CoS chapter 2 discussion / gnomes / House Elves

[Catlady (Rita Prince]

No: HPFGUIDX 188766

Sherry discussed Cos Chapter 3 in <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/188747>:

<< 2. Why do you think Vernon tried to prevent Harry's escape? If he feels Harry is such a burden and freak, why not let him go? >>

At the time, I thought Vernon tried to prevent Harry's escape out of sheer cruelty, but after later list discussion of later volumes suggested that the reason the Dursleys agreed to keep Harry was that Dumbledore promised to protect them from murderous wizards as long as Harry lived with them, maybe Vernon tried to prevent his escape to keep from losing the protection. (As Potioncat wrote in <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/188759>: << I'm not sure if he thought he had to keep Harry all summer as part of the agreement of taking him >>)

<< 6. What did you think of Molly's alternating behavior, yelling at her sons, then being sweet and loving to Harry? >>

I thought it was crazy, and would have made her kids feel worse (and blame Harry for it), but eventually I realised that she always behaved like that and they were used to it and understood that it was just because she was something of a drama queen.

<< 7. What did you think of the de-gnoming process: funny, cruel, gross, anything beyond just a humorous scene? >>

It was kind of funny, but struck me as remarkably inefficient. If you throw the Gnomes far away, still they eventually come back. It would be more permanent to kill them, or to put them in cages which are taken to zoos with animals that eat them, or throw them into the ocean and drown them. Of course all those things are not funny and are (to me) unnervingly cruel, but at least the poisoning varmints option is part of real life. As Potioncat wrote in <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/188759>: << But in RL I wasn't able to take any of the measures recommended to get rid of the chipmunk colony in my yard either. >> If I had a lawn, I don't think I would care if rodents and their like tore it up and made it look ugly, but I ought to care if they bring rabies and bubonic plague and tularemia and a legion of rickettsia diseases that could infect my pets and me.

<< 9. From this chapter on, the burrow becomes one of Harry's favorite places, and the Weasleys become his favorite family. What do you think draws Harry so much to this quirky home and family? >>

It says later in canon that Harry likes the Burrow because it's the first place he ever was where it seemed that everyone liked him. List discussion pointed out that canon did NOT say that it was a place where everyone seemed to like each other. But even if Percy and the twins pointedly dislike each other, Percy, Fred, and George all like Harry. There is some question in my mind about which Weasleys would have liked him if he had been neither a famous person nor a member of Gryffindor's Quidditch team. 

Pippin wrote in <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/188761>:

<< The Weasleys are morally outraged over the mistreatment of Harry, indifferent to the plight of the Elves (Molly'd like one to do the ironing), and downright hostile to the Gnomes. I don't think that's inattention on JKR's part. It's a deliberate irony, IMO, aimed at showing the reader that moral outrage over the plight of the oppressed is a lot less consistent and a lot more category dependent than the innocent believe. IMO, it's something she very much wants us to think about. >>

I disagree with you about Rowling's intention. To me, Rowling's okay with downright hostility to the Gnomes because they're just animals (as Carol mentioned in <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/188753>). If she objects to abuse of animals in real life, she doesn't show it in the Potter series, and she doesn't make a less unprivileged category for animals who can use some human-recognized language, like sign-language apes in real life and speaking gnomes in fantasy. Well, that gets complicated because the hippogriff got a hearing before being executed, and the hippogriff doesn't speak language altho' apparently it can understand when it's being insulted in language.

It seems to be okay with Rowling for Mrs Weasley to want to own a House Elf, because she would treat it reasonably kindly; Rowling can't object too much to House Elves being owned because the series ends with the hero owning a House Elf. All along I said that Hermione got it wrong; the plight of the House Elves was not they were enslaved but that they were abused. Her organization should have been a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to House Elves rather than an Anti-Slavery Society. Some Weasleys would have joined a SPCHE if they had known how some owners treated House Elves.

The series being complete, Rowling clearly views the House Elves as people rather than as animals, but as a kind of people, different from humans, for whose correct treatment our only analogy is animals such as dogs. We, unlike the Potterverse narratorial voice, know that dogs should not be burnt or bludgeoned as punishment nor for 'fun', but when dogs are taken away from abusive owners, they are given to kinder owners, not set free to run feral. Dogs are trained to do jobs for humans, like guide dogs and bomb-sniffing dogs, sheep dogs and hunting dogs, for which they are not paid and do not get vacations; I share the general belief that the dogs consider the relationship with and praise from their handlers to be sufficient reward and they want neither vacations nor manumission. 

I certainly agree with all the listies who said that saying that a certain group of people is different from us and doesn't want freedom or whatever is very dangerous, because historically this has been said of many groups of humans as an excuse for oppressing them. On another tentacle, assuming that all people are just like us, even non-human people, is nowadays condemned as cultural imperialism.

Bart Lidofsky wrote in <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/188762>:

<< The Weasleys would have been a perfect place for Winky to go >>

Yes. But this seems to be another self-defeating attitude of House Elves: they seem to be snobs who want to serve only in castles and richly furnished buildings. That is contrary to the folklore brownie who helps good housewives in tiny, poor, but clean cottages and cabins. No, I don't think a House Elf would desert its owner just because the owner moved to a shack, but an owner-less House Elf wouldn't join up.

Steve bboyminnn wrote in <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/188765>:

<< I suspect it is much like slaves are breed. I have a male house-elf and you have a female house-elf. We decide we need more house-elves. So, my male breeds with your female. The first off-spring elf goes to you, and the second off-spring elf goes to me. Now we both have more house-elves to carry on. >>

Yes, I know that some slave owners were careful to have some big strong male slave beget children on many female slaves regardless of how they might feel about it. But female slaves also had children who were not deliberately bred, some as a result of pair-bonding love with a male slave and thus having a family. That's why the male slave whose wife and children were sold away is a common plot element in novels.

So I've always imagined that House Elves are normally let out one night a month to go a House Elf social gathering (perhaps explaining how Winky and Dobby got to know each other; altho' I suppose it could have been that the Crouches were house guests of the Malfoys at some point) and select their own partners for short, fertile, romances. In that case, there would have to be some decision which owner got the offspring, and it seems logical to me to have a rule that female offspring went with the mother and male offspring went with the father. That would explain Winky's matrilinege. Except that Dobby's ambition was to have his head up on the wall next to his *mother*...

<< House-elves clearly have a complex range of emotion, but does it extent to romatic love, and how far will they go to get it? Humans will kill thousands, even millions, for love. But will elves betray their masters for love? >>

I said 'romance' because I imagine them motivated by something like lust, but with affection, rather than by a desire to make more slaves for their owner, but House Elves couldn't possibly be allowed to feel romantic love. Whoever made or enslaved them would have been sure to prevent it, because romantic love is such a danger, as you pointed out.