Was the hissably villainous Ministry of Magic flunky actually in league with Voldemort all along, or was she just naturally nasty, and later found it easy to fall in with his plans once he had, through proxies, taken over the Ministry?
I’d go with naturally nasty. She got left out the first time round and was pissed off about bit.
Rowling has been asked this in a chat interview after Deathly Hallows was released and said no, she’s not a Death Eater, just a “nasty piece of work” (Rowling’s description). She also said she did time in Azkaban after Voldemort’s death for crimes against muggle born wizards and witches.
Trivia: Her original first name was Elvira. Rowling changed it when she learned about the Cassandra Peterson character.
Interestingly, a VP where I used to work looked a bit like Umbridge and was similarly nasty.
Umbridge is a pure blood with a hatred of muggles and half-bloods even before Voldemort’s return.
Side issue, though.
Dolores loved authority, preferably without any real responsibility: power she could use arbitrarily for her petty whims over people. She was a typical cruel bureaucrat, always sticking to the absolute rules self-righteously, rules she had a hand in making in the first place. The difference between say, Umbridge and Lucius Malfoy is that Malfoy, for all his petty spitefulness, doesn’t expect his enemies to thank him for the privelege. He actually does have some worth to the world - just not nearly as much as his arrogance demands. Umbridge has, effectively, none: her only value is in the hzay and unaccountable fields of bureaucracy, where blind rules-following and sucking up can substitute for any redeeming usefulness.
Voldemort merely changed administrations for her, and she was well-suited to benefit. Ten minutes beforehand, she would have been the loyal company woman to the ministry. Ten minutes later, she was the loyal company woman for the new administration. She would never in a million years help Voldemort take power - for one, she wouldn’t take a risk like that. But she also would never oppose a strong horse. She’s the kind of person who privately curses the “meddling kids” and “superlicious officials” who brought down Voldemort and “blamed her for doing her job.” She’s unlikely to ever regret anything, because she’ll never believe she did anything wrong.
I think smiling bandit nailed it. And know I couldn’t have come close to saying it half as well.
I liked her as a baddie because we’ve all met people like her, adults and kids alike.
Thanks, everybody. Much obliged.
Strong half-horses, on the other hand …
I’m not even completely certain that she ever actually realized that Voldemort had taken over-- Didn’t he still have some patsy that was officially in charge? She just new that there was a new boss, and that he was giving her free reign to do what she liked.
Good point, Chronos. Umbridge might simply have preferred Thicknesse as Minister over Scrimgauer (sp probably wrong), due to the better mesh of styles. She probably would not have noticed any change in Thicknesse due to his being subverted and Imperioussed, and even if she did notice, she might not have cared due to the improved job fit and career potential.
If she had known she’d probably have kept up the cover story. She was a total Kool-Aid drinker as long as she was in a powerful position. She didn’t participate in the battle of Hogwarts though.
I saw something on TVTropes one time (I forget where, exactly) that pointed out that the reason why she was able to produce a strong Patronus at the muggle-born trials was because that was what made her happy. She was exactly where she wanted to be :eek:. A pretty chilling assessment, if it’s accurate.
I think it’s more that she had a subconscious doublethink instinct to not pry too deeply (or at all, really) into whatever was going on. If she knew she was working for Voldemort, she’d have a hard time rationalizing it to herself, so she made sure that she didn’t know. There, problem solved, no moral quandary.
I think Umbridge is one of Rowling’s best creations. She’s not classically evil, she’s just selfish. And in Books 5 and 7 we see the perils of unchecked selfishness. I find her character much more interesting than “He’s the bad guy because he is evil… kills people and stuff.” Umbridge is not a murderer. She puts herself ahead by pushing others down, and yet she can be ridiculously dangerous.
She is clearly allegory for racism, but I think she represents the motivation for discrimination too. She holds herself higher than others simply because she is pure-blood because she has nothing else. In other words, unlike someone like Dumbledore, she can’t point to any accomplishment she has actually achieved to demonstrate her greatness. She can only achieve greatness by belittling others.
I think the world has far too many real Umbrages unfortunately.
Yes that’s there obviously, as that’s the over-arching allusion in the whole Voldemort/pure-blood thing. But, that and Umbridge more broadly are a strong parallel to any kind of witch-hunt, whether it be REAL witches (Salem) or other sorts of condemnation (HUAC). The thing that makes you a target in that world is something you are intrinsically (a muggle-born or partial muggle) but the hunt-down-and-destroy is more in the realm of witch hunts. Of course, the parallels to Hitler and the Holocaust, or any genocide, can’t be overlooked.
Really, the whole point is that Umbridge doesn’t consider herself a monster. No human does. In her eyes, she’s just doing what is necessary to maintain order and discipline, and she probably thinks she’s doing all her victims a favor.
She tortured Harry. I would consider that evil. Remember when he had to write lines as a punsihment and the words got etched into his flesh as he wrote them.
Win.