House Elf Loyalty

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 151608

Alla wrote:
> 
> Bud do we know that the first House Elves agreed to serve out of his 
> own free will? Do we know that they were not being tricked into 
> agreement or even worse - were forced to sign an agreement?
> 
> I mean, of course we don't have to agree with JKR in interpreting 
> her works, but to me at least her intentions on this issue are quite 
> clear. I think she does portray house elves with more or less direct 
> analogy of slavery and knowing her intentions (since I do believe 
> her interviews) that helps me (I think) to predict what is going to 
> happen to House Elves at the end. I do think that whatever 
> enchantment they are under will be lifted and they will be free.
<snip>

Carol responds:

But what does freedom for house-elves *mean* and what would it entail?

Since the house-elves appear to be derived from the elves and brownies
of English folklore (as opposed to Faerie, like Tolkien's very
different Elves), I doubt that they ever signed or were tricked into
an agreement. It seems to be their nature to work for humans although
it's nonmagical ordinary humans (Muggles, though the term isn't used)
who receive their aid in folklore, cf. the story of the shoemaker and
the elves cited by another poster in this thread. (Witches and wizards
wouldn't need their aid as they have their own magic.)

The question for me is what happens to a house-elf who is freed. For
Winky, it's the ultimate disgrace. Even Dobby suffered a longish
period of unemployment. I doubt that a house-elf could conjure a
substantial meal any more than a wizard can; it would disappear once
eaten without contributing any calories just as Leprechaun gold
disappears. Otherwise, no witch or wizard would live in poverty and
Kreacher wouldn't have to live on scraps of real food discarded by
wizards. As for clothes, Winky has only the one little outfit that she
fails, in her misery, to keep clean. Dobby, until he comes to
Hogwarts, has his tea towel and a single dirty sock. After that, he
has the socks and hats that Hermione knits and whatever he can buy
with his wages (e.g., a child's soccer shorts).

What is freedom, then? To quote a song from (I think) the 60s,
"Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose. Nothin' ain't
worth nothin', but it's free." House-elves may be able to live on
nothing, but not comfortably, any more than Sirius Black could in GoF.
House-elves (unless they're Kreacher) receive food, tea towels, and
shelter from their human masters, a trade-off for abuse, in Dobby's
case, but a perfectly acceptable situation for the Hogwarts
house-elves, who clearly don't want their freedom and resent being
offered it (even assuming that picking up the clothes made by
Hermione, who is not their owner or mistress, would have that effect).
Suppose they were suddenly freed against their will. Would they regard
themselves as "sacked" and disgraced, like Winky? Would they ignore
the situation and continue working of their own free will, refusing
wages from a sense of honor? Would they even have that option?

My guess is that if the MoM passed an edict freeing house-elves, the
vast majority of them, including the Hogwarts house-elves, would stay
where they were, serving their former masters by choice and refusing
wages. Kreacher would probably *choose* to serve Bellatrix or Narcissa
or Draco, in that order, and if all of them were dead or imprisoned,
he would go back to the portrait of his mistress to enjoy his misery.

Essentially, freedom for a Muggle doesn't pay the bills. Freedom for a
Wizard or a house-elf doesn't provide food or a place to live. Freedom
doesn't provide employment or money. Since house-elves, unlike certain
Muggles and Wizards (e.g., the Riddles and the Malfoys) are unlikely
to inherit a fortune from either their human or their house-elf
families, and since one house-elf is extremely unlikely to hire
another house-elf, a house-elf needs a human being or human family or
human institiution (e.g., Hogwarts) to work for.

Freeing the house-elves would allow the escape of a few abused
house-elves from a life of slavery and drudgery, but would it provide
new opportunities for the emancipated house-elves? Would even the
abused elves feel duty bound to serve their old masters? Would they
demand humane treatment and wages, or would doing so violate their
pride and house-elf tradition? Could the former abusive masters refuse
to pay them or top punishing them and kick them out? It seems to me
that they'd have all the freedom of an unemployed Rita Skeeter or
maybe less as they'd have no idea of how to go about finding a new job.

At any rate, I agree with Kemper and others that the analogy to human
slavery is flawed, regardless of JKR's intentions. I can't imagine
House-elves, Wizards, Goblins, and Centaurs operating as a society of
equals, all as part of a single multicultural egalitarian society.
Humans would insist that their culture is the norm. They might allow
nonhuman students to attend Hogwarts, and an occasional nonhuman
teacher like Firenze under special conditions, but I can't imagine
them allowing, say, House-elves or Goblins to run it. And how could a
house-elf, who uses a different brand or magic not involving a wand,
teach Charms or Transfiguration? And what about Trolls and Giants?
Should they be accomodated, too, despite their size, their limited
intelligence, and their apparently innate tendency to violence? IMO.
it wouldn't work. They're not human and they don't have human needs,
and to me it seems patronizing to impose human desires and norms on them.

Dumbledore says that the Fountain of Magical Bretheren tells a lie,
that Wizardkind have mistreated their fellow magical beings, and it's
hard to dispute that statement, at least as a generalization. But what
is the solution? Treat House-Elves and others with respect and
consideration, of course. Outlaw abuses such as hand-ironing and
beating, of course. But free House-elves against their will? Consider
them all as equals in some utopian society that includes nonhumans in
the government and education of Witches and Wizards and vice versa? I
don't see how that would work. Centaurs, for one, would want no part
of it, even setting aside the practical considerations illustrated by
the switch from Trelawney's classroom to Firenze's. I see no solution
except separate but equal, live and let live, with some sort of
Department of Magical Cooperation ensuring peaceable relations among
the groups but letting each group live as it wants to live, with its
own rules and traditions. (Half-humans could choose the tradition they
wanted to follow, which I'm betting, with my human arrogance, would be
human in most cases, just as most Half-Bloods and Muggleborns choose
the WW over Muggle life.)

Carol, noting that prejudice and arrogance aren't limited to the
humans in the HP books, as demonstrated by the Centaurs, and that
their needs are different from human needs