Explain This Passage

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 180604

lizzyben wrote:
> 
> No, Ted Tonks was actually a muggle-born wizard. This surprised me a
little, because I was sure that he was a Muggle, but he's actually a
wizard. 

Carol responds:
Right. He's introduced by Tonks herself in OoP, where she says, "My
dad's a Muggle-born and he's a right old slob." Later in the same
book, Sirius Black tells Harry that his favorite cousin, Andromeda,
was burned off the family tapestry for marrying a Muggle-born. The
respective quotes are in "The Advance Guard" (OoP Am. ed. 50) and "The
Noble and Most Ancient House of Black" (113).

I think it's the Family Tree on the Lexicon website that refers to Ted
Tonks as a Muggle, but either JKR labeled it erroneously (unlikely
given Ted's role in DH), or it was transcribed erroneously (along with
the dates for the thirteen-year-old father), or the Black family (like
Voldemort) didn't distinguish between Muggles and Muggle-borns. In any
case, all the canonical references to Ted Tonks (in OoP and DH) refer
to him as a Muggle-born, not a Muggle, and the marriage seems to be a
happy one.

lizzyben:
> So, presumed-Slytherin Andromeda Tonks was brave, noble & right for
marrying a muggleborn wizard over her family's objections. But was
presumed-Slytherin Eileen Prince brave, noble & right for marrying the
Muggle Tobias Snape? The text strongly suggests that she was not. 

> There's the split again - wizard/wizard marriages seem good &
strong; while wizard/Muggle marriages are bad & wrong. 

Carol responds:
Andromeda Tonks had a happy marriage despite her family's rejection of
her for marrying a "Muggle"; Eileen Prince had a dysfunctional,
unhappy marriage. (I imagine that she faced similar opposition from
"the Full-Blood Princes," but that's just speculation based on young
Severus's nickname for himself.) The respective success or failure of
these marriages seems to me more a matter of personalities and
cultures (Ted Tonks being a jovial Hufflepuff and Tobias Snape being
an abusive Muggle of whom both his witch wife and his little son were
afraid) than of marriages to Muggles being disapproved and marriages
to Muggle-borns approved (by JKR or the characters or the WW at large;
it's not clear from your post who thinks that marriages to Muggles are
"bad and wrong").

The marriage of a Witch and a Wizard from differing backgrounds and
"bloodlines" is certainly much more probable than the marriage of a
Witch or Wizard to a Muggle, as well as less likely to result in
conflict sim;ly because one marriage partner or the other will be
uprooted from his or her culture in a mixed Magical/Muggle marriage,
whereas in a Pure-blood/Muggle-born marriage, both partners can live
happily in the WW. (I can't see Eileen Prince or little Severus
feeling at home in the "Muggle dungheap" that Bellatrix so stridently
condemns. The wonder is that Eileen Prince remained with her husband,
which she clearly did until Severus was at least nine or ten and
probably beyond; we don't seem to hear of WW divorces, not counting
the Muggle Tom Riddle Sr. running out on his wife and unborn child
after discovering that he had been "hoodwinked." Nor can I imagine any
but the most complacent Muggle living in the WW, where he has even
less status than a Squib and can't do magic or see magically concealed
places).

No one in the books speaks for or against mixed Muggle/Wizard
marriages except for Ron's remark that "If we hadn't married Muggles,
we'd have died out." (Wizards can even marry giantesses, apparently,
but that didn't work out, either.) But it seems to me that marriages
between people who are not equal partners, in which the magical
partner's status must be concealed from the Muggle neighbors and the
children (unless they're Squibs) sent away to a school that the Muggle
parent can't even visit, would be very hard to sustain. In theory, the
magical partner could turn the Muggle partner into a toad; that Eileen
Prince doesn't use magic on her husband can only be explained, as far
as I can determine, by her fear of the legal consequences of using
magic on a Muggle (cf. Morfin Gaunt).

lizzyben:
> 
> I'd forgotten about Seamus Finnigan, who might be an exception to
this pattern. But we don't ever meet or see his parents, so it's hard
to say anything about them. 

Carol responds:
We meet Mrs. Finnigan at the QWC, where she has a tent covered in
shamrocks. Seamus and his friend Dean, whose "folks are Muggles, mate"
(I won't get into the off-page story of his secretly Wizard biological
father being killed by DEs), are with her, but her husband isn't.
Presumably, all the Muggle-repelling spells and/or the Statute of
Secrecy would make it impossible for him to attend even if he wanted to.

lizzyben:
We do know that she concealed her wizarding background until after
they married - repeating the WW pattern of secrets & lies. Maybe it's
a miserable, awful marriage too or maybe they're  blissfully happy,
who knows? <snip>

Carol:
Certainly, the witch wife seems to be the dominant partner, in
contrast to Eileen Prince and Tobias Snape. She's the one who opposed
Seamus's return to Hogwarts in OoP. His father's opinion is not even
mentioned. 

Carol, who thinks that a marriage between a magical person and a
Muggle would require a very strong foundation of mutual love and
respect to endure and would work only in mixed Wizarding/Muggle towns
like Ottery St. Catchpole (George could have married a Muggle and made
it work, I think)