Point of clarification...?

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

So I was rereading scenes from HBP for an upcoming essay I have planned, when I came across this line:

"They [the orphans] looked reasonably well-cared for, but there was no denying that this was a grim place in which to grow up." (HBP, 268)

The question is: is it to the orphanage's discredit that the place is grim? Or is it Voldemort's? Or else is it just another way of stressing how overly important and powerful death is that all orphans must be miserable every second so matter how they're treated?

Ideas, anyone?

Comments

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

I'm sure I'm giving Rowling too much credit for engaging in historical research, but British orphanages in the the 1920s to '40s really were horrible places. At that time there was a fashion in child-rearing that said babies shouldn't be cuddled or given too much attention because it "spoiled" them. Fortunately for human sanity, most mothers ignored that nonsense and cuddled their babies, but in British orphanages the rules were strictly followed. Babies were only given the minimal amount of attention necessary to feed and change them, then they were put back in their cribs and left alone the rest of the time. Many babies died from this neglect, which is euphemistically called "failure to thrive."

This went on for years until somebody made an accidental observation: In one orphanage, there was a cleaning woman who broke the rules and cuddled and sang to the babies. Somebody noticed that the babies she gave extra attention to were healthier and lived longer than the babies who didn't receive that extra attention. That led to a change in the rules, and people went back to cuddling babies.

John Bowlby tells this story somewhere in his Attachment and Loss Series.

Contrast that story with this one: Last year the American TV network ABC ran a special about psychopaths and what makes their brains different from normal people's brains. The last segment was about a scientist who studied murderers and their brains. He'd gotten interested in the subject because there were several murderers in his family tree. He looked at his own brain and found out he had a murderer's brain! Yet he was a loving husband and father and a successful, highly-respected professional who'd never committed any crimes in his life.

In considering why he hadn't "gone bad" when so many other people had, he realized he'd come from a very close, loving family in which he'd been pampered and adored by many people from an early age. He decided that that love and support had been great enough to overcome his innate tendencies to violence.

If Baby Tom had been adopted by such a family, there might never have been a Voldemort. That would make an interesting AU fanfic. How would Tom have turned out, what would he have done with his life, if he had grown up to be a normal person?

Also

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

Would love your citation if you can find it--I know there were such recommendations, but not when precisely they were being made, nor the extent to which institutions (as opposed to parents) followed them.

However, even if not.... Mrs. Cole and her underlings were being run off their feet trying to feed, clothe, and keep clean the orphans, making sure their basic physical needs were met without enough money or (in consequence) staff. Playing and cuddling with the babies--who would have time? (Maybe some of the older kids, in fact, if they were allowed--in the orphanage in Daddy-Long-Legs, ca. nineteen-teens, older children helped with younger. But then, another literary reference, Tillie Olsen's "I Stand Here Ironing" has a child sent to a 1930's sanitorium disallowed contact with her parents and separated from a fellow patient because they'd become attached.... And these are both American referents.)

Some babies would demand attention by being fussy or would win it by being too cute to ignore, but Tom apparently had attachment problems from the beginning. And in such a situation, even if the staff didn't subscribe to theories that babies shouldn't be "spoiled," a baby that didn't seem to want or need physical affection wouldn't get it....

Re: Also

[oryx_leucoryx]

Then there was Janusz Korczak - pediatrician, teacher, designer of the orphanages he ran. One never leaves the bedside of a sick child. (That was, reportedly, his explanation for his choice to die with his orphans rather than take the Nazis' repeated offers to save him alone.)

[pearlette.livejournal.com]

The question is: is it to the orphanage's discredit that the place is grim? Or is it Voldemort's? Or else is it just another way of stressing how overly important and powerful death is that all orphans must be miserable every second so matter how they're treated?

Ideas, anyone?

Well, it's a trope. A very common one. Orphans and orphanages. Oliver Twist, Jane Eyre, etc etc etc etc etc.

JKR isn't trying to be historically accurate because her Muggle Britain is not really meant to be the real Britain -- I should know, I live in the real UK, and I can tell when JKR is inventing geography in the books. It's quite obvious to a British reader, she's not trying to pull the wool over anyone's eyes. Here she is simply drawing on an accepted cliche.

But, yes, as the above posters have said, real historical orphanages in Britain and Ireland ranged from being decently run to downright bloody horrible.