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deathtocapslockI’m not entirely sure that this is the best place to post this essay, but as it concerns issues which we frequently comment about here, I thought I might as well share it with you. As you may be able to guess from the title, it contains my thoughts on the House system and how it connects to the politics of the wizarding world. Enjoy! :)
Theoretically, at least, the Sorting Hat sorts students based upon their innate personalities; thus, brave students go into Gryffindor, clever ones into Ravenclaw, hard-working ones into Hufflepuff and cunning ones into Slytherin. It seems unlikely, however, that this is the only – or even the main – factor in the Hat’s choice. For a start, we know that certain families tend towards certain Houses (the Weasleys all seem to be Gryffindors, for example, whilst Draco’s ancestors were apparently all in Slytherin). Family members do not all share the same personality, however, and, if personality were the main factor in the Hat’s choice, we would expect virtually every family to have members in each House. Secondly, many people seem to have been sorted into the “wrong” House; Crabbe and Goyle, for example, never display any signs of cunning or ambition, and Albus Dumbledore seems more like a Ravenclaw or Slytherin than a Gryffindor. This would be more explicable if we take the view that the main factor in students’ House choices is, in fact, their own personal preferences. The wizarding world seems fairly corporatist, and family unity is highly prized (hence, for example, the Weasleys’ anger when Percy chooses to side with the Ministry over his father), so it seems quite likely that children would have a strong preference towards being sorted into their parents’ House; this would also explain the fact that students frequently seem not to display their House’s preferred qualities to any great degree.
Wizarding politics seems to be mostly split between those who support the rights of the old Pureblood families, and those who advocate greater inclusion of Muggleborns into wizarding society and politics. This division seems to be reflected in the school House system. Slytherin House’s reputation as the home of the rich and privileged and a bastion of Pureblood supremacy suggests that it is the House of choice for pro-Purebloods; Godric Gryffindor, on the other hand, was described by Rowling as “an enlightened fighter against anti-Muggle discrimination”, suggesting that, from the beginning, his House has been associated with the pro-Muggleborns. Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff don’t seem so strongly aligned; possibly they are both halfway houses (no pun intended), containing a mixture of pro-Purebloods and pro-Muggleborns, and aligning themselves with whichever political faction currently has the upper hand.
The fact that Slytherin and Gryffindor apparently clashed over whether or not to include Muggleborns suggests that this issue has been an important one in wizarding politics for many centuries. As society’s attitudes are never static, the balance of power will probably have swung like a pendulum from one side to another, with first the Pureblood Faction, then the Muggleborn, having the upper hand. At the time of the HP novels, it seems that the pro-Muggleborns are in control; not only does Mr. Borgin complain that “wizarding blood is counting for less and less everywhere”, the alignment of Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff Houses with Gryffindor against Slytherin would make more sense if the political winds were blowing in the former’s favour. It would also explain why Voldemort’s followers mostly seem to be from Slytherin House: rich aristocrats are usually the least likely to try and overthrow the established order, having as they do the most to lose and the least to gain; if, however, they’ve felt their power and influence being eroded over the past decades, and this process seems likely to continue for the foreseeable future, they might be tempted to rise up in rebellion in order to prevent this from happening.
It seems likely that most Dark Wizards come from whichever faction is currently losing. As of the late twentieth century, this means that Voldemort and most of his supporters are from Slytherin; when the Purebloods had the most influence, Gryffindor was probably the “dark” House. Which brings us onto a certain infamous line: in PS, when Harry is worried about being sorted into Hufflepuff, Hagrid consoles him by saying that Hufflepuff is better than Slytherin, adding that “There’s not a single witch or wizard who went bad who wasn’t in Slytherin.” At first glance, this seems ridiculous (what, so there were literally no Dark Wizards over the past millennium who were in Gryffindor, Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw?), but it may be that Hagrid’s definition of “goin’ bad” isn’t the same as most people’s. By way of analogy to Muggle dictators, Slytherin Dark Wizards would mostly be like General Franco, trying to return the wizarding world to a mythical golden age before their society was corrupted by foreign elements. Gryffindor ones, on the other hand, would be more like communist revolutionaries, trying to overthrow those in power to create a more egalitarian society. Hagrid’s blood status makes him a natural member of the Gryffindor faction, and it seems quite likely that he would sympathise with the aims, if not the methods, of these Gryffindor Dark Wizards. If this is the case, then it may be that he doesn’t consider any Gryffindor Dark Wizard to be bad – misguided, certainly, but not evil, unlike the Slytherins, who want to keep people like him down and deny them equal rights and opportunities. From his point of view, therefore, “All bad wizards are Slytherins” might be a perfectly reasonable thing to say.
The Gryffindor House-Slytherin House hostility also makes more sense when viewed through this lens. From the Gryffindors’ point of view, the Slytherins certainly are despicable: they’re seen as stupid and ugly (and yet, at the same time, as a dangerous threat, mirroring many real-world examples of prejudice), and virtually anything they do is considered bad by default, even when, in objective terms, they’re often little worse or even better than the Gryffindors (see, for example, practically any chapter in any Harry Potter book). This would be extremely over-the-top if it were a simple example of inter-House rivalry; if seen as a continuation of a centuries-old feud, however, it seems more explicable. (As mentioned above, wizarding society is very corporatist, so it seems quite likely that children would inherit their parents’ political views.) It also explains the hatred of the Malfoys for the Weasleys: as an old Pureblood family, the Weasleys would seem to be natural Optimates (indeed, it may be that they were until a few generations ago, which would explain why they are still Pureblood despite being so pro-Muggle), and thus would be considered class traitors by the Malfoys.
We aren’t really told the Slytherin view in the books, probably because Harry aligns his world-view almost entirely with the Gryffindors. This makes the Slytherins come across as ridiculous caricatures in places; if viewed through the lens of “Harry Potter as political propaganda”, however, their characterisation starts to make more sense.
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Re: don't mind me, got a little carried away here...
Date: 2010-10-15 01:48 pm (UTC)I think I was talking about after, not while he was at school and keeping his special name secret.
/Very few of those who weren't his close associates at school made the connection./
I get that but I really wasn't thinking about pre-Voldemort days but I was probably mixing it all in with my post and confused it. I was thinking after and I wasn't thinking it was a secret.
/Well, the person keeping the secret is Twinkly. The guy who met Tom at the orphanage/
Yea, I just posted a reply to someone else where I wondered if that was the only possible reason it was kept a secret. But then when Voldemort came back to the school for the job (changed as he was) Dumbledore was very insistant on calling him Tom - so what changed in that meeting to make him start using Voldemort?
(On a side note and I'm putting this rant in after I've written this reply: In a way this just seems like the canon confusion pit. JKR claims to have had the whole story etched out...kinda making it sound sometimes like she knew all the bits already. But on some level I just don't believe her. I think she had the general idea of what she wanted the plot to be but all the other bits - some of them seem filled in and she didn't keep track of stuff like say: Dumbledore insisting on calling Voldemort Tom in a memory scene written later - but forgetting that Dumbledore in scene one book one insisted on calling him Voldemort. It just seems like JKR didn't really have all her ducks in a row when she actually sat down and wrote out and filled in all the details to the original plot she had in mind)
In the very first book Dumbledore is insistant that everyone use the name Voldemort because he doesn't see any harm, but it's interesting that Dumbledore is shown in a memory to be insisting on calling Voldie, Tom to his face. I just don't understand the change or why, I guess it was just to tweek Voldie but to me wouldn't it have been easier on everyone had they used the name Tom, not to mention the name was fixed so if you said it DE would come get you.
Again I still don't get why Dumbledore hid this fact about Voldemort and the only thing I can come up with is because he went to the orphanage but I have a hard time seeing that as a valid reason for Dumbledore, who didn't have a problem defying the ministry orders.
/But did any of their parents defy Voldemort 3 times? We don't know where Voldemort was hanging out the 10 years he was gone after killing Hepzibah, but if nobody who defied him in those years managed to do iy 3 times and live to have children then Britain was the only place to care about./
Now it makes sense, Good point I forgot about the defied 3 times.
/Look, secrecy from Muggles is such a big deal, yet nobody came to Obliviate the kids at Harry's school when he mistakenly levitated to the roof or turned his teacher's wig blue. So I think the Ministry doesn't know, until some point, which is at the very least until the kids receive their letters, or maybe until they start using wands./
It sounds stupid to me as to when/how they are tracking magic because it doesn't seem to do them much good with Voldemort and the death eaters. So I'm going to assume it is the wands they are using to track people but that kinda doesn't make a lot of sense either because here it's been pointed out that Hermione is doing magic with a wand out of school before she even gets to Hogwarts. Perhaps it is just because it's right before the students first year and they might assume they'd do magic.
Re: don't mind me, got a little carried away here...
Date: 2010-10-15 02:34 pm (UTC)Dumbledore calls Tom 'Tom' to his face, himself, but never in public (only when they are alone or, in the MoM, when a handful of Dumbledore's followers and Tom's followers are there, and most of them are otherwise engaged). He clearly means this to be disrespectful to Tom (who prefers 'Voldemort'), which is why he uses it. But when talking to *others* he uses 'Voldemort' - I'm with oryx: he clearly doesn't want people to figure out how much he's responsible for Tommy's little terror spree.
It's not just having gone to the orphanage (which itself wasn't necessarily wrong at all), it's many things: 1) having seen what sort of person Tom was already at 11, yet saying nothing to anyone in the WW about his dangerous traits or even offering the *Muggles* at the orphanage protection from him during the summers; 2) bringing this mini-psychopath-in-the-making into Hogwarts and not warning anyone to keep an eye on him, but doing it all himself (easier for Tom to evade one person's eye than many); 3) not saying a word about his suspicions when the business with Hagrid went down; 4) sending Tom *back*, totally unsupervised, to the orphanage every year despite knowing the sort of fun Tommy likes to get up to there and being suspicious of him in general; 5) not immediately broadcasting all he knew to the relevant people the *moment* he realized that Voldemort was in fact Tom Riddle (had his followers known he was a literal halfblood many of them would have quit, lessening the threat the DEs posed). That's just what I can think of off the top of my head, I wouldn't be surprised if there's more. If he had done something differently at even just *one* of these points, it's possible that Voldemort would never have gotten a chance to terrorize the WW.
Re: don't mind me, got a little carried away here...
Date: 2010-10-16 06:18 am (UTC)And others explained what the problem was with the orphanage visit - not that it happened, that was all good and proper, but that what Albus learned about Tom's character remained secret.