And once again Dumbledore!Abuse (was Etiquette WAS Re: polite Dumbledore?)

[lupinlore]

No: HPFGUIDX 142721

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Bruce Alan Wilson" 
<bawilson at c...> wrote:

> Now, one might argue that DD shouldn't have put Harry with the 
Dursleys in the first place, or should have kept a better eye on 
them during the first 10 years, but I'm sure that he had reasons for 
doing what he did.  Harry would have grown up with a very different 
personality had he grown up in more congenial surroundings; perhaps 
DD knew that he would need the tempering of an adverse upbringing to 
face what he had to face.
>  

And once again we are right back into the very problem that JKR was 
trying to rescue DD from by backing off of this whole issue.  Simply 
put, such policies make DD an accessory to child abuse.  His 
reasoning is completely and utterly irrelevant.  What Harry had to 
face was completely and utterly irrelevant.  The fate of the 
wizarding world and DD's responsibility for it or lack thereof is 
completely and utterly irrelevant.

Now, I have no doubt that JKR had no intention of implying any such 
thing.  I think she is quite sincere that she wanted to portray DD 
as "the epitome of goodness" and I don't think she had any intention 
of implying craftiness, manipulation, cold-calculation, or any of a 
number of other dark traits often ascribed to the headmaster.  As 
she has said, she wrote the end of OOTP in a hurry and in the midst 
of a difficult pregnancy.  DD's speech at the end of that book was 
incredibly ill-considered, and opened a can of worms that she tried 
to shut very firmly once again in the third chapter of HBP.

Unfortunately, having made that misstep, it is very difficult for 
her to recover DD's character fully into the mode I think she very 
sincerely wanted to project.  She has to resort to handwaving and 
tacit rewriting, as well as accepting a solution that, at best, 
makes DD look like a benign fool.  But, as I've said before, better 
a benign fool than a child abuser, which is what he would be if she 
had not dropped the OOTP speech like a red-hot poker.


Lupinlore