"Morality" and "tolerance" in the HP books (Was: a sandwich)

[Jen Reese]

No: HPFGUIDX 178868

> a_svirn:
> This is a very bleak outlook on social activism indeed, for in the 
> last two books Hermione gave up on the house elves liberation 
> altogether and concentrated on making a more responsible slave-
> owner out of Harry. 
<snip>
> But the fact still remains that all this rising awareness business
> concerns only slave owners. It is useless to rise elves' awareness,
> because they are what they are – slaves by nature. Hermione, being a
> bright girl, accepted it eventually. But I find the idea that
> Rowling created natural slaves in order to make a point on social 
> activism only slightly less nauseating than idea that she did it 
> because she wanted Harry to have one. Especially since they are not 
> mutually exclusive.

Jen: The difference is I don't accept the idea of house elves as 
natural slaves. The elves read as victims of learned helplessness 
brought about by the enchantment forcing them to self-punish for 
generations.  When Dumbledore said "Kreacher is what he has been made 
by wizards" in OOTP, I took that literally, that the forced nature of 
self-punishment at even the hint of disobedience had finally and 
completely enslaved the house elves when Harry came to know them.  
It's the negative reinforcement of Pavlov's dog taken to the 
extreme.  So by the time the storyline made it to DH and the sickness 
of the enchantment, well it made complete sense to me as the heart of 
the elf storyline. 

So I wasn't saying that Rowling created slaves to have a storyline 
about social activism, but that social activism offers a framework in 
which to explore a seemingly intractable social problem.  Where does 
one start?  At first Hermione thought you started with a mass freeing 
because that's the ultimate goal right, no more slaves.  Makes sense 
that it should be as easy as that; if something's wrong it should go 
away.  But with no support from other activists, the MOM or even the 
house elves themselves, that turned out to be a failed proposition.  
I thought Hermione got to the point where the tide could turn when 
recognizing that stopping the self-abuse was the first step in the 
process of changing the lot of the house elves.  At some point it 
became impossible to tell where the house elves' nature ended 
and 'who they'd been made to be by wizards' began, mainly because the 
enchantment had worked so thoroughly over time to obliterate free 
will.