Bad news ... for Slytherins- The Good Slytherin

[persephone_kore]

No: HPFGUIDX 99296

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "potioncat" <willsonkmom at m...>
wrote:
> Potioncat:
> > > What concerns me more on the issue of the Good Slytherin, is 
> > JKR's statement that too many of the people on the chat she 
> > attended  identified with Slytherin. It really sounds like she 
> > considers  Slytherins the bad guys.  <
> 
> 
> Pippin wrote:
> > Erm, that's not exactly what she said.
> > http://www.jkrowling.co.uk/textonly/news_view.cfm?id=63
> > 
> > "I was concerned to find that many of the moderators feel their 
> > spiritual home is Slytherin"
> > 
> > 
> >  I don't think there's any question but JKR believes that 
> Gryffindor 
> > values are spiritually superior to Slytherin ones and wants us to 
> > think so too. That does not say that Slytherins themselves are 
> > morally inferior to Gryffindors. Slytherins, though schooled to be 
> > cunning, opportunistic and exclusionary, may just as freely 
> > choose to serve a greater good, while Gryffindors are every bit as 
> > capable of wrongdoing, despite that they ought to know better.
> > 
> 
> Potioncat again:
> Well, I think you and I may agree (?) that Slytherins can be as 
> moral as Gryffindors or Gryffindors as amoral as Slytherins....my 
> point is, quoted or paraphrased, it sounds to me that JKR sees the 
> Slyterins as bad....Hatfields vrs McCoys,  Robin Hood vrs King John, 
> Lancasters vrs Yorks. A "good" side and a "bad" side.
> 
> That's not how I want it turn out, you understand.  I'm hoping 
> she'll pull the rug out by having good Slytherins. 
> 
> Potioncat

I think it's practically a definite. She's been laying clues all along
that while Slytherin House and many individual Slytherins do have and
present real problems, the unilateral equation of Slytherin and Bad
isn't accurate. In the first book we see Snape (a Slytherin) turn out
to be among the heroes instead of the villain. In the second we have
Voldemort humanized (though this does NOT mean made out to be good or
excusable), and even though it's also implied that being in Slytherin
would have been a bad choice, it's emphasized that Salazar looked for
some pretty good qualities. (We also have Hermione being quite
ruthless. Let's drug 'em and take their shoes! Honestly, Salazar would
have had to either use her as an example of why Muggle-borns couldn't
be trusted, or co-opt her, and I think the latter might have been
safer for the rest of his students.) In PoA both the believed and the
real villain are... drumroll... Gryffindors, and that means that even
as a public perception, "Every witch or wizard who went bad was in
Slytherin" isn't accurate. In GoF, I keep blanking. *wry grin* In
OotP, we even get a new, fun Slytherin -- Phineas Nigellus -- and for
all the irritation he's provoked before, and for all Harry's fury at
Snape that leads some to think he'll never come around, those
imaginings about the Slytherin who was the Least Popular Hogwarts
Headmaster Ever and how he might mourn Sirius were... awfully
sympathetic, don't you think?

But actually, I think a very key piece of evidence is right in PS, on
the very first occasion when Harry looks at the Slytherin table and
evaluates them: "It might have been Harry's imagination, after all
he'd heard about Slytherin House, but he thought they looked an
unpleasant lot." (Slightly paraphrased.) 

I think it's crystal clear from that quote that the anti-Slytherin
bias is something JKR is absolutely aware of, and that it's both
intentional and intentionally unfair -- not unfounded, but unfair as a
full generalization. The very first time Harry gets a look at
Slytherin House as a whole and makes a sweeping negative statement
about them himself, planted in the same sentence is the suggestion
that he's *imagining* more ill of them is there, based on what he's
heard elsewhere. 

PK