[HPforGrownups] Re: Lily and Petunia

[Janette]

No: HPFGUIDX 176502

>
> Geoff:
> I made a similar comparison way back when HBP first came out. I grew
> up in Burnley in East Lancashire which was both a cotton weaving and
> coal mining town and the descriptions reminded me so much of the
> houses we lived in at that time. I *could* empathise with Snape over
> that....


montims:
this interested me so much that I looked it up on the fabulous Lexicon -
http://www.hp-lexicon.org/essays/essay-spinners-end.html

and read this, which puts a new slant to Snape's perceived personality, and
also to Petunia's snappishness.  I can testify to Northerners' "bluntness":

Snape's words and actions are those of one from the industrial north of
England. Snape uses the expression "dunderhead," which is quite often heard
in the north of England but rare elsewhere, and he describes Mundungus
Fletcher as "smelly" — a word common among children all over Britain, but
rarely used by adults — unless they are from the Manchester/Derby area.
Finally, the fact that Snape probably comes from the industrial north of
England defuses a lot of his apparent harshness and nastiness, because it
means much of it is just cultural. In that area "surly and antisocial" is
rather admired, and rudeness (known as "being blunt") is regarded as a sign
of honesty and is cultivated as a virtue. Indeed, one can say that Snape's
probably from a northern English industrial area, rather than Lanarkshire or
Derry, precisely because he is so brusque and sarcastic.


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