Back to Slytherin House (Was: Ending WAS : Compassionate hero)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 176074

Carol:

Before responding to this post, I want to ask Betsy a question
regarding the Condoleezza Rice analogy upthread. Did you intend Dr.
Rice to represent what you expected for the Slytherins? It seems to me
that she's more analogous to a Muggleborn. And if Hermione is indeed
high up in the Ministry (admittedly, not mentioned in the epilogue but
stated in an interview), isn't she your Dr. Rice? (It was the
Muggle-borns, along with Muggles and house-elves and goblins, who were
oppressed during DH, not the Slytherins.) I'm not arguing here; I'm
just confused as to which oppressed group you intended Dr. Rice to
represent in your analogy.

Betsy wrote:
> Of course that's if, and only if, the Sorting is ideological in 
nature. 

Carol responds:
And I wonder whether we can definitively answer that question,
especially for slytherin for Slytherin House. Clearly, Gryffindor
sorts for courage and Ravenclaw for "wit and learning" or intelligence
(not exactly a personality trait but clearly a personal trait).
Hufflepuff is a conglomeration ("just and loyal," hardworking, but
also "the lot" or "the rest," i.e., the ones who don't fit the
criteria for the other houses). Hagrid calls them "duffers," IIRC, and
Draco dismisses them with the exact phrase James uses to reject
Slytherin, as if those two not so very different boys perceive
entirely different Houses as the House of outcasts as the result of
their upbringing. Clearly, however, the *Hat* does not perceive either
House as a house of outcasts, though it seems to be unhappy with the
whole process of having to "quarter" the students every year. Granted,
Zacharias Smith, a Hufflepuff, ends up acting like a coward in DH (I
didn't like that; I thought he had every right to ask Harry for proof
that Voldemort was back, but, oh, well; that's my disappointment and
my difference from JKR.) But Ernie Macmillan, Hannah Abbott, and
Cedric Diggory also end up in Hufflepuff, and all of them are likeable
or admirable in their different ways, refuting Draco's and Hagrid's
views, IMO.

Slytherin, as this unkillable thread illustrates, is a different
matter because the Sorting criteria keep changing. We start off with
cunning (SS/PS), then ambition (GoF, Harry having missed the Sorting
in CoS and PoA), then, suddenly (though maybe we should have guessed
it from the Basiliks in coS), we get "those whose ancestry is purest"
(OoP). Does pure blood equate to cunning and ambition? Apparently,
since Slytherin took only "pure-blood wizards/of great cunning, just
like him" (OoP again). Why, then, isn't Percy in Slytherin? And how
did Dumbledore, who could have been either a Ravenclaw for his brains
or a Slytherin given his early views on Muggles, end up in Gryffindor?
(His mother was a Muggle-born, but Half-blood status didn't keep out
Tome Riddle or Severus Snape.) That's all we get. Harry misses the
Sorting again in HBP and doesn't even attend school in DH. (I *wish*
we'd been able to hear the Sorting Hat under Snape!)

Slytherin is the only house associated with an ideology, and only
directly so in OoP. The rest comes from remarks like Hagrid's
inaccurate claim that all DEs came from Slytherin and Sirius Black's
statement that most of Severus Snape's "gang" became Death Eaters.

Betsy Hp earlier:
> > <SNIP>
> > > The problem, IMO, is that with Slytherin house JKR has conflated
personality with ideology. And by condemning one, she's condemned the
other.  And that's bigotry.

Carol:
I agree that she seems to have conflated personality with ideology.
I'm not about to argue whether that's bigotry or not. (I don't see the
pure-blood ideology as racism, either, since white Hermione and black
Dean are subjected to exactly the same prejudice for being Muggle-born
or unable to prove otherwise. I like the term "bloodism" that someone
on the list used. Helps to keep RW concerns out of the discussion.)
That aside, it does seem that, by DH, JKR has forgotten that Slytherin
and Death Eater are not synonymous. 

Or has she? Setting aside the much-discussed Snape, who is doing what
he can to protect the school from the Carrows, we have a non-DE HoH
for Slytherin and only three students (out of four that we know of
with DE parents) who either become DEs or are corrupted by them, and
one of them, Draco, is extremely disillusioned with the reality of DE
life. With the exception of Pansy, who seems to be motivated by terror
or a personal antipathy for the boy who performed Sectumsempra on her
boyfriend, the Slytherins seem more noncommital (like Slughorn before
he returns to fight) than pro-Voldemort. (Snape's influence at work,
keeping them out of the fray? We don't hear about any students killing
each other in the corridors, and only two, Crabbe and Goyle, Crucioing
others in detention.) LV is lying when he says that Draco is the only
Slytherin not fighting on the DEs. Not a single Slytherin student
joins the battle that we know of. All except Draco, Crabbe, and Goyle
are herded out of the Great Hall on McGonagall's orders, along with
the underage students from all the houses and the noncommital or
cowardly older students from the other three, thanks to Pansy's remark. 

So the DE/Slytherin analogy does not hold, at least for students of
Harry's generation. Severus Snape and his Slytherin friends entered
school at exactly the wrong time, when LV was first coming to power.
By the time they were in fifth year or so, with older DE friends like
Lucius Malfoy, the DEs must have seemed like an attractive option,
especially for someone like Severus, whose brilliance was
unacknowledged elsewhere. That situation is not comparable to the WW
when Harry and Draco are roughly the same age. Draco is enticed by the
promise of "glory" and the chance to avenge his father' Crabbe and
Goyle are seduced a year later by the chance to perform Dark magic.
But none of them has grown up with DE friends or DE wannabes
surrounding them and infiltrating their house. Theo Nott, it appears,
rejects the temptation altogether (if the absence of evidence can be
counted as evidence of absence). And Blaise Zabini, though a
pure-blood supremacist, turns up his nose at the DEs back in HBP.

So, however true or partially true the Slytherin connection may be for
men (and a few women) of Snape's age, or Lucius Malfoy's, it does not
seem to hold for Harry's. (And the pre-Riddle Slytherin House produced
Slughorn.) What does that tell us? Perhaps that Slughorn's phlegmatic
temperament is as representative of the true Slytherin House (minus
the corruption of Tom Riddle and the pure-blood ideology) as the cool
intellect and cooler courage of Severus Snape. 

> Betsy Hp:
> The scene where the Slytherin house flag was not flying in the RoR,
and the scene where the entirety of Slytherin house stood up and 
walked out of the school when the battle was met.  And most deeply, 
most horribly, the scene where Dumbledore told Snape that maybe they
Sorted too early. 

Carol:
I've already talked about why Slytherin House walked out. Had any of
them stayed behind after McGonagall's order (not counting Draco et
al., who sneaked out of line later), everyone in the hall would have
mistaken their intention as support for Voldemort. (McG is not a
favorite of mine, especially after this book.) The best they could do
was to sit out the battle. Not one of them (except the moronic Crabbe)
actively supported Voldemort, and even he never got to the battle.

As for the Slytherin flag not flying in the RoR, please go back and
look at the chapter. The flag of each student's house appeared (along
with a new hammock) when that student came to the RoR for refuge. The
only students to do so were former members of the DA. The Slytherins
were not invited to join in the first place and would not have been
welcomed had they attempted to do so this time around, and only Draco
and the former members of the Inquisitorial Squad even knew about the
room. I doubt that Crabbe and Goyle (or Pansy) even knew how to get
in, and the protection on the room excluded Carrow supporters in any
case. Of course, there were no Slytherin banners. The Slytherins,
other than Crabbe and Goyle, were quietly obeying Snape's restriction
on groups of more than four students. Only the former DA members were
violating those restrictions (exactly as Snape must have intended).

As for DD's remark about Snape's being Sorted too early, I'm sure that
both he and JKR intended it as a compliment, courage being the
greatest virtue in her opinion. That Snape looked "stricken" shows
that perhaps he disagreed with that assessment, and yet it's he who
says "I am not such a coward" and proves that statement over and over
again.

Betsy HP:> 
> It must be a condemnation of personality.  Unless we're back to
children being sorted ideologically at age eleven.  Which is stupid 
beyond the telling of it.  "Hmm, we've got a Ku Klux Klan house in 
our school.  Why do so many students hate black people?"  I mean, 
*honestly*! <snip>

Carol responds:

Let's look at post-Voldie Slytherin. There can be no more DE recruits.
The HoH is still the non-DE Slughorn, who fought against Voldemort in
the end. The house now has at least one hero, the former headmaster,
Severus Snape, whose portrait will surely be hung in the headmaster's
office. (I choose to believe that he was buried with honors next to DD
and given a posthumous Order of Merlin that stands conspicuously in
the trophy room.) Perhaps future students of all Houses will also be
taught about Regulus Black, who died to avenge a house-elf. 

We see a progression away from James's and Hagrid's attitudes toward
Slytherin at the end of the book. In another twenty years, in the
absence of a new Dark Lord (and with no encouragement of Dark magic or
pure-blood elitism in Slytherin itself), old fears and prejudices
could wither away.

Suppose that all students are taught Muggle Studies from a competent
teacher with a philosophy like Charity Burbage's. Suppose that
"Mudblood" (in violation of free speech, but "tolerance" is now more
fashionable) becomes a forbidden word that earns detention of a loss
of House points. Suppose that "blood" ceases to be a criterion for
admission to Slytherin, and passwords like "pureblood" are magically
forbidden. Training Prefects to be more effective in the absence of
adult supervision might prevent budding Dark Arts proficients--or
bullies--from causing so many problems. And certainly, Hogwarts could
use a larger staff!

At any rate, I do see progress, and I like the way Harry tells his
second son what to expect at Hogwarts rather than letting him stumble
blindly and learn by trial and error as Harry, and, less excusably on
the part of the Weasleys, Ron did. Draco followed (unwittingly) in
James's footsteps, making an enemy of Harry as James did of Severus
through House prejudice, but Harry has taken steps to prevent his son
from being the victim of any such bullies, regardless of House. The
adult Draco nods at Harry rather than sneering as his father used to
do at Arthur Weasley. Poco a poco. It's the best we can realistically
hope for.

To return to the Sorting Hat, if we eliminate both blood and ideology
as criteria for sorting into Slytherin, we're left with personality.
Cunning is a bit too much like intelligence for the hat to make a
clear distinction, so I suppose that ambition could be the defining
trait. Or is there a "water" trait that would work better and create a
more equal balance with courage, intelligence, and loyalty? What would
a Slytherin modeled on Snape at one end of the spectrum and Slughorn
on the other hand value? What would define the new, non-DE, no bigoted
ideal Slytherin?

Carol, trying to show that Slytherin House is not static but dynamic,
different in different eras and capable of reform with Voldie dead