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

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 152331

Gerry wrote:
> So he finds out he has been sleeping with somebody he finds totally
> repellent and it is not rape? I think it is rape, I think he
panicked and felt violated and besmirched when he found out what had
happened to him. I can easily imagine him running out as fast as he
could without looking back - ever. 
> 
> > > 
Carol earlier:
> > >  Once he got over the initial outrage and humiliation, he should
have seen that she, a lifelong victim of abuse, only  wanted to be
loved, that she was sorry for her mistake, that as a fellow human
being, she deserved to be treated with compassion even though she had
hurt him. Does being sorry and trying to make amends for a mistake
count for nothing?
> 
Gerry:
> You assume he knew anything about her background. You assume he
actually understood in what kind of psychological environment she grew up.

Carol:
He knew exactly what kind of home she lived in, that she was
motherless, her father was a "tramp," and her brother was a mental
case about whom the villagers told stories. He would have seen her in
her rags with her dull hair and wall eyes and plin, sad face. It
wouldn't take much to gues what kind of life she lived.

Gerry:
 You also assume that he could see she only wanted love. It is equally
possible that she never talked about her past, that he knew nothing
about her and that when the effects of the potions were gone he saw
this ugly, dumb, nasty witch who had enchanted him and tricked him
into marriage. And even if he understood all that he was in no way
obliged to have anything to do with her again. She was a victim, sure,
but why would it have been her victim's duty to help her? After all,
> she was a witch and could be supposed to look after herself. 

Carol responds:

And because she was an "ugly, dumb, nasty witch," she had no right to
be treated with human dignity? Almost certainly when she told him that
she was a witch and that she had given him a love potion, she would
have told him why she did it--because she "loved" him and wanted to be
loved in return. And she was the mother of his child and ought to have
been given the provision that any decent man who could afford to do so
would give to a woman he didn't love but had impregnated. You are
arguing for inhumanity and revenge. I'm arguing for understanding and
forgiveness. You may be right that he thought that she could fend for
herself because she was a witch, but I would think the fact that magic
did not guarantee decent living conditions would have been clear from
the conditions in which the Gaunts lived and from her own obvious lack
of social skills and education. He must have known that he was
condemning them both to poverty and perhaps starvation, and yes, it
was his duty, as the child's father and the girl's husband (tricked
into marriage or not) to provide for them. The only part of his
marriage vows that he kept was to "forsake all others," giving up the
woman he would have preferred to marry. And that, IMO, is the chief
cause of his suffering, which is not nearly as great as hers.
> 
>  > Julie:
<snip> Yes, she was wrong to do it, but her intent wasn't to harm, so
I can both condemn her action while not fully condemning her. But 
that's just me :-)
> 
Gerry:
> I totally agree with that, but I don't agree it is Tom who should
give the compassion, the forgiveness or the love. 

Carol:
You agree that she had no intent to harm, yet you think she's a
rapist? You condemn her action but not her, yet you don't think that
Tom should forgive her? What about us, the readers? Maybe we should
forgive her?

To return to the "rape" idea, please find me some evidence that anyone
in the book considers Tom Sr.to be the victim of rape. Dumbledore
certainly doesn't, nor does Harry. Nor does Tom Sr. himself claim
anything of the sort. He says that he was "hoodwinked," meaning,
according to Dumbledore, tricked nto marrying a girl he didn't and
couldn't love. (Obviously he can't claim to other Muggles that he was
given a love potion or literally bewitched. He'd be laughed out of
town, as would a man of his generation who claimed to be raped.
(Seduced, maybe. Raped? Physically impossible, people of that era
would claim.)

We need to consider that the Merope incident took place in the 1930s,
not the politically correct 1990s or 2000s. Setting aside the act of
forcible homosexual rape, which they might concede to be abhorrent and
capable of causing a male victim lasting emotional trauma, the idea
that a man could be raped simply would not occur to a man of Tom's
generation. His problem, as far as we can see, is not that he was
sexually used but that he can't marry his darling Cecilia. Nor do we
have any evidence that he and Merope had sex "on a daily basis," as
Alla claims. We know that they had it once, or Tom Jr. could not have
been conceived. That's all we know. And when he did have it, it was
consensual sex with his lawfully wedded wife, or so he would have seen
it at the time. Merope was not standing over him with a wand or a gun
forcing him to have sex.

As for being permanently tramatized, he returned to live with his
parents and never married. Where is the evidence of emotional trauma?
Anger, humiliation, resentment, absolutely, or he would not have
deserted Merope. That and the mere fact of her appearance, her
background, her family, her poverty, her ignorance, her utter
unsuitability as a wife, combined with the fact that she was actually
a witch, would be sufficient in themselves to account for those
emotions. We don't need to bring in matters like male sexual trauma
for which there is not a shred of evidence in canon. I think that some
readers are perhaps bringing their own social or political agenda to
this discussion rather than looking at the canonical evidence.

What we know, in short, is that she tricked him into marrying her,
probably with a love potion, that she became pregnant (which requires
only a single act of sex--and I doubt that Merope knew anything about
contraception whether she wanted to get pregnant or not), that she
stopped giving him the potion, that he left her, that he angrily
blamed her for "hoodwinking" him and abandoned her, leaving her alone
and desperate and pregnant, without a penny to support herself or her
child. Is child abandonment not a crime? Is it not a father's legal
and moral responsibility to provide child support, especially if he is
rich and the mother is poor, whether or not he is himself a victim?
Surely her plight was worse than his?

I like to think, BTW, that when he was at last confronted with the son
who looked so much like him, the son whom he had helped to turn into a
monster by abandoning him and his mother, that Tom Sr. at last
repented his misdeed and spent his last moments trying to protect his
parents from becoming victims of that son along with himself. I will
probably be proven wrong, but the memory in the cave could very well
be Tom Sr.'s: "It's all my fault, all my fault,' he sobbed. 'Please
make it stop [the pain of a Crucio?]? I know I did wrong . . . . Don't
hurt them, don't hurt them, please, please, it's my fault, hurt me
instead . . . ." (HBP Am. ed. 572). If those were Tom's last words, I
forgive him his trespasses, terrible as the consequences were for
Merope, Tom Jr., and in part for the WW itself.


Now let's look at Merope. When do we ever see her behaving assertively
or even lusting for Tom Sr.? She likes to look at him, but nothing
worse than that as far as we see. And no doubt she fantasizes about
him, Cinderella fantasies in which the handsome, rich young man from
the mansion on the hill (it must seem like a palace compared with the
hovel she lives in) rides away with her and they live happily ever
after. Sorry; I'm falling into speculation here. Back to canon.

She lives in a hovel (darling Cecilia calls it "an eyesore")
containing a "filthy armchair," a "grimy black stove," a smoking fire,
"squalid-looking pots and pans," and not much else, with a brother
who's at least half-mad, attacking Muggles and nailing snakes to the
door if they aren't "nice" to him, and a father who abuses her, not
only calling her a "disgusting little Squib," "a pointless lump," and
"a useless sack of muck" in the space of about five minutes, but
seizing the locket around her neck and almost choking her (it's
clearly far more important to him than she is). Probably he abuses her
physically in other ways off page; she's clearly afraid of him,
dropping the pot when he yells at her, unable to perform magic in his
presence. Her hands tremble as she puts the pot back on the shelf. She
wears "a ragged gray dress the exact color of the dirty stone wall
behind her," her hair is "lank and dull," she has a plain, pale, heavy
face and eyes that stare in opposite directions like Morfin's. Harry
thinks he's "never seen a more defeated-looking person." She does not
speak a single word during the entire scene."

And this is the young woman we're supposed to consider a rapist, a
girl who has apparently never known love and seldom heard a kind word
(Ogden's may be the first and last, aside from any endearments
whispered by her husband when he's under enchantment). Her dead
mother, almost certainly a Gaunt herself because the Gaunts marry
their cousins, may not have loved her, either. Certainly she's unloved
now, with as much chance of escaping her abusive life by marrying the
handsome Muggle as Morfin has of becoming Minister for Magic. Only
when both Morfin and Marvolo are in prison does she have a taste of
freedom and the chance to go after what she wants. That she does so in
a way that hurts the object of her love probably does not at first
occur to her. She has not received any training in morality or ethics,
only abuse and name-calling. There is no evidence that either she or
her brother ever attended Hogwarts or had any education of any sort.
Later, in London and nine months pregnant, she is taken advantage of
by Caractacus Burke, who could have ended her poverty but instead give
her ten Galleons for a priceless locket, and she is too naive and
ignorant to know the difference. (I'm not sure how she learned to
concoct a potion of any knd, BTW; there's no evidence that she or her
father or brother can even read. Marvolo sends the Ministry owl away.
Surely he would have read the letter if he could. And her father holds
  no job, seeming to think that this blood heritage is all he needs.

Harry pities her, though he does think that she should have saved her
life by magic for her son's sake. (What that would have accomplished,
given her poverty and helplessness, I can't guess. You can't conjure
money or food with a wand, not real money or real nutrients, at least,
or people like Remus Lupin wouldn't live in poverty.) Dumbledore also
pities her and points out that she never had Lily's courage. Nowhere
does anyone condemn her for wanting to be loved and going about it in
the wrong way. He does, however, note that Tom Sr. abandoned her. In
fact, the only two people who condemn her are Morfin and Marvolo,
first for loving a Muggle and then for running off with the locket.

Speculating again, I would guess, given Merope's timidity and lack of
courage, that she waited, depending on the potion to act for her, for
Tom Sr. to make all the moves--to propose, to make love to her on
their wedding night, to kiss her and tell her she was beautiful. Had
she really been beautiful, he might have had a fling with her, but he
certainly would not have married her of her own free will. A
mesalliance with the daughter of a "tramp" and the sister of a madman
would have been unthinkable. But Merope, defeated and homely as she
was, could not hope even for that, and so she resorted to the only
means at her disposal for finding and receiving love, a love potion.

Perhaps she realized at last that it was an infatuation potion, that
he didn't truly love her, and she set him free. Her repayment was
hatred, rejection, and abandonment, including the burden of bearing
her child alone, with no way to feed, clothe or house either him or
herself. Frankly, I'm surprised that she lived long enough to give
birth to him. No one should have to suffer such a fate, no matter what
their sins.

Carol, who can't understand why readers are ready to forgive Draco for
trying to murder Dumbledore and nearly killing two schoolmates through
his carelessness but not to forgive Merope, who is not much older, for
trying to find love in the wrong way