Have you all seen this post by Shyfoxling?

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

I'm Dreamwidth friends with her so I noticed she was exploring Pottermore.

What she found was this.

I left a comment at the bottom of the page with my initial thoughts, but now I'm torn between that and WHYYY DID ROWLING THINK THIS NEEDED TO BE EXPANDED UPON?!

Still more credence for the theory that Rowling has the mental maturity of a twelve-year-old?

Comments

[robina1984.livejournal.com]

Well, before plumbing, they had to do something, right? And honestly, it doesn't sound that bad, looking at the time period. The real question is: if they could just make stuff disappear, why switch to plumbing? Possibly the stench stuck around even after the offending substance vanished?

[darth-eldritch.livejournal.com]

Maybe they don't even lift their robes.

OMG, too funny. I was thinking the same.

[oryx_leucoryx]

So real wizards go commando?

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

Isn't that canon? I vaguely recall some wizard boasting about it.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Archie at the QWC wanted a healthy breeze about his privates, which is why he wore a dress when he tried to go in Muggle clothes. OTOH Severus was wearing underwear when he was assaulted by James and Sirius. (Did the popularity of Levicorpus change wizard fashion?). Oh, Ron has underwear, which Hermione washes in DH.

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

It's entirely possible. I know it was referenced in Terri Testing's old fic "Liberacorpus."

[melaniedavidson.livejournal.com]

...I don't think I'd trust untrained* students to be ABLE to do that without accidentally making it huge or exploding it or something.

*Hur, hur.

[hwyla.livejournal.com]

This is unbelievable! It isn't even historically correct.

LONG before actual 'plumbing' arrived, castles had separate rooms for the necessary relieving of one's self. Usually referred to as the 'garde-robe' or sometimes as a 'privy'.

They were often no more than a seat of stone (or fancy ones might have wood on top of the stone of the castle wall) with a hole that overhangs into open air - jutting out from the castle wall, sometimes over a moat. Now - it should be admitted that there might be more than one seat in a room, so you might be sitting with other people (just as you do in the new-fangled plumbing-equipped bathrooms of today's Hogwarts - just without dividing partitions. But that is little different from the wall of urinals in a men's room.

Note that by the time of Henry VIII, the 'necessary' at Hampton Court even had brick-lined drains which took the 'waste to the River Thames - so Hogwarts wouldn't have needed to wait until the 18th century to get 'plumbing' - the facilities just wouldn't have 'flushed'. But we have a canon spell for making water pour out of one's wand, so that would have been enough. Altho' I'm sure the merfolk would have complained about anything emptying into the Lake.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Vanishing spells are taught in 5th year. What did the younger students do? Did they leave messes for the house-elves to clean up?

[oryx_leucoryx]

this was a rare instance of wizards copying Muggles

A rare case? What about the train? Newspapers? Printing presses? A significant part of wizarding technology is derived from the Muggle version, with some silly magic stuff on top.

BTW is her timing of 18th century correct? I just read terry Pratchett's Dodger, which is set in the early years of Queen Victoria's realm and richer folk flushing their waste into the sewers (designed by the Romans as storm drains) is described as something relatively new.

[ladyzenobia.livejournal.com]

...Slytherin was forced out of the school by the other three founders

Ah, so he didn't leave because the other founders were letting muggleborns in. He was actually forced out. I wonder why? Could be that he was getting too obsessed with the dark arts, but the sorting hat does say that all four founders were locked in a bitter power struggle and the hat should know, having been there. So did they gang up on Slytherin, or what?

[annoni-no.livejournal.com]

If he were actively forced out by the other three for whatever intolerable offense(s), why did they keep his House as part of the school instead of splitting up his students among the three remaining founders? Rowling's original explanation via the Sorting Hat makes so much more sense. Slytherin left on his own due to the schisms that had developed after the school was established. His colleagues still respected him though, and all parties probably had regrets that situation hadn't been resolved more satisfactorily. So his House was maintained as a tribute to their old friend in honor of his contributions.

This idea that all three of the 'good' founders ganged up on the 'evil' (and foreign-sounding!) Slytherin leaves the same nasty aftertaste as, and textually reinforces, the concept that all children sorted into Slytherin at age 11 are inherently and irredeemably wicked.

Can an author be guilty of historical revisionism in her own fantasy world?

[oryx_leucoryx]

Can an author be guilty of historical revisionism in her own fantasy world?

Isn't that called retconning?

Some authors are more open about it than others. "There are no continuity errors in the Discworld novels. There are, however, alternate pasts" - Terry Pratchett. (And of course, in his 'verse there are in-universe reasons for the multiple-pasts.)

[maidofkent.livejournal.com]

Or just hasn't remembered what she originally wrote. This version of events interestingly echoes the 'sacking' of Severus Snape. I notice that Salazar displayed stone snakes as emblems of his power - how unlike a griffin door-knocker on the entrance to the head master's office, or a sword hung up in the same office.


As to plumbing, the first English flush loo was invented in the sixteenth century, but they didn't catch on until the nineteenth, and modern sewerage systems were also nineteenth century. Bazalgette designed the London sewers after the 'Great Stink' of 1858. Before that, people had earth closets, garderobes, cesspits, or used open sewers to discharge into rivers. I can't imagine why wizards didn't use chamber pots, and why vanishing of waste was discarded in favour of a plumbing system which appears to end up polluting the lake.

Is there anything wizards have in day to day use that they haven't copied from Muggles?

[kahran042]

Or just hasn't remembered what she originally wrote.

Considering that she apparently doesn't reread her writing, that would make sense.

[aikaterini.livejournal.com]

/This idea that all three of the 'good' founders ganged up on the 'evil' (and foreign-sounding!) Slytherin leaves the same nasty aftertaste as, and textually reinforces, the concept that all children sorted into Slytherin at age 11 are inherently and irredeemably wicked./

Which once again leads to the question of how and why Slytherin still exists, if all of its students are supposedly evil. If that’s the case, if their House is so tainted by the bigotry of its Founder that all of its students must be inherently evil, then why even *have* Slytherin House anymore? Why not just stop those kids from learning magic if they’re supposedly so evil? Or Sort them into other Houses so that the other kids can "reform" them?

[oryx_leucoryx]

The others are keeping their enemies close. They want to watch them, but not be involved with them.

Except when things are different, of course. Pansy and Parvati were on first name basis in 1st year, and in GOF the Hufflepuffs collaborated with the Slytherins in the 'Potter stinks' campaign.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Oh, another thing: So at least in the 18th century there were Gaunts at Hogwarts. I wonder if the last 2 generations of them still went there or if they preferred homeschooling. Was Dumbles teaching when Merope attended Hogwarts (if she did) in the 1920s, or was he still researching alchemy?

[ladyzenobia.livejournal.com]

I always assumed the Gaunts didn't have the money to go to Hogwarts or for homeschooling either. They look completly uneducated. But of course that's Rowling beating us over the head with a sign saying "inbreeding is evil" so maybe they weren't that bad off. They knew basic spells, after all. But they lived in a hovel and didn't seem to have any money, so how could they go to Hogwarts? I know there's a fund and everything, but it seems to be to help students pay for books, robes etc. Don't they have to pay for tuition?

[maidofkent.livejournal.com]

I assume it's like a UK state school or US public school and funded by the government (in this case the Ministry). Muggle schools are funded via taxation, but we don't know if this exists in the WW. I think Whitehound suggests that Hogwarts could be funded on donations, and investment in property, as Oxbridge colleges used to be. At any rate, no one mentions having to pay tuition fees.

[oryx_leucoryx]

There is no mention of tuition in the books, only of purchasing of books, uniforms, etc. And we know there is a fund for needy students, which is how the orphan Tom Riddle was able to buy his school equipment.

[night-axe.livejournal.com]

No surprise that wizards haven't figured out what medieval Muggles knew about the uses of human urine and feces in agriculture and (the former) in the tanning and textile industries. Tons of valuable fertilizer vanished. What a waste. *rimshot*

What I want to know is where stuff goes after you vanish it. Are its atoms dispersed in the earth's atmosphere? In that case I'ld guess we're breathing more poo than oxygen by now. Or does it go into another dimension? Is there a parallel universe full of wizarding crap? These people just don't care, do they.
/Dept. of Overthinking

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

Isn't that always the way of these things? Rowling tries to expand upon something that doesn't need to be expanded upon, and the end result is that the "answers" she provides just raise more questions!

[kahran042]

I'd say that it either suggests that she has the mental maturity of a twelve-year-old, assumes her audience does, or a little of both.

[sunnyskywalker]

Wait, wait. Didn't Dumbledore say in GoF that he'd found the RoR as a room full of chamberpots? Are we really supposed to believe that his default image of "place to go to the bathroom" is a chamberpot because his mother used one as a girl in the Muggle world (assuming she came from somewhere which hadn't gotten plumbing yet - probably a safe assumption)? Did she introduce them to the Dumbledore home for the kiddies? Or, if it's Hogwarts itself interpreting "place to go to the bathroom" as "room full of chamberpots," then why does the castle think of chamberpots if they were never wizarding standard?

Because it just plain makes more sense if chamberpots were still in common use in the wizarding world in Dumbledore's youth. Some places might have fancy plumbing, but most people still used chamberpots. Possibly wizarding chamberpots had charms on them which automatically vanished human waste (and perhaps only human waste).

[oryx_leucoryx]

The entire story sounds forced, like something Dumbles came up with in order to let Harry know about the ROR (perhaps Harry would have worked out the riddle of the egg much sooner if he had gone to the ROR). I don't believe for one second that Dumbles actually paced back and forth 3 times in a random corridor instead of heading towards the nearest bathroom he knew of. Besides, according to Pottermore updates he got the Mirror of Erised from the ROR, so he obviously knew about the room already, so at least the part about the room appearing where he didn't know there was supposed to be one is a lie.

[sunnyskywalker]

Which still leaves us with the weirdness of why he picked that story. He researched ancient Muggle waste disposal (or dredged up a childhood memory, possibly of hearsay from Kendra), decided that it would make a suitably amusing anecdote and that Harry would recognize the reference, and then dangled the story in front of Harry? That's convoluted even for Dumbledore. It makes more sense as both a real or a completely made-up story if chamberpots were something in common wizarding historical memory.

[malic-ba.livejournal.com]

Is it possible that Dumbledore isn't aware of modern plumbing, and thinks that Harry would recognise the reference because that's what his Muggle family would have?
I agree, it's still a reach ...

[nx74defiant.livejournal.com]

Given the outdated condescending view Wizards have of Muggles that would actually make sense.

[sunnyskywalker]

It might! He supposedly reads Muggle newspapers, but (a) we don't know how thoroughly he actually reads them, and (b) my newspaper doesn't mention plumbing very often, so who knows what conclusions he could have formed from incomplete data. A column with an offhand joke about chamberpots might have gone totally over his head and given him the impression that we actually use the things.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Good thing he isn't a Pratchett fan, he would have called it a 'guzzunder' (that which 'goes under' - the bed), leaving Harry very confused indeed.

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

I contend that just about *all* the staff know about the Room of Hidden Things. What they don't realize is that the room has other guises. The House Elves know about the Room that Provides (aka the Come and Go Room), but they probably never were asked so never volunteered the information.

Still doesn't explain Albus pacing back and forth the same stretch of corridor while aiming for the bathroom, though.

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

Make that a four-year-old. They are the ones obsessed with poopy jokes.

Honestly, how crass. The other things that stood out - no surprise! - was the denigration of Salazar Slytherin and the putting down of Muggles. Honestly, Wizards copy Muggles all the time!