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

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 152458


> 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.  

Pippin:
Goodness me, no! Did I say all that? The question was in what sense,
if any, Merope could be called a victim. My answer was, because she
was deserted by her husband, who failed to fulfill his legal obligation
to support her and their child. That does not exclude Tom from 
being a victim as well. I wouldn't say Merope didn't deserve Azkaban
for improper use of magic and violating the secrecy act. I'm not giving
her a pass.

In modern times Tom would have no obligation to stay in the marriage
and I hope he would be granted an annulment by any reasonable court.
But I am  talking about the laws and customs of 1926 or thereabouts.
In those days, as near as I can determine, marriages were regarded
as sacred and considered valid until proved otherwise.  The grounds
for proving lack of consent through duress or fraud were painfully
narrrow, the interest of the state was in preserving the marriage
over the welfare of the partners,  and the burden of proof was on the 
petitioner. 

It would not have been enough for Tom to prove that he didn't really
love or desire Merope, because lack of desire did not invalidate a marriage. 
He would have had to prove that he consented only because of 
"force and fear"  and it would have had to have been physical. 
He would probably have been laughed out of court if he claimed he had 
been in emotional bondage, however it had been induced.

Tom knew, or should have known, that he was consenting to all 
this when he got married, and I see no canon that he was incapable
of withholding his consent or that he was so overcome by the potion
that he didn't know what he was doing.

By the laws and customs of his time, Merope had the right to her
husband's support if he had the means to do it unless the marriage
was proved to be invalid. I am not saying she  had *earned* the right. 
We have rights to all sorts of things we  have done nothing to deserve.  
But legally, and, by the morals of her time, morally, she was wronged, 
IMO. 

> 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. 

Pippin:
According to Slughorn, the potion does not produce feelings of
love -- it produces feelings of obsession and infatuation. As much
of the novel turns on the difference between  love and such feelings,
I think it has to be relevant whether there was any way Tom could 
have distinguished between love and infatuation before taking such 
a solemn and in his time nearly irrevocable step as marriage. 

Canon suggests that had he been willing to wait, Merope would have 
tired of his make-believe passion and revealed herself before she 
became pregnant.

Canon implies the villagers believed Tom's talk of being "hoodwinked" 
referred to a fake pregnancy, because that was the readiest explanation 
for his hasty marriage. Dumbledore says that what Tom 
really meant was that he was enchanted,   but  is it not valid to
ask whether the enchantment produced the haste as well as the
desire?


Magpie
 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.

Pippin:
Your example illustrates my point very well. If Tom had consented 
in fear of his life, he would have been entitled to an annulment
in 1926. But I don't think people would have recognized artificial
emotional attachment as a problem, because they  didn't see the lack
of attachment as invalidating the marriage. He might have done
better to claim that Merope didn't tell him she was a witch, but it 
would still be hard, IMO, for him to prove that he wouldn't have 
married her if he'd known that.

Pippin