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The Slytherin Question: an Essay
Thursday, 3 August 2006 05:18 pmBefore I took my little hop over the ocean, some of you asked me to post my essay on Slytherin House, so this is me keeping my promise. Although I have worked on it pretty long and treated the subject with great seriousness (that's me!), I still feel that this essay is a WIP, and not just because its questions won't be answered until Book 7 has been well and truly published and devoured. I just have this annoying thirst for thoroughness and getting everything right, but in this case I'm not sure I can manage on my own. I would therefore love to hear any theories, reactions or reflections you might have, so that one day I will be able to adapt this piece and make it something with which I can be really happy.
One thing: I did my best not to judge the wizarding world by Muggle standards, and I tried to stray as little as possible from the information we have been given in books and interviews; I order myself to keep a strict divide between meta and fanfic.
Here goes, then.
The Slytherin Question
Slytherin House, many readers of the Harry Potter books agree, is a stain on the blazon of Hogwarts. Recruiting and sequestering the cunning, the ambitious, and those of purest blood, it has a singular propensity for producing villains. Nearly all of Harry’s antagonists are Slytherins: Draco and Lucius Malfoy, Severus Snape, and Lord Voldemort himself are the most notable. ‘And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee…’ says the gospel of Saint Mark; and in the now infamous Mugglenet/Leaky Cauldron interview, Emerson Spartz and Melissa Anelli quite understandably ask why Slytherin House is not simply abolished and its residents dispersed over the other three houses, none of which have a bad reputation at all (Part Three). Rowling replies that Slytherin must stay, that it represents the human flaws, and that ‘if only’ they could be embraced, the result would be ‘an unstoppable force’ (ibid.). It is the same message given by the Sorting Hat in Order of the Phoenix (186-7): strength is born of unity. Besides, Rowling says in the same interview, the Slytherins are not all bad.
It seems, however, that the text does not bear out her words. More often than not, Slytherins are described as unattractive or downright ugly; they are also mean, unengaging, and morally suspect on account of their association with Dark Arts and an ideology that discriminates on the basis of blood purity. Though the other Hogwarts houses contain their share of irritating or unpleasant people – Hufflepuff House can boast Zacharias Smith, Ravenclaw has the sneak Marietta Edgecombe, and Cormac McLaggen is a Gryffindor – Slytherin House does not have a single student with whom Harry or his friends are on speaking terms. Then again, there seem to be no depths to which Slytherins will not sink; they even populate the Inquisitorial Squad for the utterly awful Dolores Umbridge. Outside of the books, too, J. K. Rowling uses Slytherin students as denominators for everything young men and women should not be – recently in a rant on her website she dubbed ‘empty-headed, self-obsessed girls’ who care too much about appearances ‘Pansy Parkinsons’ – Pansy being cast as the anti-Hermione (“For Girls Only, Probably”).
With only one more book to go, it is time to wonder whether the reader is to expect anything good from Slytherin after all, or whether we are dealing with another Crookshanks – Hermione’s cat, whose extraordinary intelligence has only ever been explained outside of the novels (World Book Day Chat). ( Read more... )
One thing: I did my best not to judge the wizarding world by Muggle standards, and I tried to stray as little as possible from the information we have been given in books and interviews; I order myself to keep a strict divide between meta and fanfic.
Here goes, then.
Slytherin House, many readers of the Harry Potter books agree, is a stain on the blazon of Hogwarts. Recruiting and sequestering the cunning, the ambitious, and those of purest blood, it has a singular propensity for producing villains. Nearly all of Harry’s antagonists are Slytherins: Draco and Lucius Malfoy, Severus Snape, and Lord Voldemort himself are the most notable. ‘And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee…’ says the gospel of Saint Mark; and in the now infamous Mugglenet/Leaky Cauldron interview, Emerson Spartz and Melissa Anelli quite understandably ask why Slytherin House is not simply abolished and its residents dispersed over the other three houses, none of which have a bad reputation at all (Part Three). Rowling replies that Slytherin must stay, that it represents the human flaws, and that ‘if only’ they could be embraced, the result would be ‘an unstoppable force’ (ibid.). It is the same message given by the Sorting Hat in Order of the Phoenix (186-7): strength is born of unity. Besides, Rowling says in the same interview, the Slytherins are not all bad.
It seems, however, that the text does not bear out her words. More often than not, Slytherins are described as unattractive or downright ugly; they are also mean, unengaging, and morally suspect on account of their association with Dark Arts and an ideology that discriminates on the basis of blood purity. Though the other Hogwarts houses contain their share of irritating or unpleasant people – Hufflepuff House can boast Zacharias Smith, Ravenclaw has the sneak Marietta Edgecombe, and Cormac McLaggen is a Gryffindor – Slytherin House does not have a single student with whom Harry or his friends are on speaking terms. Then again, there seem to be no depths to which Slytherins will not sink; they even populate the Inquisitorial Squad for the utterly awful Dolores Umbridge. Outside of the books, too, J. K. Rowling uses Slytherin students as denominators for everything young men and women should not be – recently in a rant on her website she dubbed ‘empty-headed, self-obsessed girls’ who care too much about appearances ‘Pansy Parkinsons’ – Pansy being cast as the anti-Hermione (“For Girls Only, Probably”).
With only one more book to go, it is time to wonder whether the reader is to expect anything good from Slytherin after all, or whether we are dealing with another Crookshanks – Hermione’s cat, whose extraordinary intelligence has only ever been explained outside of the novels (World Book Day Chat). ( Read more... )
