JKR and the boys/ Dark Magic and Snape

[Sydney]

No: HPFGUIDX 161484


> Sydney:
> > Then there's that JKR's placed Snape in an industrial northern town.
> >  That carries a lot of baggage-- there were huge race riots in the
> mill town of Bradford in the mid-nineties, Yorkshire is the stronghold
> > of the British National Party, and it's also where the 7/7 bombers
> > were from.  

> Carol:
> "Race" in what sense? If you mean the antagonism between Yorkshire and
> the southern counties, you can see that in the era of Richard III, who
> died in 1485, and probably before. As you say, it's a class thing, not
> race, with the Southerners regarding the Northerners as almost
> barbarians and the Northerners seeing the Southerners as soft and
> corrupt.

Sydney: 

No, in this case I meant race as in race-- the big headline issues of
the BNP, white-pakistani race riots of the last 10-20 years,
skinheads, and terrorism, with which Northerness is sadly freighted at
the moment.  It's just part of the soup of reference JKR is counting
on her readers bringing to the book, as she counts on their knowledge
of Nazis and the KKK to set a mood for Death-Eaterness, or Enid Blyton
to set a mood of boarding-schoolness.  She's a very allusive writer in
that way-- she draws on a collective set of what you might call
cultural imagery.  It's what lets her strike so many chords with her
readers so economically.

Now that the reader associates Snape with row-housing in a northern
industrial town, there's a flood of imagery that goes with it-- more,
probably for a British reader than an American one, but still anyone
might start thinking:  unemployment, sweatshops, exploitation, angry
working class.  This is sort of an aside, but did you ever see the
"Monty Python" episode where "No one expects the Spanish
Inquisition!"?  The sketch actually starts with a cliche 'period
drama' set with a Typical Mill Foreman with Typical Northern Accent
coming into the scene and saying "Trouble a' th'mill".  If you google
"Trouble at the Mill" you'll see just how much this phrase was used
even before the sketch! 

Anyways-- my point, if I had a point, is that we've been introduced to
a new 'set' and this set has been attached to Snape.  The 'Burrow' set
of the cottage overrun with healthy children brings its associations
and expectations, the 'island prison' set of Sirius Black ditto, the
'identikit suburban house' of the Dursleys ditto.  Whether this is
Snape's childhood home or not (I very much think it is), JKR painted
this cliche set-- and I mean cliche in the warmest possible way!--
with some care.  Snape's now been grafted onto everything implied with
living in a decrepit northern town and that would include class, race,
and regional resentments.  'Resentment' and 'Snape' go together like
fish and chips, so so far it's all in tune.


Carol:

But I don't see Snape in that picture at all. Just because he
> lives in Spinner's End as an adult doesn't mean it was his childhood
> home. It's as good a place as any to hide from both sides.  

Sydney:

I realize it's not made explicit, but I'm going with the Law of
Narrative Economy.  This is the picture that JKR puts Snape in, these
are the images she wants to connect with him.  Snape's already been
established as poor in OoP (greying underwear, spitting and swearing),
and living in somewhere dingy and full of flies, and we're supposed to
be intrigued by what his background is.  Personally I think this is
completing the picture to say:  not just working class, northern mill
town working class. 
  

Carol:

> Or, if you like Knockturn Alley, maybe he had a shop
> there in his early DE days. He needed paid employment or a business,
> right? To my knowledge, DEs don't get paid.

Sydney:

I used to have this theory that Snape worked for Borgin and Burkes,
but that turned out to be Tom Riddle! 


> > Sydney:
> >
> > Yeah, it's so intriguing!  Because on the one hand JKR's really set
> > him up as the familiar figure of the chip-on-shoulder lower-class
> guy trying to 'pass'. 

> Carol:
> I don't wholly agree. Yes, he's reshaped his image so that he's no
> longer a stoop-shouldered, pallid teenager with a neglected look (as a
> pureblood family might treat the half-blood grandson that they were
> forced to take in on his father's death--see, I think the shouting man
> is Grandpa Prince, which would explain the absence of Muggle clothes
> in Snape's childhood memory. Not even Harry would fail to spot those.)
>  He seems to need to earn a living, perhaps because the Princes
> refused to support him after he came of age. That doesn't mean that he
> came from a working class background.

Sydney:

I guess I'm just rolling with how JKR has presented the character so
far-- he lives in a row house in a crap town, when he was a kid he was
neglected and unrefined (he's swearing a blue streak, not using the
cool cutting insults he does now), he now has a slightly
inappropriately formal way of speaking, he's a schoolmaster who puts
on airs, he's hypersensitive about people respecting him and calling
him 'sir'.  For me this all adds up into... rats, I have to use the
word again-- maybe not a cliche but a familiar character from the sort
of fiction JKR habitiually draws from.  The working-class lad made
good.  Of course there's a very common storyline with this character--
the poor relation, made to feel his unworthiness and vowing to get his
own back (Heathcliff, Steerpike, Uriah Heep).  I wouldn't feel a bit
surprised if we get this storyline with Snape leading up to his
joining the DE's.  Although there's alternate storylines that could
also work-- I'm quite fond of support-of-the-family Snape, where his
mother or other relations were counting on him to make something of
himself and rescue the family from poverty.  He seems to be from a
young age a sort of go-to guy for people (at least the much older
Karkaroff instinctively turned to him for 'what are we going to do!!')
and he seems very natural with an air of put-upon responsibility, so I
 wouldn't be surprised if this was the storyline either.

Carol:

 Lucius as a wealthy pureblood
> who doesn't have to work would be naturally condescending to a less
> wealthy but highly talented halfblood whom he regards as his protege
> (the "lapdog" idea) and who has to teach for a living. But
> intellectually and in terms of magical power, Snape is at least his
> equal and Lucius knows it. And Bella, though she won't admit it, is
> flat out afraid of Snape.

Sydney:

Yeah, but to someone like Lucius talent and intellect WOULDN'T make a
half-blood Snape his equal, or to someone like Bella either.  That's
what's mysterious about that whole relationship.


> > Sydney:
I read a very
> cool theory somewhere that the famous significance of Harry having
> Lily's eyes is that that's why he's the only one who can make out the
> > handwriting in the HPB book-- Snape spelled it 'for lily's eyes
> only'! <snip>
>
> Carol:
> All of the references to Lily's eyes have been to their color (and
> once, IMO, to their unusual almond shape). Having Lily's eyes helped
> Harry get the memory from Slughorn. I think we've seen the last of
> that motif in HBP.

Sydney:
Here's the quotage from the horse's mouth:

"Q: Now, can I ask you: are there any special wizarding powers in your
world that depend on the wizard using their eyes to do something? Bit
like ...
A: Why do you want to know this?
Q: I just vaguely wondered.
A: Why?
Q: Well because everyone always goes on about how Harry's got Lily
Potter's eyes.
A: Aren't you smart? There is something, maybe, coming about that. I'm
going to say no more, very clever."

So the Lily's eye's thing is some magical thingie.

-- Sydney, feeling smug about remembering to save this post before
hitting send, as yahoo ate it the first time;  unless of course she
winds up double-posting in which case could the mods remove the spare..