Wizard-Muggle marriage, & further commentary on Kevin

[Tabouli]

No: HPFGUIDX 33667

Here's something I've mused about off-stage for a while...  in CoS, I think, Ron mentions (as people have recently quoted) that most wizards these days are half-bloods, if wizards hadn't married Muggles they'd have died out, etc.  OK.  As half-blood myself, one question I am constantly being asked is "how did your parents meet?"  In my case, I of course know the story well.  However, so far we have no clues as to how wizard-muggle marriages come about.  In fact, from what we can see, muggle-wizard relations are quite distant and, on the wizards' side, rather indulgent (from e.g. Arthur) and even condescending and superior (e.g. Lucius Malfoy).

We have heard about the outcomes of some cross-cultural marriages (Voldemort's tragic childhood, Seamus' shocked Muggle father), but we have never seen or heard about a cross-cultural marriage in the making.  How do such couples meet, and how do they overcome the cultural differences?  How do the Muggles come to terms with the magical abilities of their spouses and overcome their natural scepticism, and what do they tell their families?  How do the Wizards come to terms with the lack of magical powers (but presence of all manner of other technological gadgets) of their spouses and deal with their feelings of cultural supremacy?

For that matter, how on earth do they meet?  IIRC, the only adult we've seen so far who has much daily contact with Muggles is Arthur, and despite his love for them he doesn't seem to know many personally (though we don't know how well he got along with the Grangers!).  Then perhaps there's Fudge, who negotiates with the Muggle PM (Fudge/Thatcher, anyone?).  Apart from them, jobs like Auror, Knight Bus driver, Hogwarts teacher, Ministry officials, magic shopkeeper, Evil Overlord and the like hardly provide much opportunity for meaningful interactions with Muggles.  What avenues are there?  I suppose there's my fledgeling theory that Mrs Figg the positive Squib role model is a Muggle-Wizard liaison officer... maybe there are a few of these around and they make Muggle friends and invite them to their parties or something!

Sadly, I don't really see JKR getting into a back-story of this type in the HP series, unless it magically turns out to be mega-relevant to the plot (e.g. Tom Riddle's past, which looks the likeliest candidate to date), but it's interesting to speculate.  What do people think?

Pippin:
> I think you might have picked a  more comparable Narnia book to 
brush up on. The Harry Potter series is a romance of the "child exile" genre. 

Now *this* was an interesting comment (thanks Pippin!)  The book I immediately thought of was "The Horse and His Boy", actually.  Adopted son of hated Northern race ill-treated and exploited by wicked stepfather (interesting portrayal of the Arab world by C.S. Lewis, don't you think, Kevin?  Setting a good example to the wee ones, no doubt...), who runs away with the help of a talking horse to the magical North (where they eat nice English food and have blond hair, white skin and other hallmarks of Good) where he discovers he's not a slave boy but a prince who, as prophesised, saves Archenland from destruction.

Quite a good parallel with HP, isn't it?  And on reflection, the character development in that book is somewhat more plausible than his Pevensie stuff.  Note of course that C.S. Lewis, in addition to warning the children about the Evils of the Arab world, also reminds us that stereotypically "female" activity like interest in clothing and relationships is despicable and worthless and should be shunned by sensible women (lest they slide away from Aslan like Susan, or Lasraleen).  Nothing like a morally sound series to teach the children, eh?

However, I prefer to be fair to Clive on the feminism and Islamophobia front on the same grounds that some have used to defend HP... they are a reflection of the prevailing values of the time in which he was writing, as upper-middle class Christian academic in a very masculinised world.  Just as JKR's language and style reflects the era in which she is writing. Though I can't help suspecting that Kevin might be happy to endorse Clive's stance on these two issues...

catherine:
> In Lord of the Rings, with few exceptions those that were evil are so 
because they were created that way.   That makes it so easy and 
safe.  That person is an Orc, they are evil.  It's comforting to 
think that those who are evil are so because they were preordained to 
be so.  Makes your choice obvious doesn't it: `should I side 
with `ugly orc' or the fair Galadrieal?'<

And as for Tolkien, obviously a clear sign that someone fits into the Evil category of humanity is ugliness!  A fine Judeo-Christian education for the children.  Nothing like that unambiguous distinction between Good (where all people are fair and wise) and Evil (where all people are ugly and foolish and come to a bad end on Legolas' arrows), eh?  Moral stuff.

Lotus:
> > This site isn't just a fan list. 
>
>Oh? I have seen very little on this list that would support this. As a matter 
>of fact, Kimball's post is the only one I recall that wasn't in support of HP. 

Well, it depends, as most complex questions do, on definitions.  How do you define a "fan" of HP?  If it means "someone who likes HP", sure, it's pretty rare to see posts on this list which don't come from "fans".  However, I wouldn't at all say that all listmembers are "fans" if this implies we are "blindly adoring readers of the HP series".  Clearly the main point of having such a list is not to wallow in the unquestioning devotion of 3000 fellow fans, but to debate and analyse the series from different perspectives, many of which are quite critical.  In the recent spate of posts on gender roles in HP, there were a large number of listmembers who expressed disapproval about JKR's writing in this area, for example.  Our eyes are open to HP's flaws, we just like the books anyway.

catherine:
> I noticed that as of this writing, you (Kevin) haven't responded to 
> any of his essay's response.  

Actually, this doesn't surprise me at all.  Alas, I doubt that he ever will; alack, I even doubt whether he is reading our carefully thought out arguments!  As I mentioned in my last post, my feeling after reading his essay was that he had spent some time preparing what he felt was a watertight moral argument against HP, which he intended to post out to the ignorant and misguided fan lists (hmm... has his essay turned up on any other lists we know of?) in an attempt to prise the blindfolds from our eyes and point out the perils of our fandom. then withdraw self-righteously, his moral revelation achieved.  My impression was that he sincerely meant what he said, but, with the limited vision that people with those sorts of views tend to have (due to limiting their social contact to people like themselves for fear of corruption), never imagined that the list would in fact be full of intelligent, educated, literature-savvy people (of whom some are Christian) who are very familiar with all three of the series he mentions and are more than capable of understanding, rebutting and rejecting his arguments.

All the same, he's provided us with a nice axe to grind.  The ol' grain of sand in the oyster... an irritant, but one that has produced some very interesting posts.  A bit of indignation never hurt anyone...

Tabouli.


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