Just saw the trailer for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Are Durmstrang and Beauxbatons single-sex Wizarding schools?
I don’t recall the book itself ever saying so, but I also don’t recall mention-by-name of any female Durmstrang student or male Beauxbatons student, and in the trailer linked above Dumbledore says something like “Welcome the gentlemen from Durmstrang and the ladies from Beauxbatons”, and sure enough the contingents lined up from each school look single-sex in the brief frame in which they are shown.
I don’t remember any female Durmstrang students mentioned in the book, but they were some male Beauxbatons. Padma ditched Ron at the Yule Ball for one. Of course Ron was too busy fretting about Hermione to notice.
There’s a brief mention of a girl from Durmstrang in the scene where Dumbledore announces the rules of the Triwizard Tournament. She’s sitting next to Poliakoff, the kid who asks Karkaroff for wine and spills food down the front of his robes.
I know nothing of HP apart from the films released so-far.
That being said, Sturm und Drang (“storm and urge”) was certainly a very “yang” literary movement and a Beaux batons (“beautiful sticks” or “wands”) sounds like a very “yin” name for a magic school.
Without knowing anything of the actual text, I would assume that “Durmstrang” is a play on “sturm und drang” and that the school had the spirit of rowdy, impetuous boys, and that “Beauxbatons” was more geared toward aestheticly-minded femmes.
If there is any crossing of gender lines, I would expect that the students are appropriately matched to the archetypes.
Yes and no. Durmstrang is an Eastern European wizarding school. Beauxbatons is French. The stereotyping is based on those facts-- the Beauxbatons are somewhat effete and affected, the Durmstrangs are rather grim, raised in brutal conditions, and somewhat prone to the dark side (at least, one would assume so, given that their Headmaster is a former DeathEater. But then, you probably don’t know what a DeathEater is yet, I guess.)
