Why buy Ron Maroon? (Was: Why buy 5 sets of Lockhart's book?

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 114293

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "gelite67" <gelite67 at y...> wrote:
> Alex wrote:  
> 
> <snip> 
> 
> And it's
> > hard to believe that the maroon set were the *least* offensive set 
> of
> > used dress robes available.  
> > 
> Angie replies:  
> Even if Maroon was all she could get, couldn't they have dyed it?  
> Surely, they know about dyes!


Carol responds:
Here's a thought. Maybe Molly has assigned each child a color in her
mind as he (or she) is born, and she has specific reasons for not
using certain colors. Orange, for example, would "clash" with her
children's flaming red hair. (Anyone raised in the same era I was will
surely be familiar with this concept. You don't wear orange and any
shade of red together, any more than you wear stripes and plaids
together.) She would probably eliminate white because it gets dirty so
easily, black because it looks funereal (and the robes are black,
anyway), green because it's associated with Slytherin, pink because
it's for girls, etc. So she's fairly limited in the colors she can
choose by the time Ron is born, having already assigned all the "good
ones" to his five older brothers. She may also actually *like* maroon
and think Ron looks good in it, and since it's been "his" color since
he was born, she can't help associating him with it. In any case, he
may not have been color-conscious at all until about age eight or nine
and then may have hesitated to say anything about it. Or she just
tuned him out as part of the constant babble all around her.

I for one wouldn't want the job of raising seven kids, all of them
magical, six of them boys, and two of them exceedingly mischievous,
and homeschooling them myself, much less keeping up with that big,
rickety ghoul-inhabited house on a limited income. I do think there
are more effective ways of rearing children than constantly yelling at
them or sending them Howlers, but the WW is clearly not aware of
modern Muggle child-rearing methods (which have their drawbacks, too,
if Dudley is any indication) any more than Hogwarts operates on modern
Muggle educational principles. Being a mother isn't easy under any
circumstances and being a perfect mother of seven wizard kids is
impossible.

IMHO, maroon sweaters are just a fact of life that Ron should learn to
live with--like classes with Snape or Trelawney and having five older
brothers. The dress robes, I agree, were a bit much: Molly should have
trimmed the lace whether or not they were maroon. But her budget and
her time were both limited, Ron didn't make that request. He just says
he'd rather go "starkers" than wear that robe--a bit of comic
mother/son interaction that is (IMO) one of the funniest parts of the
book.

Carol, who admits that Molly is a flawed character, but she wouldn't
be human if she were perfect