A sandwich

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 178692

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, Random832 <random832 at ...> wrote:
>
> prep0strus wrote:
> > Prep0strus:
> > 
> > But by making Dobby want not just to be treated well, but to have
> > freedom and payment,
> 
> Does he?
> 
> Did he express any interest in freedom or payment before Harry got him 
> freed? He may see no middle ground between being free and paid, and 
> being abused by the Malfoys, and sees the former as the lesser of
two evils?
> --Random832
>
Carol responds:

And let's look, too, at what "freedom" meant for Dobby and Winky.
Winky, of course, was essentially fired, her cute little schoolgirl
outfit being her only compensation for her years of devotion to her
masters. Once she found employment (thanks to Dobby's idea) she was
desperately unhappy even with excellent working conditions. (She
evidently rejected the idea of payment and days off as unbefitting a
House-Elf. Freedom, for her, meantdisgrace, and despite a new job (at
which she could have done as well as any other House-elf had she so
chosen, she sank into drunkenness and squalor.

Dobby, too, faced a long period of unemployment. He's freed at the end
of CoS, but he doesn't show up at Hogwarts until GoF. What was he
doing (or what were he and Winky doing) for the entire year of PoA?
Not even a House-Elf can conjure food magically (unless Gamp's Five
Laws, or whatever the term is, don't apply to them). They certainly
weren't employed. They had air to breathe and the clothes (or filthy
pillowcase, in Dobby's case) on their backs and nothing else. They
were homeless and unemployed, with only Dobby's indomitable spirit to
keep them, somehow, alive.

"Dobby likes being paid, but he likes work better," he tells Harry in
GoF (quoted from memory). And he talks Dumbledore *down* when DD
offers him a salary he thinks is too large and more days off than he
wants. And even as a free House-Elf who sometimes chooses to serve
Harry, he's still *supposed* to be in the kitchens with the other
House-Elves, just as a human employee is *supposed* to be at his or
her desk (or whatever) instead of doing whatever he'd rather be doing.
 (Was it Pippin who mentioned "wage slaves"?)

What is freedom if you've lost your job, other than the freedom to
look for another source of income (or room and board, if you're a
House-Elf), another place to work, another employer who perhaps will
treat you kindly, perhaps not? A "free" House-elf searching for a new
master is more to be pitied than envied, IMO. He or she needs a
master, a human being to serve. that's what House-Elves want, the only
thing they know how to do. In Dobby's case, he chose to serve
Dumbledore (in return for some small wages with which to buy clothes
and a few days off) and Harry, in return for nothing except the honor
of it as an expression of his gratitude. If Harry were to free
Kreacher, depriving him of his home at 12 GP and his chance to work
for a master he respects (now that Harry has caught on to Kreacher's
devotion to Master Regulus), would Kreacher be grateful and happy? I
think not. At least now Kreacher wears a clean tea towel and has the
means of taking a bath. A nice little bed in a small, clean room in
place of his den is probably the only other thing he wants or needs
(assuming that Harry returns to 12 GP). and, IMO, he would be both
honored and happy to get Master Harry a sandwich now that Master Harry
has destroyed the Dark Lord that Master Regulus was also (for reasons
perhaps unfathomable to Kreacher) trying to defeat.

If we think of House-Elves as the beings whose psychology Hermione
describes in "Kreacher's Tale," there's nothing to object to in
Harry's request (actually only a hope as worded in the book) for a
sandwich. It's only when we bring in the interviews that Harry becomes
a "slave master." (At least he's a kind one who practices noblesse
oblige.) But, IMO, Ron and the Twins were reight and Hermione wrong
about the House-Elves' desire for freedom. If they wanted to be freed,
they certainly would not have refused to clean the Gryffindor Common
Room. (Refused to do their job, or part of it, because they were
insulted by the attempt to trick them into freedom--read
unemployment--whether they wanted it or not and whether or not it was
hers to give.) If they can refuse to do part of their normally
assigned work, they're not really slaves, are they? (Dobby owned by
the Malfoys is a different case altogether, an abuse of a system that
ought to be mutually beneficial.)

I'm wondering exactly what "freedom" for House-Elves means to other
posters who see it as a good thing (rather than the disgrace that
House-Elves perceive it as being or the homelessness and unemployment
that Dobby and Winky faced for a year). Does anyone think that they're
going to train to become accountants? There's no such education
available in the WW unless it's for goblins. And what good would a
Hogwarts education do them? They don't need to learn to use a wand;
they can do magic without one. Would a House-Elf want to learn
Astronomy or Divination or Potions or COMC? I rather doubt it. They
like housework and cooking. They're exceptionally skilled at that sort
of work. Why not let them do what they want to do and are good at? (A
placement service for "freed" House-elves might be a good thing, though.)

Carol, wishing that JKR had said nothing about "slavery" in interviews
since canon presents House-Elves as psychologically different from
human beings and happy to serve them