Ravenclaw House

For this journal I focused on Cho Chang and her subversion of the stereotypes associated with the archetype of the fairy tale role of the princess.

Although Ming-Hsun Lin approaches the princess’ role in Harry Potter through the characters of Hermione, Harry, and Ginny, I would argue that the character who best fits into this role is Cho Chang, despite her presence only being a significant one in Harry’s fourth and fifth years. Vladimir Propp explains that the princess “is usually the “sought-for person” or the “reward” for the hero in the narrative,” (qtd. in Lin 81). This desire is shown all throughout Harry’s fourth year, after he got a crush on her in his third year, but he is denied as she is in a relationship with Cedric throughout most of Goblet of Fire. In Order of the Phoenix, Harry finally gets to be in a relationship with Cho, but it ends up being short-lived due to feelings of jealousy on Cho’s side, and a lack of empathy from Harry. Despite the subversion of the princess role in the sense that Cho does not end up being Harry’s great “reward” for managing to live through an encounter with Voldemort that killed his romantic rival, Cho still fills many aspects of the archetype.

Lin states that “archetypal princesses possess nobility from social, spiritual, or biological sources,” all of which are areas that can describe Cho Chang (81). Although Cho is not literally royalty, it can be assumed that she was held in high social regard in Ravenclaw, considering she was a Seeker for their Quidditch team, which is a fairly major role to be trusted with. Spiritually, Cho is shown to be incredibly loyal, perhaps to the point of error, as she was a staunch supporter of Dumbledore’s Army despite feeling that Hermione’s “SNEAK” hex on the D.A. parchment was an awful trick that her friend was on the receiving end of. Cho’s beauty is often emphasized in the books as well, which would be classified as biological nobility.

I believe that the most important aspect of Cho’s character is that she does not end up in a lasting relationship with Harry, as that would cause her to shift from the princess archetype to the princess stereotype, which in Lin’s words means, “The stereotyped heroine retains little or no personal autonomy, becoming virtually a prisoner of societal expectations,” (82). The fact that Cho isn’t certain about her burgeoning relationship with Harry in Order of the Phoenix is the most important part of her character; she turns to him after Cedric dies because he expressed interest in her before, and because she thought he could help her find closure. Instead, Cho learned that she had to distance herself from Harry because he didn’t provide the comfort she was searching for. In fact, Cho does not end the books with a romance at all, which directly subverts the princess stereotype of “[f]inding true love” that was brought about by Disney films (83).

Overall, Cho Chang is the ideal character to look at for filling the archetypal princess role while also subverting many of the tropes it comes packaged with. By being a female character who is presented as desirable towards the male characters (and a literal reward, in terms of being one of the people under the lake during the second task of the Triwizard Tournament), her characterization defies what audiences generally come to expect. Rather than ending up with the hero of the story, Cho instead expresses a desire to find her own happiness, and her strongest attribute is her loyalty to her own friends.