Explain This Passage

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 180475

lizzyben wrote: 
> Another oddity, to me, is that while the text seems to approve of
Muggleborn/Wizard marriages, it seems to look down on Muggle/Wizard
marriages. After all, the only two we hear about are totally
dysfunctional & poisonous. So, it's not very approving of
relationships between people of different cultures. 
> 
a_svirn replied:
> Hear, hear! Rowling doesn't seem to like muggles, does she?

Carol responds:

I'm snipping the discussion on blood. For the record, I agree with
a-svirn's position (see upthread).

Regarding Wizard/Muggle marriages, as someone else pointed out,
there's no indication that Seamus's parents have an unhappy marriage,
though his mother appears to be the dominant parent, appearing without
her husband at the QWC and almost preventing Seamus from returning to
Hogwarts in OoP.

It's surprising to me that such marriages occur at all, given the
pervasive prejudice against Muggles and the Statute of Secrecy, which
would prevent the wizard or witch from revealing his or her secret
before marriage. Granted, mostly Muggle towns like Ottery St.
Catchpole would provide a chance for Magicals and Muggles to meet, and
Muggle-borns would know Muggle families from their childhood, but the
difficulties inherent in such a marriage would be almost
insurmountable. (George supposedly marries Angelina rather than the
pretty Muggle girl who admired his card tricks even though Arthur
would no doubt have preferred a Muggle daughter-in-law.) As for Eileen
Prince (almost certainly a Slytherin and probably a pure-blood given
Severus's self-imposed nickname of *the* Half-Blood Prince) marrying a
Muggle, it's so improbable that it can only have been done as a plot
device to give Severus that nickname and a dysfunctional family
background. As for Tom Riddle Sr.'s marriage to Merope Gaunt, it could
only be managed thtough the use of love potions.

I almost forgot to address the point about JKR's dislike of Muggles.
She's portraying the Wizarding world mostly from Harry's pov, and he
certainly has no reason to like the Muggles he's encountered. But I
thought that she presented Frank Bryce sympathetically, and Hermione's
parents appear to be good, understanding people (a bit more lenient
than I would be with a teenage daughter, but that's fiction for you).
The Dursleys are "the worst sort of Muggles," according to McGonagall
(who obviously hasn't watched the British equivalent of "America's
Most Wanted"), not typical shopkeepers and bankers and teachers. (I do
think she's critical of middle-class materialism and of politicians in
general, but that's another topic altogether.) Muggles in general
"don't see nuffink, do they?" not because they're stupid ("Ingenious,
these Muggles, aren't they?") but because of Muggle-repelling charms
that prevent them from noticing magical places and other expedients
that JKR has invented to make the existence of a secret, magical
population in our midst believable to her Muggle readers. Those
Muggles who do know about the WW keep it a secret for fear of being
thought mad, which is a perfectly reasonable assumption in the
post-Age of Reason world, the majority of which (at least in developed
countries) has long since dismissed the existence of magic as
unscientific. None of us, after all, can take a wand we've purchased
online (no, I don't own one), point it at an object and say
"Wingardium Leviosa, and cause the object to fly. And if we were to
brew, say, rat spleens and powdered moonstone and crushed beetles and
mandrake root in a cauldron, all we would get is a foul-smelling mess.
I think, IOW, that the Muggle attitude toward magic (it doesn't exist)
is spot on. As for the Wizarding attitude toward Muggles, who tried to
burn them or drown them or hang them back in the days when they did
believe in magic because they associated magic with the devil, and who
are clearly "inferior" because they lack powers that Wizards take for
granted, I think that the attitude is understandable if deplorable.
(Contact with Muggle relatives like the Dursleys or Tobias Snape only
magnifies the problem. I don't think it's the root cause.) The cure,
IMO, is a good Muggle Studies class, but evidently, Charity Burbage
was preaching to the choir. I doubt that students like Draco, who were
most in need of understanding Muggles as people, would have deigned to
take the class. If nothing else, British WW kids should learn that
witch-burning/hanging has not been practiced in Britain (and
English-speaking countries in general) for some three hundred years
and that Muggles have produced great works of art, architecture,
literature, and music, as well as brilliant and sometimes dangerous
inventions, without recourse to magic. We've done pretty well for
ourselves, even without the latest technological gadgets.

Carol, imagining that Wizard/Muggle marriages were more common before
the Statute of Secrecy and/or that most Muggle-borns have a Squib
ancestor who passed as a Muggle, accounting for Wizarding genes in the
Muggle population