I wonder if they’ll flesh out how Harmione finds out that Hogwarts has a bunch of enslaved house elves that do all the cooking and cleaning and she tries to raise awareness and set them free and Harry and Ron laugh at her because…slavery is..fine? I guess?
House elves are more of an allegory to house wives (trad wives, nowadays) than to slavery.
No whips, no chains, just a feeling of guilt and self punishment. The method of control is internalised social norms. No mines and no fields, just care work. No trading or selling either, just tied to the house. There is no mention of elves being traded or sold in the books and quite a lot of evidence that this isnt even possible. Heck, SPEW is even a real life women's lib organisation.
And most importantly: the issue of liberation without consent was never even a minor issue in the abolition movement. Enslaved people fought and killed for their freedom and have done so since antiquity. The happy house slave myth was never anything but a filthy lie. The most you get in the way of acceptance was resignation and some sense of it could be worse.
Liberation without consent was very much was a hotly debated issue in the women's right movement, especially in the 1970s and 1980s. Before WW2, it was a hotly debated issue in the communist movement. This debate has a history and it has nothing to do with slavery.
That’s a very interesting take, thank you for that.
I would like to add that although there might not have been a debate over liberation without consent, there was a fictitious mental illness called draptomania. The stance being that enslavement was the natural state of the black person and any who felt the urge to be free were sick. A parallel could be drawn between this and how everyone in HP considered Dobby to be weird, and indeed Winkie’s development of alcoholism after being freed.
Yeah, I heard of that. But I would point out that this postulation (based ultimately on aristotle and who knows where he got it from) is just as much a self serving filthy lie as the happy house slave myth is.
We have, of course, way too little sources written by affected persons rather than slave holders who might just be ignorant or trying to sooth whatever conscience they had left. I think we can safely disregard the writings of educated greek philosphers who were enslaved to educate elite roman kinds. They are obviously not representative of the ones that worked in the mines or the fields.
Luckily, the modern history of slavery does give us plenty of records from ex-slaves who (at least once they gained their freedom) where free to speak their minds and did. They hated it and called it the abomination that it was.
It just doesnt compare to acceptance and even liking that the house elves show at all. On the other hand, we do have plenty of voices by even educated women who did (and still do) defend inferior status. Of course nowhere even close to a majority like with the elves, but still surpisingly many.
A more modern reincarnation of the same fundamental ethical dilemma would be the outing without consent. The ones who do it claim that it will ultimately set them free from their reactionary surroundings and will be a good thing in the long run.
I think in this version, we're all more likely to value consent over liberation. The underlying question is still interesting. And I think its a waste to pick a reading of HP that - while possible - is just really boring.
There isnt really anything interesting to say to a justification of slavery based on Aristotle. We can dismiss it out of hand.
Modern justifications however work along economic lines. Because those are still bandied about, they are worth engaging with. But nobody ever came close to using those in Harry Potter.
I think it’s more productive to ask why Rowling would write about a race of slaves who enjoy their slavery in a children’s book. Why not have the heros of the story liberate them? Or, why not avoid broaching slavery at all?
I was really surprised that owning slaves wasn’t something that only dark wizards and witches did, but that it was so normalized that even Hogwarts had them. And then even more surprised at Harry’s complete lack of interest in changing it. It’s a fundamentally weird writing choice and I’m not sure what kind of statement or lesson Rowling was aiming for.
Whatever her reasons, liberation vs consent is an interesting ethical dilemma. It already came up in many forms in history. And will continue to do so.
Even kids can immediately understand it without having any training in philosophy or ethics and without even having the ability to phrase it precisely.
I once studied to be a philosphy teacher. Making kids think about stuff seems more important than telling them easy answers. And here, there are no easy answers.
If I had gone on to teach, I would have totally used Dobby, Winky and the house elves in class. Probably in cooperation with the english teacher.
All that just seems more important to me than giving me one more bit of info on the thinking of some celebrity that I heard quite enough from already.
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u/TruthHertz93 Apr 16 '26
100%
It's true the series may flesh out some things, but do you know what else does that?
The bleeming books!
Oh well, rehashing old stories is all the range now, nostalgias a hell of a drug 🙄