House elves and some spoilers for Swordspoint WAS: realistic solutions

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 180791

> > Magpie:
> > Only if the book actually suggests the problem exists. In HP it 
> > certainly shows that there's a problem if you're a bad Wizard 
like 
> > Lucius, but no I don't see any indication that there's any 
problem 
> > with Dumbledore or Harry or Hermione owning a slave.
> 
> Pippin:
> 
> No problem?  Even though Dumbledore would never
> use an Elf as a poison tester, his ownership allowed Slughorn
> to do so. Sirius said that an elf is supposed to obey every
> member of the family.

> Hermione's married to Ron. Harry's son is James. Nuff said. 

Magpie:
I didn't say that *I* had no problem with it. For me the problem 
doesn't even need imagining Ron or James doing anything to the House 
Elves (which doesn't actually seem like a big danger anyway). I'm 
just not convinced I just read a book dramatizing House Elves 
ownership as a problem for good owners because of these things you 
imagine here. (I don't even remember Slughorn using House Elves as 
poison testers to be honest. I don't doubt it happened, but I 
definitely don't recall it as something that seemed to be there to 
dramatize that Dumbledore owning House Elves was bad--Dumbledore who 
has offered their freedom and they refused it.) 

Pippin:
> 
> The problem with a person who thinks that they're good owning
> a slave was dramatized with Sirius.  JKR doesn't have to dramatize
> it again to show me that I can't generalize from Harry's experience
> to the whole WW, much less the real world. Even if Harry is given 
> the grace to do no harm, bless him, what about everyone else? 

Magpie:
I didn't say anything about generalizing from Harry's experience. 
We've already seen owners that aren't as good as Harry within canon. 
That doesn't change that I don't see Harry/Kreacher dramatizing 
anything bad for Harry. 

> Magpie:
>  And given the 
> > pov that comes through in a lot of the book that seems pretty 
> > consistent--power should be held by the good guys.
> 
> Pippin:
> You want it should be held by the bad guys ???

Magpie:
No obviously I don't want it held by the bad guys. I just said the 
books pretty consistently imo favor more power for good guys rather 
than objective checks on power (and no, I haven't forgotten Harry's 
rejection of the Elder Wand in saying that). So in the context of 
this discussion, which I thought was clear, I can easily imagine 
seeing it in terms of of needing to curb the power of bad owners and 
wanting elves to have the good owners rather than getting rid of 
ownership in general. Which is even hinted at with the interview 
canon of Hermione given a position of power re: house elf rights--
Hermione is given power over the owners rather than slavery being 
abolished.

> > Magpie:
> > I don't remember Harry worrying about these things, and given how 
> > great I hear this Harry Potter fellow is, no I don't think he'll 
ever 
> > really have a problem with this. Yeah if he makes a mistake (not 
that 
> > I think he would) it'll be a shame that Kreacher has to punish 
> > himself--but good old Harry will no doubt swoop in to stop him if 
> > that happens because he's a good guy. 
> > 
> 
> Pippin:
> 
> But then we're talking about sheer fantasy, and not about a 
realistic
> situation at all. In which case, sure. I don't think I'd suffer if 
I was owned
> by an angel or a saint. Heck, I'll  volunteer, especially if I get 
to live at 
> Hogwarts and do magic. 

Magpie:
A lot of the book is sheer fantasy and not a realistic situation at 
all. That scenario is perfectly believable for the HP series. You 
seem to be agreeing here with exactly what I'm arguing by saying that 
you actually would be fine being a House Elf and therefore owned by 
someone *if the person was a great owner who wouldn't abuse you 
ever.* So slavery isn't a problem for you if you could depend on 
the 'perfect' owner. 

Though you sell Harry and Dumbledore short imo by suggesting only an 
angel or a saint could provide this situation. Neither of them make 
their House Elves suffer--they make them happy. They even 
technically "don't want" to own them since Dumbledore offered to free 
his and Harry accepted his reluctantly. So they've rather earned 
their status as saintly slave owners who can enjoy being masters 
guilt free.


Pippin: 
> Who wouldn't? 

Magpie:
Me. I wouldn't want to be a House Elf slave no matter who owned me. 

Pippin:
> 
> Of course there's the minor problem that saintly and angelic 
beings  
> wouldn't want to own slaves, and wouldn't be seduced into thinking 
> that slavery was an objective good no matter how many sandwiches 
> I made for them. Oh well. 

Magpie:
You don't have to be what JKR would call "a saint" (iow, not Harry) 
or angelic in order to be a good master for a house elf. You can just 
be Harry or Hermione or Dumbledore wanting the elf to have a better 
home that it might with a worse owner. You can even be somebody who 
allegedly "wouldn't want" to own a slave if you got one dumped in 
your lap and bravely had to "make the best of it" by enjoying the 
perks. 

Sure I imagine JKR wouldn't say that even this situation wasn't 
*ideal* to have House Elves be slaves at all, since that makes them 
vulnerable to bad masters, but no, I don't see that she thinks we 
shouldn't be perfectly fine with Harry's owning Kreacher since 
Kreacher wants to be owned and would be so unhappy if he wasn't 
owned. Certainly I don't see any hints that this is bad of Harry, 
which is what the conversation is about. 

Alla is arguing this perfectly logically elsewhere in the thread that 
the fact that the elves want to be owned makes all the difference (or 
at least she can see it not making a difference, whether or not she 
personally thinks that it does--she understands that pov). Many 
people get that from the books. There have been remarks on this group 
arguing pretty much that, that since they want to be owned, it's not 
bad to own them, it's only bad to mistreat them once you do own them. 

> > Carol:
> If House-Elves are given what they want
> > (like the House-Elves at Hogwarts), they're happy. In turn, they 
> give
> > "good service," making their owners happy. The owners, in turn, 
> thank
> > them or compliment them, making them happier still. The only 
problem
> > is the enchantment that forces them to punish themselves when they
> > disobey their masters. 
> 
> a_svirn:
> This is by no means the only problem. In fact it isn't a problem at 
> all. It is a problem for the likes of Hermione, who still can't 
quite 
> squire the whole thing with their consciousness. But if we were to 
> take elves' own perspective it wouldn't be a problem at all. Not 
one 
> of the elves we have seen close up regards self-punishment as a 
> problem. Whereas two out three elves – two-thirds of our elvish 
> acquaintance – saw being compelled to serve their masters against 
> their will as a problem. And Winky saw being dismissed with 
ignominy 
> as a problem. In all three cases their status as slaves was the 
root 
> of their problems, not the self-punishment thing. 

Magpie:
Yes, I think these issues get conflated. The self-punishment is 
something repulsive to Wizards like Hermione and Harry, and something 
perhaps enjoyable to a Wizard like Lucius. But it's not what makes 
them slaves. It's something Wizards care about more than House Elves 
as far as we see. (Perhaps because that's when they most look like 
slaves under a compulsive enchantment rather than a person who loves 
them freely and likes to see them happy in a mutually beneficial way. 
Many slave owners would probably prefer to think they're being served 
out of love.)

Ultimately Hermione's switches away from house elf freedom to good 
treatment for owned house elves. That to me sounds like a shift to 
the view of slave-owning being legitimate. It's not dealing with the 
problem of owning the slave but the self-punishment that is repulsive 
to (some) Wizard owners. It's a problem with the elves that must be 
fixed, if anything. If Kreacher no longer self-punished would 
Hermione be perfectly happy with his being owned by Harry and 
following orders for the Trio? If so, then she's not anti-
slavery/anti-house-elf-ownership because that's a separate issue.

-m