TBAY/SHIP: Crouch - Winky As Wife and Mother (9 of 9)

[ssk7882 <skelkins@attbi.com>]

No: HPFGUIDX 47966

Nine

Winky as Wife and Mother

---------------

"You aren't really going to propose this," says Eileen.  "Are
you, Elkins?"

Elkins glances up to the sky and smiles.  The subject line
emblazoned across the heavens slowly fades away, to be replaced 
by a new one:

"TBAY/SHIP: Crouch - Winky as Wife and Mother (9 of 9)"

Down on the beach, Affective Fallacy pricks up his ears, suddenly
at the alert.  The Sirius and Snape fans who have been squabbling 
over the rights to ride him stand back and look up.  Several 
LANDLUBBERS let out shrieks of pure horror and flee inland,
wailing and gnashing their teeth.

"Oh, honesty."  Elkins rolls her eyes.  "They're fine with it when
it involves *Death Eaters.*"

"I can't believe you're doing this."  

"Well, why on earth not?"  Elkins glances up at the CRAB CUSTARD
banner.  "He is Dead Sexy, isn't he?"

"Well, yes.  But--"

"And you said yourself that Winky seems to occupy the role of his 
wife."  

"Well, yes, but--"

"Really, the man must have been very lonely after his wife's death, 
wouldn't you think?  He had no friends.  He disappears from his 
workplace for weeks on end, and the person who actually has the best 
insight into his condition -- which is to say, none at all -- is his 
brand new teenaged assistant.  It's really quite pathetic, when you 
think about it.  Charis once suggested that it was part of what made 
him such an inviting tool.  Nobody *knew* him.  Do you really think 
that he would have been celibate for all that time?  Does that really 
seem in character for Crouch to you?"

"Well..."

"He was hardly geriatric.  He was prematurely aged.  Still quite 
vital.  And he does seem to have been a man of rather...well, strong 
passions."  Elkins smiles.  "As I think you've noticed, Eileen, 
although I *do* find it interesting that you've never actually once 
cited that aspect of his character as a part of your CRAB CUSTARD 
defense."

"I, er, well..."  Eileen shifts from foot to foot.

"Mmm-hmmm."  Elkins smirks.  "Those fits of apoplectic rage, those 
suddenly bulging eyes.  Sudden and abrupt *tumescence,* yes?  It is 
suggestive of a rather...passionate nature, that.  Rather like the 
way that the Snapefans can sometimes get about those throbbing veins 
that poor dear Severus develops whenever he's...oh.  Oh my!  My, I 
really *am* embarrassing you here, aren't I?"

Elkins steps back a few paces and regards Eileen with frank interest.

"Now that is a truly extraordinary color," she says.  "How on earth 
do you *manage* that?"

"Can we just agree that he must have been lonely and move on?" gasps
Eileen.

"All right.  We'll drop the tumescence then.  Okay, the guy was 
lonely.  For around ten years, he'd had Winky as his only 
confidante.  She was the only person who knew his secret.  She was 
the only person he had to talk to.  And we know that he did talk to 
her, too, and not just about household matters, either.  He talked to 
her about workplace issues.  He talked to her about Ludo Bagman.  He 
talked to her about his job.  Those aren't things that you normally 
discuss with the help.  They're things you discuss with your *wife.*  
Or your mistress."

"Well, yes, but--"

"Crouch allowed Winky to intercede with him on behalf of his son.  
She played the role of his wife there, too, the role of his son's 
mother.  She occupied the maternal intercessionary role, mitigating 
his paternal discipline.  And she threw the memory of his dead wife 
against him, just exactly like a second wife might do.  Or again, a 
mistress."

"Well..."

"You've said yourself that he seems to have been unduly influenced by 
her.  Under his control.  Didn't you even use the phrase 'under her 
thumb,' at one point, Eileen?"  Elkins shakes her head.  "That's a 
dynamic that usually comes about between a man and a woman that he is 
*sleeping* with, isn't it?  There's an exceptionally vulgar term for 
it, actually.  Needless to say, I won't use it here."

"Er."

"She even gets described in much the same language as Mrs. Crouch does
in her one appearance.  You said it yourself: the entire Crouch 
Sr./Mrs. Crouch dynamic is recreated between Crouch Sr. and Winky."

"*Minus* that!" says Eileen.  "Minus that!  I was not suggesting 
that...errr...there was something going on between the elder Crouch 
and Winky." 

"I know," says Elkins.  "I know that you weren't.  But I am.  It 
actually *was* my instinctive reading, you know.  Even the very first 
time I read the book, I was assuming that--"

"That's just because you're BENT, Elkins!"

"She acts like she's in love with him," says Elkins quietly.  "Even
Ron notices that, and Ron is a fourteen-year-old boy.  He says that 
she seems to love him.  He says it without a trace of sniggering or 
contempt or irony or hyperbole.  He says it in dead earnest.  'Love' 
really isn't a word that laddish fourteen-year-old boys like Ron use 
all that lightly, is it?"

"Ron also says that Percy loves Crouch," Eileen points out.  "And
I don't think that he was suggesting that they were having an 
affair."  

"When she hears that he's been at Hogwarts as a Triwizard Judge, she 
perks up immediately," says Elkins.  "She responds to the idea that 
he might be in the vicinity, that she might be able to see him again 
'breathlessly'.  Her reaction to having been dismissed from his 
service is completely neurotic.  It's not normal.  She doesn't accept 
her new terms of service.  She won't accept the uniform.  She won't 
take on new duties.  She sits around in the clothes that he gave her 
all day long and snivels.  She turns to drink.  If there really is 
some form of magical compulsion which drives the house elves, then 
surely that must be every bit as bad a violation of it as Dobby's 
iconoclasm, don't you think?  It's certainly a violation of their 
*ethos.*  The other elves are absolutely disgusted by her behavior."

"She's devoted to him," says Eileen.

"Indeed."

"Like *Percy* is devoted to him.  It doesn't mean that they were--"

"The two situations are different.  Percy does have a kind of a crush 
on Crouch, but Crouch can't even remember his *name.*  His 
relationship with Winky isn't anything like that.  He doesn't strike 
me as the least bit disinterested in her.  You've implied yourself 
that he loved her."

Eileen sighs.  "I would be hard pressed to believe that there was no 
emotional bond between Winky and him," she admits.

"So would I.  When I read a character described like Crouch is
desribed at the QWC, 'his face somehow sharpened, each line upon it 
more deeply etched,' I assume that person really is suffering quite
badly, no matter how little pity he may have in his gaze.  That's
a physical description of a man in pain.  Seriously, now.  Is there 
any particular reason why we should assume that a relationship which
in all other respects seems to replicate a sexual relationship should
*not* have had a sexual component?  I mean, is there any reason that 
we should assume that Winky was *not* sharing his bed?"

"Well..."  Eileen squirms.  "Well, it's just sort of...distasteful.
Isn't it?"

"Is it?  Why?"

"Well, for starters, she's not human.  And also she's...well, tiny."

"This is a novel that gave us not one, but *two* half-giant 
characters," Elkins reminds her.  "And from Fudge's comment about 
them not all turning out like Hagrid, it would seem that it's not all 
that an uncommon pairing in the wizarding world, either.  I don't get 
the impression that wizards are too particular about species.  Or 
about *size,* for that matter."

"I just don't know if I think that it would occur to people in the
culture to view the elves as objects of lust," says Eileen.  
"They're...well, they're really rather disgusting and freakish, 
aren't they?"

"Harry thinks that they are, but he's not used to them.  I don't know 
if I think that the elves would seem at all freakish or disgusting to 
someone who was actually a member of one of those fine old pure-
blooded families.  I mean, you have to figure, don't you, that the 
elves probably fill the Nanny role in those households?  If you'd 
been raised in one of those famlies, then the elves probably would 
have been the people who actually took care of you when you were an 
infant.  They're the ones who would have watched over you as a young 
child; they're the ones who would have cooked your food, and quite 
likely served it to you as well.  Food is important.  They'd be your 
first source of material comfort, your first physical providers.  
They'd be your very first objects of love, most likely.  You'd be 
used to them: the way they look, the way they sound, the way they..."

"Elkins," says Eileen.  "This is--"

"It's not disgusting.  It's *normal.*  It would be normal for people
who grew up in those households to view the elves as objects of 
erotic desire.  Maybe not appropriate ones.  But certainly *appealing*
ones."  

Elkins hesitates.  She winces.

"Oh, this is bringing us to *such* a Bad Place, Eileen," she says.  
"You know that, right?"

"So don't look," suggests Eileen.  "Just put the palantir away."

"I can't.  Look, let's just come clean here, shall we?  We both
*know* why Crouch/Winky is so disturbing, don't we?  We know why 
it's scary to talk about.  We know why it's a sensitive topic.  And 
it doesn't really have anything to do with species.  Or about size, 
for that matter."  

Eileen looks deeply troubled.  

"We are going to get in so much trouble just *talking* about this," 
she says.

"I know.  I know we are.  But someone has to say it sooner or later.  
The main reason that Crouch/Winky is a disturbing concept is because 
she is his *slave.*  And that's also what makes it so very convincing.
Because...well, there's an awful lot of real life precedent, isn't
there?  And we already know that Crouch didn't scruple at somewhat,
errr...coercive relationships with subordinate members of his
household."

Eileen looks away.  "I don't like house elves as slaves," she says
evasively.  "I prefer Pippin's reading of house elves as housewives."

"Right.  No sexual undertones there, are there?  And no implications
of borderline consensuality, either."  Elkins smiles.  "I like house 
elves as housewives too, actually," she admits.  "But I don't think 
that it's what makes Crouch/Winky such an upsetting concept.  And it 
*is* an upsetting concept, isn't it?  I mean, even when you weren't 
proposing a sexual relationship, you *still* called it 'nasty and 
twisted' in your subject heading.  Well, why?  Why is even the 
implication so nasty?  Why is it twisted?  Why is it so upsetting?  
It's because we're not entirely sure how free the elves really are, 
isn't it?  And because without knowing that, we can't evaluate to 
what extent we should consider such a relationship rapacious.  We
don't know exactly what rights of refusal she might have had.  
That's what makes it so troubling."

"Winky seems to genuinely care about Crouch," Eileen points out.

"Yes.  She does.  Well, there's plenty of real life precedent for
that too, isn't there?  I don't know if that signifies.  People play 
the hands they're dealt, and all things considered, it's far better 
to love than to hate.  In fact," says Elkins.  "Crouch/Winky sort 
of replicates the troubling ambiguity of the entire SPEW plotline, 
doesn't it?  She clearly really loved him.  But did she have a 
choice?  To what extent to the elves *really* like to serve?"

Elkins takes a deep breath.

"And that's precisely why I believe in this ship," she says.  "Not
only because it's so strongly suggested by the characters' actions,
but also because it just dovetails far too neatly with all of the 
other thematic foci of the Crouch family subplots for me not to 
believe that adult readers, at any rate, are meant to read a sexual 
relationship here."

Eileen stares at her.  "You think this ship is authorial *intent?*" 
she asks.  "You're serious?"

"Yes, I am.  Dead serious.  By the time she was writing GoF, the
author knew that she had a large adult audience, as well as a young
readership.  I think Crouch/Winky is intentional, and that it's just
glossed for younger readers.  Of course, there's no way to know for 
sure.  Especially since if I were JKR, I'd deny it if anyone asked
me about it."

"Because of the Bad Place?"

"Well, yeah.  And also because the woman has enough problems as it is 
with all those Satanism accusations without having to worry about 
what people might think about her sticking sexual relationships of 
dubious consensuality into her kids' books.  But at any rate, whether 
it's intentional or not, it just makes sense to me.  See, as I see 
it, the Crouch family plotline is connected very strongly to certain 
types of things.  The House Elf subplot.  The Imperius Curse.  
Fanaticism.  Devotion. Misplaced loyaties.  They're things that seem 
to me to tie into that closing contrast between what is right and 
what is easy.  They're all areas of the story that highlight the 
difficulties of knowing what is truly your own volition and what is 
not.  The house elves enjoy servitude, so are they really slaves?  
The Imperius Curse doesn't feel bad; it feels *good,* it makes you 
*want* to obey its dictates.  Crouch's son cites as his deepest 
desire the desire to serve, to prove himself worthy to his substitute 
father figure.  Both Percy and Winky grant Crouch more loyalty than 
he probably merits; Mrs. Crouch and Winky also give that same sort of 
loyalty to his son.  Was it admirable of them to do that, or was it 
misguided?  Was it a little bit of both?"

"I would have thought you'd call it misguided," says Eileen, smiling
slightly.  "Given your feelings about Crouch."

"I probably should," admits Elkins.  "But I admire loyalty.  I've a 
terrible soft spot for misguided loyalty.  And I'm really awfully 
fond of Percy, you know.  But at any rate, to my mind all of these 
issues are strongly conceptually linked.  The Crouch family subplot 
seems to me to address questions of borderline volition.  If you 
believe yourself to want to serve, then can you truly be said to be 
under coercion at all?  Where does choice end?  Where does 
brainwashing begin?"

Elkins looks both ways.  She bites her lip, then takes another deep 
breath.

"There are questions of sexuality and gender relations that tie 
closely into that issue," she says quietly.  "But they're really 
rather adult, and perhaps not altogether appropriate for younger 
readers."

Eileen opens her mouth.  

"I don't mean adult in the pornographic sense," amends Elkins 
quickly.  "I don't mean that at *all.*  I just mean adult in 
the...well, in the *grown-up* sense.  Sexual relationships, even the 
most healthy and egalitarian ones, always touch just a little bit on 
the borderlands of volition.  They're not really freely chosen in 
quite the same way as platonic relationships are.  But that's a 
*very* delicate subject, and it's not something that children really 
understand.  They can't. They don't have the life experiences yet to 
understand it.  Adults do, though, and I think that Crouch/Winky is 
written into the text in such a way as to provide it as another 
example of borderline consensuality for the book's adult readers, 
while still glossing it sufficiently to keep the book appropriate for 
children.  It's there to provide another example of an area of life 
in which the boundary line between coercion and volition can often 
become hazy, blurred, indistinct.

"Besides," adds Elkins, after a short pause.  "You don't want to talk 
me out of this ship, you know, Eileen.  You really don't."

"Why on earth not?" asks Eileen.

"Because it makes me like Crouch better."

"Elkins!  Why?  It makes his treatment of Winky all the more abysmal!"

"Does it?  Oh, I don't know.  Maybe it does.  But it also makes it
somehow more forgivable.  People get weird when it comes to their 
lovers.  Crouch/Winky actually humanizes Crouch a great deal for me.  
It makes him seem less like a thematic icon, and more like a real 
person.  It makes me find him a lot more sympathetic.  Although 
his poor son..."  

Elkins laughs and shakes her head.  

"Well!" she says.  "And that's another very compelling bit of 
evidence for Crouch/Winky right there."

"His son?"

"Yes.  Do you remember a while back, when you were talking about 
Winky taking over Mrs. Crouch's function in both the text and the 
family dynamic?  You said:

> In her relationship with Barty Jr., Winky also seems to be like
> Mrs. Crouch.

Eileen nods.  "Yes," she says.  "She's just like his mother, really.
She loves him and wants to let him off the hook, believes the best 
of him, even though she knows he wants to serve Voldemort."

"Well, yes.  That's true.  But is it really the same relationship?
Is it the same relationship on *his* end?  Crouch Jr. seems to have 
idolized his mother, or at the very least to have romanticized her 
a great deal after her death.  But how did he feel about Winky?  Are 
there any indications that he felt even the slightest bit of 
affection for her?"

Eileen thinks this over for a moment.

"Well, it's hard to tell," she says.  "We never really see them 
interacting."

"No.   We never do, do we?  Which is particularly interesting, don't 
you think, given that she was actually present for the entirety of 
his confession?  And hardly a silent witness, either.  She makes quite
a nuisance of herself, really.  She literally throws herself on top 
of him when she thinks that he's been killed.  She's utterly 
distraught.  She sobs, she wails, she interrupts, she pleads.  And he 
never even acknowledges her presence.  Not once.  He digresses all 
over the place in the course of his interrogation, but he never 
addresses a single word to her.  Not even indirectly.  I can think of 
two reasons why that might have been the case.  The first is--"

"Veritaserum," Eileen says.

Elkins nods.  "Yes.  Dumbledore starts out his interrogation by 
asking, 'Can you hear me?'  That could be more than a formality.  
It's possible that the stuff focusses your attention on one 
interrogator and one interrogator only."

"The first person who addresses you," suggests Eileen.  "Or maybe
the first person who asks you a direct question once you're under 
its influence."

"Could be.  If so, then maybe he honestly couldn't even hear anyone
else.  He may not have been aware of Winky's presence.  Or perhaps
he couldn't really digress in that particular manner.  But there's 
another possibility too."

"That he was ignoring her on purpose."

"Yes.  And you know, I'm sorry to say that I really do think it's 
the latter?  I see not a trace of affection in how Crouch Jr. speaks 
of Winky, and a good deal that could be indicative of a tremendous 
degree of hostility.  If you ask me, I'd say that he hated her.  For 
ten years, she was his only companion, yet he doesn't even refer to 
her by name at first.  He refers to her as 'the house-elf.'"  

"That's just how wizards talk about elves."

"I think it's more than that.  He refers to her as his 'keeper and 
care-taker.'  He never once states that she treated him with 
kindness, or with compassion.  Instead, he says that she 'pitied' 
him.  He refers to whatever privileges she managed to get for him by 
negotiating with his father on his behalf as 'treats.'  He has not a 
single nice thing to say about her.  He exploited her weakness at the 
QWC, and he seems almost *proud* of himself for having done so.  He 
shows no signs of sympathy or regret when he talks about his father 
sacking her. In fact, I think you can almost read a trace of a gloat 
in that 'she had failed him' comment.  That's not the phrasing you'd 
choose to discuss someone you viewed as a mother, is it?  It's the 
way you'd talk about a villain's lacky getting thrown into the 
crocodile pit for having failed to conduct some wicked plan 
successfully."  Elkins smiles lazily.  "In fact," she says.  "It's 
very much like the way you might describe...oh, let's just say an 
Evil Overlord feeding his snivelling minion to a giant snake for 
having failed him in some very important task.  Isn't it?"

"That's really a very unkind parallel, Elkins," Eileen tells her 
reprovingly.  "On a number of different levels."

"You think?"  Elkins shrugs.  "Take it up with the author," she 
says.  "I just call 'em as I see 'em.  And what I'm seeing is that 
while Winky is in many ways marked as Crouch Jr's mother, both 
textually and in terms of her relationship with Crouch Sr, he 
*himself* does not seem to have perceived their relationship that way 
at all.  He seems, in fact, to have resented her a great deal.  He 
doesn't even really credit her with persuading his father to allow 
him to go to the QWC, does he?  Not really. He credits his *mother's 
memory,* just like he gives his mother all the credit for rescuing 
him from prison.  It's very much the same thing, really.  'My father 
didn't save my life; my *mother* did.'  'Winky didn't persuade my 
father; my *mother's memory* did.'"  Elkins rolls her eyes.  "Barty 
Junior and his sainted mother."

"That Mrs. Crouch *really* gets on my nerves," growls Eileen.

"Yes.  You know, she's really beginning to get on mine too?  But her 
son seems to have idolized her.  And he also seems to have despised 
Winky.  It is rather suggestive, that, Eileen.  You have to admit 
it.  And there's something else, you know.  One final reason for 
thinking that perhaps Crouch Sr. wasn't the model of fidelity to his 
late wife's memory -- or indeed, that perhaps he had *never* been 
much of a model of marital fidelity."

"More slander, Elkins?"

"Slander?  Eileen, you wound me.  I am merely trying to look at the 
family dynamics here.  Now, we all seem to agree that whatever else 
he might have been, Crouch the Elder was a bit of a tyrant when it 
came to his familial relations.  You would think that he must have 
seemed like rather an ogre to his son, wouldn't you?  He sent him 
off to Azkaban.  He bellowed abuse at him while he was pleading 
for mercy.  He held his life in his very hands.  He controlled him.  
He dominated him.  He bent him to his will.  'Total control.'  And 
really, Crouch Sr. was a quite impressive man in his day, wasn't he?  
Forceful.  Charismatic.  Magnetic.  Domineering.  He's still rather a 
striking personality even by the time of canon, when he's become a 
lame duck.  CRAB CUSTARD, you know."

"Yes."

"And his son truly hated him.  I think we can agree on that point 
too.  But what does Barty Jr. actually give as his reasoning for 
hating his father so much?  What does he tell Harry?  That his father 
was a bloody tyrant?  That his father was a monster?  That his father 
was Ever So Evil?"  

Elkins shakes her head.

"No," she says.  "What he says instead is that his father was 
*disappointing.*  Now, why do you think that he would have chosen 
that particular word?"

"Well..."  Eileen thinks about it.  "The *author* probably chose that 
particular word," she says.  "Because it hearkens back to Voldemort 
in the graveyard."

"It does do that.  Voldemort is 'disappointed' in his Death Eaters.  
Because they've been *unfaithful,* isn't it?  What is the 
significance of the fact that Crouch Jr. uses that very same word to 
describe his father?"

"Oh, well."  Eileen shrugs.  "I think that could be just...well, 
you know.  Villain talk.  Or perhaps referring to the...well..."  
She squirms uncomfortably.  "The 'H Word' thing."

"The 'H Word.'"  Elkins smiles.  "How many arenas of Crouch's life
do you think that word applied to?  He was a political hypocrite,
certainly.  Did that tendency translate into his personal life, do 
you think?  Winky talks about her mother serving the family before 
her, and her grandmother before that.  Did Crouch ever keep any 
*male* servants?  Was he *ever* maritally faithful?  Isn't 
'disappointing' rather a stereotypical word for an aristocratic 
young man to use to refer to a father who...well, you know.  Who 
cheats on his wife?  Who does the *help?*"

"You are a very sick woman, Elkins."

"Crouch Jr's treatment of his father's body suggests to my mind 
that to some extent he felt that he was avenging his mother," says
Elkins.  "The third task guardian is a *sphinx.*  The entire family 
dynamic seems awfully suggestive to me of some pretty serious 
Oedipal issues.  And I have to say that when I look at a family 
dynamic in which a son adores his rather sickly mother, absolutely 
detests his father, seems to loathe his father's female servant in 
spite of the fact that she has been kind to him, *and* refers to his 
father as 'disappointing...'  Well, it just gets difficult for me
to avoid the suspicion that there are more than political differences
underlying the conflict there."

"You are just plain disturbed," Eileen says flatly.  "That's all 
there is to this."

Elkins laughs.  "Okay, okay," she says.  "Suit yourself.  You don't 
have to board the Crouch/Winky ship if you don't want to. I think 
it's there, but hey.  To each his own.  Right?  And really, you know, 
it's not the idea of the ship that I find so disturbing about Winky's 
role in the Crouch family dynamic at all.  I actually find that 
rather sympathetic, for all parties concerned.  It's very human, and 
it's also really rather sad.  No, the thing that I find disturbing 
about Winky is what I feel that her role conveys about the maternal 
role in the series as a whole.  Or even about the role of *women* in 
the series as a whole."

"Oh, Elkins!" exclaims Eileen, looking frightened.  "You really 
*are* determined to get us in trouble here, aren't you?" 

"Looks that way," admits Elkins.  "You didn't bring any asbestos 
suits with you today, did you, Eileen?"

Eileen shakes her head.  "No," she says.  "And if I had, I certainly 
wouldn't share with you!  Not after that evil political attack back 
in part four.  And not after you knocked over my CRAB CUSTARD table 
and tried to *throttle* me.  When the flamethrowers come out, I'm 
just going to duck and cover.  You can do what you please.  But now 
that you've raised the issue, you might as well get on with it."

"Okay," says Elkins.  "Well, I can't help but feel, you know, that 
Crouch Jr's respective attitudes towards his mother and Winky reflect 
to some extent the biases of the authorial voice itself."

"You're going to die for this," Eileen advises her gravely.  "You 
*know* that."

"Yes, I know.  But it has to be said.  Really, when you think about 
it, Winky was every bit as much Barty Jr's mother as Mrs. Crouch was, 
wasn't she?  I mean, can you really imagine Lady of the Manor Crouch 
changing her son's diapers?  I somehow suspect that's house elf 
work.  Along with all of the other gross, tedious and unpleasant 
chores of child-rearing.  This gets into Pippin's preferred reading 
of the house elves as housewives.  The person who actually fulfilled 
that aspect of the maternal function in Barty Jr's life was probably 
*always* Winky.  Or perhaps Winky's mother, depending on how the 
house elf generations work.  That's how it works, surely?  The elves 
do the dirty work?"

"I would imagine so."

"And then that the entire dynamic is just replicated when it comes 
to post-Azkaban Barty.  Once again, Mrs. Crouch left all the maternal 
dirty work for her elf.  She up and died, and left Winky to take care 
of the mess that she'd left behind.  *She* wasn't the one who got 
stuck looking after her crazed son all the time, and neither was her 
husband.  That was Winky's job.  Not an enviable task.  Especially 
since I somehow doubt she was ever consulted about the wisdom of 
breaking him free from Azkaban in the first place."

"It doesn't seem quite fair, does it?" admits Eileen.

"No.  It really doesn't.  And really, when you think about it, in 
many ways Winky sacrificed far more for Barty Jr. than his sainted 
mother ever did."

"Well," says Eileen.  "His mother did die in Azkaban for him."

"Yes," sighs Elkins.  "She did.  And I'm not saying that wasn't a 
sacrifice, or that it wasn't a rather brave thing for her to have 
done.  It must have been just awful.  I don't know if I would have 
been willing to do it.  But at the same time...well, not to sound 
brutal here or anything, but the woman was dying *anyway,* wasn't 
she?  She redeemed her son's life with a week or two of absolute 
misery, and I'm not saying that was nothing.  But it didn't really 
last all that long, did it?  And it wasn't...oh, I don't know quite 
how to explain this.  It wasn't actually *work.*  It wasn't active.  
It involved suffering, but only of a rather passive nature.  It 
didn't represent a commitment of *labor.*  It wasn't hard; it was 
merely unpleasant.  Am I making the slightest bit of sense here?"

"Some."

"I guess that I just think that in the long run, it's a lot harder,
and in some ways a lot braver, to *live* for someone than to die 
for them.  What Winky gave to Barty Jr. was ten entire *years* of 
her life, and not of her own volition, either.  And it was *active* 
sacrifice.  It was hard work.  She had to watch over him constantly.  
It became her job.  To some extent, it became the poor creature's 
existence.  I can't imagine that it was a walk in the park, being 
Barty Jr's jailer, can you?  Especially since he seems to have 
hated her."

Eileen mutters something about ingratitude.

"Well, really," says Elkins.  "Even assuming no 'ship, I don't think 
that I can blame him for that.  After all, why *should* he have felt 
gratitude to Winky?  She had nothing to do with saving his life, and 
no matter how nice she may have tried to be to him, she was still his 
jailer.  She professed affection for him, and she tried to make his 
situation more bearable, but when push came to shove, she wasn't 
really on his side at all.  She was his father's creature.  She was 
his father's servant, his father's minion, his father's enforcer.  
She served as the agent of his bondage, and she carried out his 
father's edicts even when she didn't herself agree with them.  If I'd 
been Crouch Jr., I think that I would have felt some contempt for her 
too.  I mean, from his rather adolescent point of view, she's just 
his father in a skirt, isn't she?  Just another two-faced liar.  Just 
another hypocrite."  

"She didn't have a choice, though," points out Eileen.

"No.  She didn't have a choice.  But you know, it's a lot easier to 
sympathize with the plight of people who are 'just obeying orders' 
when their orders don't happen to concern *you.*  You *know* how
freely my heart always bleeds for minions, but I suspect that I might
find that flow starting to slow to a trickle if I were actually the
person *subject* to the orders that they had no choice but to obey.

"Crouch Sr. seems to have felt that Winky was insufficiently loyal to 
him over his son," continues Elkins.  "But Crouch Jr. surely would 
have felt just the reverse -- and with far more cause, really.  I 
can't blame him for not liking her much.  But the fact that Winky 
herself does seem to have felt rather ambivalent about the entire 
situation just makes it a greater sacrifice, doesn't it?  Mrs. Crouch 
got herself well out of that entire twisted Oedipal triangle, and she 
left *that* behind for Winky to deal with as well.  She left Winky 
trapped in an absolutely untenable position, both emotionally and 
morally.  She seems to have genuinely cared about young Crouch.  She 
pitied him, yet she couldn't really help him in any way that had any 
real significance.  She loved him, yet she was put in the position of 
being his jailer and his overseer.  She had to enforce his father's 
will upon him whether she personally approved of his decisions or 
not.  It put her in an awful position, always trying to walk the 
line, trying to look out for his interests and his father's 
simultaneously..."

"She fell off that line at the QWC," says Eileen coldly.

"Man!  You really just can't forgive her for the QWC, can you?  Yes, 
I suppose she did fall off that line eventually.  But then, it was an 
impossible line to walk in the first place.  And in the end, it 
utterly destroyed her, didn't it?  She's a shattered wreck by the end 
of the novel.  An alcoholic mess."  

"So what does this say about the maternal role in the books?" asks
Eileen.

"Well, how do you think that we're supposed to read Mrs. Crouch's 
sacrifice?  My feeling is that it's portrayed as rather noble.  
Perhaps wrong-headed, in that Crouch Jr. really was a Death Eater, 
but wrong-headed in a manner that I think that we're supposed to 
read in a fairly sympathetic light.  Her one on-screen appearance
is rather cartoonish, but I think that we're expected to imagine
whatever off-screen suffering her sacrifice entailed as happening
in a heroic idiom.  She languishes romantically away in prison, and
I think that that's set forth in a more or less tragic light."

"I suppose so."

"Well, how about the suffering that Winky accrues from her sacrifices?
Is it portrayed as noble?  Is it portrayed as in any sense tragic?
Is it set forth in a heroic idiom?"

"Errr...no," says Eileen.  "I wouldn't quite call it that."

"No.  It's totally pathetic, isn't it?  Grotesque.  To a large extent,
her suffering is played for laughs.  We're meant to understand that 
she really is in pain, but at the same time, the actual portrayal 
is...well, it's Toonish, really.  She's utterly revolting.  Her nose 
runs.  She throws tantrums like a child, throwing herself down onto 
the floor and beating her fists against the flagstones and howling.  
She's filthy. She turns to drink, and she's a rather comedic drunk, 
too: she hiccups, she dribbles all over herself, her eyes cross, she 
passes out in a stupor and immediately starts snoring.  The other 
elves wrap her up in a tablecloth.  I mean, we're not exactly looking 
at what I'd call a tragic portrayal of anguish here.  The authorial 
voice accords her very little dignity at all."

"Well, except for maybe in the last scene," points out Eileen.

"When she's playing the Greek Chorus in the great mad scene of 
'The Fall of the House of Crouch,' you mean?"  Elkins grins.  
"Maybe.  But even there, there are still strong elements of humor and 
grotesquerie to her portrayal.  All that, 'Oh, Barty, you bad boy" 
stuff.  Overall, I'd say that the authorial voice treats her with a 
good deal of contempt.  And of course, her loyalty is *misguided,* 
isn't it?  She's guilty of having thrown good loyalty after bad.
It's portrayed as a failing, wouldn't you say?"

"Absolutely," says Eileen, with conviction.

"Well, what about Mrs. Crouch's loyalty?  Winky is no less guilty 
of misapplied devotion than Mrs. Crouch is, really, but are we 
encouraged to read them as equally culpable?  I don't know if I 
think that we are.  It seems to me that when it comes to Mrs. Crouch, 
there's an implication that her actions are more forgivable because 
she was his mother.  At the very least, they get a somewhat noble 
portrayal.  But Winky is also marked as his mother, isn't she?  She's 
just the maternal aspect who does all the *dirty* work.  Yet her 
suffering is grotesque, and her misplaced loyalties, I think, really 
very strongly condemned by the narrative."

"There are some troubling gender implications there," agrees 
Eileen.  "Aren't there."

"There really are.  And it's not helped by the fact that the series 
is just stuffed to *bursting* with all of these remote, idealized, 
nameless, tragic martyr mothers.  Sickly Lady of the Manor Crouch.  
The nameless Mrs. Longbottom, who is not an Auror but merely an 
Auror's *wife,* and who therefore can serve as an absolute 
sacrificial lamb in a way that her husband cannot.  Tom Riddle's 
nameless mother, who dies in childbirth.  And of course, Lily Potter, 
who at least gets a name, but who has to date been given precious 
little else.  She has no backstory, no personality, and no particular 
character, except that she seems to have been perfect."

"'Lily Was Nice.'  But that may change."

"Let's hope so!  Right now, though, that's all we've got on her. No 
friends, no cool legacy items left behind for Harry to play with, no 
backstory, nothing.  We just know that she was pretty and smart, and 
good with Charms.  And that she died for her son.  So we have all of 
these idealized distant martyr mothers, and they seem to stand in a 
kind of contrast to *real* mothers.  You know, the people who 
actually do 'women's work.'  The ones who get down in the trenches of 
the actual day-to-day dirty work of mothering, whose sacrifices 
entail *living* for their children, rather than just dying for them.  
*That* role," says Elkins.  "Is filled by the house elves.  Who are 
grotesque and faintly ludicrous.

"And that really does bother me.  The implication seems to be..."

"That the only good mother is a dead mother?" suggests Eileen,
smiling.

"Well...yes.  It does feel that way to me at times.  Or even
worse: the only good mother is one who doesn't sully her hands with 
icky feminine stuff.  'Women's work.'  It seems to divorce the 
idealized aspect of the maternal role from the physical and material 
aspect in a way that strikes me as somewhat misogynist, really.  It 
seems to me to fit in somehow with the contempt that the narrative so
often shows towards other stereotypically feminine interests or 
endeavors: those silly giggling Gryffindor girls, you know, or
Lockhart and his appeal to women, or the role of Divination, or those 
trashy women's magazines.  I mean, what does all of that say about 
*women?*"

There is a long silence.

"What about Molly Weasley?" asks Eileen.  

"Molly?"  Elkins thinks, then nods.  "Yes, okay.  She's a bit flawed, 
and in some pretty stereotypical ways -- the Lockhart crush, the 
women's magazines.  But I think that she's portrayed as admirable."

There is another long silence.

"So thank heavens for Molly Weasley," says Elkins drily.

"Molly won't be enough to protect you from the flames," advises
Eileen gravely.

Elkins sighs.

"I know," she says.  "Maybe I should have just stuck with politics.  
Or...hey, I know!  Want to talk about the Twins?"


**********

Elkins

who cut her teeth on works of fiction that portrayed 'women's work'
with a certain degree of contempt, and who now, as an adult with
no children and a rather marked (some might even say pathological)
aversion to domestic activities, often finds herself wondering to 
what extent she might suffer from a bad case of internalized 
misogyny -- and if so, then just where that *came* from, anyway.

*********************************************************************