Millicent Bulstrode (WAS: Classical Literary names in HP

[elfundeb]

No: HPFGUIDX 46049

Correcting and elaborating on one of egress.geo's literary names:

  Melisant Bolestrode -Bolestrode is a primary villain in Shelley's 
  Middlemarch.

Middlemarch was written by George Eliot, not Shelley. However, I think Middlemarch is unquestionably the source of Millicent Bulstrode's name, I picked up on the similarity of her name to Nicholas Bulstrode on myfirst reading of PS/SS.  Millicent hasn't had much of a role in HP, as it turns out, but IMO she was very appropriately sorted into Slytherin, as Nicholas Bulstrode's life history fits the Sorting Hat's description of Slytherin house ("those cunning folk use any means to achieve their ends") to a T.  

What follow are MIDDLEMARCH
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In Middlemarch, Nicholas Bulstrode was a prosperous banker and supporter of philanthropic causes.  Unknown to the Middlemarch community, he had come by his wealth by (i) working as a pawnbroker, then becoming a partner in the business, (ii) upon the death of his partner, marrying his elderly widow, (iii) paying off the person who had located his wife's long-lost daughter whom the wife wanted to leave her fortune to, so Bulstrode himself would inherit the money, and (iv) when, many years later, the person he had paid off arrived in Middlemarch, ill, alcoholic and penniless and threatening to reveal Bulstrode's past, Nicholas Bulstrode offers to watch over him in his illness/delerium tremors and feeds him alcohol, which kills him.  

Sounds like the worst of Slytherin, doesn't it. The book ends with Bulstrode's reputation, though not his fortune, in ruins.  Sometimes, however, I think Nicholas Bulstrode does not resemble Millicent so much as one Lucius Malfoy.  Perhaps we'll hear more of the Bulstrodes and their relationship to the Malfoys.

Debbie


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