[HPFGU-Movie] Re: WorkoutDan and Study Hall
Karen Chuplis
kchuplis at alltel.net
Mon Jan 30 01:05:37 UTC 2006
On Sunday, January 29, 2006, at 06:45 PM, Shaun Hately wrote:
> On 29 Jan 2006 at 17:35, Karen Chuplis wrote:
>
>>
>> On Sunday, January 29, 2006, at 03:56 PM, Shaun Hately wrote:
>>
>>> Newell, I think did a very credible job - but I am probably somewhat
>>> unusual in how important this is to me.
>>> http://www.alphalink.com.au/~drednort/HSWW.html is evidence of that
>>> (and in my view worth reading if people don't know that much about
>>> the British public school tradition and how (I and others think) it
>>> has influenced Hogwarts.
>>>
>>
>> Really interesting essay! I was wondering about Dudleys Smelting
>> stick.
>> Can you shed any light on the purpose of that or it's evolution? (P.S.
>> the description of its apparent use by JKR via Harry is one of my
>> favorite bits of humor in the books "They also carried knobbly sticks,
>> used for hitting each other while the teachers weren't looking. This
>> was supposed to be good training for later life.").
>
> In simple terms, the Smelting sticks simply seem to be part of
> Smelting's uniform. Historically, there were a number or Public
> Schools that had walking canes, or umbrellas as part of their
> uniform. School uniforms were, to an extent, based on the fashions in
> place when they were introduced and if the fashion at the time
> included a stick, sometimes that was translated into school uniform
> as well. Most got rid of them a while ago (a number during World War
> II - boys had to carry gas masks during the war and a number of
> schools changed their rules on carried items, or on hats at that time
> to make that easier). The comment about the sticks being used for
> hitting each other is probably very tongue in cheek - I doubt the
> school officially regards that as the purpose of the sticks (as
> evidenced by the fact that boys don't do it when staff are looking) -
> although it's very possible that such useage is unofficially
> tolerated.
Oh I never took it as anything but humor. It just is so funny to me for
some reason. The delivery is just hysterical to me.
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