[HPforGrownups] Re: HBP & To Kill A Mockingbird

[Katherine Coble]

No: HPFGUIDX 160112

> Katherine:
> > The scene from Bob Ogden's memory--where we first see The Gaunts--
> > struck me as being very similar to To Kill A Mockingbird.
> > It's as though Merope Gaunt is Mayella Ewell and Mr. Gaunt is Tom
> > Ewell. I wonder if JKR did that on purpose?
>
> Jen: Good catch on the comparison. I remember that Mayella tried to
> keep herself clean and made things a little nicer around the house
> when possible. Both were lonely, both offered a drink to a man they
> were interested in (with vastly different contents!), and ultimately
> both were responsible for painful circumstances due to their own
> deception. There are quite a few similarities.
>
> Merope was less of a fighter than Mayella. She was deceitful like
> Mayella, but...it bothered me less? Maybe because the context was
> the magical world and not the real one. And she came across as very
> naive about the world to me, thinking a love potion was romantic
> rather than an act of taking a person's will away.
>
> As to whether JKR intended it, that would be a good interview
> question one day. She's obviously very well read and the parallels
> are striking when you consider them. If she did tell a similar
> story, then she's equating love potions with false accusations--both
> steal another person's freedom.


Katherine:
After having some time to think things through a bit more carefully I  
wrote this essay on my blog.
It's the best explanation of the comparisons I can come up with.  And  
I'm more convinced.

Two lonely and lovelorn girls, growing up in squalor--Mayella Ewell  
and Merope Gaunt are literary sisters in many ways. I have come to  
believe that Chapter 10 of The Half-Blood Prince is JK Rowling's  
tribute to Harper Lee's classic To Kill A Mockingbird.

When we first see Merope Gaunt, she is cowering in her father's  
kitchen, surrounded by grime and filth. Yet Harry notices that Merope  
has made an effort to be clean and presentable. I was instantly  
reminded of Mayella's efforts to keep tidy, and of her struggling red  
geraniums.

Mayella and Merope have the misfortune of sharing a father. Seperated  
by magic, an ocean and a couple of decades, Bob Ewell and Marvolo  
Gaunt are nevertheless the same man. Dirt poor and ill-regarded by  
their neighbours, Gaunt and Ewell both consider their race and  
lineage to be their chief source of pride. As long as Bob Ewell is  
white, in his mind he has character above the black workers who  
trundle past his tumbledown junkyard house every day. As long as  
Marvolo Gaunt is a pureblood wizard and a direct descendant of  
Salazar Slytherin he can hold his head above muggles and wizards  
alike. In both sagas the pervasive racism of these small-minded men  
becomes the undoing of all those around them and in fact sets in  
motion all events of each story.

Our heroines also share an obsession, after a fashion. Tom. Mayella's  
Tom is Tom Robinson, the handsome and gentle-hearted black man she  
watches through her window every day. Mayella Ewell grows to lust  
after Tom Robinson, knowing that his very blackness would make him a  
forbidden lover in her house. Merope's Tom is Tom Riddle, the  
handsome and hard-hearted Muggle she watches through her window every  
day. In her world the love for Riddle is the same as Mayella's love  
for Robinson, yet it's Riddle's non-wizard nature that makes him  
forbidden to her. Both Mayella and Merope see their love as an escape  
from the tyranny of drunken and abusive fathers.

Each girl sets her obsession in motion at the absence of her family.  
Mayella takes "a slap year to save [seven] nickles" to send her  
younger siblings for ice cream. We are not witnesses to the further  
action, but the story would seem to prove out the following events.  
Mayella lures Tom Robinson into the Ewell shack and throws herself at  
him. Bob Ewell comes upon the scene and beats Mayella fiercely. Due  
in part to her beating and in part to her shame at being rejected by  
Tom, Mayella levels the accusation of rape that tears apart Maycomb  
county and ends the lives of Tom Robinson and Bob Ewell.

In Merope's Little Hangleton hovel events are somewhat inverted but  
have similar outcomes. Like Bob Ewell--his muggle counterpart-- 
Marvolo Gaunt beats and strangles his daughter upon discovering her  
obsession with Tom Riddle. Unlike TKAM, the reader is a witness to  
this beating. I surmise that this is JK Rowling's subtle way of  
confirming Tom Robinson's version of events and offering Robinson a  
postmortem exoneration. In HBP, the beating results not in Tom Riddle  
being falsely accused but in Marvolo Gaunt and his worthless son  
Morfin going to prison. At first the reader is relieved to see Merope  
finally have some peace. But just as Mayella couldn't resist seducing  
her Tom, Merope used her freedom to the same ends. Unlike Mayella,  
however, Merope has the means to concoct a love potion that enslaves  
Tom Riddle to her. The child born of this bitter obsession becomes  
the boy Tom Marvolo Riddle and the man Lord Voldemort, who reigns  
evil and chaos over both the Muggle and Wizarding worlds.

Two sad, lonely, lovelorn girls. Both seem inconsequential yet both  
prove the far-flung disastrous outcomes of obsessive love.

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