The Journey from Platform Nine and Three-Quarters

[terri_testing]

In response to my last, Vermouth1991 objected to the Hogwarts Express as follows:

Re: taking the train

Comments

the journey is a trial

[terri_testing]

... watered down by the Victorians for children.

I know. Once you see it, it's obvious, isn't it!

And, you know, that really does account for Rowling writing it that way. She's got a great subconscious, and a good knowledge of folklore. The hero is supposed to undergo an ordeal to purify him and prove him worthy.

It's... it reminds me of Austen's spoof of Gothic romances, Northanger Abbery. Her heroine, Catherine Morland, is not a Gothic heroine, but a real girl--originally noisy, dirty, lazy, but never from spite. Catherine ;ater encounters all of the trials of Gothic heroines--only transposed onto real-life situations and trials. She's tempted from the path of virtue--to drive out to a Castle with John, instead of keeping her appointment to walk with Eleanor. She's abducted, by cunning and then bu violence--when she virtuously decided to keep her appointment, and John, her supposed friend, and even her brother all work on her to bring her to a position where her honor might be ruined.... Eventually, Catherine finds herself in a real Abbey, where her misjudgmentd put her in danger--but not in the Gothic dangers she fears.

The journey is the Victorian kiddies-lit lite version of trial by ordeal.

Re: the journey is a trial

[sweettalkeress]

It kinda begs the question as to how old/experienced the people entering the castle would have originally been. Because, in ancient martial-arts lore (and even modern-day martial-arts schools, in a way), there were (and are) ways to prove yourself and get recognition, but they all require(d) years of training beforehand. So...would future Hogwarts students be trained for this kind of trial since birth? Or would they start when they were older than eleven...?

Hoggy Hoggy Hogwarts

[terri_testing]

I bring you the opening of the school song:

Hogwarts, Hogwarts, Hoggy Warty Hogwarts,
Teach us something please,
Whether we be old and bald,
Or young with scabby knees....

So, er, yes, really any age.

Re: Hoggy Hoggy Hogwarts

[sunnyskywalker]

Which makes sense. Schools being rigidly divided into classes based on age, and each grade being designed for one age alone, is a system that developed over centuries. I recently read Centuries of Childhood by Philippe Aries which cited a number of examples of this, with schools five and six hundred years post-Hogwarts Founding still having 11-year-olds in the same class as 19-year-olds. Not that many "old and bald" students admittedly, but then, it was also perfectly normal to just join classes with a teacher you favored for a while and not necessarily stay for a fixed curriculum for a fixed time (lots of students wandered from place to place taking classes whenever and wherever they felt like it, literally begging to support themselves). Hogwarts could well have made provision for trusted adults to be admitted for a little while to learn a few new skills, maybe come back every so often when they had time, but not be locked in year-round or expected to reach any great mastery--just to improve a bit, and be more tightly bound to the magical community.

Re: Hoggy Hoggy Hogwarts

[oryx_leucoryx]

In Jewish tradition there is the tale of Akiva who learned to read at 40 (he was a shepherd, eloped with his employer's daughter, she demanded he get an education) and attended school with young boys. Sometime in the 1st century (though the details are probably apocryphal).