a sandwich

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 178833

> Pippin:
> Of course slavery is counter-cultural to the 20th/21st century West,
> which is why Hermione finds its existence in the WW so hard to 
accept.  
> The goblins' ideas about property ownership are also 
> counter-cultural. But to see the goblin side of things is 
comfortably
> anti-Imperialist, while to see the House Elves' side is not. JKR is
> demonstrating the biases the leftist outlook brings to the table,
> not because she's anti-leftist, IMO,  but because it was leftists 
like 
> herself she was planning to reach. 


Magpie:
Hermione is being a stupid lefty in her trying to force the House 
Elves to be free, sure. That's obvious. But that doesn't change that 
she does it in this case by creating slaves that conform to pro-
slavery arguments. So anybody who doesn't like Harry the slave owner 
ending still has the same point they always did. (Oddly, she herself 
said that Hermione was right and that House Elves was like slavery, 
meaning in our world.)

Pippin: 
> The Elves are different than us. They mostly don't like to work for 
wages 
> and they mostly don't mind being owned. The goblins too have 
> different ideas about the uses of money and different concepts of 
> ownership. But being pro-Goblin flatters our anti-Imperialist
> notions, and we want them to be right, while being pro-House Elf
> seems to put us on the same side as Simon Legree. But of
> course despite some superficial similarities, wizards are not 
antebellum
> slave owners any more than Goblins are American Indians.

Magpie:
The Elves don't just "not mind" being owned or working for people, 
they seriously want it. House Elves actually conform to the view of 
slaves that slave owners had. They need to be slaves, and it's fine 
that Harry owns one. Twenty-first century anti-Imperialist views or 
anti-slavery views don't hold up in this universe. Not sure what she 
needed to reach me to tell me there. (Though I doubt she really 
expected anybody to side with the goblins.)

Pippin:> 
> Since no nineteenth century slave owners are going to be reading
> the books, I think whether they would be happy to identify with
> the wizard slave owners is irrelevant. But it would be difficult for
> anyone with normal sympathies to identify with making House
> Elves punish themselves. 

Magpie:
So I sympathize with the House Elves having to punish themselves 
so...well, nobody's working to lift that enchantment so the solution 
is just to be a good master that they want to serve so that they 
don't do anything wrong and have to be punished. Meanwhile, since 
Harry isn't an ante-bellum slave owner there's apparently nothing 
potentially threatening to his character about owning one. Harry gets 
a slave character who fawns over his superior master and talks funny 
but it's totally okay he's not actually human.

Pippin:
That is never shown as a moral practice
> and it is intrinsic to House Elf slavery, along with the fact, 
mentioned
> by Ron in CoS, that House Elves can usually  only use their magic 
with
> their owner's permission. We see what happens to magical creatures
> who can't use their magic, so that is a powerful incentive too. 

Magpie:
A powerful incentive to what? For me or the characters to have a few 
problems with House Elf slavery? There's nothing I or they can do 
about it so might as well just be good owners and enjoy the good 
service. It works perfectly well in canon, but I'm not getting any 
great lessons out of it. 

Pippin:
> 
> Even if some idiot thought that  House Elf style slavery would be a 
> good idea in RL, duplicating its conditions is as far beyond our 
capabilities 
> as creating Eloi and Morlocks. But real people can be conditioned 
to 
> accept slavery to some extent. 

Magpie:
So don't try this in your world because it won't work. Only in a 
fantasy world do you get slaves like this. It's not going to bring 
slavery back, but it's not saying much against it.

Pippin:
That is an inconvenient truth which in 
> no way makes slavery more palatable, but does make it harder to get 
> rid of.  JKR was brave to recognize that in her books, IMO.

Magpie:
Brave to recognize what? That she hadn't really created a way for 
House Elves to be realistically freed? She did seem to recognize that 
but I wouldn't call it brave.

Pippin:> 
> The point of Hermione's storyline, I think,  is that well-meaning 
solutions 
> which are imposed without considering the fact that people do 
survive
> under slavery, (and other horrifying conditions) and may not want 
to 
> be patronized or treated as helpless, are part of the problem.

Magpie:
Yes, that is the point of it, it seems. So in the end she just joins 
the system. 

> Magpie:
>  This is also why I see no hint that JKR's really 
> > showing us the temptation of slavery here, since there's no hint 
at 
> > all that owning slaves could be corruptive to one's character. 
> 
> Pippin:
> Much of wizard-kind has ceased to see the Elves' being forced to
> punish themselves, or not being allowed to use magic without their
> masters' permission as anything terrible. To that extent their
> moral sense has been corrupted.  

Magpie:
If you slap that on it yourself. I don't see this shown in canon at 
all. Maybe it also shows that wizards have been corrupted because the 
house elves are doing the cooking and nobody ever worries that they 
haven't learned to cook themselves. The fact that they can't use 
their magic without their owners' (general) permission *isn't* 
terrible. And most wizards don't have any dealings with them--who's 
to say they don't care if they punish themselves? Ron doesn't seem to 
like it and he's a regular wizard. There's nothing in canon that 
*shows* this point in any way, that their moral sense has been 
corrupted that way. The elves are punishing themselves, nobody's 
doing it to them. And the story ends with Master Harry with his slave 
and not worried about that stuff at all--and no, I see no indication 
that that's supposed to be an ominous note.

-m