Is it worse for Harry or Dudley at 4 Privet?

[dumbledore11214]

No: HPFGUIDX 96877

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "justcarol67" 
<justcarol67 at y...> wrote:
> Carol:
> It's possible that Petunia treated Harry reasonably well as a small
> child (up to the age of five or six), not actively abusing him and
> (fortunately for him) not indulging him, either. I'm guessing that 
it
> was only when he started showing signs of being "abnormal" (magical)
> that they relegated him to a closet--though he would always have 
been
> treated as a sort of stepchild--fewer and cheaper presents than
> Dudley, etc. I think he first became aware of it when Dudley got a
> shiny new bicycle or tricycle and he didn't (a memory from the first
> occlumency lesson, IIRC). 
> 
> BTW (and I know a number of people will disagree with me), Harry did
> actually acquire some benefits from his rather deprived childhood.
> Unlike Ron, he can flick a spider off his socks without fear. He's
> used to them, just as he grew used to his cupboard. Children,
> especially wizard children, are more adaptable than we think they 
are.
> Think of the children from non-Western cultures who have grown up in
> mud huts, or those (Muggles) from earlier centuries who had no
> electricity or indoor plumbing. And our parents or grandparents and
> great-grandparents were almost certainly "disciplined" using 
corporal
> punishment, yet most of them grew up to be decent, hard-working, 
even
> loving people.
> 
> The Dursleys, as I've said before, apply a double standard with 
Harry
> and Dudley, an indulgence that they mistake for loving and nurturing
> with Dudley and an old-fashioned, rigorous spare-the-rod,
> spoil-the-child mentality with Harry (though they don't actually 
beat
> him). I'm sure they tell themselves (as old-fashioned parents did)
> that it's for his own good to punish him. We know they believe that
> punishing him will suppress his magical tendencies and make him
> "normal" like them. It's very much like the old idea of washing out 
a
> child's mouth if he swore or told a lie: he'll learn his lesson and
> won't repeat the behavior for fear of that particular punishment. (I
> remember reading somewhere--I think in a work of nineteenth-century
> fiction--about a child who had the end of his or her tongue snipped 
of
> with scissors for telling a lie. Now *that* was child abuse!)
> 
> Carol, who thinks that Harry's childhood is no worse than Jane 
Eyre's
> and better than David Copperfield's.


The only disagreement I can state is that Harry "lives" in the 20  
century, so magical child or not, I don't think it is fair to apply 
the disciplinarian standards of 19 century.

Harry survived, Harry has strong personality, but I think he got the 
said personality DESPITE Dursleys' treatment of him, not because of 
it.

About Petunia treating him reasonably well till he was five or six? I 
don't know. Everything is possible, but I somehow doubt it. 

Now, I suspect that I am incorrect on this one, but doesn't SS/PS 
mentions somewhere that they put Harry in the closet as soon as they 
found him outside their house. Maybe I'll look it up later. :o).


Alla, who would not wish Jane Eyre's childhood on any child. :o)