[HPforGrownups] Re: House elves and slavery

[Magda Grantwich]

No: HPFGUIDX 126665

--- vmonte <vmonte at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> What is also disturbing to me is this: 
> If the elf culture thinks that serving humans is a noble
> profession, 
> why do they then have a method in which they can be freed from 
> servitude? What is it with the whole thing about wearing filthy
> rags, and not being allowed new clothing? This is disturbing. 


Anyone else remember reading the Shoemaker and the Elves when they
were little kids?  It's a fairy tale about a shoemaker and his wife
who are down on their luck and finally the shoemaker has just enough
leather to make pair of shoes.  He sets out the leather, intending to
work on them in the morning and goes to bed.  The next morning
there's a brand new pair of beautiful shoes on the workbench - much
finer than anything he could ever make - and the first customer who
comes in buys them with a purse of gold.  So he buys more leather and
the same thing keeps happening every morning until the shoemaker and
his wife are prosperous again.

Now of course they're dying of curiosity about this and so one night
they stay up and hide behind the curtains all night.  Around midnight
elves come into the shop and make the shoes; the elves are naked. 
The shoemaker and his wife decide to thank the elves so the shoemaker
makes shoes for them and the wife makes elf-sized clothing, and that
night they lay the gifts out instead of the usual leather.  The elves
are delighted with their gifts and depart, never returning again. 
(There's a little chant they sing which I can't quite remember but
the implication is that they're freed from some kind of enchanted
bondage.)  The shoemaker and his wife however remain happy and
prosperous for the rest of their days.

Now I've always viewed JKR's image of house elves as coming from just
this kind of folkloric background.  The elves are required to provide
service but if the humans they served didn't thank them in return
then the servitude would continue until they did.  And the
requirement to serve seems to have been imposed on the elves through
something other than humans; certainly the shoemaker didn't enchant
the elves.

It's not hard to imagine what would have been the fate of those elves
if the shoemaker had been unworthy of the generosity, or if his son
or daughter were less honorable.  Those elves would have been stuck
there until they were let go.  So too would JKR's house elves be
trapped in a continuous servitude loop until after hundreds of
generations the whole thing had been perverted into a master/slave
relationship.

Note that at no time in the shoemaker story is work denigrated; the
shoes the elves make are much better in quality than anything the
shoemaker could produce.  The implication is that the elves are
pretty hot stuff if they really chose to compete with human
shoemakers.

I really think this is one area where JKR as a Brit didn't appreciate
the connotations of elven servitude or slavery for a North American
audience who would immediately imagine a
gone-with-the-wind-civil-war-jim-crow kind of situation without the
folkloric cultural background that Europeans might more readily
assume.  

Magda


		
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