Snape: the Riddle...(and Spinner's End)

[leslie41]

No: HPFGUIDX 136126

Just want to add my kudos to severelysigune for the extremely 
provocative post, and add some comments to particular parts.     

> "Spinner's End" shows us Snape in his natural surroundings, in an 
> ancestral home far removed from the one fandom has often liked to 
> allot to him. 

I love this too.  Ravenclaw!Snape often has a huge manse he ambles 
about in over the summer, and comes equipped with exquisite taste in 
furnishings and food.  How nice to see that Canon Snape lives in a 
shamble of a tiny house with threadbare furniture--and lots and lots 
of books.  
 
> I have to admit that it is perhaps a bit unfair calling Snape
> naïve.  I don't think he is. It is just that he has allowed 
> himself to be seduced by the admittedly formidable combined forces 
> of the Black sisters <snip> there is a seduction going on: she 
> coaxes him into making a mistake. 

I don't think so, or at least it isn't Bella and Narcissa doing the 
seducing.

> However, the most compelling pressure issues not from Bella, but 
> from her sister, whose tears flow freely, who clutches at Snape's
> robes,holds his hands and throws herself at his feet. She strokes 
> his ego: "you could do it," she says, "you are the Dark
> Lord's favourite", "you are Draco's favourite teacher", "/you/ 
> would succeed". All pretty transparent to this sceptical observer
> but Narcissa has touched a nerve. <snip>  No doubt a portion of 
> his brain tells him that he finds himself in a danger zone (mark 
> his unease at the sight of her tears); but his 
> vanity and pride send signals that are too strong for so weak a 
> man to resist. Snape is deeply enjoying his power over Pretty 
> Cissy. He says yes, not out of the goodness of his heart, but 
> because it is his moment of triumph over all he has wanted to be 
> but has not been able to reach. He has finally come to the point 
> where he can bow down to pick up a pure-blooded aristocratic 
> beauty from where she is grovelling in the dust. Stupid, stupid, 
> stupid. The trap closes, and Narcissa has him where she wants him: 
> on his knees and firmly bound by a powerful spell. 
 
I would disagree with this, simply because from the very moment that 
the sisters appear he is in complete and utter control of them, 
Wormtail, and the entire situation. Rowling hints at the sisters' 
predicament even before they arrive. 

Snape's house is in a "deserted labyrinth of brick houses," the very 
last house at the end of a street named "Spinner's End," over which 
a the chimney of a mill "hovers like an admonitory finger".  

Remember that our perspective here is Narcissa's, not Snape's, at 
least until she gets to the house itself.  The labyrinth of houses 
seems to be the web that Snape inhabits, and the mill chimney seems 
to caution Narcissa--against what?  Against *him*, of course.  She 
is approaching the Spinner--Snape.  Any reading of the chapter that 
does not see Snape in this role--as wholly manipulating the 
situation and drawing both the sisters into his "web," misses the 
point I think.  If Narcissa is the spinner, why does Snape live in 
a "web" at Spinner's end?   

Immediately, the sisters feel the oppressiveness of the place. It 
feels to them like a "padded cell."  Snape, of course, feels no such 
oppression, anymore than he is "oppressed" in the dank environs of 
his dungeons.  Throughout, he seems quite comfortable.  Narcissa is 
desperate, Bellatrix is furious, and neither one of them have 
control either over themselves or the situation.  Snape does.  His 
interchange with Bellatrix--Bellatrix Lestrange, murderer of our 
precious Sirius Black--slices her neatly into tiny little ribbons, 
robbing her of her surety of his guilt, and placing a seed of doubt 
within her about her relationship with Voldemort.  He mocks her, her 
doubts, her performance at the ministry, and her sacrifice in 
Azkaban, without ever challenging her directly, and answers every 
one of her questions about his loyalties one by one by one.

There doesn't seem to me any indication in the text that Snape is in 
any way moved by Narcissa as a woman.  There is no indication in any 
of the novels that Snape has ever been moved by a woman, for good or 
ill. If anything the scene I think reveals him to be entirely 
uncomfortable with her pleas, because they are enforcing an imtimacy 
with him that he does not desire.  When she grabs his robes he 
removes "her clutching hands," by the *wrists* so as not to take her 
hands in his, and basically tells her "enough of this" a few minutes 
later.  

What moves Snape?  What gratifies him?  What gives him a sense of 
satisfaction?  Not the pleas of a pureblood.  Working for the order. 
In OotP we find this interchange between Harry and Snape:

Snape: ...it is not up to you to find out what the Dark Lord is 
saying to his Death Eaters. 
Harry: No - that's your job, isn't it? 

He had not meant to say it; it had burst out of him in temper. For a 
long moment they stared at each other, Harry convinced he had gone 
too far. But there was a curious, almost satisfied expression on 
Snape's face when he answered.

"Yes, Potter," he said, his eyes glinting. "That is my job."

He is the seducer here, not Narcissa.  I think it is entirely 
possible he doesn't know anything at all about the plan until 
Narcissa and Bellatrix show up, and only figures it out from their 
conversation.  

As for the name "Spinner's end" itself, it could be read any number 
of ways. Of course in Britain "end" at the end of a street name 
refers to the boundary of a town. Obviously Rowling has more in mind 
than that of course.  It could mean "the demise of the Spinner" 
(Snape). But the word can also mean "goal" ("the ends justify the 
means") or even, according to the dictionary, "the part you are 
supposed to play" (as in "he held up his end").
 
Makes ya think.