This is the last of seven ‘Pregnancy Trap’ posts that explore one of the more curious Golden Threads that run through everything Rowling has written. The first six can be found at the link above and include deep dives into the Big Four traps that define in some sense the Harry Potter series, Cursed Child, the Cormoran Strike mysteries, and Casual Vacancy. The last two entries in the series have been loving looks at the individual books of the Strike-Ellacott stories, which in addition to being grounded in the Leda Strike-Jonny Rokeby Pregnancy Trap feature novel-specific characters whose lives included some kind of “coercive love;” the first post covered the first four books in the series and the most recent the last three.
Today I close out the survey with a relatively quick look at the Fantastic Beasts screenplays, The Ickabog tale, and The Christmas Pig. I’ll wrap up this Pregnancy Trap Golden Thread in an article on the Substack page and a ‘Rowling Studies’ podcast for subscribers before moving on to the next Golden Thread ‘common denominator’ in her work.
Book-by-book, then, the Pregnancy Traps or “Coercive Love” to be found in Fantastic Beasts, The Ickabog, and The Christmas Pig!
Fantastic Beasts
I’m not a fan of the Fantastic Beasts films because, as a serious reader of J. K. Rowling, there’s very little certainty about what parts are hers in this collaborative exercise. Scroll down to the bottom of this post for a collection of links to articles about the elusive shooting script written by Rowling for a clue about what I’m saying.) That being said, a complete survey of Rowling’s works to list all the Pregnancy Traps wouldn’t be complete without a look at the three Beasts screenplays.
There aren’t any Pregnancy Traps! But there is a lot of “coercive love” of different sorts, all critically important to the ensemble cast’s lives and plot points.
Queenie Goldstein’s Coercive Love for Jacob Kowalski
We’re not told what exact spell that Queenie uses to “enchant” Jacob Kowalski, only that Newt’s “Surgito” counter spell frees him from it. Why had she felt the need to trap her No-Maj American lover and drag him to London? As she explained to the exasperated baker in the street outside Newt Scamander’s home, “Why is it wrong to want to marry you? To wanna have a family? I just want what everyone else has, that’s all. They’re really progressive here and they’ll let us get married properly” (Crimes of Grindelwald screenplay, pp72-73). Jacob objects to her coercive love, Queenie bolts for Paris, and the fascinating Super Muggle sub-plot in resistance to the anti-No-Maj Gellert’s ambitions begins.
Perhaps alone among Rowling’s “coercive love” plot points, this Marriage Trap ends well, with the man and woman winding up happily married.
Corvus Lestrange IV’s Coercive Love for Laurena Kama
From the Wikipedia plot summary of Crimes of Grindelwald:
Tina and Newt go to the Lestrange family tomb and find Yusuf confronting Credence and Nagini. Yusuf [Kama] reveals that he is carrying out his father Mustafa’s request to avenge his mother Laurena: she was kidnapped by Corvus Lestrange IV using the Imperius Curse, and died giving birth to Leta, Yusuf’s half-sister. Corvus IV remarried and had Corvus V. He sent Corvus V to America for adoption to keep him safe after discovering Yusuf’s revenge plot. Leta reveals that she unintentionally caused Corvus V’s death: sailing to America, Leta, unable to stand his constant crying, switched her baby brother with another infant, Credence; the ship sank, and Corvus drowned.
The entire Leta Lestrange plot line begins with her conception, sex that only happened under the Imperius curse. Credence’s survival of the sinking ocean liner, too, has to be attributed to Leta and thereby to Corvus IV’s use of the Unforgiveable Curse to win the woman he wanted.
Unnamed Muggle’s Pregnancy Trap for Aberforth Dumbledore?
There’s next to nothing said in the screenplay about Aberforth’s fathering Aurelius/Credence with a Muggle woman the summer that his brother Albus was consorting with Gellert Grindelwald. Albus explains to Newt that
“The summer Gellert and I fell in love, my brother fell in love as well. With a girl from the Hollow. She was sent away. There were rumors. About a child. [Credence] is a Dumbledore. Had I been a better friend, to Aberforth… If I’d been a better brother, he might have confided in me. Perhaps things would have been different. This boy could have been part of our lives. Part of our family” (Secrets of Dumbledore screenplay, p 184)
Was it a Pregnancy Trap? If so, who was trapped, Aberforth or the unknown Muggle? Or was she a witch? How did Credence wind up on the boat to America? Did the Dumbledore parents exile their first and only grandchild? The mother’s family? I’m confident those with greater familiarity with these screenplays have answers to those questions (feel free to enlighten me in the comment boxes).
What we know for sure, though, is that three of the major sub-plots in the Fantastic Beasts have their foundations in, if not the usual Rowling-Galbraith Pregnancy Trap, then with coercive love subplots.
The Ickabog
Nick Jeffery and I will be talking about Rowling’s fairy tale in the coming weeks, easily the most neglected work by Rowling; only the always there first with the most Lana Whited, as far as I know, has written about this political fairy tale (see her ‘The Ickabog, Monsters, and Monstrosity’ in The Ivory Tower, Harry Potter and Beyond). Nick and I in recent conversations have come to the conclusion that The Ickabog, along with Casual Vacancy and Ink Black Heart, is not only one of Rowling’s most autobiographical works, but, with the Lake and Shed interview, the Solve et Coagula tattoo, her RFK Award speech, and the Trans Tweet Heard Round the World, a key to her self-understanding in the critical year 2019-2020.
But that’s for another day!
There are no Pregnancy Traps in Ickabog, either, but, as with the Beasts screenplays, there is a significant “coercive love” subplot.
Spittleworth’s Coercive Love for Lady Eslanda
We learn in the first chapter that King Fred has eyes for the bookish Lady Eslanda but Lord Spittleworth convinces the foolish King not to pursue that relationship. Why not?
For a time, Fred had seemed to rather like Lady Eslanda, who was as dark and beautiful as Fred was fair and handsome, but Spittleworth had persuaded Fred that she was far too serious and bookish for the country to love her as queen. Fred didn’t know that Lord Spittleworth had a grudge against Lady Eslanda. He’d once asked her to marry him, but she’d turned him down (p 2).
In chapter 35, ‘Lord Spittleworth’s Proposal,’ Lady Eslanda is kidnapped by Spittleworth’s henchman and taken against her will to his country estate. She, however, has fallen in love with Captain Goodfellow, the cheesemaker’s son, and refuses his offer to make her the “wife of the Chief Advisor.” She does so with such vehemence and flair that he imprisons her in his library (pp 147-149). She is only freed post Ickabog Bornding by Bert Beamish and Roderick Roach, who capture Lord Spittleworth and take him to the capitol for his trial (pp 263-267).
If Fred had courted and won the heart of Lady Eslanda, of course, the drama of The Ickabog almost certainly would have played out very differently.
The Christmas Pig
Last and perhaps Least, there are once again no Pregnancy Traps in Rowling’s beautiful and profound Christmas Pig. There is, however, a hint of conditional love bordering on the coercive.
Natalia Macaulay’s Coercive Love for her daughter Holly?
Holly Macaulay is driven to be an Olympic team caliber gymnast. The pressure to succeed, to win every competition, is enormous. The inciting incident of Christmas Pig, the defenestration of DP from a car window by Holy after step-brother Jack calls her a Loser, follows upon her coming to stay with her father after losing a gymnastics competition.
Much of the action of Christmas Pig in the Macaulay home and in Jack’s biological parents’ home) is obscured frtom the reader because we only have a ‘Jack’s Eye View’ of what is going on. Jack, though, hears Natalia Macaulay hysterically blaming Holly’s father, her first husband, for their dauighter’s “missing practices” which led to her defeat (p 25). Jack learned from the Holly-figure in the Land of the Lost, Bullyboss, that Holly really wanted to learn music rather than be a gymnast, which he shares with his step-sister after returning to the Land of the Living. Papa Macaulay is the man on the spot; Holly opens her one Christmas Eve present with Jack — and she has received “a shiny black guitar” (pp 269-270). Natalia, I think, is the source of the inherited ‘Bullyboss’ aspect of Holly’s character that Jack’s step sister was happy to lose, a love that was conditional on the young woman’s conforming to her mother’s desire rather than her interior calling or vocation, a calling her father ‘hears’ and heeds.
Which closes our seventh Pregnancy Trap post. I’ll be speaking with Nick Jeffery about this Golden Thread on a Rowling Studies podcast and writing up my conclusions over at the Substack Hogwarts Professor!
