Elves and freedom

[dracojadon at yahoo.co.uk]

No: HPFGUIDX 170308

> Sherry:

> In the days of slavery here in the US, slave owners often said
> something I've heard characters in the books say several
> times.  "They're happy this way."
<snip>
> So many of the statements made about it in canon are exactly the
> kinds of rhetoric that has been used for generations all over the
> world to justify slavery.

jadon:

A difference is that the house-elves themselves use this 'rhetoric,'
isn't it?

GoF:
"House-elves is not supposed to have fun, Harry Potter," said Winky
firmly.

OotP:"Winky is still drinking lots, sir," he [Dobby] said sadly, his
enormous round green eyes, large as tennis balls, downcast. "She still does not care for clothes, Harry Potter.  Nor do the other house elves. None of them will clean Gryffindor Tower any more, not with the hats and socks hidden everywhere, they finds them insulting, sir."

Even Kreacher, who hates his master, doesn't want to be _free_:

"Kreacher is cleaning," the elf repeated. "Kreacher lives to serve
the Noble House of Black."

Both Kreacher and Dobby are a bit weird, but Winky is supposed to be  our voice of house-elf normality, isn't she? - and from her persective, freedom has ruined her life. That's not to say that house elves were always enslaved, or that they are incapable of being happy if freed, but that at the moment _they_ are happy with their situation. That Appeal Against House-Elf Slavery in 1973 can't have been made/supported by house-elves. (I wonder why Hermione hasn't read about it in Recent Events in Wizarding History, or whatever it was she bought for background reading in PS, if it's important enough to have been the most significant disaster in a minister's career.)

Forcing freedom onto modern house-elves is a bit like forcing civilisation onto aboriginal tribes in the rainforest: it's completely failing to take into account the values of the elves, pressing onto them the values of wizards instead - which, if it was wizards who enslaved house-elves in the first place, aren't exactly to be trusted as consistent.

I _do_ think that house-elves could be perfectly happy unenslaved,
but it could take a lot of upset getting to that position. The
current attempts at helping them are misdirected - take Hermione's
list (GoF):

"Our short-term aims," said Hermione, speaking even more loudly than
Ron, and acting as though she hadn't heard a word, "are to secure house-elves fair wages and working conditions. Our long-term aims include changing the law about non-wand use, and trying to get an elf into the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, because they're shockingly underrepresented."

Are 'fair wages' enough to buy stripy socks all year round? Working conditions - the abuse is self-imposed (but yes, Dobby for one doesn't like it). Wands - house-elf magic can be far more powerful than anything a wizard can do with a wand (wouldn't it be fantastic for LV to find himself - at the very last, the moment of doom - thwarted by an army of insulted house-elves from the Hogwarts
kitchens?) Representation - that's only something they'll need if
they start acting and thinking like humans, and *human wizards are
not automagically superior to non-human magical beings* - is Hermione ever going to learn that?

jadon