Harry's Crucio - Hermione & the Elves (was: Wands and Wizards)

[montavilla47]

No: HPFGUIDX 183749

> Mike:
> I also think it's unfair to call Hermione shallow for her changing 
> her position on elves. SPEW was all well and good during GoF, when 
> there was no Voldemort threat (that they knew of). But after 
> Voldemort's resurrection, there were more important things going on 
> than her worrying about the plight of elves. 
> 
> And still, she didn't drop them completely. Like I said, she tried to 
> improve Kreacher's lot with Sirius. She was appalled when she thought 
> maybe Harry had told Dobby and Kreacher they couldn't sleep. It seems 
> to me that Hermione had pretty much given up on elf freedom by the 
> end of GoF. From then on, she spoke not of freeing the elves but of 
> improving conditions. 

Montavilla47:
Do you mean by the end of GoF or OotP?  In OotP, Hermione is so
committed to freeing the slaves that she tries to trick them into it
with the hats.

She *may* have changed her mind by HBP, but IIRC, she doesn't
say *anything* about elves in the entire book, so it's hard to tell.

> Mike:
> You know, if Dobby hadn't called himself a slave in CoS, I don't 
> think it ever would have occurred to me to call these creatures as 
> such. That's not the way they were written, IMO. They may be bound to 
> serve the masters of their house (in the brick and mortar sense), 
> their servitude seems to be more abstract than a hard and fast rule. 
> We get plenty of examples of them working around their masters wishes 
> when they don't like their masters. In that sense, they were written 
> to be like some elves of folklore, not as slaves, IMO again.

Montavilla47:
This is something that real life slaves did, too.

Mike:
> I don't put any stock in JKR's interviews. There is nothing in canon 
> that makes me think of human slavery when I see the House Elves. So 
> that leaves JKR's interviews, wherein she drew the parallels to human 
> bondage. 

Montavilla47:
Well, I would assume she was drawing parallels when she had Dobby
call himself a slave, and Hermione calling the House-Elves at Hogwarts
slaves.  I think that qualifies as canon.

Mike:
>I think JKR fancied herself as making all these noble 
> statements, when she really didn't write her books any way like that. 
> It's wishful thinking and self-delusion on her part, methinks. But 
> then, I also didn't picture Dumbledore as gay. Just because she did 
> doesn't mean she wrote him that way for us to discern. And just 
> because she thought she was making a comment on human slavery with 
> the elves condition, I didn't see her write that. 

Montavilla47:
I think that's as likely to be the answer as my thesis that she *intended*
to support a gentler, kinder institution of slavery.