Sadism or not ? McGonagall and her punishments

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 186671

> a_svirn
> > Yeah, and Lavender was offended that Ron would wear the
> > "sweetheart" necklace in public. Obviously ridiculous ornaments
> > weren't banned in Hogwarts.
> 
> Shaun:

> At the time Parvarti is reprimanded, Hogwarts is expecting its students to 
> make an unusually good impression on a group of guests arriving at the 
> school. They are expected to be wearing their hats and their cloaks, rather 
> than just the robes that seem to be the generally expected uniform most of 
> the time - again, just drawing on my own experiences, this is entirely in 
> keeping with the expectations that applied during my own schooling, when we 
> were allowed to go most of the day without our blazers, but were expected to 
> put them on for assemblies and when representing the school (nerds like me 
> just wore the thing constantly, except when the weather made it too hot to 
> do so). Perhaps McGonagall wouldn't have said anything about Parvarti's hair 
> clip on a normal day. This wasn't a normal day. It was a formal assembly.

Magpie:
Uniforms at Hogwarts are contradictory because JKR often forgets everybody's supposed to wear robes, period. Iirc, in GoF hats simply make a rare appearance. There's a scene where somebody knocks Parvati's hat off somewhere and I think it's in class, implying that they wear hats all the time. 

I still think the reading more supported by the text and McGonagall's character is not that she's a big stickler for no ornamentation and standard hairstyles in Hogwarts but that she's uptight about making the impression she wants and snaps at Parvati and Ron. We've got evidence throughout the books that they don't have overly strict rules about hair and ornamentation. Hermione doesn't have to pull back her hair, dreadlocks and braids are fine, Luna can wear radishes and bottlecap necklaces. Parvati's wearing a gaudy barrette and Ron's uniform is fine, she just doesn't like that his hat is crooked. I believe we later see McGonagall being competitive with the other school personally. Parvati's barrette doesn't follow the image she wants to project, imo. That's totally consistent with her character.

McGonagall doesn't say she's enforcing any rule at all about uniforms. She just tells Parvati to take that "ridiculous" thing out of her hair. If the problem is the regulation uniform, I think she'd say that, not show anger at the ridiculousness of Parvati's taste in hair clips. But that's what she wants to express at that moment.

-m