Lily (was Complimenting a character WAS: Re: HBP CHAPTERS 7-9 POST DH LOOK

[littleleahstill]

No: HPFGUIDX 184425

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Lynda Cordova" <sweenlit at ...> 
wrote:
>
>.
> 
> Lynda:
> 
>> Here's the thing. Nothing in the way that Snape treats any witch 
or wizard
> of muggle birth is what I would call pleasant. He isn't even 
pleasant to any
> of the students at Hogwarts, nor to most of the others we see him 
associate
> with, but from the way he is spoken of by characters throughout 
the text of
> seven books, he did save his greatest contempt for those wizards 
and witches
> who were muggle born or showed what he considered to be a lack of 
magical
> ability. That's direct enough textual evidence for my point.
> 


Leah:  As you say, Snape is not particularly 'pleasant' to any of 
his students. I can't however think of an example of other 
characters saying that he is particularly unpleasant to Muggleborns. 
I might have forgotten of course - what comments were you thinking 
of?  

We don't see Snape teaching any classes except Harry's, so we only 
see him from Harry's point of view.  In that class, Snape is 
unpleasant to Harry, a half-blood, Hermione, a Muggleborn and Ron 
and Neville, purebloods.  We don't see him being unpleasant in the 
same way to any of the other students, including Dean, who is I 
think a Muggleborn.  Neville needs to learn to control and master 
his magic; his own family have treated him very unpleasantly in an 
attempt to bring his magic out in the first place, and I think Snape 
is doing the same.  As to Hermione, Snape doesn't start off treating 
her unpleasantly. She is interfering in his first class, waving her 
hand around and standing up trying to answer questions which weren't 
directed at her or even directed at the whole class.  Snape just 
tells her to sit down.  Unpleasantness to her later is related to 
her being one of the Trio,persistant rule breaking, and annoying 
behaviour in class. I'm not saying Snape deals with this correctly, 
but I don't see his treatment arising out of her blood status.   

Young Severus tells Lily that being Muggleborn won't make a 
difference, even though he clearly knows that it does to some 
people. Headmaster Snape tells Phineas Nigellus not to use the word 
Mudblood. If Lily is correct that Teenage Severus did use the M word 
to other Muggleborns, this seems more like an aberration to fit in 
with other Slytherins than his consistent viewpoint.  Snape does 
value magical ability and wants to see it used properly, not just 
through rote learning, but I don't see any evidence besides Lily's 
comment that he cares how the magical ability was derived.

Leah