Official Philip Nel Question #10: Class

[bluesqueak]

No: HPFGUIDX 41470

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "ssk7882" <skelkins at a...> wrote:
Elkins wrote:
> 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.
 

Nope, I think you did a pretty good job

> 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.

I'm truly not certain which direction your 'gestalt' interpretation 
is coming from. Christie's works are overwhelmingly dominated by 
stock characters because she quite deliberately used stereotypes to 
trick her readers - a stereotype would be presented, leading the 
reader to think they knew exactly how the character would behave: and 
then - whoops! they behave in a way we don't expect. The brave, 
helpless orphan is a cold blooded murderer (does this particular 
subversion of the stereotypical stock character remind you of anyone 
in the Potterverse?)

As for her attitude towards 'representatives of the lower classes' - 
we find Captain Hastings marrying the music-hall artiste who's been 
on the boards since she was six (*very* much below his class - but 
she's bright, and brave, and sparky, and that makes it OK in 
Christieworld). Or Miss Marple arriving at a house in a complete fury 
because the stock adenoidal housemaid (who used to work for her) has  
been murdered. Or Poirot investigating the murder of a cleaning 
woman. Or the extremely bright 'working girl' hairdresser (who 
doesn't get murdered) - and so on, and so on. 

In terms of a gestalt (the whole as sum of its parts) I would not 
have placed 'the working classes are beneath us' as one of Christie's 
problems.  If they are a major character they tend to get as much 
individual development as any of her more middle class characters; if 
they are victims their death is seen as deserving exactly the same 
punishment for their murderer as if they'd been a wealthy, titled 
person. 

<Snip>
 
> 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.

I would say that Hogwarts does serve the working classes, and the 
urban poor, providing they have sufficient magical talent. I think 
your argument is that so far, the children of working class parents 
that we have met at Hogwarts have all been the children of muggles.

<Snip>
> 
> > > 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. 

<snip discussion of Hermione's line about Hogwarts being the 'best' 
school of magic>

> 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  
> whichshe might well have been relegated.
>

Could I just make my position clear here? JKR has invented the 
Potterverse. It is her world, and she's still creating it. If she 
says there are no other wizarding schools in Great Britain, then 
there-are-no-other-wizarding schools. Full stop. 

Of course, this does rather leave us with the problem of wondering 
what happens to magical children who *aren't* magical enough to get 
into Hogwarts [see below for my personal opinion], but whether we 
choose to imagine apprenticeship-at-age-11 (which happened as 
recently as the nineteenth century in the UK, so not impossible that 
the WW should still use it), or private home tuition (possibly where 
Professor Lupin made his living?), other, less prestigious, wizarding 
schools in the UK are OUT. Like it or not, they don't exist. 

And Eliza didn't marry Prof. Higgins in Pygmalion, either, much as I 
would have liked her to (GB Shaw went to the trouble of pointing out 
that she married Freddy, opened a flower shop and prospered, after 
some initial problems caused by their complete lack of business 
training). It's the author's world. We just get to play around in it.
 
<Snip>

> 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.

No, it doesn't, because we see in GoF that Arthur Weasley and Amos 
Diggory know *all* the magical families in their local area by name 
("The Lovegoods have been there for a week already [which means they 
have cheaper tickets] and the Fawcetts couldn't get tickets. There 
aren't any more of us in this area, are there?" GoF pp68 - 69 UK 
hardback).

I've just spent a few days in Edinburgh, and one of the things I did 
was join a walking tour. During the tour the guide talked about the 
way the extreme lack of space in Edinburgh Old Town meant that all 
classes of Edinburgh society lived in exactly the same houses up to 
the late eighteenth century. The poor would be in the basements, the 
middling classes on the first or second floor, the rich and titled on 
the top floor where they got air and light. And when you sift through 
the household documents (letters, household accounts etc.) you see 
that all the classes living in the same house knew each other by 
name. There's some evidence that their kids all played together, and 
that the pauper's kids (and their parents) might sometimes find 
themselves being given a meal (or old but warm clothes) by their 
little noble friend's parents.

So I think your idea that 'friendship' implies 'same social strata' 
is not necessarily true considering the relatively small nature of 
the Wizarding World - it has certainly not been true in all parts of 
the UK at all times, and it's especially interesting that it is well 
known not to have been true in a part of the UK that JKR lived in. 

> 
> Furthermore, we have never once heard even a first-year student at 
> Hogwarts speak with the "wrong" sort of accent. 

Dicentra made some very good points about accents at Hogwarts in post 
# 41448, so I won't comment further.

<Snip>

> 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.) 
<Snip>
 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.

And Tom Riddle's *mother*? A descendent of Salazar Slytherin, true, 
and Riddle sees himself as noble because of that, but what class was 
she in the Wizarding World? Unlike Harry's parents, she didn't leave 
her son any money (Riddle describes himself as 'poor'), she doesn't 
seem to have had any relatives who could take Tom in, and she was not 
generally known as the 'Heir of Slytherin' (Tom wasn't). Her 
profession is described as 'witch'. As far as 'independently 
wealthy', then, a definite 'no', and 'working in the civil service' 
is a definite 'don't know, but probably a little unlikely given that 
no one in the WW seems to have known Mrs Riddle well enough to want 
to take her child in'. [Modern Ministry Wizards seem to all know 
*everyone* in the Ministry].

<Snip>

> 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.  


You seem to be determined [grin] to read 'real world' class systems 
into the WW, and I suspect that JKR does not want to import them for 
exactly the same reason she's made sure that 'race' is examined 
*only* by the fictional means of using the WW's attitudes to races 
that don't exist in RL. She's going to examine 'class prejudice' [if 
I'm right] by using a class system that only exists in the fictional 
world.

The most basic division in this class system is: did you get into 
Hogwarts or not?
Note that despite Salazar Slytherin and the DE's, 'getting into 
Hogwarts' is not dependent on your parents (at least, not under 
Dumbledore), it's dependent on your magical ability, which is 
meritocratic enough. But what happens if you *don't* get into 
Hogwarts, or find yourself being expelled?

You get dumped. Sorry Elkins, but when you think that there must be 
other wizarding schools, you're being a little soft on those Squibs. 
Squibs don't need education, you see. They're barely better than 
muggles, and muggles should probably be reclassified as 'beasts' 
(FBWTFT)

Filch is a Squib. Caretaker. Hagrid got expelled. Gamekeeper (and he 
was lucky to get that). Education outside Hogwarts? Well, we know in 
Hagrid's case - bugger all. He has difficulty spelling words 
like 'Voldemort'. There are other implications (his childish 
opinions) that his education came to a complete stop when he left 
Hogwarts. There are no wizarding schools other than Hogwarts in the 
UK - JKR is telling the exact, unpalatable truth.

No wonder Neville's relatives were so delighted when the letter came, 
and were so willing to chuck him out of a window to bring out any 
magic in him. No wonder Lupin's parents were so desperate to persuade 
Dumbledore a werewolf could get into Hogwarts. No wonder the worst 
threat Snape can think of is getting expelled.  It *is* one of the 
worst things in the WW. THERE IS NO OTHER SCHOOL TO GO TO.

You didn't go to [or finish] Hogwarts? Welcome to the WW's lumpen 
proletariat. You're not born there, you just get sent there at 
eleven, and unless you happen to meet someone like Albus Dumbledore, 
you're there for life. And it is, of course, completely unfair.

Unless you're like Molly's second cousin (PS/SS) and have the nerve 
to say 'bugger this, I'm going to run away and become an accountant'. 
The Weasley's like muggles. They don't talk about that cousin because 
he's a Squib.

[Students of UK political history will realise that Molly's second 
cousin was probably [evil grin] John Major; the Prime Minister who 
ran away from the circus to become an accountant.]

Once you do get into Hogwarts there is a second 'class sorting', 
which does go by birth, roughly equivalent (but only roughly) to 
our 'middle' and 'upper' - how long have your family been going  to 
Hogwarts, or one of the equivalents in other countries? Are you 
an 'old wizarding family' or not? 'Mudbloods' are at the bottom of 
this tree,'half bloods' a little higher, then the 'old families' like 
the Malfoys and the Weasley's, with their traditional rivalry. And 
it's unpleasant, this class system; it means that the exceptionally 
talented Hermione is probably going to face a struggle for the rest 
of her life compared to the almost-as-talented-but-from-a-much -
better-family Draco. No wonder she works so hard.

Every wizard-born child has a family independently wealthy or in the 
Ministry of Magic? No lower-class wizard children? Is that because it 
would be so horribly embarrassing to admit their non-muggle parents 
weren't magical enough to get into Hogwarts that they never, ever 
mention it? (look how hard Filch finds admitting to being a Squib in 
CoS (p.109 UK paperback); how Ron's reaction is to laugh at him, how 
his parents 'never talk' about that second cousin).

Do 'mudbloods' get *into* the Ministry? Do we know of any Ministry 
wizards who seem to have muggle backgrounds? Or do they take their 
staff from the relatively small number of 'pure and half-bloods'?

<Snip>

> 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."

Filch and Hagrid are 'stock types' then? Sorry, neither of them 
play 'middle class' to me, and they are neither outside Hogwarts nor 
unimportant.

I said: 
> > 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.

You could try using 'upper', 'middle' and 'working', which would be 
the metaphor I would use - equally inaccurate, since of course all 
three classes have both working and non-working members. I did not 
assume that you were trying to be offensive; I simply assure you that 
I have heard 'lower class' used far too many times in a way that 
suggested that the speaker really did think that they were inferior. 
I'm sure from reading your posts that you *don't* - but I found 
reading your post objectively quite difficult *because* you kept 
using 'lower class', and that is why I mentioned it.

I said: 
> > 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]
>
Elkins replied: 
> 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]
> 

[*even more exceptionally evil grin*] but you seem to be deciding 
that the trolley lady, the nice ice-cream lady, and all the other one-
or-two line characters are automatically of a particular social class 
*because* they are in a service position. Think outside the box, 
please. 

Q " What do you say on first meeting an Oxford graduate? "
A " I'll have a large fries and a milkshake with that."

Pip