Although no direct influence can be proven, Sirius Black, one of the main secondary characters in J.K. Rowling’s world-famous Harry Potter series (1997-2007) combines in his characterization intertextual traits that connect him with two key Dickensian secondary characters: John Brownlow in Oliver Twist (1837-9) and Abel Magwitch in Great Expectations (1860-1). These two male characters are given the role of protecting a young orphaned boy, a role which they share with Sirius, Harry’s godfather. Like Brownlow, Sirius is a rich bachelor and also the best friend of the boy’s deceased father. Like Magwitch, Sirius is an escaped prisoner, unfairly sentenced for life, who finds himself unable to recover his freedom due to a faulty system of justice and whose redress never reaches him before he dies. The intense mourning which many readers describe in relation to Sirius’s strange demise may thus reflect the broken hope that, like Oliver, Pip and other literary orphans, Harry will be rescued by a father figure. Rowling’s own systematic destruction of this possibility in her series, with the deaths of Sirius, Dumbledore, Snape and, indeed of James Potter, points towards a feminine, androphobic distrust of the male protector, based on her defence of idealised motherhood.
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