House elves and holidays

[catherine at cator-manor.demon.co.uk]

No: HPFGUIDX 16749

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., Magda Grantwich <mgrantwich at y...> wrote:
> > What I'd like to know is why most house elves seem to enjoy what 
> > they do.  Why do they take such pride in being owned?  
> 
> Does anyone remember the story of the "Shoemaker's Elves"?  The
> shoemaker was down to his last bit of leather, laid it out on his
> bench before going to bed and found it made into shoes in the
> morning. He and his wife discovered the elves and thanked them by
> making them perfect little clothes to wear because they were naked. 
> The elves were happy and left but the shoemaker had good luck the
> rest of his life.
> 
> This is the analogy that came to me when I first encountered Dobby 
in
> the second book.  Elves like to work and help humans.  Some humans
> abuse the system and they are shown in the books to be unsympathetic
> for doing so.  
> 
> I don't think Hermione's SPEW campaign is as funny as JKR meant it 
to
> be but then JKR is not American and might not appreciate the
> sensitivity of the whole slavery issue.  
> 
Thanks for reminding me of that story - I'd forgotten, but now it 
fits.
The reason I find the SPEW storyline amusing, isn't anything to do 
with slavery (and BTW, slavery is regarded very sensitively in the UK 
as well, after all, most slaves came through Liverpool/Bristol on 
their way to the Americas.  I myself, when on holiday in the British 
Virgin Islands recently, discovered that there are a huge number of 
people in the Carribean with my maiden name (Phipps), because they 
were owned by someone called Phipps generations back.  That made me 
feel great, as you can imagine).

No, it is the whole thing of teenagers, full of idealism etc, who 
become very obsessed with a particular issue, as Hermione has done 
with the house elves, whether they invite it or not.  The experience 
which relates most closely to mine is when I was at secondary 
school.  My father taught rural science and had a working farm on the 
premises.  His prize pig (called Charlotte, after Charlotte's Web) 
was very old, having borne numerous litters, and it was time for her 
to go.  It eventually came out that she was to be taken to the 
butcher's shop and turned into sausages.  This generated a huge 
outcry in the school, with a "Save the pig" campaign running for the 
whole of one term, and with a huge number of people turning 
vegetarian in the process.  There was nothing they could really do, 
and eventually all the fuss died down, and they accepted what was 
going to happen - they lived in a rural community after all, but at 
the time it seemed the most important thing in the world to them.

What I'm trying to say (albeit in a very long-winded way) is that JKR 
is probably gently poking fun at the intensity of teenage obsessions -
how black and white/ life and death, issues can seem. 

Catherine