[HPforGrownups] Individual issues and JKR (was Re: Snape and the "Chosen One" )

[Sarah E. Schreffler]

No: HPFGUIDX 153589

xuxu:
>And then sometimes, in disregard of conventions, people just fall in
>love with each others, and that is a different matter altogether. I
>don't think JKR has said anything against that. In any case I wouldn't.

>The problem with PCness is that we end up using words meaning nothing
>at all. Is 'genetically homogenous' even a scientific truth? What
>about 'born of two persons who love each other'?     

Sarah says:
For a great deal of human history, love had little or nothing to do with
marriage. "They told us we'd learn to love each other" 

"For twenty-five years I've washed your clothes
Cooked your meals, cleaned your house
Given you children, milked the cow
After twenty-five years, why talk about love right now?"

The problem in Harry Potter was not the love (or lack of love) behind
the parents.  (Narcissa and Lucius really DO seem to love each other, as
do Dudley's parents.  The problem with Merope and Tom seems to be not a
lack of love but forced "love" -- and quite a bit of self-deception on
Merope's part.  She thought the real was true, and she wanted the real,
not the fake.  To the point where when he left her after she stopped
giving him the potion, she didn't want to live anymore.)  It is the
attitude toward outsiders.  Or, to point a finer point on it, an
attitude toward the different.  Despite the fact that she says just
about all the wizard are related to each other.  (Order of the Phoenix,
Chapter 6, p.113 in my book) "The pure-blood families are all
interrelated," said Sirius. "If you're only going to let your sons and
daughters marry purebloods your choice is very limitd, there are hardly
any of us left. Molly and I are cousins by marriage and Arthur's
something like my second cousin once removed..."

But JKR only once says anything about physical problems in the children
of these unions -- in the piece about the Gaunts.  Over and over what
she seems to decry is the pure-blood attitude.  Molly and Arthur, as
they say, are also pureblood, but don't come in for the same kind of
treatment because they are more willing to accept outsiders.  Book 2
covered these  differences between those who did and didn't accept
outsiders quite a bit with a beastie who was killing "Mudbloods" (and in
the end, it even turned out that the mind behind it didn't care about
the muggle-ness of the people at all.  He was more interested in Harry
Potter, even willing to kill pureblood Ginny to get there.)  At the end
of book 4, (Goblet of Fire, chapter 36, p. 708 in my book) (Dumbledore)
"You place too much importance, and you always have done, on the
so-called purity of blood! You fail to recognize that it matters not
what someone I born, but what they grow to be! Your dementor has just
destroyed the last remaining member of a pure-blood family as old as
any-- and see what that man chose to make of his life! I tell you now--
..."

--Sarah Schreffler
Newcastle, WA