Hated DH epilogue

[littleleahstill]

No: HPFGUIDX 172605

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "houyhnhnm102" <celizwh at ...> > 
houyhnhnm:
> 
> I thought the epilogue was Rowling at her most 
> Austenesque.  Here is what the late critic Mark 
> Schorer had to say about the ending of _Pride and 
> Prejudice_:
> 
> >>The movement of these individual human beings 
> exists, of course, within a larger movement, that 
> of the whole world about them.  Not everything in 
> that world is happy at the end.  The Bennets are 
> left with their entailed estate.  Mrs. Bennet, like 
> the life force, will persist as foolishly as 
> ever . . . The gaunt spector of Lady Catherine 
> has not been laid . . . Pride and predjudice have 
> not departed from the world.  And Jane Austen need 
> not have feared:  hers is a moral relativism, and 
> the world is not intolerably bright by any means.  
> Still, it is brighter.<<
> 
> Similarly, not everything in the Wiazarding World 
> is happy at the end.  The sorting goes on. The 
> rivalry between the houses goes on.  Gryffindors 
> and Slytherins still dislike and mistrust one another.  
> Draco and Harry nod curtly to each other, but they 
> are not friends.  No doubt, the house elves are still 
> enslaved.  The Ministry of Magic is as undemocratic 
> as ever.  Other magical beings are not recognized 
> as equals by wizards, despite Grawp and the last 
> minute aid of the Centaurs.  Still, that world is 
> brighter.  Voldemort is gone.  A new Dark Lord has 
> not yet arisen.  Harry's scar has not pained him for
> nineteen years. All is well (for the time being.)



Leah: 

I found that a rather odd critique of Austen actually; Pride and 
Prejudice is a comedy of manners.  I've certainly never read it in 
the expectation that the union of Elizabeth and Darcy is going to 
bring about profound, or indeed any, social change or that 
individual behaviour will be altered by it.

However, that expectation has been raised in the Potterverse. We 
have had SPEW and the Fountain of Magical Creatures, and the 
centuars and in this book, Griphook.  I wouldn't expect a whoopedy-
do 
world after Voldemort's defeat, with all house elves liberated 
overnight, but I would have expected some sort of abolition 
movement.  I would have expected some evidence of a change in 
mindset.   It would be wrong and ridiculous to suggest that there 
was no more racial discrimination in Europe once the 
Nazis had been defeated. But there was that change in mindset.  In 
the 1930s, it was acceptable for well known public figures, not just 
politicians but eg writers, to express anti-Semitic sentiments.  It 
is no longer acceptable.  The world is far from perfect, as always, 
but something has moved on.  Similarly, in England in the sixteenth 
century, the torturing to death of animals for public entertainment 
was a good laugh. It isn't today.  There is still cruelty to 
animals, but again the mindset has altered.  I would just liked to 
have seen some evidence of that change taking place.  It wasn't 
there.

And then there's the whole Slytherin problem. From Hagrid in book 
one onwards, Slytherin has been the despised, the evil house; it's 
been reinforced in every book. Even in DH, DD doesn't say, "You've 
been a brave chap,Severus, there must be good in Slytherin", 
it's "we sort too soon", ie. you should have been a Gryffindor, mate 
(and Pettigrew presumably in Slytherin).  As others have pointed 
out, no Slytherin student is named as fighting with Harry.  If 
Slytherin is indeed so corrupt and hopeless, why does it still 
exist? Or why hasn't it been renamed Snape House and reformed?  
We're talking about changing a school system here, not the world.  
Harry's behaviour in the epilogue is totally inconsistent.  He 
whispers to Albus Severus that it won't matter to the Potters if 
their son is in Slytherin. But if Slytherin is what it seems to be, 
it should matter.  On the other hand, if Harry believes that Snape's 
life and death make Slytherin worthy of equal treatment, then why 
does he whisper this, and not shout it out? Why has he allowed one 
son to taunt the other all summer with the threat of being in 
Slytherin, without apparently doing anything to stop him? 

If the septology had just been about the defeat of Voldemort, the 
mythic overcoming of good by evil, I wouldn't mind.  This would be 
as you say, an individual victory and the world goes on unchanged.  
However expectations on the social level have been raised throughout 
the book and there is no delivery of them at the end.  If Harry had 
said to Albus Severus, go ahead, be in Slytherin, do things there we 
can be proud of, then one could see things being done quietly, as in 
the epilogue to 'Middlemarch': 'the growing good of the world is 
partly dependent on unhistoric acts'.  I wanted to see that in the 
epilogue, and I didn't.

Leah