House Elf Question

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 178787

> > Magpie:
> > Kreacher, too, was not made miserable by being 
> > a slave. He was made miserable by a bad master. So if a House 
Elf 
> > doesn't want to be freed (which would be almost all of them), 
being 
> > a slave to a worthy master is a perfectly good solution-the one 
> > Harry and Kreacher agree on.
> 
> zgirnius:
> I do not think we are supposed to consider Regulus Black a bad or 
> unworthy master. Yet he is the master who contributed most greatly 
to 
> Kreacher's misery, not through conscious choices to do so, but by 
not 
> understanding the effect his actions and his orders would have 
over 
> the years. This is why I think Kreacher is the best example of why 
> the enslavement is wrong. He is the one illustration that what you 
> claim is the solution (a kind master who cares for the welfare of 
his 
> house-elf) isn't. 

Magpie:
I meant Sirius. Regulus' orders to Kreacher unintentionally lead to 
suffering for him, but suffering he gladly went because he wanted to 
serve him, while *freeing him* would have caused perhaps more 
suffering and it would have been on purpose. As is shown by the 
characters themselves, including Hermione, not saying "he's really 
suffered...we should free him." The House Elf enchantmentcan be 
harsh and cause suffering for Elves (ironing your hands hurts too) 
but in the end a kind master is a better solution than freedom, even 
if that one kind master unintentionally caused the House Elf 
suffering that he himself was glad to suffer for Regulus and felt he 
deserved. Since none of the characters sees this as showing that 
Kreacher should be freed, I don't see why I would take that from the 
text. The enchantment's there, right? Freeing Kreacher doesn't lift 
it, it just makes him suffer for sure. There's a number of other 
answers to "even working for a good master could cause moments of 
unhappiness as well as happiness" than "free house elves." No system 
is perfect. The situation with Regulus and Kreacher was a very odd 
circumstance.

zgirnius: 
> I don't agree that the Hogwarts house-elves would naturally have 
> joined the fight without orders to do so, and I don't see why this 
> should be my default assumption.

Magpie:
Nobody ordered Kreacher to be nasty to the people who moved into 
Grimmauld Place after his (accepted) masters died. Winky sticks up 
for her family when Hermione criticizes them. Devotion to one's 
owners and their causes (if you have accepted them as worthy) is one 
of the defining features of House Elves.

zgirnius:
 We've only seen Dobby fight, and 
> only after he was freed, before DH. I expected it to happen in the 
> event we did have a "Battle of Hogwarts", but only because I 
expected 
> it to be one of the pay-offs of the SPEW and other house-elf 
> storylines. I expected the text to present me with some 
explanation 
> for why this happened in DH, and the presence of Kreacher leading 
the 
> charge, is an explanation I find more palatable than the ones I 
had 
> imagined in my head (like, say, Hermione or Dumbledore or 
> Headmistress McGonagall talking them into it). Instead, I got a 
house-
> elf leading other house-elves in the fight, and I thought it a 
fine 
> conlusion to the storyline.

Magpie:
The conclusion still being that House Elves, including the one 
leading the charge, are still slaves. There's no indication that 
House Elves have any different position than they had before after 
the Battle. You read the House Elves joining the battle as some wrap 
up to the House Elf storyline that suggested a change in their 
status or their attitude; I saw it as totally business as usual. 
Without your post it never even would have occurred to me that House 
Elves joining the fight could be taken that way. When given the 
choice by their masters, they choose to fight. And then after the 
fight they can be regular House Elves again. If they were free now I 
think JKR would have said that. (Rather than ending with the line 
she did.)

After everything I've seen of House Elves I can't imagine why they'd 
need to be talked into anything like this--this is what they do. 
They support their Wizards. And in this scene (as they do throughout 
DH) they support Hermione's *new* insight into their minds. Think 
kindly of them (as Harry does with Kreacher, as Ron does for the 
Elves at Hogwarts) and you'll be rewarded by their devotion. No 
House Elves were freed during the course of this war. Nor did any 
ask to be freed, or anyone try to free them. The last line presents 
a rosy picture of Harry and Kreacher in their previous roles. 
They've gotten rid of the people who would have been bad masters and 
are happy with the right ones.

-m