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

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

In my fiction "Liberacorpus," I posited that James drugged Lily at Sirius's 1979 Halloween party and screwed his wife while she was temporarily incapable of protecting herself from impregnation...It's the man's consent that counts.

As I'm sure you know, having sex with someone who's incapable of giving consent is rape, even more so if you've drugged them to incapacitate them. Granted, in the 1970s the concept of marital rape was still new, so it probably wouldn't have been considered rape then, particularly in such a backward society as the WW.

Nice sarcasm, BTW.

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

So... wait wait wait. If what you're saying is true, then this starts to look like an inversion of the idea that women can never rape men, but men can still rape women. What?!

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I don't understand what you're confused about. I was making a legal point. In the U. S., and I assume most civilized countries, it's considered rape to drug someone or get them drunk to have sex with them, or to have sex with someone who's drunk, stoned, or passed out. Although it's now legally possible for a man to rape his wife, that wasn't the case until well into the 1970s in the U. S. There was even a TV movie made about it called Rape in Marriage: The Rideout Case.

As for women raping men, while some people think it's impossible (not least because men always want it, no matter the circumstances /sarcasm), I certainly consider it a reality, particularly in the conditions listed above.

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

Sorry, that wasn't a very coherent response. What I'm trying to say is, that given that the prevailing mentality in many media seems to be that while it's possible for men to rape women, it's impossible for women to rape men, it is curious that Rowling will call out a woman for (possibly) drugging and raping a man, but at the same time the idea that a supposedly good man may have drugged and raped his wife is possible to extrapolate from the text, and Rowling doesn't seem to care about this.

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

I don't know that it can be extrapolated from the text. I know terri put that in her story, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's implied in canon. It's not that I can't see James doing that; I just don't know that the evidence he did do that is in the text. And if I'm not certain, you know Rowling never intended any such thing. Besides, in historical and cultural context, that wouldn't have been considered rape. Morally, and from a woman's POV, it might, but as terri says above, the man's consent is what counts.

[aikaterini.livejournal.com]

/it is curious that Rowling will call out a woman for (possibly) drugging and raping a man/

Does she, though? Maybe it's just been my experience, but most HP fans that I've seen who mention Merope condemn Tom Riddle Sr. for leaving her. After all, Merope's story takes place in the same book where Hermione and Ginny giggle when Molly tells them about the love potions that she made in her youth and where Romilda Vane's attempt to win Harry over by sending him treats laced in Amortentia is played for laughs. Unfortunately, this attitude has resulted in a lot of fanfics freely using a Love Potion as the catalyst for a romance.

I mean, maybe JKR does condemn Merope for "hoodwinking" Tom Riddle Sr. But I'm not so sure that the narrative makes it clear that what Merope did was wrong becuase she *raped* him. Another thing to note is that we never see any instance of men or boys wanting to use the Love Potion. In the HBP movie, we only see girls excitedly approach Slughorn's cauldron of Amortentia before being halted by Slughorn.

[nx74defiant.livejournal.com]

Maybe using magic decreases a man's sex drive?

Wizards don't seem to have a normal sex drive.

[granatapfelrot.livejournal.com]

That's getting depressing. No central heating, no cell phones, no mp 3-players, an incredibly embarrassing private messaging system and then it ruins the male's sex drive to learn something completely useless, like turning a porcupine into a pin-cushion.
No wonder, they're all batshit insane and overly aggressive.

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't care about cell phones or portable mini music players, but I do like other forms of modern technology, not to mention little things like civil rights, voting rights, and jury trials. And I've always wondered: Floo calls are supposed to be their version of phone calls, but what do you do if somebody doesn't have a fireplace? I've never lived in a home with a fireplace. Are we supposed to assume they all have fireplaces because they don't have central heating?

Maybe they have lower sex drives because, their protests to the contrary, their low-tech, unapologetically unjust world is harder to live in than ours, and the added stress saps their energy and makes them less interested in sex. Stress is a well-known killer of the sex drive.

[granatapfelrot.livejournal.com]

The Potterverse is a nasty little dystopia with nothing much to redeem it. Voldemort really wasn't their biggest problem, so you're likely right with the stress thing.
We were only shown the life of famous Harry Potter, his friends, foes and teachers. I shudder to think what little Miss Plain Muggleborn from Hufflepuff life must be like. We did see in canon, what happens to not rich, not good-looking Slytherins.
And no, I never lived anywhere with an open fireplace either. Don't you also have to stick your head into the fire to talk over the floo? What do people do who have problems with the knees or back?

[granatapfelrot.livejournal.com]

most HP fans that I've seen who mention Merope condemn Tom Riddle Sr. for leaving her.
Yeah, I've seen the same. In some people's simplistic world-view, rape seems to be something, that only occurs between an evil, brutal, sex-crazed guy and a pretty, nice and of course NOT promiscuous girl. If that's not the case then it's not rape, but something weird or funny(a male getting raped by a female gets almost always played for laughs) or vaguely embarrassing and dirty.
So Riddle Sr. ends up as this nasty guy who maliciously left his own kid.
Now, it wasn't little Tom's fault, what his mother did, but expecting Riddle to stay with his rapist and/or look after a child he never had a choice in having, is a bit much. Would Riddle throwing some money at Merope for little Tom's upkeep have been enough, or would only real parenting and being happy about it, do?
I fear the latter.
Just like Petunia obviously should have been overjoyed, to get her sister's magical brat foisted onto her, without so much as a by your leave.
I would really like to know, if those people themselves, would reallytake responsibility for a kid in similar circumstances, or if they're only talking big.

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

Maybe they're like those people who don't believe women should ever have abortions, but when the kids are born, they don't want to be bothered to take care of them, including providing welfare benefits or good public schools. I've seen that kind of anti-abortionist referred to as "pro-birth but not pro-life."