Summary
In this episode, Professor Julian Wamble explores the character of Molly Weasley from the Harry Potter series. They discuss Molly's role as a pureblood, a mother, a hero, and a friend. They also delve into Molly's fears and trauma, and how it shapes her actions and beliefs. The episode concludes with a preview of the next episode, which will focus on Molly's husband, Arthur Weasley.
Takeaways:
Molly Weasley is a complex character who elicits mixed reactions from fans.
Her role as a mother and a wife is central to her character, and she is both loving and protective.
Molly's beliefs as a pureblood and her treatment of non-pureblood characters like Hermione and Fleur raise questions about her prejudices.
Molly's actions and sacrifices in the fight against Voldemort make her a hero in the eyes of many fans.
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction and Background
09:45 Molly Weasley as a Person
15:35 Molly Weasley as a Mother
22:47 Molly Weasley as a Pureblood
26:58 Molly Weasley as a Hero
27:50 Molly Weasley as a Friend
30:29 Molly Weasley's Fear and Trauma
37:01 Preview of Next Episode: Arthur Weasley
Summary
In this episode, Professor Julian Wamble explores the character of Molly Weasley from the Harry Potter series. They discuss Molly's role as a pureblood, a mother, a hero, and a friend. They also delve into Molly's fears and trauma, and how it shapes her actions and beliefs. The episode concludes with a preview of the next episode, which will focus on Molly's husband, Arthur Weasley.
Takeaways:
Molly Weasley is a complex character who elicits mixed reactions from fans.
Her role as a mother and a wife is central to her character, and she is both loving and protective.
Molly's beliefs as a pureblood and her treatment of non-pureblood characters like Hermione and Fleur raise questions about her prejudices.
Molly's actions and sacrifices in the fight against Voldemort make her a hero in the eyes of many fans.
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction and Background
09:45 Molly Weasley as a Person
15:35 Molly Weasley as a Mother
22:47 Molly Weasley as a Pureblood
26:58 Molly Weasley as a Hero
27:50 Molly Weasley as a Friend
30:29 Molly Weasley's Fear and Trauma
37:01 Preview of Next Episode: Arthur Weasley
Welcome to Critical Magic Theory, where we deconstruct the wizarding world of Harry Potter, because loving something doesn't mean you can't be critical of it. I'm Professor Julian Womble, and today we're going to dive in to the incredible life and times of the one and only Molly Weasley. Have you ever wondered why Molly is so hard on her kids? Or to what extent is she... prejudice against creatures like Velas, and is that why she treats Fleur a certain way? Or why in the world, this one is personal for me, why in the world did she send that small egg to Hermione in Goblet of Fire after reading Rita Skeeter's article? Well, today we're going to get into it. But first, do you all remember back in the 90s, for those of us who were alive, then if you weren't, don't say anything. I don't want to hear it. I don't want to know it. But theme songs back then were so good and we all knew them and would sing along. And I thought, let's bring back the theme song. So let's hop and dance to this incredible music. written and composed by my two friends Mark Miller and Niles Luther. You need to dance. Let's go. Welcome back. I hope you danced it out. Y 'all, we did it. I cannot tell you how surprised I am at myself for putting this podcast together and how grateful I am to those of us who are part of the TikTok community that kind of pushed me to do this. This is very much out of my comfort zone. My therapist is thrilled. Uh, and so I am so thankful and I realized that I have not really introduced myself when I started putting my lectures from my class onto TikTok a year ago today. Happy anniversary. I just kind of started posting them and then everything blew up and I never took the time to actually explain who I am, what I'm about, what I do. And so this is a moment. I am Professor Julian Womble. I am a political science professor at George Washington University. And there I teach classes on race and politics and identity. And I also teach a class that is very near and dear to my heart called Harry Potter and the politics of social identity. And so for those of us who are coming to this podcast from TikTok, You have seen my lectures, you have seen bits and pieces of the things that I get up to in my classes, and many of you asked, how can I get into this class? And since most of you probably don't want to pay the tuition or already have degrees, we had to think of a way to make this happen. And so this podcast came to be out of that. My journey with Harry Potter started when I was eight or nine and I went to a scholastic book fair. If you know, you know, and if you don't know, again, don't tell me. But Scholastic Book Fairs were these magical wonderlands where once or twice a year, Scholastic, the book publisher would come with their books and they would bring kind of these trunks and you would go to a certain place at my school, it was the library, and you would go and buy books. So it's kind of like a portable bookstore. And I got... Prisoner of Azkaban first, not really understanding the idea of what Harry Potter was. I just saw a kid on a broomstick and I was like, this is my jam. And I bought the third book, realized it was the third book, went back and got the first and the second. Now, it's important to note that at my house, magic, witches, warlocks, the whole nine, completely not allowed because devil. which meant that I had to have all of it. And so I was reading these books in the dead of night. And so after the fourth book came out, I kind of had to out myself as a Harry Potter stan. And from then on, I was just completely consumed. And I would reread the books once a year. And I was so just kind of enraptured in this. escapism that these books offered, I was caught up in watching Harry grow and learn as I was growing and learning. When Deathly Hallows came out and they were kind of leaving Hogwarts, I was graduating from high school. And so for most of my childhood, my adolescence and my teenage years, Harry Potter was such an integral part of it. And so because of that, it's been such a big part of my life. There was a day, where I was mowing the lawn, which is not something I do often, but when I do, I listen to Harry Potter audio books to pass the time. And I was thinking to myself, why is it that if Voldemort really is so pro pure blood, why doesn't he just promote more pure bloods having babies, as opposed to kind of going out and running this whole scheme to get rid of muggle -borns and muggles? And it occurred to me, oh, this is actually just about hate. It's not about... being pro -pure blood. And I really went down this whole rabbit hole, and that's how my class was developed. And that's how I kind of came up with the idea of thinking about how we understand the ideas of identity and the way that identity relates in political and social spaces using Harry Potter as kind of a Trojan horse to kind of get people to have maybe more difficult conversations. And then it kind of snowballed, and here we are. What I want for this podcast is to do something very different than what I do in my class, which is to really dive into the characters and to think about what makes them tick, what makes them work, what makes them operate the way that we see them in the books and to spend some time really going in on the ideas that have led our characters to this place while also recognizing that some of the choices that they make are the byproduct of the author of these books. And while we're on the topic of JK Rowling, it is imperative for me to point out that I in no way promote or endorse any of her hateful and dangerous transphobic language. And to that, you may say, then why are you even doing this? Why are you teaching the class on Harry Potter? Why do you still consume the material that she's created? And I think that these are all really, really valid questions. And I think that there are a myriad of ways outside of ignoring all of the things that she's brought to bear completely to handle and to navigate this. The way that I conceptualize it is that if I can use her books as a way to help us think about the things and the deep seated kind of programming that we have that has led to a space where transphobia, and discrimination against trans women and non -binary individuals can kind of flourish, then that is incumbent upon me to do. And so by unpacking and diving in and being critical of these books, I think that there is a way for us to learn and to grow in a way that makes it so much more difficult for the beliefs of J .K. Rowling to find fertile ground in our minds and in our hearts. And I also think that Harry Potter serves as a great place to do that because J .K. Rowling wrote what she knows, which is oppressive structures and discrimination and privilege and prejudice that is kind of baked into a societal structure. And so throughout these books, we see so many of these things existing in ways that as children go very much unnoticed. And to me, that is terrifying. And one thing is true, Harry Potter isn't leaving the zeitgeist for the foreseeable future. People are gonna keep consuming these books, the new TV show, the movies, the theme parks, all of these things. And so if there's a way for us to use the things that we know people are gonna keep consuming as a way to teach them to not believe and endorse these ideas, let's do it. So I wanna begin our journey in thinking about these characters at the top of the Wizarding hierarchy. So the way that I think about this, we have our pure bloods, we have our half bloods, and we have our muggle borns. And then we have our Sqibs, we don't have that many of those. But I want us to dive in and I want us to go in that order. And so I wanna start with the Weasleys because we love the Weasleys. They hold a very special place in our heart because of the way that they treat Harry. And I wanted to start with Molly because I think that there are so many things baked into her character that speak volumes about what it means to be a pureblood and also the sacrifices that one has to make when one goes against the societal grain. And so I asked you all six questions about Molly and I want to go through them in what I want to call an arithmetic lesson. I'm a big data nerd and I write surveys for my own research. And I thought nothing to me says community like a survey. And part of that is because I think that surveys allow for us to understand where our ideas and where our beliefs fit in to a collective. And so I put a survey up, six questions open into questions. I said, this is your homework. I thought, well, maybe if I get about a hundred people, we'll be good to go. I got 823 responses. You guys went so far beyond my expectations. I'm so grateful and really thinking, okay, Julian, you need to up the ante. So for next episode survey, I'm shooting 4,000. Can we do it? I mean, that's not even that much. It's what? 800 and I'm a political scientist, not a mathematician. Eight, uh, 200, no. This is embarrassing. Will this make the episode? I don't know. Anyways, less than 200 people. Anyways, that's less than 200 people. We can do this. And so I want to get into the stats. So the first question I asked is, is Molly Weasley a good person? Now I know. and you all made sure that I knew. These questions were hard. They lacked nuance, but it's the best way for me to aggregate your ideas and to think hard about what you actually believe. And so when I asked you all, is Molly Weasley a good person, about 60 % of you said yes. 19 % give or take said no. And 23 % said don't know. This is fascinating to me because I think that what is clear and became clear as I looked at these numbers and as I read through your open -ended responses is that a lot of us are conflicted about Molly. And I think that this is what makes her such a compelling character because she is someone who is neither good nor bad. None of us are absolute in this regard, which many of you reminded me. What I want us to think about. is what are the things that stick with us that made us think of these responses? I think if I had to answer this question, I would say yes. Because again, Molly contains multitudes, and I think the things that would make me say no, I can come up with an explanation for. Not necessarily an excuse or something to kind of absolve her, but something that I think would resonate enough with me that I wouldn't allow that to color. completely the way that I see her. And it seems to me that many of us kind of fall into this category and a recognition that she is absolutely someone who, despite flaws, which we all have, has such a generous heart. And I think that this comes up in the next question that I asked, which is, is Molly Weasley a good wife? Where 76 % of you said yes. 11 % give or take said no and 13 % said don't know and I think that if there's one thing that we know about Molly It's that she loves Arthur She is so supportive of him. She married into this family I think as I did a little bit of research kind of on on the internets about Molly what became very clear to me was the reality that this is a woman and who undoubtedly came from immense amounts of privilege. So she was a Pruitt, which is a very prominent pure -blood family. And if we look at Auntie Muriel, who either married into the family or was a Pruitt herself, we know that she has a goblin tiara. We know that she holds prejudice views towards muggle -borns. And so we can see that that's undoubtedly the space out of which Molly came. She married into the Weasleys. a family without very much money, with a bad reputation because they were seen as blood traders because they believed in the inclusion of muggle -born and half-bloods. And so the fact that Molly then goes and marries Arthur speaks volumes because she was making meaningful sacrifices to do this. For me, the love that she has for Arthur is so incredible because it came at a very high price that I think no one is talking about. And I think in our criticisms of Molly, one of them is never that she's a bad wife. We see her be so supportive of her husband, despite the fact that he's working a job at the ministry that pays very little and is frowned upon. And all of that comes at a price socially. And she's willing to pay it. And she is and has paid it. And I think that that cannot go undiscussed. The next question that I asked was, is Molly Weasley a good mother? Now this is where we see some variation, if you will. About 51 % of us said yes, so that she gets the majority. 36 % said no. And 13 .1 % said don't know. I am a person who struggles with Molly as a mom, because I think that there are moments where she's not supportive. of her kids, particularly Fred and George, who don't go the direction that she believes is best for them. I'm going to talk a little bit later about that. I think that many of us in your responses talked about kind of the difference in her parenting between all the boys and Jenny. Many of you wrote in your comments, both on the survey and on TikTok, that Molly is a boomer. She's a product of her generation. And I want to add to that, that she's also a pure blood witch in a society that is puritanical at best and stuck in the 18th century at best. Which means that the perception of gendered roles is problematic and also so deeply rooted in misogyny that the difference that Molly exhibits in the way that she raises and treats the boys and the girls is less surprising to me. What I love is the fact that Ginny doesn't take any of it and that she really does kind of demand equity. We see this in the Order of the Phoenix when Molly tries to keep Ginny out of the meeting and she says to her, they're just gonna tell me what they said anyway so I might as well stay. Or when everyone tries to keep Ginny in the Room of Requirement during the final battle at Hogwarts and Ginny says, I will not be relegated to this room to wait to figure out what's going on with you while you are all fighting. I will not do it." And I think that Molly really wants to protect the innocence of Jenny in a way that she clearly doesn't care about as much or is less concerned about or invested in for the boys. I also wonder, and forgive me, I'm a Gemini, so I'm going to see things from both sides. Would Molly be as protective of Jenny and as adamant about protecting and preserving her innocence if she had not been captured and possessed and almost killed in the Chamber of Secrets. That's something that as I've been thinking and grappling with Molly as a mother and the circumstances of her mothering, I wonder about that a lot because as part of the lore it is said that Molly really wanted a girl and then she gets Jenny and at the first time out of her leaving Molly's home and her care she gets possessed by by the spirit of the darkest wizard of the age and almost dies in a cave that nobody thought existed. I cannot imagine how terrifying that would have been for Molly. That desire to hold on so tight to Jenny is rooted both in the belief that because she's a girl, she is fragile and needs assistance in ways that her brothers do not, but also in the truth that what happened to her scared them to death. And again, I don't want to try to absolve Molly of the internalized misogyny. We know it's there. We see it in the way that the boys treat Jenny. In Ron's description of Jenny when she's dating, in Ron's description of Hermione when Rita Skeeter writes that article about her. I am not comfortable, however, saying that this all comes from Molly. There are a lot of different places where misogyny can rear its head and enter into the hearts and minds of people, but I can that Molly plays a part in this because we see the way that she treats Hermione, we see the way that she treats Fleur, we even hear Ron say when he references Hermione as a Scarlet woman that that's what his mom calls them. And so clearly some of his kind of problematic gendered beliefs are coming from home and coming from Molly. some of us were really struck by how much of a mother she was to Harry and that this kind of informs the way that we think of her as a maternal figure because she's not only just a mother to her kids, she's not only just a mother to Harry, she's a mother to everyone. To Tonks, to Remus, to Hagrid, she takes care of everyone. When we think of her role in the Order of the Phoenix, she is taking care of everyone at headquarters. She's cleaning the house. We also recognize that, again, because of the way that J .K. Rowling writes this character, we don't know anything about her. And so her role as a mom is all that we get to see, really. And I think that that means that we hold her to a standard that we would hold mothers now in the year of our Lord 2024. Someone wrote in their open -ended response, There is no way to be a good mother and give attention to every single one of your kids when you have seven of them, let alone undivided attention. And that really hit me because I thought, yeah, that's hard. And some of us would say, well, then why does she have so many kids? We're not getting into that. That's not our business. The fact is that she did. As a person who, again, is not a parent, I cannot imagine. I can't imagine having one child, let alone seven. And having to try and create a space that feels safe and wanting what's best for them. And so I recognize and I can appreciate the variance and I can appreciate the 36 % of people who said she's not a good mom. I also wonder the extent to which we are so hard on Molly because we know Molly's. What I have found in kind of my own investigation and my engagement with some of us is that many of the characters that we have the strongest feelings about and are unwilling to give some sort of redemption arc are characters that we know in our real lives and have very preconceived strong ideas about who they are as people. And so perhaps that's what's happening here with Molly. The next question was, is Molly Weasley a good pure blood? We were pretty much split into thirds with 37 % saying yes, 34 % saying no, and about 29 % saying don't know. This was a tricky question. because it's all about how you interpret it. Is she a good pure blood, like as in she is a pure blood who goes against the grain? Or is she a good pure blood because she buys into the prejudices and beliefs that come along with being a pure blood? I'm not gonna define that for you because this is gonna be a survey that you get for every character that we have an episode about, and I'm not gonna bias you. But I do think it's interesting to look and see at how divided people were in this idea. And I think that this division comes from the fact that Molly kind of treads the line between being a magical supremacist and someone who is more progressive than say other purebloods. And so I think that some of us are really caught up in the web of the complexity of her outlook on muggle -borns, on half-bloods, and on non -magical people. And it makes sense because there are a lot of instances where obviously she's in the Order of the Phoenix who is fighting against Voldemort, who is an advocate for violence against muggles and muggle -born individuals. So clearly she has some belief in the way that individuals who are not pure blood should be treated, and they are not close in terms of ideology to that of Voldemort or Death Eaters. But at the same time, we see numerous times throughout these books. that Molly does not have the same outlook on non -magical people that Arthur does, which is to say that while Arthur has a fetish and has some level of curiosity that he doesn't really try to get into, but we're going to get into that next week, so I'm not going to spoil it, she doesn't care. She embodies the desire to stay as far away from Muggle things as possible. I think that she is not interested in having to deal with Muggle conventions or inventions unless she absolutely has to. And I think even then she's reticent to do it, but she gets it on. She is a pure blood witch who grew up in a house. If Auntie Muriel who would be her aunt is any indication has very specific views about muggle borns, about non -magical people. And Molly would have those things as well. And at least at the very least, Molly was socialized with those beliefs in mind. And I think that when we see the way that Molly reacts to to the flying car or Arthur using stitches when he's in St. Mungo's after being attacked. Her reaction is one of why are you doing the things that are subpar to what we as magical people have when we know that non-magical people, all they have is substitutes for the better thing, which is the magic which we possess. I think that that outlook, while not necessarily advocating for violence against them, is supremacist. And we find ourselves in this space of trying to figure out what it means to be a good pureblood. If we think about it in the way of... I'm a good pure blood because I stand in the face of the bigotry and prejudice that is espoused by death eaters like the Malfoys and other pure blood people, then we can imagine why she would fall into that category. If we think of it in terms of someone who is still biased, we could also see that. And so I think that this kind of divide that is fairly equal across the yes, no, and don't knows makes sense because we are trying to figure out where she sits and she's in this kind of weird lim - both space and it's so funny because I often characterize Slughorn as being in this place and the harder I think about it the more I'm like well... Molly is kind of there too in this like, I'm not prejudiced because I know muggle-born people, but also I think that muggles are not as good as us. And so it's fascinating to think about that. And I think that when we think about how we've responded to the question, it all depends on how you view Molly. If you view her positively, you're going to give her the benefit of the doubt. And if you view her negatively, you're going to give her the benefit of the doubt. You're going to assume that she's doing something bad. The next question was another tricky one. Is Molly Weasley a hero? What does it mean to be a hero? That's up to you. I should let you know right now. Random outburst in song, that's my jam. That's my way. But for the question, is Molly Weasley a hero, 44 % of us said yes, 41 % of us said no, and 15 % said don't know. This is interesting. And when asked, many of us brought up the idea that she killed Bellatrix and that she was part of the order and that she fought against Voldemort and that this inherently makes her a hero. Some of us said, well, we don't really get to see her in that much action outside of those moments and so it's difficult. Some of us invoked the idea of just the sheer number of sacrifices she made so that other people in her circle and in her orbit could do this. I think she's a hero. And the last question is, is Molly Weasley a good friend? Now this one was hard. And that's made evident in the responses where 42 % said don't know, 32 % said no, and 27 % said yes. By my estimation, we do not have enough information to actually answer this question. Someone wrote, I feel like we don't quite have enough information about her marriage or friendships. I don't even think she has any to determine whether or not she's a good wife or friend. Someone else wrote, how Molly is a friend is not touched on so much, but she cared about Tonks and I think that the Weasley's home was somewhere friends could go for love and support and probably a good meal. We have this sense of what friendship can look like. And it's hard when you're an adult with seven kids and you know, but we also do get to see Arthur who we're gonna talk about in the next episode. We get to see him be a friend to people and we get to see what that looks like. And I think this is one of those moments again where we see Molly as a mother. We get to see her as a wife, but we don't really get to see her as someone who has a life outside of motherhood and being a wife. I got in a lot of trouble on TikTok. for a video that talked about the way that JK Rowling writes women. And it's either that you are a mother or a maternal figure, or you are kind of a mess. And I got in a ton of trouble for it. We don't really get a sense of who Molly is as a person. We don't really get a sense of who she is when all of her kids are at school. We don't get any of that. When we think about whether Molly is a good friend, personally, I fall into the don't know category. I don't think that J .K. Rowling gave us enough to be able to make that kind of assertion, to make that kind of assessment. And so now is a moment where I want to kind of reflect on my own beliefs and ideas about Molly and take what you all offered both in the survey and in your open ended responses and think about who she is and how we can kind of understand her. Now I should preface this by saying, as someone said in the comments on a TikTok post I made a few days ago, you may not love my take. I'm hoping it gives you something to think about and that's. all I want. You don't have to agree with me. In fact, I appreciate and welcome disagreement. I don't love disrespect, but I do absolutely believe in your ability to say, I disagree with you. Go for it. When I think of Molly, I think of someone who is so scared. I think one of the things that is so undiscussed in these books is the trauma from the first Wizarding War. Molly and Arthur got married early because of that war, because of the rise of Voldemort. Molly was raising her children during that time. Molly lost two brothers because of that. Earlier I talked a little bit about... all that Molly must have sacrificed to leave a prominent pure -blood family and to marry into one that was disgraced and broke. One thing that I have heard so much from my own parents and from friends who are parents is, you just want your kids to have a life that is better than yours. And Molly knows the cost. She's paid the price for love. She's paid the price for having progressive beliefs in a society that is so strict and stringent in its belief structure and its desire to oppress muggle-born and non -magical people. She knows all of that and has experienced it firsthand. And I think she recognizes that her children had no choice in entering into the world and having the signature Weasley red hair and the Weasley last name, but she knows what that's going to cost them. And she's terrified. She knows that... When they go into spaces, people are gonna know who they are immediately and all the preconceived ideas, all of the privileges that they're supposed to have, all that is gonna be gone because they're Weasleys. And so my thought is that everything that she wants for her kids and why she pushes them so hard is because she knows that all the privileges that they're supposed to have as pure -blood people, will not be applied to her kids. And she's terrified about what that means for their futures. So that when I think about why she's so hard on Fred and George and why she's such a stickler for the Hogwarts to ministry pipeline, it's because she wants what's best for her kids, but she's so afraid that if they deviate even a little bit, that because of who they are and what she and Arthur believe outright, and publicly, it's going to cost them everything. One of the other big things that came up in the comments was her the way that she treats Hermione and Fleur. And I think that this is where the writers own gendered beliefs come to play. Because I think that JK Rowling at no point in any of these books writes women characters who like one another. We have a couple of moments. where kind of Ginny and Hermione get along, but mostly that's when they are ganging up on Fleur. We get to see Lavender, Bran, and Pervarti, but that's it. From our main girl and women characters, we really don't get to see them in good relationship with one another. When we think about Molly and we think about the way that she treats Hermione when she reads that Rita Skeeter article after previously saying like, Rita Skeeter doesn't really know what she's talking about. And then all of a sudden she absolutely believes it when it comes to Hermione. I think it speaks volumes about the effect of patriarchal structure makes it so much more difficult for women to befriend one another and not be in constant competition with one another. And I think that J .K. Rowling bought into this idea and I think it's still very much present now. And I think that what we see from Molly here is that. And I don't excuse that because I think it's so problematic and I think it's even more problematic because Hermione is a child. And I think what we see so often in these books, both from Molly and from other individuals is that they don't seemingly care about the fact that they're dealing with kids when they treat them in terrible ways. I think this is true for Severus Snape as well. When I think of her relationship with Fleur and with Hermione, I think that it comes down to the reality that women, particularly of a certain era, leverage their strongest and most awful criticisms against other women. And this is passed down. And we see it being passed down from Molly to Ginny because of the way that Ginny talks about Fleur. One question that I want us to think about is, are we holding Molly to a different standard than we are holding other men characters? And... It's part of the reason why we are so upset with Molly because she is part of this family who is supposed to be a safe haven and yet there are characters who she makes feel unsafe. because that resonates with me. At the end of the day, for me, Molly is a product of her generation, as many of you have said, who is terrified of the world that her kids are in, who has not dealt with her own trauma and is passing it down, both in terms of her gender politic, both in terms of just the sheer politics of the space as a pure -blood person who believes in equality. It's all being passed down and trickled on through her children. I think she is someone who was easily and justifiably overwhelmed by the world and the life that she's in and I think that more than anything She just wants what's best for everyone in her orbit She just does not know how to communicate that without forcing them to see it the way that she sees it to me Molly embodies a very specific kind of person who has so much unresolved trauma that they don't self -reflect very often because if they do, they will break down. And so they cling to the things that they believe so tightly because if they let it go, what else do they have? In two weeks for the next episode, we're going to be talking about Molly's husband, Arthur. And in particular, I want to think about how it is that Arthur is seemingly so unbothered by the financial situation that they're in, by just the general, like, she doesn't seem to have the same hangups as Molly in terms of wanting their kids to go and do the ministry pipeline. That all seems to be coming from Molly. So what is Arthur's deal? There will be a survey, same questions, same opportunity. And I want us to think about the meaningful differences between these two individuals, why it is that it exists the way that it does. And we're going to dive in to Arthur's beliefs about muggles because I made a post a couple of days ago and y 'all went there. Until then, be critical and stay magical, my friends. This has been an episode of Critical Magic Theory. I'm Professor Julian Womble, and I want to make a special thanks to all of the many people on TikTok who have encouraged me to do this and have been so supportive. Again, my friends, Mark Miller and Niles Luther for the music. If you want to join the Mary Throne on social media, feel free to follow me at profw, P -R -O -F -W on TikTok. at prof .jw on Instagram and Critical Magic Theory on YouTube. See you next time! For all my extra credit seekers out there, don't forget to rate this podcast, turn on your notifications, like, follow, subscribe, all the things. Thank you.