Dolores Umbridge

Dolores Umbridge from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling

Umbridge comes right on the heels of Aunt Maria because she strongly reminds me of her.  They are cut from the same cloth, the villain masquerading as a prim older lday.  Umbridge is even described when she first shows up as “looking like someone’s maiden aunt.”

This being Harry Potter, Umbridge is the better known of the two characters.  She shows up in the fifth book, the volume people hate due to an overdose of Harry’s adolescent angst.  I was fifteen myself when it came out, so I didn’t have a problem with the book at the time and read it all in one night.  My neck got sore form craning over the book for hours on end, but I couldn’t put it down, fueled by the desire to see the awful Umbridge brought down and the heroes given an inch to breathe easily again. 

Umbridge was a more effective villain than Voldemort ever was.  He was mysterious and threatening before he came back and people were too afraid to whisper his name, but the build-up never delivered once he was walking around.  He was just another Dark Lord and did generic evil things in his quest to rule on high, for the sake of being evil.  The sixth book spent a lot of time exploring his past and motivations to give him more depth, but it failed to make him a less generic antagonist.  Everything about his character is crafted to put a neon sign over his head to point out that THIS IS THE BAD GUY.  He’s made of shortcuts in the writing that quickly establish him as evil without having to go any deeper.  Everyone knows snakes mean villainy.  It’s classic, but that doesn’t necessarily make the character compelling.  What is unexpected and more provocative is a person with fluffy kitten decorations on wall who tortures children in her care.

Dolores Umbridge is an unlikely person to be an effective villain—no one is scared of kittens—and yet its believable when she is.  She uses appearances in the same way as Aunt Maria.  She starts off as an irritating sign that the government is leaning in on Hogwarts and everything about her annoys the teenage students, like her patronizing tone of voice or habit of polite coughing to get attention.  It’s hard for a person to pinpoint why exactly they are put off by her, because out loud, it’s hard to justify hating someone because of her ugly sweater. 

Umbridge doesn’t immediately come across as a villain, but she isn’t very good at manipulation.  It doesn’t take long for everyone to figure out she’s a power-hungry tyrant, or that she’s willing to hurt her students.  Even when her true nature is obvious, they still can’t get rid of her.  She’s backed by the authority of the government.  She’s not as powerful as some of the other characters in the series, but she uses every resource available to her and abuses her position to make people miserable, in petty and small-minded ways. 

The struggle against authority is constant in Harry Potter.  The series doesn’t even need an outside force like Voldemort to be full of antagonism, in more subtle ways.  The students struggle against their teachers, a universal frustration for anyone in school, and they all face conflict with corruption in their government.  Voldemort, master of the dark arts is not someone you’d expect to encounter on the street, while Umbridge could be that lady in a pink sweater telling you your paperwork is wrong at the DMV.