Merope is pitiful was Re: In defense of Molly + Merope comments

[bennetfan101]

No: HPFGUIDX 136514

phoenixgod2000 wrote:

> She has had any number of bad things happen to her, things that I 
> wouldn't wish on anyone. But that is true of just about any evil 
> person on the planet. There are very few people who are evil in a 
> vacumn. I've done work with prison inmates in the past and I can 
tell 
> you they are filled with stories just as dark as Merope's and they 
> turned around and spread that darkness to other people just as she 
> spread her own darkness to Tom Sr. She is sad, pathetic and weak.
> 
> But so is just about every other evil person on the planet.




But none of these things make Merope a strong mother figure in 
comparison to Tom Riddle Sr. -- unless we're including the fact that 
she was in control of her senses when he was knocking her up. Merope 
was clearly the underdog house-elf in her family, beaten, maybe even 
(I suspect, there were strong indicators of this) raped herself in 
her family. When Tom left her she was poor and broken; she is 
basically the HP equivalent of runaway teenage pregnancy. I believe 
she is to be pitied for this, but it's entirely beside the point; 
the point is that she herself was not a particularly strong mother 
figure. 

On the other hand, in comparision to Tom Riddle, she was the more 
loving figure, which does make her win the successful-parental-
figure battle (although this battle can hardly be applied to such a 
situation). The magic came from her side, but so did the sociopathy.
I'm not that surprised that the male figure is the weaker parental 
figure in nine out of ten of the family units we see in the HP 
series; there was an article not long ago speculating on the 
possibility of this being a result of Jo's first husband walking out 
on her and her daughter.

bennetfan101