[ SECRET POST #2262 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2262 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 040 secrets from Secret Submission Post #323.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 1 - not!fandom ], [ 1 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Oh God. No wonder fans get so defensive about house elves being slaves. I guess it's not "Slavery is not OK" that JK Rowling was trying to say. She was saying, "Slavery is OK if you're nice to your slaves; if you're an asshole to your slaves, you don't deserve them."

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think she had any message about slavery. If she had wanted to make a message about slavery, she wouldn't have created a race that likes being enslaved, because that makes the situation fundamentally different from anything we see in real life.

[(Anonymous)]

I didn't get the impression there was a message about slavery either. To me, the parts about the House-elves read a lot more like a comment on class, and on the British relationship to class, especially the working class including (duh) servants. (I'm not British, so I'd really love to hear the opinions on this of someone who is, in case I'm way off the mark here.)

[(Anonymous)]

What class in British society are like House Elves?

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

You mean in reality? None that I know of.

In fiction, though, I keep coming across servants who take pride in ... (1) serving Good Families from the upper classes, and being very loyal to them; (2) never making any demands for themselves; (3) "belonging" to a house (such as in Wilde's "The Canterville Ghost", for example) or coming from a family that has served another family for generations, basically being born into the job (well, they could refuse, but that would mean outright rebellion) - I seem to recall this showing up in Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day, but it's a long time since I read it. The House Elves seem like an extreme version of these things.

[(Anonymous)]

Not British, but from everything I've gathered British society is very class conscious, has been for a long time.

Anyways, there was a point when [again, from what I've been able to gather] the servants were sort of like the house elves. They weren't slaves by any means, but there was a definite difference that struck me as being very similar to how the house elves [aside from Dobby] were portrayed in the books.

[(Anonymous)]

That's exactly what she's (probably unintentionally) saying. It's a fantasy where there's a race whose natural state is to be enslaved and they're happier that way and that's the rightful order of things. And good people like the hero of the book make the best masters. Nothing ethically weird about owning another person at all, if they're happy. That doesn't map on to human history at all.

The whole story's also weirdly conflicted, with the one anti-slavery person first not being able to make a case for why slavery is wrong, and then changing her whole position without admitting it.