Official Philip Nel Question #10: Class

[ssk7882]

No: HPFGUIDX 41446

Note: I've rearranged the text of Pip's message in this response in 
an attempt to make my reply somewhat less repetitive and more 
coherent.  I have really tried not to do any damage to Pip's 
authorial intent in the process; if she feels that I have nonetheless 
somehow misrepresented her, then I offer my most sincere apologies.

About my class analysis of the HP books, which I likened in some ways 
to the works of Agatha Christie, Pip wrote:

> This is an oversimplification of Christie. . . .It is also an 
> oversimplification of JKR...

Yes, of course it is.  But when we talk about class (or gender, for 
that matter) in either a series or an ouvre, then we are by necessity 
going to be speaking in terms of gestalt.  Of course there are a few 
clever representatives of the lower classes to be found in Christie's 
eighty-some-odd novels.  But her works are overwhelmingly dominated 
by the stock characters of the adenoidal housemaid, the unbelievably 
stupid "working girl" secretary, the mean-spirited gold-digger, the 
brutish slattern, and so on.

Similarly, when we talk about class in the works of JKR, we are going 
to be looking at the overall scope of the series, not evaluating each 
and every character to see whether the author's use of the stock in 
that particular case is justified or realistic, or whether it serves 
a useful narrative function.  Of course stocks serve a useful 
narrative function!  If they didn't, then writers wouldn't use them.  
But the particular types of stock and stereotype that authors *do* 
use, and the precise ways in which they use them, are significant.  
They affect the overall slant of the writing; they produce a gestalt 
impression in the mind of the reader.  They convey meaning.

> ...since at the moment we have seen very little of the Wizarding 
> World outside of Hogwarts. 

Well, as I read it, that was rather the point that Eileen was making 
in post 37420: that Hogwarts exists to serve a specific segment of 
the wizarding world, one which does not include the working classes 
or the urban poor.  We therefore only meet people from those 
backgrounds when we leave the milieu of Hogwarts.

Where cause and effect come into this equation, of course, is a 
matter of dispute.  On the one hand, as Eileen wrote: 

"If some students are admitted from the wizarding lower classes, they 
must soon pick it [the proper accent] up. They would not, after a 
Hogwarts education, talk as the two learned custodians of the Knight 
Bus."  

She then went on to speak of an "aristocracy of education."  This is 
the same possibility, I think, that you yourself suggested here:

> 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 ;-) ).

Agreed.  This was the very possibility that I was trying to suggest 
when I expressed my doubts about JKR's claim in interview that 
Hogwarts is in fact the only school for magical students in the UK.

I wrote:

> > 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. 

Pip:

> "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'.

Well...it might.  I find it rather ambiguous myself.  Hermione 
immediately prefaces the statement with this expression of pleasure:

"Nobody in my family's magic at all, it was ever such a surprise when 
I got my letter, but I was ever so pleased, of course, I mean, it's 
the very best school of witchcraft there is, I've heard--"

Now, she *could* just be saying that she was "ever so pleased" to 
discover that she had magical talent at *all* -- and then doubly 
pleased to learn that, because she is fortunate enough to live in the 
UK, she is therefore entitled to attend the very best school of 
witchcraft in the world.

She could.  It's possible.  To my mind, though, that line of dialogue 
seems to suggest that Hermione herself, at any rate, believes that 
there do exist other, less prestigious schools of witchcraft to which 
she might well have been relegated.

This touches on the possibility that you raise here:

> 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). 

Yes, there is a difference, and here again, I think that we are 
compelled to consider the possibility that there do exist far less 
prestigious schools than Hogwarts in the UK, schools to which those 
not magically talented enough to attend Hogwarts, yet still too 
magically apt to be designated "Squibs," might be sent.  This would 
be consistent with Neville's description of his family's joy to learn 
that he had indeed been deemed "magical enough" for Hogwarts.

So yes.  There is certainly textual evidence to suggest that 
education -- and thus social standing -- within the wizarding world 
might be determined by innate magical talent, rather than by the 
class of ones parents. 

On the other hand, as Eileen's message also points out, every single 
one of the wizard-born Hogwarts students whose parental occupation we 
actually *know* is the child of either a ministry official or an idle 
aristocrat.  (Lucius Malfoy may also hold some form of government 
sinecure in addition to all of his, er, philanthropic and unpaid 
positions: I am told that the trading cards, which I myself have not 
seen, list some type of "underminister" position as his occupation.)  

It is also implied that many of the children whose parents' jobs we 
*don't* know were acquainted with one another even before starting 
school, which rather suggests that their families moved in the same 
social strata.

Furthermore, we have never once heard even a first-year student at 
Hogwarts speak with the "wrong" sort of accent.  The only Hogwarts-
educated character we have ever heard speak "improperly" is Hagrid, 
who also, er, can't spell.  I tend to agree with Eileen that this 
does not seem particularly believable, and that it can probably be 
read as comedic trope.  If the children of the lower classes of the 
wizarding world are indeed assimilating, then either they're doing so 
awfully *quickly,* or JKR has simply never bothered to show us any 
evidence that they attend Hogwarts at all.

I wrote:

> > Only Muggle-born students, who are obviously a special case, have 
> > parents who do not come from the middle classes or above. 

Pip asked:

> How do you know this? 

Er, because that's what's in the text.  Because of all of the 
students whose parents' occupations we have been told, only the 
Muggle-born Creevey brothers and the Muggle-born Tom Riddle have 
parents who do not come from the middle classes or above.  
(Well...actually, I suppose that Riddle's father actually was 
wealthy, but for purposes of this discussion, I would consider the 
orphanage in which he was raised to serve the relevant "parental" 
function.) 

I think that we may be talking past one another here.  I am 
describing what the author has actually chosen to show us in the 
text.  This is obviously not the same thing as what may be "true" in 
the fictive world as the author imagines it or, for that matter, as 
we the readers choose to imagine it.  When we look at what's actually 
given us by the text, though, then so far this is simply the fact of 
the matter: no wizard-raised child at Hogwarts that we know of has a 
father who is not either independently wealthy or working in the 
civil service.

> We haven't been introduced to a student with the signal that 'they 
> were from a working class wizard family', no. 

No, we haven't.  This doesn't mean that they don't exist in the 
fictive world, of course.  But it does mean that they do not exist in 
the *text.*  And I do view that as significant. The author chooses 
what to focus on when she writes, and those choices in and of 
themselves convey meaning.

> We've been introduced to the Weasley's, who have a good Hogwarts 
> education but absolutely no money. 

And who, it is strongly implied, have been having large families and 
strained resources, while nonetheless travelling in circles noticable 
to the likes of Lucius Malfoy, for more than one generation.  "My 
father told me all the Weasleys have red hair, freckles and more
children than they can afford."  Lucius also takes Arthur to task for 
the "company he keeps."  I read the Weasleys' social class to be 
coded as impoverished minor aristocracy, or at the very least 
as "impoverished but genteel."

Oh, and on the topic of aristocracy, in response to my description of 
the "peers are not to be trusted" attitude, Pip wrote:

> Incidentally, I seem to have missed Lucius Malfoy's elevation to 
> the peerage - when did it happen? :-)

It happened in analogy.  ;-)

As far as I can tell, there is no "aristocracy" in the sense of an 
actual *peerage* in the wizarding world at all (although it would not 
surprise me in the least if we were to learn in future canon that 
there had been one once, but that at some point in history it had 
been dissolved).  But we are naturally dealing with analogy and 
parallel whenever we talk about social class as reflected in the 
wizarding world, and it seems quite clear to me that Lucius Malfoy 
may be read as analagous to a member of that social class.  I don't 
really think that we're ever going to see the Weasleys attend Mass 
either, but I do think that Richard Adams' reading of them as 
analogous to an old Anglo-Catholic family is perfectly defensible.


> 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'.

Okay.  So your chief question, then, would be this: "Is the wizarding 
world's class system more of a meritocracy, or more of an 
aristocracy?"  Would that be a fair assessment?

It's an interesting question in its own right, and for what it's 
worth, I'd say that it's impossible to say for sure at this point.  
As outlined above, I can see canonical support for either answer to 
that particular question.  As JKR herself does seem fairly strongly 
committed to egalitarian principles, though, then I would say that 
the answer, in terms of how the author herself is imagining the 
system working, would indeed very likely be "yes."

In terms of what the text actually shows us, though?  In those terms, 
the wizarding working classes are not represented at Hogwarts.  They 
simply aren't.  

> Why should the books deal with the working classes!!!

There's no particular reason why they should.  As, indeed, they 
*don't,* which was rather my point.

What particularly interests me about this in the context of the Nel 
discussion is what it reveals about the text's ambivalence, its 
inconsitency, when it comes to the subject of social class.  What I 
perceive about this series is that it simply does not concern itself 
very much with the working classes.  It concerns itself with a ruling 
elite.  Even if that ruling elite for which Hogwarts is the 
appropriate educational preparation *is* a meritocracy of sorts, we 
are nonetheless never actually shown any signs of lower than middle 
class origins among its wizard-born student body.  If such a 
population exists, then it is invisible to the reader.  Members of 
the wizarding world's lower-than-middle-classes who *are* depicted in 
the text are only seen outside of Hogwarts, and outside of the 
circles in which Harry usually travels; they are unimportant 
characters, and they are roughly sketched as "stocks."

About those stocks...

> 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. 

Well, most character stocks have their roots in real generalizations, 
don't they?  Stereotypes don't come out of thin air. 

> And how do you know she regards the students as her 'betters' 
> anyway? 

I don't.  In fact, as someone who works in a service profession 
myself, I feel virtually *convinced* that the lunch trolley witch 
wouldn't really regard the students on the Hogwarts Express as 
her "betters" at all.  ;-)

Nor, for that matter, do I think that Harry and Ron view her as an 
inferior (although I'm almost certain that nasty class-conscious 
little Draco Malfoy would).  They are children, and she is the 
friendly and kindly adult who brings the food 'round on the train, 
and from their perspective, that's probably about as far as they ever 
really think about her at all.

>From a class perspective, though, she does occupy a lower social 
standing than they do.  They are attending the school which churns 
out the ruling elite of the wizarding world.  She's selling them 
snacks and sandwiches.  Her role in the text, like the roles of the 
various shopkeepers of Diagon Alley, is merely to serve a function, 
and her descriptors -- "plump," "cheerful," "smiling" -- are just 
stock shorthand for the stereotypical plump and cheerful service 
woman who calls you "luv" or "dear" (or, in this country, "hon") when 
she brings you your tea.

There's nothing wrong with that at all, of course.  It would be a 
very tedious series indeed if the reader were forced to learn all 
about the private lives of every single unimportant character who 
wandered on by.  I was just pointing out the extent to which all of 
the members of a certain social class are sketched by type on route 
to making a rather larger point about the class focus of the series 
as a whole, and what assumptions that class focus serves to convey to 
readers of the work.

What makes this interesting, to my mind, is that the particular 
*kinds* of stocks which are being used are emblematic of a literary 
approach to social class that is strongly aligned with a certain set 
of values and mores and judgements, a certain way of viewing the 
world, and that it is a way of viewing the world that elsewhere in 
the text, JKR seems to be going very far out of her way to critique 
and even to deride.  

So there is an inconsistency here, a "fault line," if you will.  It 
is one of the points on which the text (or its author) comes across 
as ambivalent, or even as somewhat conflicted.  

Textual "fault lines" of this sort tend to create tension in readers, 
tension which can manifest itself both positively or negatively.  On 
the one hand, they can encourage "reader resistance," which is a term 
used to describe the phenomenon of readers deliberately choosing to 
interpret a text against the grain, so to speak -- reading in 
violation of what even they suspect to be the author's true intent 
(slash readings are a good example of this phenomenon).  

On the other hand, tension also helps to fuel reader interest and 
emotional engagement.  Your own emotional investment in the question 
of whether or not the wizarding world is at all meritocatic might 
serve as an example of this one.  Honestly, if there were no tension 
or inconsistency implicit in the text on this point, then it is 
unlikely that so many of us would bother to spend so much time and 
energy debating the point.  ;-)  Books that cause no tension in their 
readers are usually pretty insipid.  They don't encourage active 
reader engagement; because they inspire no anxiety, they inspire 
little in the way of irritation, but neither do they inspire much in 
the way of curiosity, of of love.  They therefore don't tend to stand 
the test of time very well.  Fiction with fault lines is fiction that 
*breathes.*


-----


A few last words on some points on which I seem to have caused 
offense.


> 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.

Of course they do.  As, I assure you, do a number of Guardian-
reading "chattering classes" type people who nonetheless hold some 
astonishingly anti-egalitarian views.

But we're talking about broad general types here, and honestly now, 
did it really *surprise* you when Vernon Dursley started shooting his 
mouth off about how hanging's too good for people like that?  I mean, 
did it take you aback?  Did it strike you as in any way out of 
keeping for the (admittedly incredibly broadly caricatured) 
stereotype that the Dursleys represent?  For that matter, were you 
shocked when Aunt Marge started drawing parallels between poor Harry 
and an sickly, ill-bred bulldog pup?

Because I have to tell you, I really wasn't gaping in the stunned 
amazement of a reader whose preconceptions had just been shattered 
when either of those things happened in the text.  JKR does often go 
out of her way to mess with reader expectation by breaking type.  
But she's not done that (yet) with the Dursleys.


> 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? ;-)

I'm terribly sorry.  I was speaking within the context of the very 
metaphor in which the term "middle class" is framed in the first 
place, a spatial metaphor which views the "middle" as sandwiched 
somewhere between the classes above it ("upper") and the classes 
below it ("lower").

Of course, it is rather a vile paradigm to begin with (and besides, 
the "middle class" isn't even in the middle at all, economically and 
statistically speaking).  But the metaphor is rather difficult to 
avoid when one chooses to discuss class hierarchy.  I absolutely do 
not believe that there is anything inferior or lowly about people who 
hold certain jobs, and I do regret it if I gave that impression.

> 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. 

The author doesn't get to interpret the text.  That's the reader's 
privilege. ;-)

I certainly don't think that a woman who sells food and beverages on 
a train is in any way inferior to a Hogwarts student, and I highly 
doubt that JKR does either -- not, at any rate, on any conscious 
level.  I do think, though, that she has written a fiction that 
concerns itself primarily with the ruling elite of an imaginary 
culture, while simultaneously revealing a great deal of authorial 
ambivalence over to what extent that ruling elite is determined by 
rights of inheritance.  I also think that she has chosen to make use 
of a number of stereotypes, stocks, and genre conventions which give 
tacit implicit approval to many of the very ideas and attitudes which
she derides in more explicit ways.  In short, I see a good deal of 
inconsistency, a good deal of ambivalence in this text, much of which 
seems to center around the issue of class.

> 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]

Are you saying that if this were the case, then she would be in some 
way *superior* to an ordinary run-of-the-mill trolley lady who had no 
such intellectual ambitions?  [*exceptionally* evil grin]


-- Elkins, who must now run off to work to, er, serve her social 
betters.