Protection-Abuse / Patron-Client (was:re:Blood protection/ Dumbledore and Harry)

[Ceridwen]

No: HPFGUIDX 158559

Lynda:
> So I take it Betsy, that the references to Harry being locked in 
his room into which bowls of soup are pushed through the door-flap 
and Harry always staying out of the reach of his uncle's grasp/fist 
do not signify abuse to you either?  Because I tend to think that the 
narrator was not lying to us in the first instance and that Harry 
probably has learned from experience to stay out of Vernon's reach...

Ceridwen:
Bowls of soup are certainly not enough for a growing teenaged boy, 
but it isn't starving him.  It's giving him the minimum, or near the 
minimum, to survive.  He is expending less energy being locked in his 
room.  Or, maybe not.  Dudley doesn't get a lot of exercise even 
though he's not locked in his room.  Kids don't play outside any 
more.  Pity.

What is bothering me about this entire line of thought is the 
automatic assumption that staying out of reach of Vernon's "grasp/" 
equals out of reach of Vernon's "/fist".  The debate over abuse v. 
discipline won't be solved by a series of children's books and the 
discussion over them, but children who are properly spanked (flat of 
hand across gluteus maximus) will dance out of the way as well, and 
children who are marched to a corner for "time out" will have learned 
to avoid that same grasping hand.  There is no overt mention of 
abuse, and to me, no covert mention, either.  It is one possibility 
out of at least two more.  And, there's always the famous literary 
British "cuff on the ear", which hasn't been presented as abuse in 
most books I've read.  I would suggest that a cuff on the ear is more 
potentially dangerous than a swat on the bottom.

Ceridwen.