Sadism or not ? McGonagall and her punishments

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 186710

> > Magpie:
> > Nobody said she was always wearing something odd, we said that she was
> > obviously allowed to wear little ornaments like her necklace and earrings
> > --which are no more elaborate than Parvati wearing a hairclip.
> 
> Shaun:
> 
> I don't believe that is obvious. The evidence in the text is that 
> occasionally, Luna is seen wearing something ornamental - that does not 
> prove that Hogwarts has no rules against ornamentation.
> 
> Ron is occasionally seen to swear in the text - does that prove that 
> Hogwarts students are allowed to swear?

Magpie:
I see that obviously the school could have some rules that aren't strictly enforced, or maybe what Luna's doing doesn't break them. But since this is fiction the simplest way of looking at it seems more useful. Ron doesn't swear to his teachers, and I think the way they're expected to speak to teachers is shown in the reactions of teachers. Luna's shown casually wearing funky earrings and things to class with no reaction and I took it as a sign that that's okay.  

But regardless, that's still not the point of what I see in the McGonagall scene. It's that McGonagall does have a pattern of letting her personal feelings effect the way she disciplines people (just as Hermione does). I don't think the GoF scene is about McGonagall enforcing a dress code according to any theory of teaching, but about showing McGonagall being nervous about making a good impression and snapping at Parvati in irritation for looking like a flirt. Whether there's an actual dress code is irrelevent. Whether she has the right to tell her what to wear matters less than how she chooses to do it in this moment imo, if we're talking about what's going on with McGonagall and Parvati here.

Shaun:
> At the point where Professor McGonagall tells Parvarti to take the butterfly 
> out of her hair, Gryffindor and the school in general are assembled for a 
> special event - to greet visitors to the school. It is one of the only times 
> in all the books where we are told the students are wearing their cloaks and 
> hats, not just the robes they seem to wear all the time. I think it's more 
> than reasonable to assume that this is a time when the rules on appearance 
> must just be stricter than they are everyday. I really don't think that's an 
> unreasonable supposition and I think it's a supposition that's borne out by 
> Professor McGonagall's actions and Parvarti's response

Magpie:
Which is a perfectly fine reading imo, unless it removes the character moment for McGonagall. If the whole point of that moment is to tell us that Hogwarts has a formal dress code they use when greeting visitors which disallows hairclips (as I said, I'm pretty sure GoF has them wearing hats more casually) and McGonagall is just enforcing the rule, then I disagree with that reading. Whether or not McGonagall has a dress code to back her up seems completely unimportant to me. As a teacher she seems to have the authority to to give all sorts of random orders to students. Having the authority doesn't mean she can't be taking out her nervousness on a student by being insulting. I've never made any case for McGonagall being out of line because she has no right to say what she's saying here based on Hogwarts rules. I'm arguing that the moment isn't in there to tell us about Hogwarts dress code one way or the other.


> Magpie:
> > My point in reading the scene has nothing to do with rules
> > at Hogwarts or other boarding schools. I'm just talking about
> > how McGonagall is characterized. You say that you can't
> > remember her ever breaking the rules. She is shown letting her
> > personal desires to interfere with the rules, most blatantly
> > when she swoops in after watching Harry flying around against
> > the rules in his first flying lesson and instead of giving him
> > detention she eagerly breaks another rule to get him on her
> > Quidditch team. And lets him have a broom as a first year.
> > One of the first times we get to know McGonagall we see her
> > putting her desire to win at Quidditch above the rules even
> > if it's unfair to other first years.
> 
> Shaun:
> 
> These are not examples of Professor McGonagall breaking any rules. Let's 
> break this down.
> 
> (1) Professor McGonagall does not punish Harry for flying around against the 
> rules in his first flying lesson.
> 
> There's no law that says teachers *have* to punish students *every* time 
> they break a rule. In fact, very, very few teachers punish every single 
> rules violation - you should only punish if it's going to serve some 
> purpose. Yes, Harry's broken a rule - and Professor McGonagall would be 
> completely within her rights if she chose to punish him for that. She's just 
> as much within her rights to choose not to punish him. Deciding not to 
> punish a student is not breaking any rule at all.

Magpie:
It seems like you're arguing technicalities about rules when I'm talking about what it's showing about the character. When I said it was McGonagall "breaking the rules" I wasn't trying to claim that she was breaking rules imposed on *her* by not punishing Harry. I was pointing out that obviously McGonagall does not think it's so important that she enforce the no brooms for freshman or no flying while the teacher is away or no first years playing Quidditch rules when she gets something out of it. I think that's what everyone meant when they brought it up. I'm not creating an imaginary teacher's handbook and finding McGonagall in violation of it. 

Likewise, I know that she asks Dumbledore to bend the rule about first years and brooms. She asks him to bend it because she's got something at stake and the rule is now inconvenient to her and so she doesn't want it enforced. She wants the rule waived in this case, just as she wants the tradition/rule of first years not playing not enforced and doesn't want to punish Harry for flying when the teacher told him not to, but rather to reward him for it. That she technically stays within school rules for herself because she's got the authority to override them or gets to choose whether to punish someone or goes to Dumbledore to get the rule waived I'm not arguing with.

> Shaun:
> 
> I believe there are occasions where Professor McGonagall is willing to be 
> more lenient than the rules allow for. I believe there are occasions where 
> she's willing to bend the rules. I don't believe there's any evidence that 
> she breaks them.

Magpie:
Wow. If I was a kid in that school who said McGonagall broke the no brooms for first years rule for Harry and some teacher told me that no, she only bent the rules, I'd just take that as proof that the teachers weren't fair and I shouldn't expect them to be. 

Shaun:
 
> I also agree that there are occasions when Professor McGonagall's emotions 
> affect how she punishes people. *But* that's not necessarily a bad thing. It 
> *is* if it means that the person in question winds up being more severely 
> punished than they deserve to be. But one does not necessarily follow the 
> other.

Magpie:
It's not necessarily a bad thing, but I thought this thread was originally about what McGonagall humiliating Neville and insulting Parvati because she found that emotionally satisfying--just as Snape does when he humiliates and insults students.

Shaun: 
> Do you believe teachers should be totally emotionless beings who never let 
> their emotions impact the way they deal with their students? I don't believe 
> that personally, but I can understand why somebody might believe that was 
> appropriate.

Magpie:
Nope, not at all. I talked here about what McGonagall's emotional state was, I never said she was wrong to have an emotional state. Neither Snape nor Lupin are emotionless beings, but their dealings with students are very different. Snape is more likely to put down a student than Lupin. McGonagall's emotional state does not always lead her to be harsh--sometimes it's the opposite. But when it's harsh it's harsh. Snape perhaps gets something out of insulting students that Lupin doesn't.

Shaun:

> My point is that there is nothing inherently wrong with a teacher letting 
> their students know that they are angry. There is something wrong if, in 
> their anger, they do something they shouldn't have. 

Magpie:
I agree. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with McGonagall or Snape showing their students how they feel. But I don't think McGonagall's moments of taking her anger out on students are always positive or for the student's benefit. In your case, you actually did something mean to another person. Neville's losing the passwords understandably made her angry, but I don't think her continued humiliation punishment did him or anyone any good. And I don't see what her snapping at Parvati did for her. In the case with Neville she was afraid due to danger so there'd be a reason for her to want to shake sense into Neville, much as your teacher would see a reason to shake sense into you about being cruel to others. Her anger at Parvati seems just catty and personal and momentary.


Shaun:
> *But* it's different from the issues I've been arguing about here. In the 
> case of Parvarti's butterfly, Pavarti wasn't punished at all.

Magpie:
No, she was insulted. McGonagall was focused on how she wanted her students to come across, got angry that Parvati was the flirty girl she always was trying to make a different sort of impression, and snapped at her that she looked ridiculous. Just as Snape doesn't punish Hermione in the "I see no difference" scene, he just insults her.

> Shaun:
> 
> If I tell a student to stop swearing, I don't generally feel the need to 
> remind him it's against the rules. He knows it's against the rules. That 
> doesn't need to be said. I *might* mention the rules if I believe there's a 
> reason why he might not know about that particular rule, but generally 
> speaking I wouldn't mention that at all. I assume students know the rules.

Magpie:
Do you feel the need to make a personal comment about him in general that's got nothing to do with swearing? If so, are you doing that to objectively enforce the rules or do you just find the kid irritating and want him to know that?

The automoton idea is a strawman--neither of us expects the teachers to do that. The thread was not, as I understood it, ever really supposed to be about whether Hogwarts had rules about hair clips, a fact that doesn't exist one way or the other. I thought it started with a_svirn pointing out that there seemed to be different judgments made on Snape and McGonagall when they behaved in similar ways, based on the idea that Snape was a sadist at heart, so when he humiliated or insulted students or enforced the rules according to his desires it was a sign of his inner sadism and unfairness, while McGonagall was a good person so when she did these things it wasn't a sign of inner sadism or unfairness like Snape's. 

-m