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

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 152434

> Pippin:
> Because, drugs or no drugs,  everybody who knows anything about 
love 
> knows that their feelings might not be real. 

Magpie:
I don't think anyone goes through life thinking they're feelings 
might not be real.  What you mean is that they don't know whether 
the real feelings they have should be called "love" or not, but 
that's because "love" is a vague and unspecific word, not because 
your feelings aren't.  Tom's feelings are real, they are the effects 
of a Potion he's been given.  Tom is feeling the symptoms of love.

Pippin:
 Merope might be ignorant 
> enough not to know that it's important to distinguish between love 
and 
> infatuation even though they can feel the same -- *she* might
> think she really loves Tom. But *he* should know, being an educated
> and sophisticated young person, that, as Dumbledore told Harry 
> some time ago, the very things we want most are often the worst 
> for us. 

Magpie:
So let me get this straight.  Knowing the difference between love 
and infatuation and obsession (or the effects of a Love Potion you 
don't know exists) is such a character-tainting thing not to know 
that Tom's not knowing the difference makes him at fault for his own 
exploitation by another person (an exploitation he is completely 
unaware of).  However Merope, because she's "ignorant" gets a total 
pass on thinking she's in love with Tom, and also a pass on thinking 
that drugging a person and enslaving him is okay if you love them.  
This is because Tom is "sophsticated and educated" and Merope 
isn't.  But being sophisticated and educated does not historically 
mean you are any wiser or dumber in matters of love than an 
illiterate person.  In fact, this story plays on the opposite 
suggestion.  The "ignorant and unsophisticated person" has literally 
brewed the symptoms of love in a bottle.  That's the thing about 
Merope.  How can I support her as she uses her "power" as a woman, 
when as soon as the time comes to take responsibity for that power 
she's a helpless female again being mistreated by the sophistiated 
nasty man? It's Tom that's uneducated and unsophisticated in this 
situation.  He doesn't even know love potions exist much less how to 
make one or how to recognize the effects of one.

Pippin:
> When Dumbledore told Harry not to look for the Mirror of Erised 
> again, Harry  was able to take the advice, even though he was 
enchanted. 


Magpie:
Well, first Dumbledore did not think to give Tom Riddle advice on 
how to handle a love potion or how to recognize a love potion's 
effects the way that he tells Harry exactly what the Mirror of 
Erised does and what it is.  If some Muggle had given Tom Riddle 
advice on being careful to not mistake infatuation or obsession for 
love, and he applied that to the Merope situation by examining his 
feelings he'd probably come to the conclusion that yes, this is 
love, thanks to the continuous doses of love potion.  

Pippin:
> I can see where a more arrogant person, say Malfoy, would have 
disregarded
> Dumbledore, can you?

Magpie:
The question is...what is the implication of that? Why does Tom 
Riddle keep getting compared to the Malfoys?  And here he's being 
compared in a situation that never happened, one where Malfoy is 
warned against not looking in the Mirror of Erised and due to his 
bad character/arrogance rejects Dumbledore's advice.  So apparently 
we're again supposed to imagine a Tom Riddle complicit in his own 
entrapment and probably deserving of it.  But the fact remains that 
whether or not Tom Riddle is arrogant, his arrogance is irrelevent 
to what happened to him.  

> Pippin:
> 
> For me, the question is not how those thoughts entered his mind --
> thoughts get into people's head in all sorts of ways. If he'd seen 
> a naughty postcard, perhaps he wouldn't be able to avoid being
> aroused and thinking he'd fallen in  love with the model, 
>  but would he be forced to marry her if she asked him to, even if 
he 
> thought his love was real? He could be drugged into it, but we just
> don't know that the love potion has that effect.

Magpie:
Merope is the agent of action in this scenario.  We can't just not 
question how those thoughts entered tom's head when the crime in 
question is intentionally infecting someone with a compulsive, 
unwanted feeling or emotion.   Tom didn't see a naughty postcard, 
and whether or not he would have fallen in love with the model on 
one has no bearing on this situation whatsoever (though I see no 
reason to assume he would, since he doesn't seem to suffer from that 
kind of mental disorder naturally).  

Pippin:> 
> We know the potion would make him think he was in love and that
> Merope was an attractive woman. We don't know that it made him 
> act on  those feelings in whatever way Merope wished, which would
> be an effect like the Imperius curse. If  it did have that effect
> I'd expect Voldemort to use it -- just put love potion in the 
water 
> and everyone would have to obey him. :) 

Magpie:
Actually, we know that love itself makes one find another person 
attractive, and since this potion is a "love potion" and not a "find 
me attractive" potion I'd say it's more likely that that's what it 
produces.  Tom then acted on those feelings of love the way that he, 
Tom, would normally act on feelings of love--he asked the girl in 
question to marry him rather than any other number of things he 
could have done.  Merope is responsible for actions that he took in 
good faith due to the artificial situation she created.  Just as, if 
she had given Tom a Potion to make him think the house was on fire 
and he jumped out the window to escape the flames, she would be 
responsible for his death by falling despite the fact that she 
didn't physically force him to jump out the window.

-m