There is no simple correlation between race and class in the HP books.
Malfoys - Rich, upper class, pureblood
Harry - rich, upper class, half-blood
Gaunts - impoverished, pureblood, class?
Snape - poor, working class, half-blood
Voldy - poor, half-blood, class?
Weasleys - not much money, middle class, pureblood
Hermione - comfortably off, middle class, muggleborn (mudblood)
Lily - same as Hermione
and so on.
Exit, pursued by a bear.
Well, I don’t feel there is much to address in your disagreement because mudblood and pure blood are clearly presented as racial terms:
Notice in this textual example the way people react as if Malfoy had spoken the N-word. There isn’t really a class equivalent. It is quite clear that Malfoy dislikes Hermione because she is a mudblood (a racial category), not strictly on grounds of class. Whereas in the first book, he rejects Weasley on class grounds, but accepts he is from a pure wizarding family.The smug look on Malfoy's face flickered. "No one asked your opinion, you filthy Mudblood," he spat. Harry knew at once that Malfoy had said something really bad because there was an instant uproar at his words. Flint had to dive in front of Malfoy to stop Fred and George jumping on him, Alicia shrieked, "How dare you!" and Ron plunged his hand into his robes, pulling out his wand, yelling, "You'll pay for that one, Malfoy!" and pointing it furiously under Flint's arm at Malfoy's face."
I believe the racial "mudblood" term reappears in some shape or form in every book after the 2nd one. Therefore, we can conclude that the racial issues never disappear and always remain in the background of the story, even when the story is exploring other young adult issues in the forefront that I already mentioned: like trust, etc. Like I said, it’s a major theme, not the ONLY theme of the book series.
The class issues are there, but are more for background of characters. We see characters from all different classes among our heroes and villains. I would agree Rowling seems to be suggesting that the rich tend to be racist and they tend to be the villain, but as already noted there are quite a few examples of the rich not associated with Death Eaters along with the poor joining up with the Death Eaters. So a strict class reading isn't sustainable.
"You understand well enough what slavery is, but freedom you have never experienced, so you do not know if it tastes sweet or bitter. If you ever did come to experience it, you would advise us to fight for it not with spears only, but with axes too." - Herodotus
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If only, there were more respectful and intelligent debates like this in both real life and the internet.
Clearly? Is racism the only prejudice in the world? You are interpreting. It is not clearly stated.
The statements could easily be made of countryfolk, or of poor people. You are American, therefore you conceive of hate in racial terms, whereas an Englishman may conceive of it in terms of class.
Think of this as a contrast - No one asked your opinion, you fucking peasant/pleb/hick/cunt. It could be any with the same reaction.
To her credit, fantasy allows her to create an allegory of hate without the clearly stating what is being hated. You interpret it as race, I think class is more fitting with the text and with the authors politics outside the text.
It's like a rich guy telling a girl she should shut her trap because she is a from a dump family. In England, the cross between hereditary titles and class is so ingrained that this is possible.
How dare you speak to me, I am of noble birth, from an old family. Or how dare you speak to me, I am white and you are black. The distinction is too difficult to hold. As you put it, it is clearly offensive, but the whole point is there is no appearance related advantage.
What is weird is the number of hereditary magical properties - Voldemort can talk to snakes through hereditary means - Tonks can transform through hereditary traits. IT seems that being pure blood has its advantage.
Now, upon reading the summary on Wikipedia of Dumbledore, I am presented with another idea, - is the conflict not the rich trying to purify their reign over the world (and muggles) as reassuring their class superiority in a war against emerging newer classes offending their authority? Is this not apparent in English history, from, for instance, The English Civil War? This is far more keeping with the tradition Rowling is working within. You are American, of course you are going to read race into it. You are not from the tradition of classicism like an English person is.
In fact, race is less apparent in English hierarchies than class. Class is everything in England, a country that has a queen simply due to her "pureblood" relationship to a deceased monarch. There have been things in English history described as class warefare. Read Engels' writings on the lower Class in Victorian England to get an idea, or Marx's Capital. The idea of class behaves differently in England. It performs itself in an hereditary fashion.
Ultimately, the text is not clear, as the weird distinction between muggle-born and pure-blood is so arbitrary that it is ridiculous - you are dealing with a group of ex-muggles and never-muggles. The never-poors dislike the new rich, because they challenge their crumbling authority, like how the new middle class destroyed the aristocracy in the late 18th and 19th century in England. They claimed the ground of money and authority, got seats in parliament, and began to displace the old families. The bottom still didn't change much, so the muggles, basically remain out of the contending. Such a time period led to much resentment, and yes, verbal abuse. The same can be said of systems in other places of the world, most apparently in places with class systems ingrained, like India, or China.
Clearly? Is racism the only prejudice in the world? You are interpreting. It is not clearly stated.
The statements could easily be made of countryfolk, or of poor people. You are American, therefore you conceive of hate in racial terms, whereas an Englishman may conceive of it in terms of class.
Think of this as a contrast - No one asked your opinion, you fucking peasant/pleb/hick/cunt. It could be any with the same reaction.
To her credit, fantasy allows her to create an allegory of hate without the clearly stating what is being hated. You interpret it as race, I think class is more fitting with the text and with the authors politics outside the text.
It's like a rich guy telling a girl she should shut her trap because she is a from a dump family. In England, the cross between hereditary titles and class is so ingrained that this is possible.
How dare you speak to me, I am of noble birth, from an old family. Or how dare you speak to me, I am white and you are black. The distinction is too difficult to hold. As you put it, it is clearly offensive, but the whole point is there is no appearance related advantage.
What is weird is the number of hereditary magical properties - Voldemort can talk to snakes through hereditary means - Tonks can transform through hereditary traits. IT seems that being pure blood has its advantage.
Now, upon reading the summary on Wikipedia of Dumbledore, I am presented with another idea, - is the conflict not the rich trying to purify their reign over the world (and muggles) as reassuring their class superiority in a war against emerging newer classes offending their authority? Is this not apparent in English history, from, for instance, The English Civil War? This is far more keeping with the tradition Rowling is working within. You are American, of course you are going to read race into it. You are not from the tradition of classism like an English person is.
In fact, race is less apparent in English hierarchies than class. Class is everything in England, a country that has a queen simply due to her "pureblood" relationship to a deceased monarch. There have been things in English history described as class warefare. Read Engels' writings on the lower Class in Victorian England to get an idea, or Marx's Capital. The idea of class behaves differently in England. It performs itself in an hereditary fashion.
Ultimately, the text is not clear, as the weird distinction between muggle-born and pure-blood is so arbitrary that it is ridiculous - you are dealing with a group of ex-muggles and never-muggles. The never-poors dislike the new rich, because they challenge their crumbling authority, like how the new middle class destroyed the aristocracy in the late 18th and 19th century in England. They claimed the ground of money and authority, got seats in parliament, and began to displace the old families. The bottom still didn't change much, so the muggles, basically remain out of the contending. Such a time period led to much resentment, and yes, verbal abuse. The same can be said of systems in other places of the world, most apparently in places with class systems ingrained, like India, or China.
the conflict actually parallels class history in England rather well. Old-families (pure bloods) seeing their authority usurped by new families, new families moving into the ranks of the older families, and bottom families remaining poor and beaten.
There is a good book called The Crisis of the Aristocracy which deals with this historical phenomenon of the decline of aristocratic authority. The text can be read within this tradition, and seems more in keeping than with class conflict, which was never as significant in English history as in American history.
Last edited by JBI; 10-14-2012 at 11:56 AM.
JCamilo miserably may be too harsh a word, but I still think that she failed at her attempt to do a proper character development. I don't mind, I liked these books for other reasons.
As for the evil and good division. It's clear that the bad people go to Slytherin (they all leave in the last book during the last battle) and the good people go to Gryffindor or other houses.
I didn't like the villains in Harry Potter. They consist of arrogant idiots or idiots. Voldy was supposed to be one of the most powerful magician, but the killing of one boy is for him an insurmountable obstacle and it seems that he tries very hard not to kill Potter, for example, by coming up with an overcomplicated plan or by finding a time to tell the story of his life when he can kill Potter in the fourth book.
Last edited by Aylinn; 10-14-2012 at 12:21 PM.
While I'm not keen on turning to the author, Rowling has discussed these issues in multiple interviews. She does at times claim she wasn't trying to do a one for one allegory with Nazi Germany and you can see parallels to Stalinsim, and there is a lot of political Isms, she's trying to address in Potter via the Death Eaters, such as class, but has also stated that the blood purity laws in the wizard world are similar to Nazi blood purity laws. In other interviews she talked about the series in terms of race. All of this suggests she definitely had race in mind. So I'm not just reading it as an American, Rowling herself has suggested she meant to invoke race.Originally Posted by JBI
Your example of turning mudblood into a class issue is pushing the boundaries of common sense. In the series, the Death Eaters make clear that one Muggle grandparent disqualifies you as being pure blood. Sounds a lot like Nazi law and white American blood purity laws to me (1/8 drop of black blood means your black).
"You understand well enough what slavery is, but freedom you have never experienced, so you do not know if it tastes sweet or bitter. If you ever did come to experience it, you would advise us to fight for it not with spears only, but with axes too." - Herodotus
https://consolationofreading.wordpress.com/ - my book blog!
Feed the Hungry!
It is not hard, is it? Class and race are related in the past. (Not so far past). The house hierarchy from medieval ages was also based on supposed racial traits. There was low level classes simple based on ethinic birth in the past in several system. So, it may be race issues even if the book is not an "Alice Walker" kind of book.
Plus, I think, as the commercial success happened, she started to play more with other themes, which may just be part of the scennary at begining, but more interesting as the market grows. The suggestions of race may come from her understanding of her public - even the treatment is not as clear. She filled the book with school conflicts, I can see she trying to play with racism too.
Meh. The idea that the book uses its own allegory to represent racial prejudice is hardly new (and arguably quite tired) in the fantasy genre. It's how the books address and handle these themes that's important--merely throwing them in there without much though (and most fantasy does this) isn't very deep or thought provoking.
There's no allegory representing racial prejudice. It is handled directly. Some wizards think they are better than the others, based on their blood purity, and Voldemort cashes in on that. It's thrown in there because Rowling wanted the magic world to be a true reflection of our own. "“I wanted Harry to leave our world and find exactly the same problems in the wizarding world. So you have the intent to impose a hierarchy, you have bigotry, and this notion of purity, which is this great fallacy, but it crops up all over the world. People like to think themselves superior and that if they can pride themselves in nothing else they can pride themselves on perceived purity." - J K Rowling
Drk's point is (I think) that when we see our own world in this magic mirror, it gives us a certain objectivity, just as allegory does, and shows up its absurdities much more effectively than any amount of direct preaching will do.
Last edited by mona amon; 10-15-2012 at 01:17 AM.
Exit, pursued by a bear.
Maybe for the last book. But it is not as strict as you put it. Snape is half-muggle. Voldemort is half-muggle - everyone is a little muddy.
The hitler allegory is kind of dry and cliche, and her use of it I attributed to the movie directors for the 7th film, but I guess it's explicit in the book too. It's kind of weak writing in my eyes.
That being said,the idea of race as I believed you were constructing it, would be in the North American sense. Being Jewish is not a racial thing.
So now we have a problem. Is Rowling paralleling Hitler, with the concept of Jew or Muggle as fundamentally different, and does she support such a divide? The muggles are not allowed at Hogwarts, they are studied as a curiosity, and live separate. They are "other" if you will, the same way the Jews, gypsies, and others become "other" in Nazi Germany. If we are reading this as racism, then we must accept there is a racial divide in the magical world.
The muggles are not the wizards. Muggle is not a pejorative, but they are clearly and fundamentally beneath and different. IF we were to take this as demonstrating racism, then this issue would need to be addressed properly. As it is there are any number of things to make us thing otherwise. For instance, the Black family tree is clearly a symbol of class and hereditary roots - the fundamental of British hierarchy and class keep in mind. He is on the tree, and those who marry commoners are cast out like the Duke of Windsor.
That would be your classical example about how the racial politics as you see them work - in terms of hereditary class. Queen Elizabeth in her day would not have been able to marry a commoner. Prince Charles married his cousin to keep the blood pure - this is English history, this is the War of the Roses legacy at its fullest. Blood in England is class, or at least was until recently. There were schools where you needed to be royal to go, and there were clubs for royalty.
This is the tradition Rowling is working in. The racial traits merely come in perhaps in the last 2 books to add a little bit of preachiness to the text. Basically slytherin is the royal house. For an American, I think you have a hard time understanding how class and blood have played a role in shaping the political and cultural structure of England.
Now, as for Race, that is trickier because anyone who studies racism will tell you that racial divides are arbitrary and meaningless. the Muggle-Magic divide is present from day 1 - the Dursleys are just muggles, Hermione`s parents are muggles, Ron`s dad works with muggles - they are like dismissed.
This is never resolved in the book - Hermione is un-mugglefied, one can say, as are other mud-bloods - those who have risen beyond their muggleness. The Slytherins think they aught not to, they come from the muggles so they should stay with the muggles. The question in the text then is not whether muggles are discriminated against for no reason, but rather whether one should or should not be able to be amongst the wizards if you have the ability to get past your muggleness.
The Hitler and nazi parallels are mere late appendices to a class-driven conflict. Let me remind you of other points.
Malfoy senior buys the whole Slytherin team new brooms, because they deserve it. Rich families, like the Blacks, have house slaves, and "manors" like the Slytherins, or even Voldemort's relatives. We have politically connected wizards from these old families too. We have also hereditary abilities in wizarding, and hereditary magical items that can be passed down as heirlooms.
The old blood, or pure Blood resembles class and royalty more than anything. You see it as race because you are programmed to think along racial lines, but there is nothing to indicate race, as much as their is to indicate a caste system over class. Muggles on the bottom, and no muggle-borns allowed to raise up - if you marry down, either a muggle or a muggle-born, then you are creating mud-bloods. IF you support them, then you are a blood-traitor. This is the system that still governs in certain countries of the world, and it has nothing to do with race, as in Black, White, Asian, Hispanic, Whatever (race doesn't actually make sense outside a context of discrimination). This is also a conflict that rocked England for centuries.
Hitler was working with a new idea of race, which was rooted in obscure and violent misunderstandings of genetics and origins, and, also downright hatred. "Jew" is not a racial category, it is a religious category. Therefore it does not fit as an exact model - there were Jews on every level of German and European society, even members of the nobility. It's a big problem to try and play with race there, and how it fits to Harry Potter, in that muggles are not Wizards, and that fundamental divide is present throughout the text.
Now lets say she is paralleling Hitler and nazi policies - that does not mean we are dealing with race, we are just dealing with systematic hatred in the 20th century sense. I haven't read the last book, but I somehow doubt she switches to a case where Wizards and Muggles are not fundamentally different. She never breaks that divide.
So what is the resolution then? the idea of nobility as represented in pure Blood makes more sense for the first few novels, up until maybe 6 or 7. Snape even sees himself as half-nobility, given his father's racial superiority over his mother - he is a "prince", if you will. He is like the Bastard son of an aristocrat who lives with the fact that he will not inherit and be legitimate because he is not from the noble-wife. Maybe in the 7th one Rowling got carried away with racial categories and junk, but they aren't the determining factor in the books, and in fact, are often contradictory.
She is after all writing about class explicitly throughout much of the novels, and spent much of her new novel, if my understanding is correct, discussing class. If we want to talk about the author, the author has continuously supported social mobility, and even donated 1million pounds to the Labour party. Class is in her life, and is important in determining her politics. Therefore it is not a stretch to say the books are about class, and less about race. They borrow from race when the two link, because the way she set up the magical world, she cannot play out her morality tale about social class without touching on the overlap.
Yes, pretty much that. I'm not sure why JBI keeps whipping out the term allegory when I clearly don't mean allegory and explained why it's not an allegory. The fact that Voldemort and Snape are half-blood is there to reveal the hypocrisy of the whole idea of racial purity and fits perfectly well with the theme as I presented it.
I already addressed his point about the Muggle/Wizard divide:
It serves as part of the racial ideology, but not in an overly symbolic way. Instead it creates the genre contrast that I mentioned, which allows the racial parallel to work in the first place. However, in itself it shouldn't be read symbolically since the readers are muggles and aren't about to go: Oh my G-d, we're inferior! I need to persecute myself!The readers are Muggles and for us the divide is between people who can do magic and people who can't, a mudblood and pure blood can perform magic equally, so when the ideology suggests one is not as good as the other it reveals just how arbitrary the racial ideology is precisely because they aren't different from our perspective. I disagree with how you think Muggles are portrayed; the ideologies of the villains are anti-Muggle, while the heroes in general are Pro-Muggle. The only time when characters study the culture of Muggles is with Mr. Weasley. The Mr Weasley episodes of exploring Muggle culture are comical and have little to do with the racial theme; the function of these episodes is similar to the Little Prince coming to different planets in Antoine de Saint Exupery's book and experiencing different elements of the "adult" world as an outsider (businessman, alcoholic, king, etc.), which unveils the strangeness and silliness of elements found in our everyday experience. That's what is happening there. Basically, you're fostering one misreading after another.
JBI then expresses his typical anti-Americanism with his bizarre comment: "For an American, I think you have a hard time understanding how class and blood have played a role in shaping the political and cultural structure of England."
As if all Americans do all day is eat donuts and watch TV and it's amazing we can even tie our own shoes, let alone know something about British history. Apparently for JBI A Passage to India is also strictly about class, not race.
"You understand well enough what slavery is, but freedom you have never experienced, so you do not know if it tastes sweet or bitter. If you ever did come to experience it, you would advise us to fight for it not with spears only, but with axes too." - Herodotus
https://consolationofreading.wordpress.com/ - my book blog!
Feed the Hungry!
You miss my point. If we are reading race into this, we must note that muggles are inferior to Wizards. Take your pick. We are muggles reading wizards, right, but we are still muggles - and muggles don't get portrayed well - The Dursleys, Voldemort's Dad, etc. - And they cannot go to hogwarts, they need to be brainwashed every time they get out of hand. How do you address this with your racial reading - they are just not special, or not worthy? They are not born with the talent? Or are you dismissing this as an overstatement, or is this just a kids book and not that intelligent.
What is a muggle, if not something non-wizardly. Some may be able to unmuggle themselves, and some wizards may be able to marry muggles, but they are still muggles. Is the lesson we need to learn to tolerate muggles, and live with the fact that some can get lucky and be "born with the ability" to become wizards?
A wizard is fundamentaly different from a Muggle in a way that one race can never be different from another, so you are right about that. However, it's clearly shown that the magical gene always predominates, so that nullifies any eugenic arguments based on that difference. It is clearly stated in book 2 that that there were so few wizards that they would have died out if they had not married Muggles.So now we have a problem. Is Rowling paralleling Hitler, with the concept of Jew or Muggle as fundamentally different, and does she support such a divide? The muggles are not allowed at Hogwarts, they are studied as a curiosity, and live separate. They are "other" if you will, the same way the Jews, gypsies, and others become "other" in Nazi Germany. If we are reading this as racism, then we must accept there is a racial divide in the magical world.
The muggles are not the wizards. Muggle is not a pejorative, but they are clearly and fundamentally beneath and different. IF we were to take this as demonstrating racism, then this issue would need to be addressed properly. As it is there are any number of things to make us thing otherwise. For instance, the Black family tree is clearly a symbol of class and hereditary roots - the fundamental of British hierarchy and class keep in mind. He is on the tree, and those who marry commoners are cast out like the Duke of Windsor. - JBI
When wizards marry Muggles, the children are always wizards. And even Muggleborns are the result of some magical ancestor somewhere in both the parents' bloodlines.
Last edited by mona amon; 10-15-2012 at 09:02 AM.
Exit, pursued by a bear.
The Janitor Filch is a squib. They have a word for the unworthies amongst the bunch.
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