De Laribus¹

This post is the result of this article (1 mb .pdf, it's the first one), found when I was cruising Hardscrabble Creek. The article, "That's the Title on the Manifesto: Labor and Class Concerns in Harry Potter" is charming, and deserves a look, but I felt that it missed an important point.

The slavery of the house-elves is disturbing to the modern reader because we are accustomed, rightly, to view slavery as an unalloyed evil. Thus, presented with the pitiful Dobby wringing his ears and ironing his hands, our sympathies go out to him, and with him his brethren. We find, however, in the Goblet of Fire, and further in the Order of the Phoenix that his fellow house-elves are less enthusiastic than Dobby when presented with the idea of freedom. Dobby is, as Hagrid puts it, a "weirdo". The house-elves of Hogwarts, of whom we see the most, are happy in their servitude, and Hermione's attempts to free them or to help them organise insult them.

There is no Real World counterpart to the house-elves relationship with their masters. They are not paid, nor bought and sold like slaves, nor do they exist as serfs. The house-elves' relationship with their employer is magical, and they are bound to the home, it seems, rather than an individual. Kreacher, for example, haunts the home of the Blacks despite his hatred of Sirius.

J. K. Rowling tells us that the house-elves have their own magic, different from wizards. I suspect that this magic is related to their servitude; indeed, I suspect that the house-elves' powers date back to a ancient, possibly prehistoric pact, something like the "old magic" which protects Harry while he is living with a relative.

(As a side note, I should mention that this sort of "old magic" occupies a different sphere from the rather mechanical school Latin and wand-swishing which the students at Hogwarts are taught. It is the same difference one finds between Xerxes in Roverandom, who is "quite a good magician [of the conjuring magic sort]" (the bracketed section was cut from the final draft), and Psamathos Psamathides, who is entirely other. Given J. K. Rowling's difficulty portraying the numinous, it is unsurprising to find both this hypothesized pact and the "old magic" itself rarely and perfuctorily described.)

To return: the house-elves don't care to advance within or destroy entirely the "class structure" in which they find themselves.

Ms. Wendy Alicia Felicity Green Stengel proposes that "[t]he four castes in Indian culture map neatly onto the classes in Harry Potter", and further that the wizards which we are meant to view sympathetically--Hagrid, Ron, etc.--who are uninterested or opposed to freeing the house-elves, are themselves products of this class structure, which shapes their thinking. She identifies the house-elves with the Sudra, the "Servants and Laborers".

From this interpretation she draws the obvious conclusion. If the class structure is like that of the Indian caste system, and if the wizarding world reinforces it at every turn, there can be no other option but revolution.

The fundamental error is, I believe, neatly capsulated in this paragraph:

And, if one does consider class, race, and caste as equivalent, we can discern how the Weasleys and Hagrid can be sympathetic and yet not be engaged in elf-rights: brethren or no, they simply do not see a common bond of humanity between themselves and the house-elves.

"The way the[y] were treating her!" said Hermione furiously. "Mr. Diggory, calling her 'elf' all the time... and Mr. Crouch! He knows she didn't do it and he' still going to sack her! He didn't care how frightened she'd been, or how upset she was--it was like she wasn't even human!"

"Well, she's not," said Ron.

Hermione rounded on him.

That doesn't mean she hasn't got feeling, Ron. It's disgusting." (GoF, 139)

Ron, however, is a product of his class, and shares the common class views.

This is a curt dismissal of what seems to me an interesting point. The house-elves are not, in fact, human. In her haste to map caste systems and call for revolution, Ms. Stengel seems to have missed or elided this point.

In the Real World, slavery is always wrong. In what does this wrongness consist? It is in the violation of the nature of the person who is the slave. We have discovered that no one has a "slavish nature". To be self-determining is a quality which belongs to all people, no matter their economic, social, or class standings. As such, we naturally view all class structures (except possibly aristocracy in its original sense) as social creations and further as wicked. Class is an artificial and indefensible barrier, goes our thought, since we hold that all men are created equal. We see the house-elves, who are rational beings, held in apparent bondage, and are revolted. We desire to free them, just as Hermione does, and when they protest we claim that they must be "uneducated and brainwashed". This conclusion is, so far as I can tell, Ms. Stengel's.

Aristotle's defense of just slavery in the Politics:

It is possible, then, in the manner we are speaking, to start by speculating on the despotic rule and the political rule in animals, for the rule of the soul over the body is despotic, whereas the rule of the intellect over desire is political or royal; and it is eveident from these examples that the rule over the body by the soul is according to nature and is beneficial, and so is the rule over the passionate part of the soul by the intellect and by the part that has reason, but that the rule of both parts alike or by the inferior part is harmful to all. Again, similar remarks hold true among men and the other animals; for tame animals have a better nature than wild animals, and among tame animals the rule by men is better for their safety. Further, of the sexes, the male is by nature superior to the female, and it is for the male to rule and the female to be ruled.

Among men as a whole, too, the same must be the case. Those differing from others as much as the body does from the soul or brutes do from men (they are so disposed that their best function is the use of their bodies) are by their nature slaves, and it is better for them to be ruled despotically, as indeed it is for the inferiors in the cases already mentioned. For a slave is by nature a man who can belong to another (and for this reason he does belong to another) and who can participate in reason to the extent of apprehending it but not possessing it; for the animals other than men cannot apprehend reason but serve their passions....

It is evident, then, that it is by nature that some men are slaves but others are freemen, and that it is just and to the benefit of the former to serve the latter.

The house-elves might well possess this nature. Their happiness in servitude may not be contentment stemming from their "brainwashing", but the happiness that comes from fulfilling one's nature. Hermione plots to free the house-elves; Ms. Stengel calls for a revolution. The house-elves have shown no interest in either.

Naturally, even if the house-elves do possess a servile nature, the relationship between servant and master may well go wrong. Dobby is horribly abused in the Malfoys' home. Kreacher is warped by his time spent serving the Blacks. But these examples of the servant/master relationship gone wrong do not prove that such wrongness is inherent in the relationship. When Dumbledore calls the fountain of Magical Brethren a lie, it may be that he is not suggesting revolution but reform: a return from the extreme of a slave/oppressor relationship not into the opposing extreme of ochlocracy, but to the mean of servant/master. If the house-elves do indeed have a servile nature, the revolution would not simply be unwelcome but harmful.

House-elves need not have any earthly relation with the "proletariat" as we understand it. The "caste system" which includes the house-elves may not be a social creation but a metaphysical fact. J. K. Rowling is under no ethical burden to "free" them, and thus far I have seen little evidence that she will.

There are other interpretations. I am fond of a quasi-libertarian one, in which the house-elves are immortal and have pledged their service to various houses, acting as free agents, in exchange for the powers they possess. In this case Dobby's mistreatment is a breach of contract, and calls for reform within the system, rather than a revolution of it. This is just speculation; i.e. I am drinking now.

But really, it seems to me that if I can suspend my disbelief for the system of physical laws governing the world of Harry Potter, I can at least try not to impose our world's philosophical laws on it.

The real question is, is it wrong to create an inherently servile rational species? I suggest this less as a creation myth for house-elves than as a serious ethical dilemma with which we shall have to deal in our lifetimes. I am reminded of the suicidal cow in the Restaurant at the End of the Universe... and I wouldn't eat a house-elf, either.

¹ "People called Roman they go the 'ouse?!"