Why Snape?

This is the question asked by this website, which appears to have died down following the final Harry Potter book, which confirmed my attitude and fulfilled my literary pre-prediction regarding Severus Snape.  Google "Snape" and you will get 3.9 million hits and I'll wager - nearly all really are Snape.

Is this a "Snaper" Doll?  Why, yes it is, complete with rather optimistic muscular build and - Hawaiian Shirts - what else? 

I'll willingly bow to a far-better woman than me - having done some thinking about the Harry Potter books, which I enjoy as much as anyone else because you'd have to be pretty much - well, either lacking in imagination, not a pleasure reader, or maybe just not ALIVE not to like Harry Potter.  I've pointed up a few times that J.K. Rowling owes a great deal to Charles Dickins, though she gets "Tom Brown's School Days" a lot - probably thanks to the execrable leg-grabber Harold Bloom (yes, that is the original Harold Bloom attempt to slam a woman article).  And make no mistake, that was where it was at.  Harold Bloom believed that Shakespeare invented the "modern man" (I think he said "human" but Bloom meant "man") - i.e. through such complex and conflicted characters as Hamlet (I'll buy that) and Falstaff (no - won't buy that - even though he "heard the chimes at midnight, Master Shallow").

So, in terms of Dickensian characters, I think that J.K. Rowling out-Dickenses the old gentleman himself.  Which is only fair, considering these are stories for today and the future, and it's no skin off his nose and not as if nobody will ever read Oliver Twist or Great Expectations again just because Dickens never thought of anybody as cool as Snape.  Or Dumbledore or Ron and Hermione or even good old Harry.  Or HAGRID - ha! 

This is just to say, I have never thought of anybody as cool as Snape.  Which is not to say, I oughn't try.  Even if I am not steeped in the public school tradition but rather the PUBLIC SCHOOL tradition - and private as well.  Watch out - for I am the graduate of a private women's college.  If it wasn't quite St. Trinians, it had its points, it surely did.  We had a few charismatic instructors.    You see here depicted the "Assistant Professor," drawn by my beloved Paul Darrow, an illustration for the now sadly out-of-print Academic Bestiary by Prof. Richard Armour, who was by the time I was at Scripps, an emeritus professor.

This depicts, I believe - Professor Richard Fadem - who all Scripps graduates between the 1970's and 1990's or even 2000's will recognize, though perhaps - not in this particular form.  According to Paul, this little cartoon really got under Prof. Fadem's skin.

Ha ha, because he was no longer the "Assistant Professor" by the time I knew him, and in fact, had launched his handsome head and notably romantic profile toward the following goal of nature, nurture and experience:

Yes -- the FULL Professor.  The website where I located this gem noted, "Full Professor -- I always wondered 'full of what?' 

And I am the owner of a rather dog-eared copy of Terror of St. Trinians, which, in various forms, is definitely still in print. 

To Harold Bloom - I say - Girlz Rool, Boyz Drool.