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

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 152615

> > Pippin: 
> > > > The marriage was made as soon as the partners gave free consent
> > > > in a recognized way...and the law in 1926 did not recognize
> > > persuasion by means other than force as coercion.

Gerry:
> Which is what Merope did. She used force. 

Pippin:
What they meant by force in 1926 was that the person marrying had given
consent in order to escape a threat rather than because he or she desired to
be married. I don't think that applies.

The concept of duress was expanded eventually to include the idea that
someone might be compelled, even  without his or her  knowledge,  to fail 
to apply his or her mind to the question of giving consent. There was
an Irish decision about that -- in 1978.

Now IMO what happened in 1978 was not that people suddenly
discovered that there was a way  to  apply such pressure. People had
been doing that all along. In earlier times they thought it was done 
by magic.  Later they thought it might be done by drugs. The US
Food and Drug Administration was studying that as late as the 1980's.

What had  changed, IMO, was the willingness to consider  that pressure 
a form of duress. 

Now, would wizards have considered it  a form of duress? They
consider Imperius a form of duress, true, but Imperius forces you to 
obey even if you know you don't want to. Harry knows he doesn't 
want to jump but the curse still forces him to do it. He does give
his mind to the question of consent, but he can't force his body 
to obey him. That's different from the way the love potion works, 
so it's not clear to me that wizards at the time  would look at it the 
same way.

We might consider the legend of Tristan and Isolde. I don't think
I've ever heard anyone claim that if Isolde and King Mark had taken
their love potion as was intended, it would have made their marriage
invalid! Or even that Isolde was less an adulteress (though undoubtedly
a more sympathetic one) because she was under the influence of a 
potion. The whole tragedy turns on the fact that the law took no notice 
of human desire. That hadn't changed very much in 1926.


Pippin