[HPforGrownups] House Elves...

[Amanda Lewanski]

No: HPFGUIDX 16998

Ebony Elizabeth Thomas wrote:

<lots of really good points, then said>

> There is nothing symbiotic about the relationship between wizards and
> house-elves.  I agree with Amy Z.  From what we've seen in canon, the
> elves get the short end of the stick.

Here it is again--everyone always must include "seems" or "from what
we've seen." I repeat, we know almost nothing about the particulars of
the relationship of house-elves to wizards.

-- We know there is a magical bond. BUT: We don't know how it
originated. We don't know from which side it stems. We don't know if
it's hereditary to a "family" of house-elves. We don't know if young
house-elves go out to seek their fortune, or are bound to the family or
old house in which they were born.We don't even know how, if, or when
house-elves breed (I assume they do, given there's two genders).

-House elves are found in old families with manors and money:
    "Well, whoever owns him will be an old wizarding family, and they'll
be rich," said Fred.
    "Yeah, Mum's always wishing we had a house-elf to do the ironing,"
said George. "But all we've got is a lousy old ghoul in the attic and
gnomes all over the garden. House-elves come with big old manors and
castles and places like that; you wouldn't catch one in our house...."
(p. 29, CoS, US)

BUT The elves might be bound to rich families simply because the rich
families are the ones likely to own the old manors and castles. It might
be the place as much as the occupants. This could be interpreted to
indicate that if you're rich, you can purchase an old house or castle,
and wow, you'd have house-elves! So they may be bound to the place,
first and foremost, and the family occupying it, second. Which doesn't
exactly sound like the wizards are the ones imposing the bond. We just
don't *know.*

If the elves are bound first to a family, we've thus far seen only Dobby
(Malfoy family), Winky (Crouch family), and the Hogwarts elves. That's a
pretty small sample. But the binding seems to be to families, not
individuals--families in the sense of many generations, institutions.
Hogwarts isn't a family, but headmaster follows headmaster in a sort of
generational pattern. But again, we don't *know.*

George's comment could also indicate that the elves may have a bit of
choice before their "binding," if "you wouldn't catch one" in the
Burrow.

--House-elves can be freed by giving them clothing. BUT of the entire
number of elves we've seen, only one was happy about that, and that
seems to be because he has a conscience and disliked that his former
masters were Dark wizards. The Voldemort years shook up more than the
wizards in the magical world.

And we're also getting snared by semantics. "Freed" to an elf is bad; it
means without any roots, having no home. "Enslaved" to an elf means a
purpose, a place in the world. Using such knee-jerk terms in new ways
seems very, very JKR to me. I am reminded of my medieval group, where
the members in creating a medieval persona so often want to be "their
own person," not in fealty to anyone, not bound to any lord. But in the
medieval viewpoint, if you weren't sworn to someone--a lord, the church,
something--you were outside society. Your social bonds were your place,
they defined who you were, your rights, your "dignities," your sphere.
Those who were not formally in society, were outside it--outlaws. It was
a different viewpoint, not "gotten" by many of our modern group, who
were after all raised on a different ethic.

I can appreciate the viewpoint of those making the slavery parallels,
but I've seen a distinct lack of any "oppressing" mechanisms. The elves
aren't being kept in their place, they're staying there. In my own
"seem" mode, there doesn't seem to be any sort of active propaganda.
There don't seem to be any sort of spells set to keep them in bounds. It
seems to have been assumed that the magical bond is something cast by a
wizard to hold the elf; I haven't seen any basis for this in canon, and
that would be the only "oppressive" thing, if it were true.

There simply may be that in the makeup of a house-elf that requires it
to be bound to a place or an institution. It may be the price they pay
for that "strong magic of their own" (although newly freed Dobby could
still blast Lucius down the stairs). The worst the wizards may have done
is take advantage of that necessity in the elves.

JKR seems to have spoon-fed us only those facts about a situation that
would lead us to jump to exactly the conclusions that it appears most of
us have, the conclusion Hermione's settled on. It's not necessarily
wrong, but it may well not be what it seems on the surface. I am
surprised, in fact, that Hermione hasn't learned more before she decided
what the case was, and that she isn't interested in hearing anything
that might moderate her view. She's usually so "gather all the
information first."

Lastly, how do you plug choice into the equation, when the elves are
making a choice we think is bad? Should we force them to have to choose
something we think is good? We are putting our values onto a different
culture, with very little information to go on. I, at least, will
reserve judgement of both the wizards as unthinking oppressors or the
elves as brainwashed slaves, until I know more about the situation.

--Amanda


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