House-elves - SB's/RL's regret - Blowing up the house - Quidditch

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 37229

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Amy Z" <aiz24 at h...> wrote:
> Pippin wrote:
> 
> >What is topsy turvy about the Potterverse is that the Elves 
regard freedom 
> >as a social disgrace. That, I think, is unknown in human 
society. Slaves 
> >are always lowest on the social totem pole. That argues that 
Elf psychology 
> >is significantly different from  that of human beings.
> 
> Pippin, aren't you the person who suggested the parallel to 
housewives once  long ago?

Yep, that  was me.

> 
> I find Elf psychology very familiar:  it reminds me of women in 
the days when marrying stripped women of their few rights 
<snip> yet remaining unmarried, or being deserted by one's 
> husband, was shameful.  <snip>
> Why was being single ("free" in the Elf parallel) shameful, 
then?  Good  question--but it was.

Being forced to be single in a society which regards marriage as 
the norm is a form of rejection and painful. However, a slave is 
already rejected, not considered part of the owner's family no 
matter how intimately connected emotionally or biologically, and 
becoming free is always a step toward acceptance.

It isn't odd that Winky, isolated and terrified, would develop 
something like Stockholm or battered wife syndrome and identify 
with her captor. What is odd is that the Hogwarts Elves, who 
aren't isolated from their peers and are not abused or terrified, 
dread freedom nonetheless. 

Unlike human beings, they are emotionally and socially 
dependent on people who have, as far as we've seen, very little 
social or emotional contact with them. They seem to have the 
worst of both worlds. They're treated as outsiders, but react like 
insiders.

Pippin