[HPforGrownups] My weekly catch-up post: scroll through it for topics/names

[Kelly Grosskreutz]

No: HPFGUIDX 58617

> Eric Oppen wrote:
>
> << Hogwarts is different is that it ignores, as much as possible, the
> British class system. >>
>
Catlady wrote:

> It always seemed to me that JKR put Justin Finch-Fletchley (cliche
> of upper-class character) in Hufflepuff and the Creevey brothers
> (whose father is a milkman, a working-class job) in Gryffindor to
> emphasize that the wizarding folk do not care a bit about the Muggle
> class system. Because they have their own class system, not because
> they're so enlightened and liberal. But she blurred that message by
> using the class traits that Muggle readers would recognize when she
> depicted class in the wizarding world: Malfoys as upper class and
> Stan Shunpike as lower-class.

It's not that the WW doesn't care about class structure; it' that they have
their own that is separate from the Muggle world.  In the Muggle world, the
Creeveys are in the working class and the Finch-Fletchleys appear to be
upper-class, but in the WW they are the same thing:  Muggles.  So Colin and
Justin are considered equals:  Muggle-borns who have yet to make their own
way and establish themselves (and their future lines) in the WW.  The
Malfoys, on the other hand, have been in the WW for centuries and have
established themselves, which is why they are upper-class in the WW.  We
don't know anything about the Shunpike family, but we do know that Stan has
taken a job as a conductor on the Knight Bus, which is a lower class job in
the WW.  The equivalent of this would be if Draco and Ron had went to school
in the Muggle world.  No one in the Muggle world would care that the Malfoy
family is esteemed in the WW or that the Weasleys are poor.  They would both
be boys who have yet to make their own way in the world and who need to
establish themselves.  But yet both would need to learn the Muggle class
structure set-up so they would know how they want to fit into it when they
grow up.

Kelly Grosskreutz
http://www.idcnet.com/~ivanova