Amortentia and re The morality of love potions/Merope and Tom Sr.

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 152303

> Alla:
> 
> Could you give me an example of Merope being a victim in her
> relationship with Tom Riddle? I mean, I don't think anybody would
> argue that she was the victim of horrible abuse, but how is it in
> any way, shape or form diminishes the wrongness of what she did to
> that poor man?
> 
> He did not ASK for his life to be destroyed, as you said he never
> remarried. I speculate that he was so traumatised that he was 
unable
> to rebuild his life ever again, basically the woman he loved was
> taken away from him, IMO.
> 
> And I am also not talking about Tom Riddle general character, for
> all we know as somebody told me he could have been a real jerk in
> his relationship with the world in general. But it is irrelevant 
IMO.
> 
> He did not do anything to Merope, he had a misfortune to be seen by
> her.

Magpie:
Yeah, I have to say I find some of the arguments here disturbing 
because they seem like just an inversion of the usual "blame the 
victim" arguments that are so common in real rape cases, only 
instead of the victim being considered automatically guilty because 
she's a woman and so sexually asking for it, it seems Tom is 
automatically guilty because he's a man, and handsome and rich, so 
can't be the victim.  Yet this is exactly what JKR is turning on its 
head by making Tom the Muggle and Merope the witch. I don't think 
we're just told Tom never remarried, we're told he rarely left the 
house after his experience.  

Lots of rapists were abused growing up, and while this may explain 
their motivations it does not make a crime any less of a crime, just 
as Tom's relatively good life doesn't mean a crime committed against 
him is less of a crime. As far as I can see Merope was in control of 
her actions every step of the way. It takes two people to make a 
baby, but of these two people Merope was the one far more in control 
since Tom was the one with his reason impaired by Love Potions. (As 
a witch Merope would also have access to birth control as well.) The 
thing Tom is guilty of taking responsibility for the child created 
by him. He also leaves his wife when the magic binding her to him 
wears off.

I'd say one of the things clear about Tom Jr.'s life is that he 
really never knew love, even in conception.  It wasn't just his 
father who did wrong by him and didn't care about him, assuming he 
knew Tom existed, which he may not have.  (We don't hear that he 
ever tried to find out what happened to Merope, since as far as we 
know he had trouble even leaving the house after his experience.)  
If his father either didn't know about him and didn't want to know 
about him, or saw him as just a symbol of his own abuse, his mother 
quite possibly couldn't see him at all, because she had trouble 
seeing anything but what she wanted for herself.  We assume she made 
a good sacrifice in setting Tom free of his love potion, but she may 
have still been going after her own ends.  Iow, she may have begun 
to resent knowing that Tom only loved her because he was drugged and 
longed for the "real love" that was freely given.  

Another thing to remember about the Muggle/Wizard worlds is the 
different position Witches seemed to have always enjoyed in the WW.  
Merope herself was cowed at home, but she's not subject to the 
disapproval or laws of Muggle society of the time.  She's not 
whatever 19th century heroine sounds most sympathetic. She's not a 
penniless, outcast Muggle girl, she's a Witch.  A witch with a lot 
of disadvantages and psychological problems that make her incapable 
of going on with life, but not a girl destroyed by sexist Muggle 
society and seduced by the rich aristocrat.  This story is really 
kind of daring in the way it challenges assumptions and stereotypes 
(or perhaps some might find it problematic for exactly that reason). 
Can we fall back on familiar injustices when the power in the 
situation is flip-flopped? 

-m