House elves and slavery

[vmonte]

No: HPFGUIDX 126668


Magda wrote:

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.

vmonte responds:

Thank you Magda, I knew there was something familiar about JKR's 
elves. I also read the shoemaker story when I was a child. I agree 
with the idea that the relationship between elves and humans has 
become perverted over time into a master/slave relationship 
(completely through the fault of humans who have taken advantage of 
the elves). Time does not always heal all wounds; it sometimes makes 
you forget your history/past and eventually you start believing the 
ideology of the oppressor.  

You are also right that the idea of slavery is repulsive to me and 
that I immediately drew upon my knowledge of North American slavery 
and completely forgot the shoemaker story. 

Vivian