When Harry met Draco, or Pride and Prejudice (non-SHIP)

[B Arrowsmith]

No: HPFGUIDX 78967

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "jwcpgh" <jwcpgh at y...> wrote:
 > --- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, B Arrowsmith
 > <arrowsmithbt at b...> wrote:
 >
 > Laura:   (clipped)
 >
 > You make an interesting point about Hermione.  I wonder if she really
 > understands how deeply the blood issue cuts in the WW.  And yeah, the
 > house elves are like the Russian peasants.  They were so far down the
 > social/economic/educational scale that they couldn't even grasp the
 > idea of a revolution, especially one on their behalf run by middle
 > class urban intellectuals.  The house elves are so committed to the
 > system and so self-identified with their owners that they can't see
 > themselves as oppressed. But you can see how belonging to a social
 > class that suffers prejudice might make you more likely to be
 > involved with liberation movements in general-whether the subjects of
 > the movement have asked for your help is another question.  <g>
 >

I strongly suspect that the House Elves are a whole other.
So far we have met  three individual Elves, each different in attitudes 
and
behaviour and different again from the crowd in Hogwarts kitchens.
There's *something* critical that we don't know about them. It's as if
there is an unspoken 'given', the way that  characters one would expect
to be sympathetic to  a suffering fellow creature (Hagrid, for example)
does not respond to  Hermiones campaign. That, of course, will not
stop Hermione. She's in automatic mode at the mere mention of an Elf.
She probably  does see them as the WW equivalent of Russian kulaks,
cowering beneath the knout. I think that if things were as bad as she
believes, JKR would have given her campaign a boost. But she is
alone on her soapbox;  even DD doesn't give her support or
encouragement. I see an enormous custard pie being stirred by
JKRs pen, eventually to leap from a page of a future book, straight
between the eyes. The readership are acting (for the most part) as
Hermione is. Get ready to duck; in JKRs world, the reader is always
wrong.

I wonder what will happen when it truly sinks in that she is one of
a despised group. I have a feeling that at the moment she is
reacting the way she would in Muggledom. She's probably used to
resistance to her crusades back there and probably reasons that
the resistance in the WW is the same as the apathy she's encountered
before. Her bossiness will have created a reaction, including insults,
before and she may think that it's business as usual. But it's not.

Will she be able to  campaign in support of herself? Or does she need
to stand at a distance and so remain 'objective'? This is where the
discussion on rights vs. self interest/identity might progress to.
Verrrrry interesting.

 >
 > Harry et al are working their way through their moral development as
 > well as their physical and intellectual growth.  They are now, at the
 > end of OoP, at the stage where abstract thinking becomes habitual and
 > conflicts of self-interest vs conscience can loom very large.
 > (Hermione is farther down the developmental road than Ron or Harry,
 > obviously.)  The goal is to make them one and the same as often as
 > possible, which avoids painful inner tensions.  Harry isn't a
 > particularly deep kid at this point but his moral sense is coming
 > along just fine-otherwise he wouldn't have cared what his dad and
 > Sirius did to Snape.  He wouldn't have identified with Snape at all.

Self interest and conscience....hmm. Conscience protects society from
the self and self interest protects self from society, crudely speaking.
Ideally, they shouldn't be in conflict, but the WW is not an ideal 
society.
I predict an increase in the angst index. Eventually, like the rest of 
us,
an accommodation of sorts will be reached, but it will probably be
conditional and open to re-assessment.


 >
 > I still wonder about Snape.  He's an example of someone going against
 > what appeals to his inner self because he knows it's wrong-Conflict
 > in a big way.  He acts as though he's very uncomfortable around
 > people from the Order-he seemed more comfortable with Karkaroff and
 > Quirrell, even if he didn't like them, they were on the same page.
 > So which will win, Snape's self-identity or his conscience?  Tune in
 > for books 6 & 7...

Who doesn't wonder about Snape? I take a different read on it. I still
think that all of Snape's actions are based on the personal. To me,
he is the embodiment of "My enemies enemy is my friend." The other
DEs are of no concern to him, the members of the Order are not the
sort of people he would normally mix with, but he needs, is obsessed
by, a compulsion to bring Voldemort, *the individual*, down. Hence DDs
trust in him. It's a believable, understandable motive for his actions 
and
his position. I've posted repeatedly on the theme but it's like dropping
Droobles wrappers into the Grand Canyon - nobody notices.
 >
 > last aside to Kneasy-Sorry about the handshake stuff-I realized too
 > late that you probably weren't being literal.  Duh.

No apology needed. I belong to the school of "If I've told you once, 
I've
told you a million times; don't exaggerate." Make hyperbole work for 
you!

Kneasy