Things better for House Elves? (was Re: Lucius Malfoy's

[deborahhbbrd]

No: HPFGUIDX 126911


> "deborahhbbrd":
> Consider what their lives would have been like if the
> bad guys had won. Nasty, poor, brutish and very, very 
> short. <snip>
> 
> Tyler again:
> Nasty, poor, and brutish, yes.  Short?  I'm not so
> sure.  I think even the DEs would have enough sense to
> realize you don't want to kill your servant (at least
> not until you get a replacement) or else you'll be
> stuck doing the cooking, cleaning, etc.  I see nothing 
> in canon to suggest that HEs were being killed for sport 
> the way muggles were. <snip> 


Deborah again:
Not killed for sport, no, but ... worked to death? Why not? The 
Nazis did that to the Jews, gypsies, gays, etc with never a thought 
for the morrow ... or else they assumed that once the war was over 
and they were safely victorious, there would be no need for a slave-
labour force any more so it wouldn't matter that they'd used 'em 
all up. And I don't see Narcissa and Bellatrix as domestic goddesses 
using their brooms for sweeping - they could use magic as Molly W 
does in the absence of HEs, though it does seem to be physically 
draining, like <real> housework.

Or, like ancient Romans and the Old South, the HEs could have been 
used as a breeding population to generate new slaves ... wouldn't 
be dehumanising as they weren't human. QED.
	
I suppose it all hangs on how you rate DE intelligence and 
foresight. (As usual, they haven't read the books in which the bad 
guys get arrogant and lose, so they don't think it could happen to 
them. Unlike the wonderful Flora Poste in Cold Comfort Farm, whose 
power over her relations came from her ability to recognise the 
soap-opera plot they were living in, and turn it to her advantage.)