a sandwich

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 178811

CJ (aka Lee) wrote:
> This is probably the crux of the problem. The whole house-elf/slave
storyline was introduced, dealt with across several books, was, by
JKR's own admission, a stand-in for slavery and hence a Very Important
Message, and then was never resolved on-page.
> 
> As far as we can tell from canon, nothing changes. House elves just
go on being house elves as everybody else loses interest in them as an
Issue. Sure, canon leaves room to speculate otherwise, but that hardly
seems a fitting conclusion to something JKR herself once declared to
be a VIM. Hmm, guess it must not have been so Important after all?
> 
> But as others have pointed out, HP is full of unresolved story arcs
--themes JKR introduces and then just walks away from (the whole 
unresolved goblin-wizard feud was another one that left me wondering 
what was the point?) -- so the house elves plot is hardly unusual in 
that respect. It just strikes me as messy writing. JKR claims she's
had the whole thing planned out for a decade, but it hardly seems
possible that in all that time she could have failed to notice all
those dangling loose ends. If she introduced them, she should have
resolved them; if she never intended to resolve them, she should have
left them on the cutting room floor. If she introduced them then later
discovered she didn't have room to resolve them, that sounds like poor
planning. In any case, Resolve your story arcs! seems like a pretty
basic requirement of Good Writing.
> 
<snip>

Carol responds:

I think even the most devoted JKR fan has to concede some sloppy
writing in the books, from minor and easily resolved inconsistencies
(e.g., the year in which the Statute of Secrecy was passed ow whether
Moaning Myrtle lived in an S bend or a U bend) to matters like how
Sirius's letter ended up in 12 GP or which spell was actually used on
the Muggles at the QWC or Ron's knowing about Draco's Hand of Glory,
which Harry saw Lucius refuse to buy for Draco. An author owes it to
herself and her readers to conduct consistency checks and consult her
own previous books as if they were reference works. 

However, returning to the House-Elf arc (and ignoring JKR's own
statements, which hold as much water, IMO, as a leaky cauldron), maybe
we should consider individual character arcs for the three House-Elves
we actually know as characters rather than considering "the House-Elf
arc," which may be an invention of fans who somehow expected to see
hundreds of Dobbys celebrating their freedom at the end of the book
despite firm indications by the Hogwarts House-Elves, Dobby, and
Kreacher that they didn't want to be free.

Dobby's arc begins in CoS, where he is a miserable slave abused by his
masters but devoted to his own personal hero, Harry Potter. Dobby is
simultaneously a pitiful figure and a comic one, and his attempts to
save Harry's life land Harry in hot water (locked in his room, serving
detention, or lying in the hospital wing). Harry frees him from the
Malfoys, which is good in that he's no longer subject to their tyranny
and abuse, but he's also unemployed and disgraced. No one wants to
hire a House-Elf; they expect them to work without pay. The
consequence is about a year of unemployment for Dobby, who is "freed"
at the end of CoS but only comes to Hogwarts after Winky, too, has
been given clothes (in her case, something more than a single dirty
sock). And even Dobby, it transpires, prefers work to freedom. He only
wants token wages and a few days off. His desire for clothes and wages
is regarded as disgraceful by the other House-Elves, who regard him as
an eccentric (and show their opinion of freedom by refusing to pick up
the hats and socks that Hermione has strewn in the Gryffindor Common
Room). And, in addition to having exactly the same duties as other
Hogwarts House-Elves, he takes on the additional, self-imposed duty of
serving Harry. Dobby voluntarily helps Harry out (tricked into doing
so by Fake!Moody but that's beside the point) in both GoF and OoP, and
when Harry summons the sullen and unwilling Kreacher in HBP, Dobby
comes along and in essence does the job for Kreacher (who may be
forced to spy on Draco but is not about to say anything bad about him). 

Dobby's story arc ends (ironically, given Harry's request or order in
CoS never to try to save his life again) with Dobby heroically
rescuing six wizards and a goblin and paying for his heroism with his
life. (Since he's not Harry's slave, his death is not punishment for
disobedience; it's merely a sad end to his personal tale.) Harry
buries him without magic, mourning for him as he never had a chance to
mourn for any of his lost friends except Dumbledore. Maybe his grief
for Sirius and Hedwig and the others is finally released in the simple
physical act of digging that grave; maybe it's grief for Dobby alone
and a belated realization of what he owes the elf. Dobby's rough
tombstone is a tribute to his ostensible freedom, which amounts, as
far as I can see, to a choice of wizard masters and willing service
matching the devotion of Winky to the Crouches or Kreacher to the
Blacks, with the difference that he can wear an odd assortment of
clothes that he buys himself instead of a tea towel. No other elf that
we see in the series has any such ambition.

Winky's arc is considerably shorter and begins and ends with GoF
(although we're free to assume that she took her place in the Battle
of Hogwarts and resigned herself to life as a Hogwarts employee with
the right to refuse to be paid). We see her first as a typical
House-Elf, devoted to her master(s) and obeying orders even though
she's terrified of heights. Granted, Crouch's treatment of her is
psychological abuse, but it doesn't match the abuse suffered by Dobby.
And, of course, she's honored to be keeping the secret that Barty Jr.
is concealed beside her in the seat she's supposedly reserving for
Crouch Sr. We see her struggling later with the invisible Barty Fr.
(an action misinterpreted by Hermione as the inability to run away)
and heartlessly given clothes by her beloved master, ostensibly for
disgracing him by being caught with the wand but really for letting
Barty Jr. get out of her control long enough to cast the Dark Mark.
(His action backfires on him, and he's later Imperiused while his son
impersonates Mad-eye Moody and then murdered by that same son. If he
had kept Winky with him, perhaps the Voldie/Barty Jr. plot would have
been thwarted at the outset.) Winky agrees to look for work along with
Dobby and ends up in the Hogwarts kitchens, but apparently the sight
of happy House-Elves wearing tea towels is too much for her and the
disgrace of her cute little outfit sinks in; she, unlike her fellows,
is a disgraced House-Elf. Thoughts of the master who needs her add to
her unhappiness and she becomes a hopeless drunk. We see the remnants
of her devotion as Barty Jr. tells his tale under the influence of
Veritaserum, revealing the secrets that she has so carefully concealed
(not to mention that he has murdered his own father). We don't know
what becomes of her after that (DD orders Madam Pomfrey to take care
of her.) But both of her masters are dead, making her a free Elf by
default even if she had not been given clothes. She has a job at
Hogwarts if she wants it. Maybe the House Elf's love of work will win
out in the end, but as of OoP, when Dobby is still using the RoR to
provide a bed for her to sober up in, that hasn't happened yet. (I
don't recall Winky's being mentioned in HBP.) Hers is not a happy
story. It seems to be a variation on the bad master theme, and yet, in
contrast to Dobby, Winky remains a traditional House-Elf in her views.
Perhaps she shows the usual fate of "freed" House-Elves. Certainly,
she illustrates their psychology (which Hermione quite clearly fails
to grasp).

Kreacher's arc begins in OoP, where we see yet another variation on
the bad master, of all people, Sirius Black, Harry's Gryffindor
godfather. That Kreacher is dirty, old, ugly, sullen, apparently
useless, devoted to his dead mistress (herself a caricature of
pure-blood bigotry and clearly insane) does not, IMO, justify Sirius's
contemptuous treatment of him. Neither does Sirius's own unhappiness
in that house (which, perhaps, brings out the worst in him) though it
makes his attitude more understandable. Surely, he remembers Kreacher
at a time when he was clean and served the family well (before the
potion and Regulus's death and his own failure to carry out Regulus's
last request, followed, perhaps, by his mistress's loss of her mind
and certainly by the deaths of both Mr. and Mrs. Black) turned him
into the dirty, unhappy creature/Kreacher that Sirius has to live with
in 12 GP. Neither makes any effort to understand or cooperate with the
other. To Kreacher, Sirius is a blood traitor and a criminal, perhaps
a murderer, who broke his mother's heart; to Sirius, Kreacher is a
filthy reminder of the pure-blood values that he rejected (along with
the Dark Arts apparently practiced to some degree by his family). At
least, he resists the temptation to behead Kreacher and add his head
to the wall. Kreacher, like Dobby, takes advantage of the opportunity
to escape from home and aid the people he thinks are his allies, or
rather, his true family, Narcissa and her husband (Bellatrix is in
prison when he escapes to the Malfoys' over Christmas break). He
provides information that leads to the plot to lure Harry to the MoM
(Sirius's death is no part of that plan; the Order is not supposed to
show up). As DD (who has just used his Machiavellian tactics to force
the truth out of Kreacher) tells Harry, Kreacher is what wizards have
made him. The implication, I think, is that it's not fair to blame
Kreacher for Sirius's death (which resulted from his own decisions to
go to the MoM and fight Bellatrix on the dais).

Sirius could not have freed Kreacher even if Kreacher wanted to be
freed (evicted from his home and his mad portrait!mistress), and Harry
is faced with the same predicament when he inherits Kreacher as part
of the Black estate. He solves the problem by ordering Kreacher to
Hogwarts (where it's unlikely that he does any work, being both filthy
and not a true Hogwarts House-Elf. He subverts the one mission on
which Harry sends him by reporting that the pure-blood Malfoy boy,
whom he would be happy to serve, goes to classes and meals and his
dormitory like any other student. (Dobby, of course, provides the
information that Draco is spending much of his time outside the RoR
guarded by what appear to be a variety of Hogwarts students.) In DH we
find out at last where Kreacher's loyalties lie (with Regulus) and
why; Harry gets a lesson in House-Elf psychology; Kreacher gets to
fulfill his former master's orders at last by helping to locate the
old locket so it can be destroyed (and receives the fake locket as a
keepsake). This change in Harry's outlook and apparent alliance
between his old and new masters causes a transformation in Kreacher,
who is now more than happy to serve Harry (and hit the smelly criminal
Mundungus on the head with a saucepan in one of my favorite DH
moments). All's well with the newly clean, happy, and useful Kreacher
until Yaxley shows up at 23 GP instead of HRH, at which point he flees
to Hogwarts and disappears from view until he emerges to lead a troop
of House-elves to fight in the name of Regulus, presumably against
oppression. (The fate of the House-Elves if Voldemort took over
Hogwarts does not bear thinking about.) We can assume that the
reformed Kreacher befriended the elves of Hogwarts and joined them in
their cooking and cleaning; otherwise, it's unlikely that they would
have followed him into battle. Perhaps having Harry Potter as his
master gave him status among them, too. (Whether Kreacher and Dobby
became friends must be left up to the imagination.) At any rate, alone
of the House-Elf arcs, Kreacher's has a happy ending. And, yes,
getting Master Harry a well-earned sandwich would make Kreacher happy.

As for House-Elf freedom, it was never in the picture--just a
misguided dream of Hermione's and the choice of one eccentric
House-Elf for whom freedom meant buying his own mismatched clothes and
serving the master(s) of his choice.

Carol, who thinks there never was a House-Elf arc per se and that
we're meant to see SPEW as a misguided attempt at helping those who
neither need nor want that kind of help