Merope's Plight and Dumbledore's Analyses Revisited

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

So I was originally going to save this for my abridged series, but since I’m afraid I’ll forget if I leave it for that long, here it is now.

I know much has been made of the fact that Dumbledore essentially blames Merope for the whole Voldemort drama and says that she’s a coward just because she died. For her child. Uh-huh.

But anyway, Dumbledore most infamously declares Merope a coward because she happens to die in childbirth. As someone who abuses that trope (dying in childbirth, I mean) like a horribly addictive drug, especially in fanfic, I have a few thoughts on that.

What it really seems to boil down to is that Dumbledore thinks Merope should be blamed for even allowing Voldie to exist (whether this has any basis in Rowling’s head or if it’s entirely Dumbledore’s opinion is up for debate here). This actually kind-of reminds me of a headcanon I worked out for a particularly nasty villain I took a shine to awhile back. In my headcanon (which is neither confirmed nor denied by the original movie) this character has a mother who dies in childbirth much like Merope. The backstory is that her boyfriend/husband/whatever is dead and she wants to have a child to keep around in his memory. But she has a really difficult pregnancy and it kills her. If you were feeling philosophical, you could raise questions about whether she was in the right to go through with something which she had good reason to suspect would kill her, all for the sake of a child who ultimately grows up to be an evil jerk whom only a small proportion of the fandom even likes.

This of course assuming she could have known the last part (which she wouldn’t have, especially since in my stories I almost always shy away from determinism of any sort—psychology comes first in explaining a villain’s behavior).

So, where does Merope fit in with all this? Merope decides to have a child which ends up not only killing her, but growing up to be an evil jerk who kills a lot of people for no reason and loses his soul until his personality is that of a cardboard box. Here’s the thing, though: logically she could have had no idea what her child would go on to do. Assuming, that is, the determinism which the Harry Potter world just reeks of is something known only to Dumbledore and a few others.

What if determinism is common knowledge, though? What if, in reality, everyone has some inkling that things like moral virtue are inherited and your family really will determine what you act like for all eternity? If that’s the case then Merope might possibly have a clue that any children she had would be evil just because she was ugly, had a bad family, and was related to Salazar Slytherin. If, that is, she even had the intelligence to grasp the concept of determinism, fully believed in it and did not dismiss it as coincidence, and that she knew the scope of what Voldie would eventually do.

But whatever. Even assuming that all that is true and she clearly knew that her child, which she felt so compelled to die for, would do morally reprehensible things, then that might make her stupid, and it might make her selfish too (“my own heir is so much more important to me than the lives of all the innocent victims he’ll ultimately slaughter”) but it doesn’t make her cowardly. Not if she had any inkling that she might die (again, contrary to Rowling’s simplistic portrayal of things, bravery is not always good. It’s perfectly possible to be brave and evil).

This is one reason why TVTropes’ portrayal of Harry Potter makes me so furious. Voldemort is clearly who he is because of how evil his family supposedly was, yet they still insist that his behavior is traceable to nurture when it’s clearly meant to be nature!

Anyway, Dumbledore’s comments about Merope are not only mean-spirited; they just plain make no sense! But since he puts it out there that women who die in childbirth are cowardly, think about what that says about maternal mortality statistics worldwide.

Oh, and I apologize in advance if I offend anyone with anything below. It’s meant to be satire and I know very well that a high rate of dying in childbirth is a very bad thing.

Women in Afghanistan must be, in large part, Slytherins or otherwise cowardly, since they have the highest rate of maternal mortality in the sample.

Also, Africa is primarily comprised of Slytherins and cowards. Betcha didn’t know that (well there was a special magic snake Rowling makes mention of in “Fantastic Beasts,” which is originally from Burkina Faso; stay tuned, BTW)!

In addition, while American women are on the whole braver and more Gryffindorish than women in most developing nations, they still have an embarrassingly high rate of evil cowards and Slytherins compared to women in the majority of developed nations, including most of Europe, Japan, and South Korea.

But you wanna know some pure, brave, and true-hearted good countries? One such country is Greece! Women rarely die in childbirth there at all. I guess you’d have to be brave to live in Greece with all the Chimaeras and Manticores lurking around. Iceland is another one, so it looks like I’ll be well protected and looked after when I visit Iceland this summer, yes/yes?

Then again, I said I like Slytherins so maybe not. Fortunately I myself am extremely unlikely to die in childbirth since I don’t plan to ever have kids.

Note: most of this information is based on statistics that the CIA world factbook published in 2008, so I don’t know how reliable it is now. But it seemed to work well enough for my purposes.

Comments

[wolf-willow31.livejournal.com]

Voldemort is clearly who he is because of how evil his family supposedly was, yet they still insist that his behavior is traceable to nurture when it’s clearly meant to be nature!

So they want to think it's just a coincidence that he was the Heir of Slytherin, as well as an offspring of the evil, degenerate Gaunts and some stupid rich muggles? And he was just evil because his cowardly mother didn't bother to stick around to nurture him properly? Like Harry's mother didn't? Or was it that wonderful nurturing that Harry got from the Dursleys that made the difference for him. Or the nurturing that Harry got from Dumbles (but Tom didn't). *head spins*

[aikaterini.livejournal.com]

Maybe they think that the “nurture” part either comes from the fact that Tom grew up in a dreary orphanage (even though Mrs. Cole told Dumbledore that Tom was a ‘funny baby’) or from the fact that at Hogwarts, he was “spoiled” because all of the teachers except Dumbledore liked him. Except that if it’s the latter, then the responsibility still falls on Dumbledore’s shoulders because he didn’t tell anybody about what he learned about Tom from the orphanage.

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

"Maybe they think that the “nurture” part either comes from the fact that Tom grew up in a dreary orphanage (even though Mrs. Cole told Dumbledore that Tom was a ‘funny baby’)"

The overwhelming opinion seems to be that if you think that Voldemort suffered in the orphanage you're a mindless Voldie fangirl who fails to appreciate how evil he really is--but we're still supposed to believe that something about Voldemort's past makes him evil. Granted, since this is a fully-editable Wiki, chances are there's multiple opinions going around, but even so....

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

Well, that's just stupid. It shows how irrational are our opponents. It's possible to have compassion for the abuse and neglect someone suffered as a child while not giving hir a pass for hir atrocious adult behavior. For example, it's a fact that Hitler and Ted Bundy were horribly abused and neglected as children, which is horrible. I wish they'd both grown up in loving, stable homes. That doesn't mean they weren't both thoroughly evil and dangerous, or that they weren't fully responsible for being a genocidal maniac or serial killer, respectively.

It's a mark of immature psychological development to believe everything is either/or. It requires maturity to realize most situations are both/and.

[aikaterini.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, I remember reading a short fanfic/drabble about Tom's early years in the orphanage. I don't remember what it was called, but it was told in the style of a case report. Basically, each 'report' detailed the extensive injuries that Tom sustained as a result of his run-ins with the other boys at the orphanage. I could be mistaken, but I think that one of the 'case files' mentioned an attempted exorcism on Tom as well. However, I am almost positive that the story generated a little controversy since many people were not happy with the story and what it implied about Tom. The author had to repeatedly defend his/her work, repeatedly asking the LJ users, "What, you don't think that this could have happened?" and for a lot of people, the answer was no. Basically, they didn't like the story because it presented Tom as a victim, not as an innately evil monster.

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

Do you have any memory of where I could find this fic? I think I'd quite like to read it.

Incidentally, I'm facing a similar problem. Because I love to write fanfiction about villains, and at least a couple of the villains I've taken a shine to have been evil monsters, in a sense. And I'm worried about writing them from a sympathetic viewpoint because there are people out there who want to deny that they could possibly be in any way sympathetic.

It's why I no longer like the Complete Monster designation that TVTropes uses. Because noting how evil a character is is one thing, but if a character is deemed to qualify as such that's often understood to shut down any and all more sympathetic alternative interpretations, with the only hope of "redemption" in the eyes of the fandom being to get expressly shown from a sympathetic viewpoint in canon.

Case in point: the villain I referenced in this article. Basically, I ran into someone on DeviantArt who went on about how he MUST have been an inherently evil monster, because he had no bad past that was ever shown in the movie. They're basically insinuating that because he never got a backstory in the movie he didn't deserve one at all, because he was so totally evuhl.

[kahran042]

Glad I'm not alone there. It might help me feel a little less helpless on TV Tropes, knowing that there are other people who feel that way.

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

As much as I enjoy reading TV Tropes, I find the some of the "Fan Dumb" there to be just ridiculous. It's one of the reasons that I avoid the HP page. It would probably just make my blood boil.

[kahran042]

I wish I had your willpower. I try to avoid them, but there's just a certain warped desire that makes me want to see just how dumb they are.

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

And did they meet your expectations? I am kind of curious what kinds of stupid things you have come across. Bile fascination, I guess.

[kahran042]

Indeed, they do. Just the usual stuff, though - basically, just echoing the Jo-groupie party line, but there are some pretty obnoxious little things attached, like having the word "people" written entirely in insulting potholes or including snide little comments towards people who dare to have different opinions than the narrative voice. It's the type of thing that I can't really explain.

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

I've noticed that they treat Snape like a common villain. As in, I've seen him appear on the Draco in Leather Pants page, the Cry for the Devil Page, and so on. The things they say regarding Snape and his past are the sorts of "it's not really his fault he's a bad person, but..." things that I often see associated with tragic villains like Cyrus from Pokemon or Mao from Code Geass; not from good people who just happen to be not-nice. And the Cry for the Devil thing is even more infuriating because that trope is CLEARLY reserved for villains; in fact, even Asuka from Neon Genesis Evangelion, one of the most infamous Jerkass Woobies in anime culture, doesn't appear on that page because she's simply not a villain (to be fair, that bit's been edited since, but still).

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, I remember reading a short fanfic/drabble about Tom's early years in the orphanage. I don't remember what it was called, but it was told in the style of a case report. Basically, each 'report' detailed the extensive injuries that Tom sustained as a result of his run-ins with the other boys at the orphanage. I could be mistaken, but I think that one of the 'case files' mentioned an attempted exorcism on Tom as well. However, I am almost positive that the story generated a little controversy since many people were not happy with the story and what it implied about Tom. The author had to repeatedly defend his/her work, repeatedly asking the LJ users, "What, you don't think that this could have happened?" and for a lot of people, the answer was no. Basically, they didn't like the story because it presented Tom as a victim, not as an innately evil monster.

Again, those people don't know what they're talking about. Decades of research into violent criminals have shown conclusively that, even though there is a strong hereditary component to violent psychopathy, the psychopath still has to have come from a severely abusive and neglectful environment for those violent tendencies to be activated, as in the cases I referenced above. I've also referred before to the prominent scientist who comes from a family of murderers, who grew up to be a loving husband and father and productive member of society because he came from a very nurturing family. To paraphrase an old saying, "Nature proposes; nurture disposes."