Fannish 5: Five Unfortunate Uses of Pregnancy
From fannish5: Five unfortunate uses of pregnancy as a plot device.
CAUTION: HERE BE SPOILERS. A lot of them, really.
In no particular order:
1) Phoebe Halliwell's pregnancies on Charmed.
( Read more... )
CAUTION: HERE BE SPOILERS. A lot of them, really.
In no particular order:
1) Phoebe Halliwell's pregnancies on Charmed.
( Read more... )
We do know that she ended up in London and alone. We also know that she ended up ragged, wretched, half-starved and on the doorstep of a Muggle orphanage. This seems to argue that she knew no one in the wizarding community who could have helped--and, if she was like most purebloods, she was completely out of her element. Think of the purebloods we've seen in the series--no idea how telephones or electricity or stamps work. She would never have heard of doctors, surgeons or psychiatrists. She wouldn't have known how to drive or how to use the Underground. She wouldn't have understood Muggle money, or had anything approaching enough education to get even the simplest job. She wouldn't even have been able to afford a place to live.
If she had the skill and the power to cast Imperio and the inclination to use it against Muggles, then why wouldn't she have used it to survive? She could have used to to command Muggles to provide her with food, clothing, shelter, heat and income. For that matter, why wouldn't she have used Imperio to stop her father and brother from bullying her? Both uses would have been helpful--and they would have saved her a lot of anguish.
I can see Bellatrix Lestrange, Walburga Black, Narcissa Malfoy--even Molly Weasley--casting such a spell. But not Merope. She doesn't appear to have the skill, the knowledge, the will, the training or the confidence. That seems like a lot to be lacking.
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Actually, while the book is never certain, I believe Rowling did confirm the love potion thing in an interview. She said that the fact that Voldemort was conceived under a love potion contributed the tiniest bit to his inability to feel or care for love, though she also said that it really didn't excuse or cover any of the horrible things he did, or his hatred and inability to feel love.
Still, I see what you're saying. Very interesting to think about.
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That's popular fanon--it makes sense to everyone but the author. Rowling says that a Muggle couldn't possibly brew a potion successfully, even if she had the right ingredients and prepared it properly.
Actually, while the book is never certain, I believe Rowling did confirm the love potion thing in an interview.
I do tend to ignore interviews; Rowling has been known to contradict both other interviews and her own canon in interviews. Once the last book came out and Hermione's middle name was stated to be Jean (not Jane, as Rowling had said in interview after interview), I figured that was confirmation--interviews are not canon and should not be taken as such.
That said, I'm sure that Rowling intended the readers to take Dumbledore at his word; he is always her spokesman in the books. And most readers DO take Dumbledore's word for it. The problem is, Rowling didn't write the potion scene, or any other scene in which Merope was cunning and manipulative and Tom, Sr. was her innocent victim. We only see Merope being shy, insecure and terrified and Tom and his girlfriend laughing at her.
I have a feeling that Rowling had envisioned the scene so thoroughly that it didn't occur to her that she'd left anything out of the manuscript.
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Actually, I forgot this when I first posted, but Merope *does* do magic once in the memory. She does a spell that ought to lift the pot she dropped off of the ground, but because she's scared and was just yelled at by her father, the spell doesn't work properly and the pot flies across the room and hits the wall hard enough to break in half.
Now see, when I read about that, I never really got the impression that Merope was supposed to be some cunning planner. Rather, I saw it as her having no one hurting or scaring her for the first time in her life, so she thinks "Tom Riddle will surely love me if only I had a chance to prove it to him!" And then she thinks that if she just gets things started with a love potion, she can get him to love her for real. Now obviously that was just my interpretation of it, but given how the views on love potions seem to be like they're something cute and romantic to get a guy to like you, it doesn't seem so far-fetched, especially since again I got the impression that Merope was a girl who was desperate for genuine love and because of a lifetime of abuse went for it in the wrong places. And while Dumbledore never actually said she was powerful (he just said that without her brother and father terrorizing her, she was able to work to the extent of her abilities), I never got the impressions that love potions were particularly difficult to brew.
Incidentally, and again this is just my reading of it, but I never did get the impression that Merope was treated as the bad guy and Riddle Sr as a blameless victim. All the books did was hammer in how Riddle Sr. and his family were total bastards and I generally got the impression that him abandoning his pregnant wife and unborn child was just further proof of that. At the very least, I never really got the impression that Merope was meant to be seen as someone evil or meant to be hated.
Anyway, that's all just how I saw it. ^^;;;
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*pausing to imagine Severus Snape's reaction to that sort of attitude...and giggling*
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