There's something very Victorian about Rowling's characters, and I actually think a Victorian reader would understand them a little more than we do -- and expect less from them. The characters are not just Victorian in who they are but in the social positions they represent. The Dursleys are a satire on middle-class airs that could have been pulled straight from the pages of Punch. As the warm-hearted matron of a large brood, Mrs. Weasley embodies all the solidity of an idealized working class. And Lily is a model for all gentlemen's wives, the household angel who brings out the best in her husband. Almost all of Rowling's characters could be straight out of a Dickens novel -- Harry too, of course, who's just the latest in a long line of noble orphans (I imagine that Victorian readers would never expect Harry to be anything but noble. Orphan or not, he is, after all, the son of a gentleman.)
In terms of social mores, the mores of the wizarding world seem to mirror those of Victorian times. Everyone is just exactly what they're supposed to be, and no one ventures outside of that or even thinks of doing so. It's unimaginable. In a lot of Dickens' stories, characters who try to move up the social hierarchy are either portrayed as ridiculous or wind up in some tragic circumstance. Rowling isn't writing with any sort of moral instruction in mind, so she doesn't bother with these scenarios, but it's obvious from the scenarios we do see that the wizarding world is far less socially fluid than our own. It's always made me wonder why anyone would want to stay in the wizarding world at all. Why would anyone, especially someone with supernatural abilites, want to stay in a world that seems as rigidly defined as the wizarding world does?
via Oselle & Sistermagpie's discussion in this archive thread discussing whether Rowling's female characters are 'cardboard cutouts', from 2007
