James' money (was: James, a paragon of virtue?)

[nrenka]

No: HPFGUIDX 123636


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "cubfanbudwoman" 
<susiequsie23 at s...> wrote:

> SSSusan:
> Sorry -- not so that there's no evidence James was rich.  We have 
> this from JKR in an AOL chat from 2000:
> 
> J.K. Rowling: Well, I can't go into too much detail, because you're 
> going to find out in future books. But James inherited plenty of 
> money, so he didn't need a well-paid profession. You'll find out 
> more about both Harry's parents later.

So, to hijack onto this thread, this opens up a number of 
possibilities:

One is that James, being rich, didn't have to worry about earning 
money and thus didn't need to do well in school.  This assumes, 
however, that well-paying jobs and sheer academic achievement are 
closely commensurate.

I can tell you myself that *that's* not true, at least in the RL. :)  
Often times the better-paying jobs are the result of academic 
compromise, and this is likely also true in the highly 
patronage/who's-your-daddy/who do you know WW system.  We have some 
correlation of good jobs and number of OWLS/NEWTS/whatever, but it 
seems more based on other ideas of prestige.  [I have friends who do 
the doctor thing for money so they can then do what they want--and 
many of them are "I wish I could have spent more time studying other 
things".  Not necessarily the case, but an idea.]

But what pops into my mind given what we know is that "James is rich, 
therefore he didn't *have* to go take a well-paying job--he could 
spend his time and energy as a member of the Order of the Phoenix, 
fighting things that we saw he already had a developed dislike of (if 
a poorly-principled one) in school".

James was Head Boy, which does seem to indicate academic achievement 
in our RL models, although that could not be true.  (This has been 
better discussed in other posts upthread)  It is, however, notably 
not dependent upon prefect status, which is not purely academic but 
almost more social.

Do we have a case of noblesse oblige here?  Who knows--but it's an 
idea.

-Nora gets back to transcribing...ouch, my hands...