Harry and the house-elves---another view

[Eric Oppen]

No: HPFGUIDX 162122

The house-elves' position is an interesting one.  To us, they seem to be 
slaves, at the mercy of their masters.  But---except for Dobby, who is 
presented as an anomalous case, they seem to be happy and contented as they 
are.  Winky, to take an obvious example, does not seem to be anywhere nearly 
as convinced of the glorious blessings of freedom as we'd expect of a 
recently-freed slave.

One thing that a lot of posters on this point forget, again and again, is 
that _house-elves are NOT human!!!_  They are another race entirely.  Humans 
hate being enslaved.  House-elves may well see their situation as the 
highest and noblest calling available to them.  Dobby is not a typical 
example, and the other house-elves seem to consider him to be on the same 
level as the sort of harmless mentally-disturbed person one sees 
sometimes---not dangerous, but not to be emulated.

And there might be very good reasons why house-elves are "enslaved."  I know 
that there is (or was) at least one other _Fables_ fan on here, which is 
nice since this reminds me of a recent story-arc in _Fables._  Basically, 
the New York Fable community had to deal with a person who had stupidly let 
a D'Jinn loose---without making his third wish "Go back into your bottle and 
seal yourself back in."  In the Fableverse, D'Jinns are incredibly powerful 
and extremely capricious---worlds have been destroyed by uncontrolled 
D'Jinns at play.  House-elves apparently have their own kind of magic, and 
Dobby, once free to do as he pleased, was able to face down Lucius 
Malfoy---who, for all his faults, is almost certainly neither a coward nor a 
weak wizard.

If all the house-elves were freed, they might be even more dangerous than 
Dementors or another goblin rebellion.  And, again, you can't generalize 
from Dobby, or Winky.  Neither of them is particularly typical of 
house-elves.  What if, once freed, they decided they'd been "cast aside and 
scorned" and began to wreak vengeance on all and sundry?