Of Sorting and Snape

[houyhnhnm102]

No: HPFGUIDX 175696

lizzyben:

> > The comes because the Four Houses correspond to 
> > different emotions - and one House is condemned 
> > as evil. Thereby seeming to condemn those emotions 
> > as evil. Gryffindor is the fire house - corresponding 
> > to the qualities of anger, passion, courage, etc. 
> > These emotions are heartely embraced & approved. 
> > Slytherin is the water house - corresponding to 
> > qualities of emotion, healing, love, empathy, sadness. 
> > And these emotions are rejected by association as 
> > useless & even dangerous. This is how Slytherins are 
> > given the "obsessive love" - love as something dangerous 
> > & wrong. This is how Slytherin men are seen crying - crying & 
> > expressing sadness is dangerous & wrong. This also seems 
> > to correspond w/what Betsy HP was saying about how Slytherin 
> > seems to represent in some ways the feminine aspects that 
> > are condemned in favor of macho masculine Gryffindors. 
> > This is, IMO, where the *weirdness* comes from.

Bart:

> Final comment, without quoting from you: JKR is 
> self-admittedly unfamiliar with RW occultism, so it 
> is wrong to assume that errors that she makes involving 
> those are through anything other than ignorance.

houyhnhnm:

I'm not willing to let her off that easily. There's 
the "ridiculous amount about alchemy" that she had to 
learn "to invent this wizard world" (by the way, where 
was it in DH?)  There's the statements she made in the 
LC/Mugglenet interview.  There's all the imagery in the 
books, continued in DH with the description of Ravenclaw 
common room, "airier than any Harry had ever seen at Hogwarts".

She was right on with the personality traits associated 
with fire and not too far off on earth and air.  But 
water?  Not anywhere close.  That's the single biggest 
wtf for me in the whole series.

I know you've made a point before about the founders 
being the wrong gender.  But I'm thinking of Betsy and 
the vibrant robust Gryffindor tower, now, and that since 
Ravenclaw also lives in a tower and Hufflepuff's common 
room is underground (too bad we never got a chance to 
see it), she even got that part right.

So where's the Slytherin compassion, sensitivity, 
kindness, gentleness, and graciousness?  I think she 
was caught between the notion to use elemental archetypes 
and the need to make Slytherin the repository of all that 
is bad and that need won out.