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

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 152319


> Julie:
> I don't think Tom's situation is analagous to rape because no 
> physical incapacity or coercion was involved, rather his emotions 
> were played with. It is more analagous to a man telling a woman he 
> loves her and wants to marry her just to get sex. That sexual 
> relationship is based on deceit, just as Tom and Merope's sexual 
> relationship is based on deceit, on the effect of the love potion 
> making Tom believe he cared for her. 

Magpie:
Of course physical incapacity and coercion is involved-that's what a 
love potion does.  It interferes with Tom physically and imposes a 
different will upon his own.  If a man tells a woman he loves her 
and wants to marry her for sex, the man is lying about his own 
feelings, not controlling the will of the woman.

Julie:
Just as a woman would be 
> justifiably angry at being tricked into believing a man loved her, 
I 
> think Tom is justifiably angry at being tricked into believing he 
> loved Merope. But I still don't see it as rape. 

Magpie:
Whether or not we call it rape, Tom was not tricked into believing 
he loved Merope.  He was forced to feel love for Merope through 
drugs.  It crosses the line from manipulation to physically 
interfering with another person's will, violating their self.  That, 
I think, is why many readers connect it to rape, not simply because 
of the sexual aspect but because it turns a person into an object 
for another person.  The Imperius curse too can be described as 
tricking a person into believing they want to do something, but 
it's  actually taking over the person's will.

 
> Julie:
> Again he wasn't violated, IMO, he was tricked, into believing he 
> loved her because she was gorgeous and desirable in his eyes, when 
> she really wasn't once he saw how she really looked. 

Magpie:
He was absolutely violated.  What you're describing is more like a 
glamour, where Merope turns herself into someone beautiful that Tom 
finds attractive, but that is not what she really looks like.  This 
analogy also interestingly is all about Tom being shallow; it's hard 
not to think that if Tom was a better person he'd either not be 
fooled by the glamour or would still love Merope when the glamour 
wore off.  However, that is not the case with a love potion.  A love 
potion does not trick Tom into thinking a situation is different 
than it is, it forces him to feel something he doesn't feel, like 
slipping someone a drug.  It violates him physically so that he is 
no longer competent to act in his own interest.  She is controlling 
his reactions through her Potions.
 
> Julie:
> He was tricked into her bed, as a woman can often be tricked into 
a 
> man's bed by lies and manipulation. It's dishonest, deceitful, 
> perhaps criminal in some sense, but it's not rape. 

Magpie:
Tom was not tricked by lies or manipulation, he was drugged.


> Julie:
> Er, huh? If you mean she hoped he would love her as she was, now 
that 
> he'd gotten to know her, I agree that she probably held that hope. 
> She still could have kept him under the love potion forever, but 
she 
> chose not to, and the only reason for that is because she knew it 
was 
> wrong. So she took the risk and did the right thing. Which doesn't 
> excuse doing the wrong thing first, but it does count for 
something, 
> IMO. 

Magpie:
We assume she stopped using the love potion because it was wrong.  
I'm suggesting it's possible that she grew disatisfied with 
the "love" she knew was fake and so needed to see if she could have 
the real thing, and maybe thought she could have the real thing.  
That's not the same thing.

> Julie:
Tom perhaps had no legal 
> responsibility to do so, given that the marriage and the child's 
> conception were founded on deceit, but morally it would have been 
the 
> right thing to do. 

Magpie:
Yes, morally it would have been right for him to provide for the 
child.  Morally it would also have been right for her to care for 
the child.  Neither of them seemed to care much about the child.

-m