OVERANALYZING THE TEXT

Gulplum/Richard (which do you prefer?) wrote:

I am perhaps splitting hairs, but I don't see the books' epicentre as being "elitism" per se, but prejudice.

No, I don't see the books' epicenter as elitism either. Perhaps I didn't make myself clear. I see questions of elitism as being at the epicenter not of the books themselves, but of reader discontent with the books.

In other words, when readers who otherwise appreciate the series express dissatisfaction, anxiety or ambivalence about either the books themselves or their own enjoyment of them, it seems to me that the vast majority of the time, the source of this unease centers in some way around the core concept of elitism. Choice vs. Blood, for example. The role of House Slytherin. Or the more strictly class-based discomfort that both Iyer and Adams expressed in their respective articles.

But since we're here, let's talk a bit about elitism, shall we?

Gulplum said:

Elitism is all about hierarchical structure and one's place in it.

Yes, but the term allows for a far greater range of conceptions of that hierarchical structure than, say, classism or racism do. The very notion of "meritocracy," for example, is itself a profoundly elitist construct.

I would say that at its core, elitism is the idea that some people are just intrinsically better than others, not merely talented in some particular arena, but "superior" in a more generalized sense: more deserving, more worthy, more virtuous. The particular skill, talent, virtue, or accident of fate that one chooses to enshrine as the criteria for membership in the "Elite" may vary, but the fundamental dynamic remains the same.

Porphyria invited discussion on this issue in her framing of Dr. Nel's Question Number Ten, when she expanded on his original questions about class to include questions about other forms of elitism as well. She asked:

4. Is Harry a member of the elite, even among Wizards? In which ways is he privileged by birth, inheritance, exceptional 'natural' talent or special treatment from powerful benefactors?

Gulplum suggested:

...he is very much of the "elite" in the sense that he is considered powerful for reasons he himself does not understand, as The Boy Who Lived. He is the "elite" in that his parents were independently wealthy. He is the "elite" because he has found a place at the best School of Wizardry in the world. He is the "elite" because he is the proteg� of the acknowledged single most powerful wizard in the world.

He is the "elite" because until Book Four, he enjoyed a direct mystical protection against Evil which had nothing to do with any of his own choices, but rather, with his mother's sacrifice. (And even this is suspect: as many on the list have pointed out, surely other mothers have given their lives for their children without any such result?)

He is the "elite" because people in authority continually make exceptions for him. He is not only allowed to own a broom as a First Year student, but one is even purchased for him -- even though he has plenty of money of his own. Dumbledore reopens a competition which is understood to be closed and concluded for him at the end of Book One, and reneges on his threat to expell him for any further violations of the school rules in Book Two. Lupin rescues him from the consequences of his violation of the school rules in Book Three. Throughout the series, various adult mentors shower him with gifts both material (the invisibility cloak, both the Nimbus and the Firebolt) and educational (special instruction from Lupin).

He is the "elite" because he has a number of unusual talents—his flying ability, his resistance to the Imperius Curse—which benefit him, but which he has in no way truly "earned."

He is the "elite" because in spite of an upbringing which ought to have left him socially crippled, he is nonetheless gifted with an innate talent for adhering to social mores.

Yes. Harry is of the "elite." In fact, given that he also seems to possess an instinct for moral virtue, one might even go so far as to say that he is of the Elect.

There often seems to me to be a tinge, or even more than a tinge, of Calvinism to the Potterverse. The text tells us that choice is paramount, but the world that it depicts often seems to be one in which strong forces of predestination are at work. We would like to believe that Harry is blessed because he is virtuous. But it is often difficult to avoid the feeling that it may work the other way around, that Harry is virtuous because he is blessed.

Gulplum wrote:

At the same time, he is anything but of the social elite.

In the world of the Dursleys? No. No, he isn't. But doesn't that very fact serve in many ways merely to accentuate and to highlight his status as the True Elite, or even perhaps of the Elect? Many of the ways by which Harry comes by the comfortable social standing that he enjoys at Hogwarts seem so very improbable for someone with his background to have managed that to my mind it far more enhances that impression of his membership among the Elect that it does to undercut it.

He is an orphan, has spent his young years in drudgery (whilst witnessing a world of plenty on a daily basis).

Not only that, but he has, or should have been, at any rate, crippled in his social development. His cousin prevented him from making any friends at school, and his guardians restricted his social interactions at home. He grew up locked in a cupboard.

And yet, he displays none of the results one might expect from such an upbringing. Once liberated from the artificially-imposed social handicaps the Dursleys inflicted upon him, he is proved to be surprisingly socially adept. He knows how to relate to others as if by some sort of innate social instinct. Hagrid responds favorably to him not only because he is "the Famous Harry Potter," but also because he is a polite and personable child. Molly Weasley will later have the same impression of him. Draco's initial reaction to Harry in Madame Malkin's is a "testing encounter": Draco does not immediately identify him as bulliable, nor can he even positively identify his social standing. On the Hogwarts Express, Harry knows instinctively how to make Ron feel more comfortable about his poverty, and he interprets Hermione's behavior in the normative fashion for an eleven year old boy (ie, he thinks she's bossy). He can correctly identify social codes and can distinguish the socially normal (Ron) from the socially vulnerable (Hermione, Neville). These are all remarkable abilities for a boy with Harry's upbringing to possess.

Of course, we all understand that this is largely just the convention of fairy tale. The neglected child of myth is always polite, attractive to strangers, attentive to social mores, and ultimately normal. There are no socially crippled children in fairy tales, and no one at the ball ever notices Cinderella's chiblains or her cracked and chapped hands. In the world of the fairy tale, all children are "resilient."

And yet this convention sits uneasily with the far more realistic approach that the rest of the series takes towards the effects of upbringing on social interactions. Characters like Neville, Draco, and the various members of the Weasley clan all seem quite believable as the products of what we can deduce about their upbringing. Harry stands out as an exception, and I think that this discrepancy does help to foster the impression that he is not merely a nice kid, but even somewhat eerily immune from spiritual harm; that he may, in fact, enjoy something almost akin to divine Grace.

Gulplum:

He is small and physically weak, and is constantly bullied.

He is small, and he was bullied by Dudley and his gang. But the text also really goes out of its way to impress upon us the extent to which his social status within the hierarchy of his pre-Hogwarts school was an artificial state of affairs, one imposed upon him by the Dursleys. We are told, for example, that Harry has no friends because: "Everybody knew that Dudley's gang hated that odd Harry Potter in his baggy old clothes and broken glasses, and nobody liked to disagree with Dudley's gang." (PS, Ch 2) Even his broken glasses aren't broken because he is uncoordinated or inattentive or clumsy, but rather "because of all the times Dudley had punched him on the nose." He's not even really all that physically weak. In spite of his size, he is in fact quite quick and agile—"Harry didn't look it, but he was very fast"—and just in case we're still operating under the misapprehension that Harry may be (God forbid) unathletic, the text goes out of its way to assure us that although he was indeed always picked last for team sports at school, this was only because all of the other children were so afraid of Dudley and his gang, and not because Harry himself was "no good."

Yeah. Thanks, Jo. We were really starting to worry.

::rolls eyes::

Once Harry is away from the Dursleys influence, of course, all this changes. At Hogwarts, he does not, in fact, register to other children as a natural target for bullying. Draco initially tries to recruit him as an ally, and there are no hints that the other students at the Sorting Ceremony or at the opening banquet view him as socially vulnerable. That's Neville, not Harry. When Harry comes in for abuse, it is due to envy, not to recognition of his social vulnerability. In terms of the hierarchy of the playground, Harry isn't at the bottom of the totem pole at all. Harry is a social normal.

Before he took up his rightful place (which is only a temporary escape as he must return to his place at the bottom of the ladder each year) he had no prospects at all.

His rightful place?

What makes us identify Harry's relatively high status at Hogwarts as his rightful place? Isn't it every bit as accidental, every bit as arbitrary, every bit as much a twist of fate, as his victimization at the hands of the Dursleys?

He holds high status at Hogwarts because his parents were famous and well-liked, because he possesses a heritable atheletic skill, because he conforms well enough to social norms not to register to other children as a victim, because he is possessed of a number of mysterious inborn talents, and because he defeated an evil wizard at the age of one -- an event which he cannot even remember clearly and which had absolutely nothing to do with his own volition.

The only way in which this is "rightful" is that we recognize that Harry is truly virtuous. We are therefore pleased to see him enter a milieu in which he enjoys higher social status. But the reasons for that rise in social status don't really have very much to do with his virtue at all. They have to do with circumstances which are for the most part every bit as much beyond his control as the circumstances which led him to occupy a degraded social position while living with the Dursleys.

The fact of the matter is that social inequalities exist and there is no way they can be abolished. The best we can do is to help to blur the lines, to make climbing the ladder easier for those who deserve it. The Durselys most definitely do not.

I tend to view this as the great fallacy of "meritocracy," the idea that it has anything to do with "merit" in the sense of moral virtue at all. I assume that by saying that the Dursleys do not "deserve" their social status, you mean that they don't deserve it because they are nasty and selfish, because they lack a sense of noblesse oblige, because they will not use their privilege for the benefit of others -- in short, because they are ethically deficient.

That is all quite true. For all we know, however, Vernon Dursley may be a very good salesman. He certainly would seem to be skilled at earning money. And that is the skill that the "meritocracy" of the system in which he lives privileges, just as the "meritocracy" of Hogwarts privileges magical, athletic and academic talent.

There is no "merit" here, if you mean merit in the sense of moral virtue. In the Potterverse, as in our own, you don't ascend the social ladder by virtue of being a decent person. You ascend the social ladder by virtue of possessing whatever innate talents the particular system in which you are operating happens to value the most highly. "Meritocracy" has no more to do with moral virtue than aristocracy by blood does.

But in Harry, the two do seem to be combined -- perhaps one might even say that they are conflated. We really are, I think, encouraged to read his social standing in the wizarding world as in some way his "rightful place," as not merely socially but also ethically merited. It is not just "his" by right of a combination of inheritance and dumb luck. It is his by right of a kind of innate divine grace.

And I do find that troubling. It is yet another point on which, whenever I contemplate the series, I start to feel the ground shifting beneath my feet.

—Elkins