[HPforGrownups] Molly and the Day Job (Was Ron, Molly and Those Robes)

[Jesta Hijinx]

No: HPFGUIDX 59561

Becky:

>Now then. On to a completely different point. I'm highly suspicious
>of our dear mother!Molly. I think there must be something she does,
>other than blunder around an empty house hold. Now, I haven't re-
>read GoF yet, so there might be canon in there that I have mentally
>blocked. But really, any witch with a solid Hogwarts education
>doesn't seem like she would be content at home doing basic things...
>Can you imagine Hermione sitting idly at home? I can't even see
>Lavender keeping a wizard house and not doing other things. We know
>Dumbledore trusts her. He's likely to give her something to do from
>now on. What I want to know is what she's been doing for the last
>three years!! Any thoughts? Canon to make me look dumb?
>
>Becky, who is slightly perturbed.
>
Canon:  Molly Weasley is not important as a plot driver during the school 
year, and is almost a caricature of a loving, nurturing figure, the opposite 
of Aunt Petunia (who evidently doesn't have an outside the home job either, 
yet almost no one comments on that!  ;-)), and so what she does with her 
time when she's not "mom" is not really relevant to the ultimate story.  :-) 
  Sorry to be so flattening.  I know you are seriously perturbed - and, 
indeed, looking at any of these people as role models, I'm not sure they're 
ideal.

I've often commented that JKR writes of a much more idealized time and that 
her world is somewhat old-fashioned - I've wondered if it doesn't slightly 
reflect her longing,w hen she was first starting to write, for less of a 
struggle as a single mom and more of a traditional family structure for her 
daughter.  Be that as it may, I don't think she was really thinking of 
holding Molly Weasley up as a "model for future women"; she's just a 
character and serves a textual function.

My take?  I imagine it takes all of Molly's time and wizarding skills to 
actually run The Burrow and the "farm" and "garden" attached to it.  Also, 
the skills she has shown so far to us, the reader, many witches would have - 
so I don't know that she could sell her skills nor any product thereof to 
the wizarding community (maybe she takes eggs to town once or twice a week - 
I don't know).  It does not seem, from canon,t hat the Weasleys ever 
voluntarily interact with the Muggle world at all - they know so little 
about it - so I can't even see that being an outlet.

Being a domestic engineer - scrounging for bargains, bartering, trading, 
even commanding and supervising each chore, like "start the next sweater!" - 
really *does* take an amazing amount of time and energy if you do it full 
out.  I can well imagine Molly going about wizarding Britain finding 
bargains on various foodstuffs and bartering some of her knitted sweaters 
and such for things like shoes, and I can see aggressively managing her 
family's and home's material concerns taking up the lion's share of her 
time.  Plus, the Burrow is *enormous* and she has no domestic help when the 
kids aren't home - while "lived in" and cluttered, it does not come across 
as filthy, and I can see that cleaning it top to bottom at least once a week 
would, again, take some waking hours.

No - I think Molly's got her hands full, even when the kids aren't home.  I 
can see her magically preserving and putting up those apples she's gotten as 
a deal into apple butter and applesauce and spiced apples and stockpiling 
her larder for when the children *are* home because I'll bet they deplete 
those stores faster than she can restock them in the summers.

Felinia
who's been a domestic engineer for a large household of people, and was 
grateful not to have a day job during the week for that time

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