deathtocapslock | Some Assorted Questions and Comments on the Dursleys

1. Is Smeltings a boarding school or a day school? My first instinct is that it's a local private day school, mainly because Piers Polkiss, Dudley's neighborhood friend, also attends the school. But I've read a lot of fics in which it's a boarding school, so I'm not sure.

2. I have trouble pegging the Dursleys' social class. One the one hand, several factors lead me to believe that they are upper-middle class--Vernon has a white collar job and drives a company car; they have a four-bedroom house, and Dudley attends a private school. On the other hand, I feel like the Dursleys'behavior better fits the stereotype of a working class family. Vernon reminds me of Homer Simpson or Peter Griffin from Family Guy, and both of those characters are meant to be caricatures of working class men. It's possible that Vernon grew up in a working class family, but that doesn't quite make sense to me, either, because he also attended Smeltings. So, I know that the Dursleys are supposed to be caricatures, but I'm not sure whom they're supposed to be caricatures of. The problem might be simply that I'm American and not that familiar with British culture.

3. If the Dursleys were a real-life family in the UK, would they have been able to get away with forcing Harry to sleep in the cupboard under the stairs? I want to believe that, if anybody knew about the cupboard, they would have reported the family to social services, and I don't think it's very realistic that the Dursleys would have managed to keep Harry's sleeping arrangements a secret for eleven years. For instance, I imagine it would have been difficult for them to prevent Dudley's friends from finding out about the cupboard and saying something to their parents. But maybe I'm being too optimistic.

4. Rowling makes it sound like it's the worst thing in the world that Harry has to wear Dudley's old clothes. But it's actually perfectly normal for the younger/smaller children in a family to be given the hand-me-down clothes of their older/larger relatives. New clothes, especially school uniforms, are expensive, and children often outgrow their clothes long before wearing them out. Harry's clothes may have been baggy on him, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the Dursleys dressed him in rags.