Hepzibah Smith, Tobias Snape, & Nathaniel Hawthorne...

[strina_brulyo]

No: HPFGUIDX 140098

Hello everybody,

OK, I'm anything but a regular contributor to forums; however, I 
really needed to share this one with you all. 
First off, there's no doubt in my mind that Snape was and remains 
loyal to Dumbledore, so if there're any Snape-haters out there -- 
you might be a little overwhelmed by this post because I don't even 
mention any of the mysteries surrounding the guy's allegiances 
here...
I've been entertaining myself recently with a bunch of popular and 
not-so-popular "conspiracy" theories, like the Unicorn Patronus or 
the Asphodel-and-Wormwood ones. These are well-researched and 
original ideas, and I so wanted to play the literary Sherlock Holmes 
and come up with something like that on my own:-))... So there it 
came, very unexpectedly, today. It's not anything close to a 
coherent theory, but if you could share any thoughts you might have, 
that would be great!

This is how it all started. First, it occurred to me that, given the 
importance of Severus as a character, and given JK Rowling's love of 
names, it is entirely possible that the names Tobias [Snape] and 
Eileen [Prince] were not picked at random. I looked them up in a few 
web sites that dealt with the history and meanings of 
names. "Eileen" was mostly cited as originating from the 
Greek "Helen" and referring to "Light." Well, I've always considered 
Eileen to be a pretty name anyway (never mind Ron who says something 
to the effect of "She was not a pretty":). So Snape's mom was likely 
a gentle person, in my opinion, especially since we've seen her 
frightened before, in OotP.

"Tobias" presented a greater challenge, however. It is said to 
mean "God is good;" it's a Biblical name... and it seems to have 
been particularly popular with the Puritans. Right away I imagined 
an angry Tobias Snape infuriated with his wife and son for being 
wizards, kind of like our Uncle Vernon, or kind of like the minister 
dad from Salem whose daughters were suspected of witchcraft (he was 
a real person also seen in "The Crucible," "Moi, Tituba sorciere," 
etc.). 

I googled "Tobias" and "Puritans" together, and I quickly came 
across the full online text of one of Nathaniel Hawthorne's short 
stories called "The Gentle Boy." It's about a little Quaker boy 
called Ibrahim who's taken in by a Puritan couple. The man's name is 
Tobias, the woman's name is Dorothy. Puritans would often shun and 
apprehend Quakers, and even accuse them of witchcraft. Little 
Ibrahim's fate is no different. The entire community loathes him, 
and the parents' hatred is naturally transmitted to their children, 
who subject him to cruel torture. He grows increasingly solitary, 
yet (I'm only talking about Ibrahim here:) he lacks all malice... 
The father never turns abusive or anything, but, unlike the mother, 
he's quite sensitive to the Public Opinion, and, at the beginning, 
he feels rather uneasy when he's seen with the boy in public... 
moreover, until then, he'd held very good positions within the 
Puritan 
community, and now these positions are shaken. JKR could be making a 
small reference to these characters, couldn't she? What do you think?

I went on to explore a little more (whoever cares about the 
Chemistry test on Wednesday??;). So there's also Nathaniel Hawthorne 
himself. Now, I'm from Bulgaria, and even though I went to an 
English-language high school, where we once discussed Hawthorne and 
an excerpt from his Scarlet Letter, I remembered next to nothing 
when it came to that author... I'd even forgotten that he was from 
Salem and how that had influenced his works a great deal. Salem!!! 
It's not only the birthplace, however, that I found intriguing. 
Hawthorne's father died when his son was four, so the future writer-
to-be lived with his reclusive mother, in whom he would find 
emotional solace for many years to come. At one point he became 
quite isolated himself, and he would rarely leave the house (does 
this remind you of a particular teenager staring at the ceiling in 
his dark bedroom?). In his correspondence, he once confessed: "I 
have locked myself in a dungeon, and I can't find the key to get 
out." Dungeon. Hmm.

What caught my attention next was the often-cited moral of 
Hawthorne's novel The House of the Seven Gables (which, regrettably, 
I haven't read): "...the wrongdoing of one generation lives into the 
successive ones, and (...) becomes a pure and uncontrollable 
mischief." Isn't that an important part of Snape's philosophy (and 
perhaps one of his greatest shortcomings), for it is so difficult 
for him to see in Harry anyone other than James?

Then, as I was looking into some of the themes and characters of The 
House of the Seven Gables (two themes were "class distinctions" 
and "witchcraft"), I was amazed to discover the existence of a 
female character by the name of Hepzibah Pyncheon. She was an old 
maid of "aristocratic" origins: "Her former status is dependent upon 
wealth (which no longer belongs to her) and a legacy of belonging to 
a leading family in Salem" 
(http://www.hawthorneinsalem.org/page/11494/). In Chapter 2, 
she's "trying with pathetic results to beautify herself..." In 
Chapter 5: "On a tour of the "dusky" Seven Gables, Hepzibah 
describes to Phoebe some of the darker histories of the house and 
hints to a treasure to be found within the house." Ah, and there are 
chapters entitled "The First Customer" or "The Guest." If our rich, 
old, single (she was single, wasn't she?), remarkable descendant of 
Helga Hufflepuff, Hepzibah Smith, is not a direct reference to 
Hepzibah Pyncheon, then, as we say back home, I'm a tramway. I need 
to read that novel, however. :)

So it seems quite clear to me that Rowling has planted some 
Hawthorne clues in Book 6. Or are they really clues? Where are they 
supposed to lead us? Perhaps they are meant to help us gain insight 
into the Snape family before the last book of the series comes out? 
I could only guess... What are your ideas? (If you ever managed to 
read through this gargantuan post!!:)


strina_brulyo