Freedom for House-Elves

[Bruce Alan Wilson]

No: HPFGUIDX 161867

"bboyminn:

Hope I didn't trim you statement down too much. I think
your statements are right on the money, and this genuine
desire to serve is precisely why 'human slavery' is a 
bad analogy. Human slaves could be fooled into thinking
their life was great, and in a very rare cases life was
probably pretty good. But I think it is truly in the 
nature of elves to serve others. That's not 
indoctrination, or illusion, or delusion, it truly is at
the core of their being. 

Think of the mythology of this type of creature; brownies,
etc.... In a small sense these creatures are pranksters.
They thought it great fun and a great laugh to imagine 
the tailor or shoemaker coming down in the morning and 
finding all the fabulous products sitting there waiting
for them. If the tailor or the shoemaker acknowledged the
Elves by offerring 'pay' of some type, it spoiled the 
joke and the elves left.

Again the above statement isn't absolute, it just servers
to illustrate that the motivations of this type of 
creature are far far different than slaves."

That is exactly Hermione's problem.  Being Muggleborn, she hasn't been brought
up knowing that there are sentient nonhumans around.  She thinks that
house-elves are just small humans who talk funny; she doesn't realize that they
are a separate species. (She makes a similar error with the centaurs, btw.)
Trying to impose her human (and Muggle human at that) mores on nonhumans betrays
an intellectual myopia.
Of course, Ron, having been raised in the Wizardling world, has a complementary
blind spot.  He takes house-elf servitude for granted.  He may not like it when
he hears of individual cases of elf abuse, but he can't see that the whole
system is flawed.

BAW



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