OOTP Chapter Nine: "The Woes of Mrs. Weasley"

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

* Mr. Weasley insists that they couldn’t have found Harry guilty based on the evidence. Why do all these people maintain their faith in the wizarding justice system? This applies double for Mr. Weasley, since he (a) has the example of Sirius for someone who was wrongfully convicted, and (b) helps petty criminals evade justice on a regular basis.

* “Muggle-baiting might strike some wizards as funny.” Possibly because they’ve got relatives whose first response to Muggle-related problems is to wipe their memories, eh, Arthur?

* Lucius Malfoy again showing off his dislike for Harry in the most ridiculously unsubtle way. Remind me again, where did he get his reputation for Machiavellian cunning from?

* Mr. Malfoy is, of course, quite right that Arthur spends a lot of his time “sneaking Muggle artefacts home and bewitching them”; once again, though, we’re expected to treat him like a horrible person for pointing out the truth.

* We’re probably meant to infer from the clinking of gold that Mr. Malfoy was trying to bribe the Minister, but I don’t think so. After all, a cunning politician such as Lucius wouldn’t just carry his bribe around like… Actually, wait, no, let’s not forget that this is a JK Rowling book, after all. Of course her characters would go around doing stupid things like that.

* Personally speaking, I’d rather manipulate the government by making generous donations to charity than by perverting the course of justice, but hey, that’s just me.

* “Dumbledore thinks that Fudge is acting of his own accord at the moment” – given that this is the man who failed to notice that one of his staff members was an impostor for the best part of an academic year, I’m not sure we can really trust his opinion on this matter.

* Again people seem to be assuming that wizards give a toss for due process and the rule of law, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

* Ron seems happy that Dumbledore’s intervention got Harry off, as opposed to worried that simply having a celebrity on your side is enough to swing it for you, or about what happens to people who Dumbledore doesn’t believe (guess he can ask Sirius about that last one).

* Fred and George’s chant is really annoying. If I didn’t know better, I’d assume they were twelve rather than seventeen.

* Once again, I can’t help but think that living in No. 12 can’t be worse than Sirius' experiences in Azkaban. Nevertheless, it is No. 12 that makes him all surly and moody, whereas he manages to stay (relatively) sane in Azkaban. Consistency? What’s that?

* It’s not surprising that Dumbledore can’t find anyone to fill the Defence post “when you look at what happened to the last four”. Err, shouldn’t that be the last twenty or so at least? (I don’t think we’re ever told exactly when Voldemort curses the DADA position, but it has to be before he starts his anti-Ministry war, which in turn must be a few years before Harry was born. Which makes me think – wasn’t it a bit irresponsible of Lily and James to have a child whilst involved on covert work for the Order of the Phoenix? They could have got killed at any time, and then who would look after the baby?)

* “‘Ron?’ said Hermione, her jaw dropping. ‘But… are you sure?’” Well done, Hermione, way to make Ron feel proud of his achievement. Clearly that girl respects him a lot. Of such things successful relationships are made.

* If the Weasleys can afford to buy Ron a new broom for becoming prefect, they either (a) don’t have much financial sense, or (b) aren’t as poor as they make everybody think.

* Nice to see Fred and George undermining Ron like that even before he gets to school. What a charming pair they are.

* Note how Hermione’s speaking “tentatively”, as if she’s worried Harry will lose his temper again. How on earth could the Prophet possibly make him look unbalanced?

* If Harry had thought about it, he’d have expected Dumbledore to make him a prefect. Well, I suppose being treated like the centre of the universe for four years is likely to do that to someone.

* Harry thinks indignantly that Ron and Hermione didn’t do as much as him, forgetting that this was usually because they’d already been injured helping him.

* It’s sad, but this probably is the first time Ron’s beaten Harry at something. And the last time. And even this time, Dumbledore later says that he’d have given the prefecture to Harry if Harry didn’t have so much to worry about anyway, so it doesn’t really count. Still, enjoy it while you can, Weasley: it’s the closest you’ll get to beating Harry at something. Ever.

* “I never thought it would be me! I thought it would be you!” Why is everyone acting like Ron and Harry are the only two boys in Gryffindor House? What about Neville, Dean and Seamus? Couldn’t Dumbledore have given the badge to one of them?

* Probably a good idea for Ron to lock his prefect badge away, given what Fred and George used to do to Percy’s.

* The trouble with using fantastic racism as a stand-in for real racism, as JKR seems to be doing with Hermione’s views on house-elves and werewolves, is that Potterverse races literally are different in a way that real-world races aren’t. Segregating people because of their skin colour = wrong. Segregating people because they regularly turn into dangerous animals = rather sensible, actually. Similarly with house-elves: they (or at least all of them apart from Dobby) literally want to be slaves, and literally cannot cope without a master or mistress telling them what to do. If Rowling wants to make some heavy-handed points about racism, she should probably find better analogues.

* “It all stems from this horrible thing wizards have of thinking they’re superior to other creatures,” says the girl who’ll end the series mind-wiping her parents and sending them to Australia.

* Buying illegal products in the same room as everybody else seems a bit incautious, I must say. Couldn’t they at least go to another room to do it?

* So even Kingsley is assuming that Harry was the natural choice for the prefecture, despite his insularity and lack of any real leadership skills whatsoever.

* I wonder if anybody deliberately buys brooms where the vibration control’s a bit dodgy…?

* The people in the photo have no idea they’re dead, unlike Percy, whose picture apparently knows that he’s had an argument with his father… Consistency? What consistency?

* This boggart scene just serves to illustrate how bad Lupin’s lesson on them in Book 3 was. “Defeat boggarts with laugher” is all very well when it turns into a variety of wacky monsters, but it’s quite hard to see the funny side in – say – all your family being horribly murdered.

* And now the long slog through the pre-Hogwarts chapters is finally over. Doing this read-through, I can’t help but think that OOTP is disgracefully padded.

 

Comments

[sunnyskywalker]

Which only goes to show how REALLY BADLY this works as an analogy for racism, which is how she set it up. If she'd set it up as a parallel to animal rights, it would probably be fine. But she explicitly set it up as the enslavement of sentient creatures... and then concluded that they liked it. Which if you take the analogy back around to the original it's supposed to remind you of, is just... ick.

[xerox78.livejournal.com]

ITA. I've seen a lot of readers equate house elf to American slavery, which I've never liked. Not because house elf slavery is "better" than human/American slavery, but because the writing doesn't live up to the comparison.

On one end is the opinion that the house elves like being slaves and nothing should change. Oh, and be nice to them so they don't set you up to be killed (e.g. Sirius and Kreacher). On the other end, you have the opinion that slavery is wrong, period, and...the end.

Hermione is excited when she thinks the elves have taken her woolly bladders knitted hats and been freed. She never wonders what became of the supposedly freed elves. What would become of elves if they were freed? Would they be allowed to get jobs at the Ministry of Magic, on Diagon Alley, at Hogwarts? I mean other than menial jobs or something dangerous like a Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes guinea pig or some kind of "spell tester" who could end up like Luna's mother. Would they ever be allowed to attend Hogwarts? Or do they just end up doing the same thing somewhere else like Dobby? Would they ever get the same rights as wizards or are they "separate but equal"? If house elves love to cook and clean and serve, could they start their own housekeeping service? What if Rose or Hugo invited his/her boy/girlfriend for dinner and (s)he turned out to be an elf? Guess who's coming to dinner, indeed!

It took a century between the abolishment of American slavery and black Americans being lawfully considered full citizens with all the rights of white Americans, and that was with tons of people actively working for it. How long would it take with everyone happy with the status quo and the few who aren't not thinking below the surface? Judging from the treatment of giants, half-giants, werewolves, squibs, etc., it will probably never happen.

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

"What if Rose or Hugo invited his/her boy/girlfriend for dinner and (s)he turned out to be an elf?"

Then we might get a few more scenes like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NH7D_MIPHus&feature=fvwrel

(Also, are house-elves the same species as humans? It seems that they aren't, but then I'd have said the same about giants and goblins and they seem to be able to mate with humans, so IDK.)

[sharaz-jek.livejournal.com]

Blast-ended Skrewts. JKR doesn't have a frelling clue when it comes to biology.

[sunnyskywalker]

House-elf slavery (or whatever it is...) looks more like Roman household slavery than American, unless there are plantations we haven't seen. Which was still not a great institution! (And anyway, they had plantations and mines too, with gazillions of slaves.) But they also had a sort of system to handle freed slaves, which doesn't occur to Hermione. Even if we posit that she is thinking of American-style slavery, American abolitionists at least tried to have a plan, sometimes - 40 acres and a mule didn't work out, but at least it was a plan. What did she think free elves were going to do? I guess you could say she thought she'd really convince a whole bunch of wizards that paying house-elves was a good idea, or that Hogwarts would hire them all, but that isn't much of a plan (what about the house-elves who, like the poor elf in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, don't like to make toys cook and clean?).

I still can't wrap my mind around the idea of writing that something is slavery, and then not bothering to resolve it one way or another. That's a big element to just throw in as window dressing.

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

This seriously puts a whole new level of creepy to this series.