Clothes as Metaphor (was: Lily and Tuney and Sev)

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 176454

Mike wrote:

> I suppose that's the reason JKR had Severus wearing those clothes. 
> Like you said, Jen, that smock spoke volumes about who and what Sev 
> was. Had Eileen made him *good* clothes out of the rags, we would 
> lose the texture of the scene, lose that sense of him being from 
> Ceridwen's "wrong side of the tracks".
<snip>
There is this parallel between the two boys ill-fitting clothes. But
ones clothes are too small while the others are too 
> large, so they are ill-fitting for opposite reasons.
> 
> This is the metaphor I see. Severus has outgrown his clothes/world 
> that he is still confined to as a child. He's ready for Hogwarts long 
> before he gets there. When we see his grey underwear, it signifies 
> there is something foul going on underneath. Severus has already 
> aligned himself with the DEs he will eventually join. Then as an 
> adult his billowing, black robes give him that bat-like and/or 
> vampiric appearance. Our clue that he should be dead, he is living on 
> borrowed time trying to walk that tight-rope.
> 
> Harry has a lot of growing up to do to fulfill his clothes/potential 
> as the wizard that will save the world. He's already *big* in the 
> wizarding worlds eyes, before he even steps into it. But he still 
> feels small and insignificant, he doesn't think he'll fit in. When he 
> crosses over into the wizarding world he has good clothes, he fits in 
> this world. He gets handsome dress robes signifying he's wearing a 
> man's clothes while really still a boy, competing in the same arena 
> as those much older than himself. Then Harry is outgrowing *his* 
> clothes, he's ready to move on from Hogwarts, his journey has 
> outgrown the childhood of school.
> 
> Mike, who's really out of his element when he starts getting into 
> metaphors ;)
>
Carol responds:
I agree with you about the texture of the scene being lost without the
smock, etc., but the whole scene bothers me because I can't see
working-class Muggle boys (or boys with working-class Muggle fathers)
wearing smocks in the late 1960s or early 1970s. Surely, they would
dress like other kids but maybe with second-hand clothing. Severus's
clothes look like something out of Dickens.  The man's coat makes me
think of the Artful Dodger. So we're back to witches and wizards
(Eileen and Severus) having no idea how Muggles dress even though they
live in a Muggle town with a Muggle husband and father. Maybe Severus
only wears these pathetic Muggle clothes when he goes outside and
wears wizard's robes that fit him when he's indoors. It's just one
more case of having to suspend our disbelief, like Lily's Muggle
family on Platform 9 3/4 later in the same chapter.

As for the symbolism you're reading into Severus's clothes, I don't
see it. For one thing, they're Muggle clothes, not wizard's robes, and
he hasn't grown into or out of any role yet at age nine or ten. For
another, the pants, like Ron's, are too small, but the coat is too
big, and the smock is just old-fashioned, working-class, and girlish
(Petunia sneers that it looks like his mother's blouse, IIRC). So I
don't think we can generalize about symbolism beyond the "abandoned
boys" motif that Harry sees. (Harry certainly isn't waiting to grow
into Dudley's clothes or shoes.) And the greying underwear in OoP
doesn't suggest anything foul, IMO, just washing black and white
clotes together or washing in the wrong temperature. (Underwear goes
in hot water with bleach, robes in cold water or they'll fade.)

Anyway, we can't judge the child Severus for decisions he has not yet
made, and I don't think that even the teenage Severus of SWM has quite
made up his mind since we still see him abjectly trying to apologize
to Lily. I think the SWM and subsequent scene were the catalyst that
caused him to choose his DE friends over Lily; he felt that he had no
choice and lacked the courage at that point to choose what was right
over what was easy.

Anyway, I don't read anything beyond poverty and outsider status into
Child!Severus's clothes, and possibly his mother's indifference to his
plight when he had to pass as a Muggle. Apparently, his wizard robes
looked just like anyone else's. There's no comment in either "The
Prince's Tale" or SWM about their appearing to be shabby or
secondhand. Maybe his mother didn't want him associating with the
Muggle children and he had to scrounge for Muggle clothes to wear when
he went outside. His father, who didn't like much of anything,
according to Severus, might well have been as ashamed of him as the
Dursleys were of Harry (or the Blacks would have been of a Squib).

Carol, who thinks that JKR was not thinking beyond the specific scenes
she created and the plight and personality of little Severus, with
whom (IMO) she wanted the reader to empathize or sympathize