Class Issues in Magical Britain Re: Do all wizards go to school?

[blpurdom]

No: HPFGUIDX 37427

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "lucky_kari" <lucky_kari at y...> wrote:
> The wizarding world is represented as one where everyone knows 
> each other. However, on closer inspection, this is not true. 
> People like Ernie Prang of Stan Shunpike we only meet when we fall 
> out of the class in which Harry moves, a class to which one is 
> admitted on basis of one's having attended Hogwarts. Not everyone 
> in the Potterverse can work at the Ministry, and other such high 
> profile jobs. However, everyone in the Hogwarts' circle does. 
> While we do not know the background of countless wizarding 
> students at Hogwarts, if we do know the background, it's 
> upperclass. 

Classifying the Weasleys as "upperclass" merely because they are a 
wizarding family mystifies me.  It is obvious that true "upperclass" 
wizarding families like the Malfoys look down on them.  And Ron, 
Fred and George (not Percy, who has social-climbing aspirations) use 
slang that is decidedly not upperclass.  We really don't know enough 
about most of the other students to generalize in this way.  I see 
no reason for the Hogwarts student body not to represent a broad 
cross-section of wizarding society.

> The primary difficulty with imagining Stan and Ernie at Hogwarts 
> is not their brains, as has been suggested, but, and it may sound 
> cruel to an audience with democratic and equalizing sensibilities, 
> their accents. I am no expert in English accents, but I would 
> stake my life that Ernie and Stan are represented as 
> stereotypically lower class. People educated at Hogwarts do not 
> speak in that manner. They speak the Queen's English. Different 
> regional accents exist, witness Neville Longbottom in the 
> celluloid-thing-that-must-not-be-named, but they speak "proper" 
> English. If some students are admitted from the wizarding lower 
> classes, they must soon pick it up. They would not, after a 
> Hogwarts education, talk as the two learned custodians of the 
> Knight Bus.

What proof do you have that Stan and Ernie are from wizarding 
families?  If they are Muggle-born, from, say, the East End of 
London, that would explain their accents and the fact that they have 
retained them, since they would have been back with their families 
during school holidays.  The wizarding world, being sheltered as it 
is, may have something of its own accent which is a kind of generic 
British accent, cutting across regional lines as the British 
wizarding world does.  Students from a certain class of wizarding 
family would therefore always be exposed to the same sort of speech, 
while poorer wizarding families and Muggle-born students would be 
exposed to the speech in the Muggle world (whichever corner of it 
they live in) until the age of eleven, and whenever the return home 
to visit after that.  They would be unlikely to lose their original 
accents unless they made a concerted effort to change, and even if 
they changed, it might come out at odd times.  (My mother-in-law rid 
herself of her Texas accent, but it comes roaring back when she's on 
the phone with relatives in the panhandle.)
 
> And, btw, this is why I think Hogwarts charges tuition.

I'm unclear how this is a pro-tuition argument; I came to the same 
conclusion by a different route.  I do believe, however, that there 
are no more than 300 students at Hogwarts and it is the only 
wizarding school in the British Isles.  

> PS - The incredible exception is Hagrid, who speaks his own 
> dialect, and cannot spell. This isn't plausible, though it makes 
> for good comic relief.

Hagrid's accent is indeed odd, because he presumably grew up in the 
wizarding world (I think Muggles would have noticed such a large 
child and wondered about him).  Given his size, he may have been 
isolated from others and exposed only to his father's accent.  If 
one of his father's parents had this accent, that would explain how 
he learned it.  

I am reminded of the character of the maid and her brother in "The 
Secret Garden" who had similar accents, and the brother was also 
outdoorsy; perhaps this is another way for JKR to draw class 
distinctions and yet also paint Hagrid as the wild but gentle savage 
who befriends Harry, as the maid and brother do with the heroine 
of "Secret Garden."  (Although I see Hagrid as more of a "Falstaff" 
figure; that's another story...)

--Barb