The house of ambition?

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

Hi, everyone! I do need to chime in on the excellent post on feminsim below--but I just wanted to point out another wildly illogical facet of these books.

I wasn't the first person to notice this, by a long shot. I think Terri said something about it (more than once) and so did Cardigrl, back when she was still on livejournal. But it's worth pointing out again.

Consider that you are a child with--shall we say, unusual talents? Consider that, as scared as you and those around you might be by those talents, you bring them intact to your eleventh birthday. Then you find out you're a wizard.

Rather than rejecting the message, you enter a brand-new world. Can you imagine how that would feel? I know, I know: we were supposed to experience this along with Harry, but he was not actually a Muggleborn, and he did have faint memories (shown in his dreams) of the wizarding world. His home life was also so dreadful (even if played for laughs) that learning that he was special, privileged, talented, and so on had to seem like an escape.

But picture an actual Muggleborn boy or girl entering the wizarding world for the first time. Picture Hermione, for example. Why on earth wasn't she in Slytherin house, if the Slytherins are supposed to be goal-oriented and ambitious? Is there anyone in canon more ambitious than Hermione?

If the wizarding world were logical, far from being the hotbed of purebloods, Slytherin house should have a higher than average percentage of Muggleborns and half-bloods. It should also have a higher than average percentage of working-class kids like young Severus. Instead, Rowling gives us the racist house full of rich people and their retainers. Which makes no kind of sense. In a logical world, as Cardigrl pointed out so many years ago, the racist house full of establishment types would be--

(drumroll)

Gryffindor!

Comments

[torchedsong.livejournal.com]

I have to run, so I'll edit a better response later, but yes - JKR did confirm Lockhart as a Ravenclaw. It's in an article titled "Gilderoy Lockhart" on Pottermore. It's also on the Harry Potter wiki page for him.

Lockhart is such a Gryffindor to me that I can't fathom how JKR sees him as a Ravenclaw, but JKR and I have different opinions on many things. :p

Edit: Back home, and I agree with Ron's potential to be sorted in Slytherin. He has insecurity and jealousy issues, but he's also ambitious, competitive, and crafty at times. I think the Weasley twins could've made a good potential case for Slytherin as well. They're resourceful, devious, and determined to make something of themselves. They're jokers (or bullies depending on how you view them), but they have a surprising serious side they use to get ahead in life. Percy Weasley too.

I find it iffy that your family background can influence which house you end up in. The Weasley family in Gryffindor, the Malfoys in Slytherin, the Blacks in Slytherin (with the exception of Sirius), the Potters in Gryffindor, etc. I know family background influences who we are as people - it's inevitable. Nonetheless, it's a bit too simple to have multiple family members overwhelmingly placed into one house. At least we had the example of the Patil twins being placed in separate houses - Parvati in Gryffindor and Padma in Ravenclaw.

Ron and Hermione being in Gryffindor also makes it easier for JKR to write the trio as close friends. Since they share a house, they'll be spending a lot more time together. I can understand why she placed the trio all in Gryffindor, but I would've liked to see more variety among the Slytherins.

[sunnyskywalker]

I think the obvious conclusion is that Lockhart Obliviated everyone who remembered which House he was really in and only pretends to be an intellectual Ravenclaw. Or maybe he Obliviated the real Lockhart and stole his identity! ;-)

[torchedsong.livejournal.com]

Ha, well JKR did write on Lockhart's Pottermore article that the one and only spell he had a real ability for was the Memory Charm. Maybe Lockhart really was flinging around convenient Memory Charms left and right, not only to steal other people's achievements and modify them to his own, but to reinvent himself as a witty and original Ravenclaw. :p

Speaking of the article, she does write this about Lockhart and his Ravenclaw status:

Sorted into Ravenclaw house, Lockhart was soon achieving good marks in his schoolwork, but there was always a kink in his nature that made him increasingly unsatisfied. If he was not first and best, he would rather not participate at all. Increasingly, he directed his talents towards short cuts and dodges. He valued learning not for its own sake, but for the attention it brought him. He craved prizes and awards. He lobbied the Headmaster to start a school newsletter, because he liked nothing better than to see his name and photograph in print.

So he didn't care about learning, he wanted the glory and attention he would receive from succeeding in his endeavors. Doesn't sound very Ravenclaw to me, but not every character fits their house perfectly. I suppose I should be astounded JKR didn't use the excuse of Lockhart being a cowardly liar to place him in Slytherin with the rest of the characters she doesn't want us to like....

[jana-ch.livejournal.com]

I agree about Lockhart being a Gryff. For those who argue that he showed himself to be a coward in Book Two, I say that he was a coward as an adult, but he was Sorted at eleven. Back then I’m sure he really wanted to go out and fight monsters in proper Gryffindor fashion. But when he tried it, he discovered that monster-fighting takes more than courage; it also takes competence. So he switched over to memory charms.

Another wizard who is disguising his House is Professor Dumbledore. That manipulative master of politics—who won awards and corresponded with adult scholars as a schoolboy, and dreamed of world conquest as a rebellious teen—is obviously a Slytherin. But after the disaster with Gellert and Ariana, he repudiated the House of Ambition and spent his life trying to crush Slytherin as the source of all evil. By the time Hermione came to Hogwarts, he had disguised his history enough that she had just “heard” that the Headmaster was a Gryffindor. She clearly hadn’t found it in any written record or (being Hermione) she would have quoted chapter and verse. This muddying of the record was made easy because Dumbledore was in Gryffindor: Aberforth Dumbledore. And no one ever remembers Aberforth.

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

Yes! Dumbledore is obviously a Slytherin, and Aberforth is equally obviously a Gryffindor! I love it!

[jana-ch.livejournal.com]

Aberforth is equally suited to Hufflepuff, but him being a Gryff slots so perfectly into the story of Albus successfully disguising his own House that it tips the scales in favor of the Lions rather than the Badgers for Abe.