Official Philip Nel Question #10: Class

[bluesqueak]

No: HPFGUIDX 41407

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "ssk7882" <skelkins at a...> wrote:
Elkins wrote:
<Snip>
> For the purposes of simplicity, therefore, in this message 
> I would like to narrow my focus to look at only one of these fault 
> lines: the text's attitude toward social class proper, and 
> particularly toward the social values of a very particular group: 
> the nostalgic and conservative English middle class.  
> 
> 
> Porphyria summarized Richard Adams' excellent article, "Harry 
> Potter and the Closet Conservative," with: 
> 
> > Adams discusses how the HP series espouses a mix of both
> > progressive and nostalgic ideas. Hogwarts is racially diverse and 
> > coed, yet recreates the old-fashioned dream of conservative 
> > Britain through its many allusions to the stereotypical British 
> > public school, notions reinforced by the quaintly anachronistic 
> > Wizarding culture at large.
> 
> Yes, it does.  I would go even further, though, and say that the 
> particular nostalgic dream that the series espouses is not even a 
> generalized English (or even British) one. It strikes me as even 
> more specifically the nostalgic conservatism of a particular social 
> class, ironically the very same social class which JKR takes such 
> delight in excoriating in the form of Harry's horrid guardians, the 
Dursleys.
> 
<Snip an assessment of the Dursleys as middle-class small 'c' 
conservatives.>

> Although JKR lambasts the conservative middle class through her 
> depiction of the Dursleys, her writing itself nonetheless 
> promulgates many of this group's particular social values, mores 
> and judgements, particularly when it comes to their view of the 
> social classes above and below their own.  In this respect, JKR 
> often reminds me of no one quite so much as Agatha Christie, whose 
> depiction of social hierarchy is similarly rooted in a highly 
> conservative, insular, nostalgic, and middle class world view.  
> 
> Good people, in JKR as in Christie, are sensible and down to earth, 
> but they are also properly educated, speak with the right accents, 
> and conform to certain social expectations.  They fall firmly 
within 
> a specific range of social class.  The occasional rustic may, like 
> Hagrid, be viewed with great affection as a kind of noble savage, a 
> diamond in the rough, but the urban proles are a different matter 
> altogether.  At best, they are rather stupid.  Their role in the 
> text is either to serve as comic relief (Stan, Ernie), or to serve  
> their betters with kindly cheer (the lunch trolley witch).  For the 
> most part, however, they are simply not worthy of notice.  In the 
> HP series, they generally fall outside of the sphere of the text's 
> attention.

This is an oversimplification of Christie (and Sayers and Allingham, 
if you wish to mention other Golden Age detective writers -not that I 
would like to defend Ngaio Marsh, who *is* 'snobbery with violence'). 
Christie generally set her novels in locations she knew amongst the 
sort of people she knew well - and as she was an upper middle class 
British-American, that meant a middle to upper class milieu (with a 
lot of archaeologists). 

Her urban proles are relatively few - but if you think they are 
stupid then I would recommend you to 'The Body in the Library', or 
the 'Tommy and Tuppence' series. Sayers, equally, has a very quick 
witted urban prole office boy in 'Murder must Advertise'. And the 
frighteningly competent Bunter; the urban prole who decided on a 
career in service.

It is also an oversimplification of JKR, since at the moment we have 
seen very little of the Wizarding World outside of Hogwarts. 
Personally I don't much like Stan Shunpike - but I have met lads like 
him in real life. He's not unrealistic. Nor is the cheery trolley 
lady. And how do you know she regards the students as her 'betters' 
anyway? She calls Harry and Ron 'dears' (PS/SS p. 73 UK paperback) - 
a normal endearment from an friendly adult to children; not 'young 
sirs' or 'young masters'. Compare her friendly 'dear' with the oily 
(and presuably middle class) Mr Borgin's 'Master Malfoy' in CoS (p. 
43, UK paperback).
> 
> Eileen touched on this when she 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 or 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. 
> 
> Yes.  Or at the very least (as Eileen herself qualified later in  
>her message), it is middle-class.  Lower eschelon Ministry workers 
> are a part of the magic circle.  Even clerks may well be included.  
> But people like Stan and Ernie, or the lunch trolley witch, or the 
> shopkeepers of Hogsmeade and Diagon Alley are not.  The working 
> classes are simply not encompassed by the vision of the series as a 
> whole.  Only Muggle-born students, who are obviously a special  
>case, have parents who do not come from the middle classes or 
above.  

How do you know this? Harry grew up outside the WW and has barely 
moved beyond Diagon Alley and Hogwarts. For all we know, if Ron had 
got on the Knight Bus, he'd have said 'oh, hi, Stan'. The Minister 
for Magic is quite happy to invite Rosmerta the pub landlady to join 
him and the Hogwarts staff (including Hagrid) for a drink (POA p. 
150 - 156 UK hardback) and she is quite happy to complain to him 
directly about his use of dementors affecting her business.

We haven't been introduced to a student with the signal that 'they 
were from a working class wizard family', no. We've been introduced 
to the Weasley's, who have a good Hogwarts education but absolutely 
no money. The problem with detecting working class students is, that 
an education beyond 18 in Britain (and in many ways Hogwarts has 
a 'university' ethos) dumps you firmly into the middle classes 
anyway, whether you have working class parents or not. *Anyone* who 
studies at Hogwarts is going to find themselves a middle-class wizard 
(and will probably be very nicely spoken, too, whether their mother 
takes the trolley up the Hogwarts Express or not ;-) ).
> 
> Indeed, there are things in the text itself which strongly suggest 
> that Hogwarts is *not* in fact, as JKR has stated in interview, the 
> only wizarding school in Great Britain.  Hermione refers to it as 
> the "best" school of its kind.  

"It's the very best school of witchcraft there is, I've heard... 
(PS/SS p.79) - which implies more 'the best in the world' rather than
'the best in the UK'.

> Neville talks about his family's 
> relief that he has been deemed "magical enough for Hogwarts" as a 
> separate issue than their earlier joy at his proving himself to be 
> capable of magic at all.

Can Stan and Ernie do enough magic to become 'fully qualified 
wizards'? There's a huge difference between being musical enough to 
be taught an instrument and being musically talented enough to get 
into, say, Cheetham's School of Music (a specialist secondary 
school). I think we've debated the possibilities of apprenticeships 
or home schooling before.

> 
> The result of this discrepancy between what the author says and 
what 
> she writes is to further the impression of ambivalence, even of a 
> certain degree of dishonesty.  The books simply do not deal with 
> the lower classes.  They fall outside of their purview and outside 
> of their scope.  The social range that does fall within the 
> attention of the text is a far narrower one: it generally 
> encompasses only the respectable (if sometimes impoverished) middle 
> classes and above.

Why should the books deal with the working classes!!! The books are 
(mostly) set in Hogwarts School, Scotland, not the Aberfeldy Estate, 
Tower Hamlets! If they were set on the Aberfeldy, they would be a 
completely different set of books, and the story would be a different 
one to the one JKR is telling. And frankly, since she's a middle-
class author, she'd have to be a bloomin' genius to tell us about a 
working class life she's never experienced.

As someone from a working class background, my main interest is to 
ask 'would I have been admitted to Hogwarts if I had had magical 
abilities?' And the answer JKR gives me is 'yes'. Hogwarts is not 
interested in whether you are black, white, asian, working class, 
middle or upper class or any combination thereof - it is interested 
in your ability to perform magic.

> 
> If the lower social ranks fall outside of the scope of authorial 
> interest, though, the upper ranks most certainly do not.  The 
> aristocracy is definitely represented in the text, but mainly as   
> the target of suspicion and hostility.  Again, very much as in the 
> writings of the similarly conservative and middle class Christie, 
> the upper end of acceptability within the world view of these books 
> comes to an end somewhere around the rank of baronet.  

(Ahem! Please see 'The Secret of Chimneys' and 'The Seven Dials 
Mystery' before making such sweeping generalisations).

The country squire 
> is admired and respected; the upper ranks of the aristocracy, on 
> the other hand, are viewed with the gravest of suspicion.  Peers 
> are dubious people: unsavory, suspect, Not To Be Trusted.  They 
> have perverse tastes and shadowy interests.  They are inbred.  They 
> unwholesome.  And they're not even really English at all, you      
> know.  
> They're *foreigners.*  Continentals.  Dare we even say that they 
> are...French?

Anglo Norman, more likely. Incidentally, I seem to have missed Lucius 
Malfoy's elevation to the peerage - when did it happen? :-)

> 
> This is damning indeed, because within the strangely conservative 
> middle class world view which really does often seem to me to be 
> informing these books, good people are above all else *English* -- 
> or perhaps, as this *is* JKR, we ought to say "British?" ;-)
> 
> Compare, for example, the impoverished but virtuous old Weasley 
> family with the "Dark" Malfoys.  Richard Adams' article mentions 
the 
> fact that the names "Malfoy" and "Voldemort" both speak to Norman 
> origins, while "Salazar Slytherin" similarly derives its sinister
> connotations largely by virtue of its very foreigness.  Porphyria 
has 
> already pointed out the extent to which the text so often equates 
> foreign or continental European sounding names -- Rosier, Dolohov --
> with allegiance to Dark powers.  Foreigners, you know, are really 
> not to be trusted.  And neither is the aristocracy.

Neither is Peter Pettigrew. Severus *Snape* finds himself under a lot 
of suspicion as well (small English village, Snape). Lockhart sounds 
rather English, so does Crabbe. The villain of CoS turns out to be 
plain Tom Riddle. The very foreign Viktor Krum spends much of GoF 
under suspicion of one kind or another, but is found to be an 
innocent victim. The definitely French Madame Maxine and Fleur 
Delacour may have their faults, but a devotion to the Dark powers 
doesn't seem to be one of them.

> 
> The Weasleys, on the other hand, come across as properly native.  
In 
> spite of the hints of Irish descent implied by their red hair and 
> penchant for large families, they are nonetheless "ours" in a way 
> that the ancient aristocracy of the Norman conquest simply is not.  
> There is a sense of almost intolerably cozy home-spun *Englishness* 
> surrounding the Weasleys.  They live near the village of Ottery St. 
> Catchpole, in a house called "The Burrow."  They have names like 
> Molly and Arthur and Fred and George.  Molly is plump, and she has 
> rosy cheeks, and she cooks her large family fry-ups for breakfast 
> and shepherd's pie for supper.

I think she is trying to evoke a mythical 'England/Britain' with the 
Weasley's, yes. And it is a mythical England, or I'm misreading the 
significance of 'Arthur' Weasley. The boys are all either Arthurian 
names (Percy and Ron) or English/British kings (except for Fred, who 
gets fobbed off with being the brother of a king).
> 
<Snip>

> JKR is a nostalgic writer, but her nostalgia is not merely 
> nostalgia per se.  It is of a particularly conservative and middle 
> class flavor, a flavor which tastes awfully strange when combined 
> with the progressive views that she elsewhere seems to wish very 
> badly to espouse.  Much like orange juice and toothpaste, the 
> combination leaves a bitter taste in ones mouth.

Perhaps you simply haven't met many small 'c' conservative, middle 
class people, who nonetheless think that racism, classism, sexism are 
bad things, that there should be equal opportunity for all, and that 
it was a good day when they abolished the death penalty. However, 
they do exist.

> 
> Many of JKR's approaches to social class do seem to me to reflect 
> precisely the same mind-set that she so loudly and shrilly 
denounces 
> in her depiction of the Dursleys.  People like the Dursleys, JKR 
> tells us, are wickedly regressive -- brutish, even.  They and their 
> ilk should be scorned, as should the things that they tend to 
believe 
> in.  Things like corporal punishment.  Things like the death 
> penalty.  Things like disdain for the lower classes. 

Could I point out that I find the very *term* 'lower classes' 
disdainful? It implies to me that I am some species of insect, or 
something equally lower than human. ;-) Presumably you are using it 
in an ironic sense? ;-)

 Things like 
> suspicion of the aristocracy.  Things like jingoism, and law-and-
> orderism, and political paranoia, and the belief that foreigners 
are 
> intrinsically dubious, not to be trusted.  Things like "blood will 
> tell."  
> 
> We are treated to this at the beginning of each novel, almost as if 
> JKR wants to establish her progressive credentials from the very 
> outset.  Once we move on to the meat of the text, however, it can 
> sometimes become a bit difficult to avoid the suspicion that in 
some 
> indefinable way, the spirit of Aunt Marge is pushing the hand that 
> holds the pen.  Blood really *does* seem to tell in the 
Potterverse, 
> and foreign names *do* often serve as a marker of dark allegiance.  
> The lower classes are stupid and beneath notice;

I have to say that I haven't noticed this. Filch strikes me as 
obsessive and downright nasty, but not particularly stupid - and I 
think Harry notices him quite a lot. Madame Rosmerta (you could argue 
she's actually lower-middle class) seems sharp enough on her own 
ground. Stan is distinctly thick - but some people are - it would be 
equally prejudiced to have all working class characters as 
intelligent rough diamonds, IMO.  

I have noticed JKR making fun of the 'suspicious foreigners' 
attitude; there are hints that we are going to see the reversal 
of 'blood will tell' in Dumbledore's consistent theme of 'choices'. 

> the aristocracy is 
> sinister, and very likely sexually perverse as well.  

Now, I have completely missed the sexual perversity. Apart from 
Aberforth and his goat. :-) And the graveyard scene, but are the DE's 
all a bunch of aristocrats?


> Corporal punishment is precisely what children like Draco Malfoy 
> deserve, and although Hogwarts does not itself permit this, the 
> narrative voice positively *exults* whenever the little brat gets  
> physically smacked down. 

We *all* rejoice when Draco gets whacked. Be honest. :-)
 
 The political approach of Crouch Sr. was regrettable, of 
> course -- but all the same, you know, his son really *was* 
> guilty...and besides, Fudge is ever so much worse.  And Sirius 
Black, 
> whom Vernon Dursley so brutishly classifies as gallows-bait, was 
> innocent all along.  Pettigrew was the real culprit -- and the 
> narrative voice rather gives us the impression that the author 
> believes that he really *does* "deserve to die."

Harry (and the authorial voice) do believe Pettigrew deserves to die. 
This is why Harry is *praised* for letting him live. 

<Snip>

Hmm... I agree that we've seen very few obviously working-class 
wizards; but then so far we've seen very little of the world outside 
Hogwarts. I suspect the reason most non-Hogwarts wizards are in the 
background is that to date Harry has had relatively little 
opportunity to interact with them, except when they are trying to 
sell him stuff.

Some of the comments made appear to imply a belief that someone with 
an apparently subservient job (the trolley lady)is automatically 
inferior to Hogwarts students - which may be the reader's 
interpretation of the text rather than the author's. For all we know 
the trolley lady could be a working-class research witch who does the 
six times yearly job for some extra cash to buy the rare herbs she 
needs. [grin]

I don't think Hogwarts is a 'public' [UK sense] school - I think it 
is a specialist school, like Cheethams School of Music, or the Royal 
Ballet School - open to anyone with ability. The 'class' recognised 
at Hogwarts is magical ability - the problem the books are starting 
to deal with, as Harry gets older, is that the WW outside Hogwarts 
does have a 'class' system based on pureness of blood and how far 
back you can trace a family tree.

Unless you think it is an accident that JKR has given Harry best 
friends from a muggle family and a pure-blood family, I suspect that 
we are going to find out much more about JKR's opinions on class 
later in the series.

Pip 
(squeaking back after a holiday - which included three days in 
Edinburgh, and yes, I did have a cup of tea in the cafe PS was 
written in).