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

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 152374


> Pippin:
> I agree that if a love potion makes a person unable to refuse a 
sexual
> advance, it could be called a rape drug. But where is the canon 
for this
> assertion? It seems a circular argument to say that Tom made love
> to a woman he wouldn't have wanted if he hadn't taken the love 
potion,
> and therefore the love potion not only made him want her but made 
him
> have sex. It sounds like an echo of the  sexist notion that men
> have no control over their sex drives and are at the mercy of any 
woman
> who entices them.
> 
> Nor do I see that it's necessary to explain why Tom married Merope.
> 
> I can believe that Tom, who is arrogant in our brief glimpse of 
him and
> characterized as snobbish and rude by the villagers, would ignore 
anything
> he had ever been told about giving into obsessions and any advice 
that
> he should wait before taking such a serious step, without any help 
from
> a potion. He was used to taking what he wanted.

Magpie:
I think that's why it's being compared to rape--there's nothing 
*wrong* with Tom acting on what he thinks is love but is only 
artificial obsession.  His body, his physical feelings, are tampered 
with so he no longer has all the facilities with which he usually 
makes decisions.  Whether or not he should have realized that he 
wasn't really in love but only obsessed, where is he behaving badly 
towards her?  Once the potion takes effect all his interest goes 
towards Merope and not Cecelia, so it's not like that would be a 
happy marriage between him and Cecelia.  Dropping the one girl and 
marrying the other doesn't seem a bad thing to do.  Apparently a Tom 
who thinks he's in love, or a Tom who's obsessed with a girl, would 
marry the girl even if his family told him she wasn't appropriate.  
If the love potion isn't controlling his feelings but only giving 
him feelings that he is acting on in his own way, he can't be 
described as being only driven by money and social position because 
he just married Merope Gaunt because she's the girl he wanted.

That's why it seems like such a cruel joke to blame Tom for not 
acting against his feelings.  If he had become obsessed with Merope 
and killed her or assaulted her then at least he's going outside the 
law, but instead he seems to be perfectly honorable in asking her to 
marry her--a proposal she seems to accept happily.  When the potion 
wears off and the love he felt feels--accurately--as if it was not 
something that was part of himself, he leaves her.  Tom does appear 
to instinctively understand on some level what was done to him, even 
if no one else will believe it.  Yet he doesn't do anything to 
Merope.  He doesn't kill her or abuse her that we hear, he just 
leaves her.

I think that's part of what's so painful about the whole thing for 
Merope, that all that really happens is that she creates an illusion 
of something she really wants, and when she stops creating it 
herself it disappears.  She doesn't seem to be disillusioned about 
Tom, really.  I mean, it's not like she marries him and he turns out 
to be a jerk that *she* doesn't want.  When the potion wears off she 
seems to be simply left with the same problem she started with, that 
he doesn't love her.  Nobody loves her (the baby might have, but 
we'll never know).  She's also pregnant, but it doesn't seem to be 
shame associated with a legitimate pregnancy or an inability to care 
for the child that does her in.  It's the loss of the love she never 
had, it seems to me.

-m