Food as comfort in low fantasy

Moving forward the later half of the twentieth century, we arrive at yet another one of the most famous series within fantasy literature of all time, and that is, of course, Harry Potter! I choose low fantasy as the texts genre here as I am only going to be addressing the early Harry Potter novels, though it is apparent that the series does progress to a more high fantasy realm. It is categorised as more of a low fantasy world then if we would compare it to say The Hobbit, due to there being an element within each of the novel set in the real world, it isn’t all set in a parallel, imaginary land. This real world element is crucial to each narrative throughout Harry Potter also, whether it is depicting Harry’s awful home life or Ron’s rural country home or seeing the characters navigate their way across England in order to look for clues to destroy Voldemort. Ultimately, without the fantasy elements mixed with the realistic elements, we would not have the Harry Potter narrative as we know it.

This clarification in genre is important when looking at how we should read food within the Harry Potter series, as it is a text which includes real world food with multiple magical dishes, which allows the readers to clarify that this not specifically the world or a fake world- it is both. I would firstly like to look at The Philosopher’s stone (1997) and question why the very first meal the children are given at Hogwarts is none other than the British classic- a roast dinner. Though the food magically appears from nowhere, Rowling writes how “he had never seen so many things he liked to eat on one table: roast beef, roast chicken, pork chops and lamb chops, sausages, bacon and steak, boiled potatoes, roast potatoes, chips, Yorkshire pudding, peas, carrots, gravy, ketchup and, for some strange reason, mint humbugs” (92). This is a description of food I’m sure the majority of British readers of the novel will relate to and may even have our own stomachs rumbling. A roast dinner is known as traditional comfort food in our society, therefore I argue that Rowling strategically has this grand meal on the children’s first day at Hogwarts as not only a welcome dinner but to put them more at ease with their surroundings. These children have just left their normal lives to come and live out the rest of their teenage years in the magical halls of Hogwarts. This roast dinner can be seen as a sign of comfort, a taste of home, perhaps a promise to keep them happy and safe (however I’m sure we are all aware that that is most certainly not the case. I have inserted the scene from the movie below, so we can witness the beauty of the feast in its entirety.

Thanks for reading!

Emily

Works cited-

Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Bloomsbury, 2001.

AllMoviesVideos. "Let the Feast Begin- Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone". Youtube, Youtube. 13th Nov 2015, Web. 15th March 2018.