Merope's Death as rejection of the WW

[Lyn J. Mangiameli]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "bluesqueak" <pip at e...> wrote:
<snip of a great analysis>

> Mrs Cole 
> in her conversation with Dumbledore seems to have been with Merope 
> *after* Tom was born. Merope knows the baby is a boy (1930's - no 
> pre-birth scans to show a baby's sex). Mrs Cole's told what Tom's 
> name should be, she's told Merope hope he looks like his papa. She 
> knows Merope didn't say anything else before she died - again, that 
> suggests she or someone else stayed with Merope, to know that she 
> didn't speak.
> 
> snip> 
>  Having Merope murdered makes her an exact copy for 
> Lily, yes, but I think Merope is Lily's mirror. Instead of dying to 
> save her son, she refused to live to save her son. Mirror image.
> 
Lyn now:
I suspect you may be correct that JKR means for her to be a mirror, but I don't actually 
think she is as much as is sometimes assumed.  You note that she lived to give birth to 
her son, lived to know his sex, lived to give him a name, and cared what he would grow up 
to look like. If she were rejecting the son, she couldn't have cared less whether he made it 
to full term, or had a name, or had looks she fell in love with. What I think she was 
rejecting, was the Wizarding World, with all its attention to bloodlines, and tolerance of 
bigotry, tolerance of her own abuse (for was the WW going to intervene in the Gaunt 
household to protect her even after they knew of her condition--the Ministry didn't 
interfere with what wizards were doing to their children (including not sending them to 
school), they only cared about the "outing" of the WW to the Muggles) and emphasis on 
magic over human emotion. She wanted to leave the Wizarding World, and part of leaving 
it was a rejection of all things magical. She attempted to escape her Wizard life through 
magical control of another, and yet it was this magical act which created the tragedy. She 
fell in love with a Muggle,  wanted to escape to a Muggle life (though a priviledged one), 
wanted her son to be a Muggle, to live as a Muggle, and perhaps never meant for him to 
know he was a wizard, which is why she sought out a Muggle orphanage and gave him a 
(mostly) Muggle name.  [As for the Marvolo part, it seems more a matter of literary 
convenience than consistent with the character's other actions).

In the end, I think it was as much her rejection of the WW, as her heartbreak over her 
Muggle husband, that related to her death, and it is those things, rather than any rejection 
of her son, that lead to her death.  Thus, I don't see her as such a perfect mirror to Lilly, at 
least based on what we know of Lilly thus far.

Just a thought.