House elves and some spoilers for Swordspoint WAS: realistic solutions
Bex
kaleeyj at gmail.com
Thu Jan 24 04:06:37 UTC 2008
No: HPFGUIDX 180915
> Goddlefrood:
>
> There is another, possibly even better, term that could be used,
> and as the books were certainly not a history lesson, allow me
> to give a short one.
>
<SNIP>
>
> If the analogy is drawn, as I propose, between the feudal system
> and the WW, then your wizard to house-elf relationship becomes
> not one of master and slave, but one of master and vassal. I
> wonder if that would meet the case and allow us to move forward
> in this discussion without referring to the elves as slaves.
> They do, IMO, more closely resemble vassals than slaves, even
> if there are definitions of vassal around that aver to slave
> being a synonym of vassal. It most assuredly is not the same
> at all. My preferred definition would be this:
>
> "a person holding a fief; a person who owes allegiance and
> service to a feudal lord [syn: vassal, liege, liegeman, liege
> subject, feudatory]"
>
> Taken from WordNet 2.1.
>
> The parameters for the release of a vassal house-elf are set out
> in the books. In many ways the house-elf fears release from its
> vassalage as much as vassals have done. That because there were
> benefits of being a vassal, such as having the protection of
> one's lord, housing supplied and in many cases a reasonable
> stipend. The latter of these was not always the case, and
> obviously other than Dobby there are no paid elves at all
> in canon.
Bex:
Excellent - you may have stumbled upon what we need here. The
differences I would draw are that the vassals didn't typically live
within the same house (though they did occasionally reside within the
walls of the lord's castle when danger struck). And generally, vassals
got something back out of the deal besides protection - they got land
maintained by the landlord (since it was still his property).
I don't know how the vassal-lord relationship worked across
generations - typically vassals were made vassals through a formal
ceremony, and I'm not sure if the arrangements would extend vassaldom
to the vassal's children. I think that vassals were more specifically
tied to a piece of land than an actual person. Brownies are tied to a
house - and more than once Kreacher serves "the house of Black," even
without any Black family members there. Perhaps more support for this
idea?
Elves' masters seem to have less obligation to protect their 'vassals'
that feudal lords. But you may have hit the nail on the head.
Elf-wizard relations seem more like a feudal relationship than that of
straight slavery. Slavery is the first thing we think of when we read
about house-elves, but as many readers have argued, it doesn't fit as
nicely as it looks at first.
> Goddlefrood, offering a reasonable alternative word to use and
> anticipating none would use it ;-)
>
Bex:
I hope it catches on. Vasself? feudelf? Or perhaps we need a name for
this idea. EVANS, maybe? (Elves: Vassals Are Not Slaves?) I'm all
a-quiver with excitement....
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