire, just as Bertha's burning of Thornfield acts out Jane's own subliminal desires. In the Harry Potter series, Tom Riddle/Voldemort is a double for Harry—they both are parseltongues, they are of mixed muggle/wizard parentage, and they have "twin" wands, both cored with a feather from the same phoenix. Moreover, as developed in The Order of the Phoenix, Harry is privy to many of Voldemort's thoughts through the scar that Harry received from him. Finally, though James Potter, Harry's father, is dead, his memory serves as another double for Harry.

The protagonist orphans learn key information about themselves from their orphan doubles, but then they must sift through their various inheritances. In Jane Eyre, Jane must learn from Bertha—her rival, double, and antithesis—and decide how she needs to negotiate her place in Rochester's world. At the same time, she is given her inheritance from her uncle. Pip must come to terms with the criminal identity of his benefactor and the role of love in his life. The secret and tainted money from Magwitch that helps Pip also reveals the social hypocrisy underlying the social strata that Pip must negotiate.

In the Harry Potter series, Harry must keep trying to understand the literal and psychological scar that Voldemort has inflicted upon him, he must deal with his fame, and he must learn to traverse two worlds. Harry has tangible inheritances to help him, such as his unexpected fortune in wizarding currency, as well as the unanticipated advantage of the invisibility cloak and the Marauder's Map. However, these tools only lead him toward understanding, they do not produce it.

Why, then, has there been such a controversy over the status of the Harry Potter books as both children's and adult literature? As I have already discussed, some of the attempts to categorize them as children's literature may be chalked up as marketing decisions. Some others may be premature critical decisions, based on knee-jerk responses to the first and, perhaps, second volumes in the series. Although I believe that sophisticated themes have already been developed in the Harry Potter series, it is important to remember that the series is not yet complete. Whether or not Harry matures or learns to deal with the coming-of-age adversities that Jane Eyre and Pip ultimately overcome is yet to be seen—although The Order of the Phoenix shows Harry making great strides in maturity. However, even for those critics who have kept up with Rowling's novels, the fact that the series is currently in flux may contribute to the feeling that the Harry Potter novels are not worthy of being identified as "adult" fiction. For many critics, the type of an ending a novel has tends to dictate its classification, and the Harry Potter series eludes such placement because it currently lacks an ending.

In fact, the status of the novels as a series may also have influenced some critics and academic readers to dismiss it from consideration as adult literature. They may believe that its popularity is due largely to the crass commercialization and audience manipulation involved in serial publication. These critics see the serialization of the Harry Potter novels as placing them in the same category as other print and video series that are designed to attract, respond to, and exploit a popular audience. However, it is worth noting that Great Expectations was published in serial form, that the market was a driving force in Dickens's writing of Great Expectations, and that Dickens ended up writing two different endings to the text in an effort to please his audience. While some might argue that the example of Dickens shows how the novels in the British canon have never been completely divorced from commercial considerations, at the very least, one might conclude from it that great literature can be created within the confines of commercial form. Thus, critics are wrong to dismiss Rowling's books simply because they are designed to attract a popular audience.

Although we have yet to see the resolution of the Harry Potter series, its literary connections to the great tradition of the British novel, and specifically the Bildungsroman, make the books worthy of adult interest. Ultimately, the Harry Potter series is too popular and too important to the future of the novel to be defined exclusively as either children's or adult fiction.

Source: Paige Byam, "Children's Literature or Adult Classic? The Harry Potter Series and the British Novel Tradition," in Topic: The Washington & Jefferson College Review, Vol. 54, Fall 2004, pp. 7-13.