FB / Animagic / Social Class / Wizarding Death Penalty / 1492 / Dark Mark

[catlady_de_los_angeles]

No: HPFGUIDX 41791

My friend asked: "Does the British edition of FANTASTIC BEASTS give 
their sizes in cm (or inches the way the USan one does)?"

ANIMAGI: Can an Animagus's animal form be a hive of honeybees?

SOCIAL CLASS: I believe that JKR made a point of demonstrating that 
Muggle social class doesn't matter to the wizarding world. The 
Creevey brothers are sons of a a milkman, a stereotypically 
working-class job, and Justin Finch-Fletchley was down for Eton and 
has the accent to go with it. But the Creeveys are in prestigeous 
Gryffindor, which will likely help them to get a good job at the 
Ministry (despite being Muggleborn), and Justin is in scorned 
Hufflepuff, which surely will be brought up against him every time 
he applies for promotion at his adult job. 

But this point is obscured because she uses the Muggle signs of 
social class to depict the wizarding social classes. The real 
Malfoys' real wizarding posh accent, and so on, wouldn't mean 
anything to the reader.  

SOCIAL CLASS: Would a world (any human world) be a better place if 
everyone were the same social class? Just because they are in the 
same social class doesn't mean that disparities of wealth, influence, 
and so on would go away, but they would be individual disparities ... 
I suppose that means that the mansions, hovels, and condo complexes 
would be all mixed up together, so all the kids could go to the same 
local schools, which would reduce disparity of education ... which, 
combined with free public universities or widespread scholarships, 
would greatly reduce the effect of the parents' income on the 
offspring's chances of getting a professional degree like MD, LLB, or 
MBA, which are often associated with getting a well-paid job ... 

Elkins wrote:

<< To my mind, JKR's nostalgia seems to represent more of a kind of 
inchoate yearning for the stability of relatively recently departed 
social structures and hierarchies. (snip) And like both of these 
forms of nostalgia, it comes complete with some rather unsettling 
political and social implications which even the best-intentioned 
often find difficult to remove. >>

Grrr. I just spent a very long time searching unsuccessfully for a 
Very Old post in which I had theorized that one reason grown-ups 
love the HP books is feeling attracted to the wizarding world's 
old-fashioned stable economy, with artisans and small businesses and 
people living in houses instead of apartments, in the same 
neighborhood for years, and never getting laid-off or finding that 
all one's laboriously learned job skills have been made obsolete, and 
I can't find it! (I think that may have been the post in which I said 
the wizarding world seems rather Victorian or at least pre-war, and 
Pippin replied that that might be because many wizards are themselves 
Victorian or at least pre-war) ... 

But, see here, *I* assert that enjoyable fantasy of a world in which, 
due to magic (which we have already decided violates conservation of 
energy and increase of entropy), human beings are not flung about, 
scattered, and shattered by the whims of the global economy NOR the 
weather, does NOT require racism, imperialism, an oppressed class, a 
hereditary monarchy, blablabla.

Denise wrote:

<< The simple fact that they have the Unforgivable Curses says to me 
that in the WW, life is a very precious thing, not to be treated 
lightly or with disrespect. There is no talk of death penalties in 
Azkaban and the Kiss from a dementor doesn't actually kill, just 
removes the part that was obviously rotten in the first place ... the 
soul."

There are other ways to kill people besides the Unforgiveable Curses. 
As the prisoners in Azkaban usually go mad from misery and then die 
from lack of interest, life in Azkaban IS a death penalty, and a 
cruel one. 

Phyllis wrote:

<< btw, Nearly Headless Nick's deathday is also Halloween! >>

Hmm. Do you think that his botched beheading was a Druid sacrifice 
rather than a penal execution? In 1492. I had assumed until now that 
he had been executed by King Henry (VII) Tudor.  

Aldrea wrote:

<< With such people (like the Malfoys) who claimed to have been 
tricked, you could just check their left arm to see if they're lying. 
>>

I agree with all of you who said that the Dark Mark is not usually 
visible. It clearly was not well-known; Sirius had no idea why 
Karkaroff was showing his arm to Snape, and Fudge appeared surprised 
when Snape showed his arm. HOWEVER, even if the Dark Mark were known 
AND Lucius Malfoy was known to be Marked, he STILL could have claimed 
that the Mark had been put on him while he was under Imperius.