The Fall of the House of ______
This thread turned out to be so interesting, it's gotten me thinking even more about incest in literature and what it stands for. Unfortunately I really haven't read any lit crit on the subject. I have a feeling I'll be surfing around today looking for some. The weird thing, too, is that the subject seems to tie in with other recent subjects on
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Silly of me to forget that, when it was such a part of her personality. That idea that "they will take over" is very much an aspect of politicized racism, and easily feedbacks into the mainstream. From "the Jews/gays/etc. run Hollywood" to "the Chinese own all the businesses". The "-blood" misnomer was dragged along, I think-- it's not where its roots are. There's already great shame attached to being a Squib, so how much more to insinuate that Mudbloods have dirty blood i.e. not as much magic as everyone else. In that sense, calling Hermione a Mudblood is... if not worse, more precise than the equivalent n** word. It's calling her a less worthy witch, when her biggest emotional hot-spot is not being good enough to be a witch.
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Oh yes. I had weird friends in high school. We were bemoaning the lack of creative epithets to call white males. We were a mixed group and it was always funnier to call your pal by their respective epithet. (Can you tell I was a tomboy? Ah, good times...) The names one calls the dominant majority wouldn't be written down, would they?
It's interesting that outside the WW, Muggles have the dominant culture. This is a minority; and if the secret got out, all the Vernon Dursleys of the world would be making up ten times the terms for 'those magic folk.' So to me, the whole Mudblood thing smacks of a defensive mechanism. They used to be the dominant culture... now they're not.
In our game we Slytherins always used to complain that the Gryffs didn't understand the importance of blood. They would defend the friends they had just made... but not the history of their families and the age-old alliances. So in that sense, yeah... the likes of Sirius, who did it deliberately, and Harry, who might not know enough of the historical reasons to fight for it... those would be the threats to me, if I believed that we had to keep those doors locked and rooms preserved, at all costs.
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Right--and they don't! The funny thing about the Weasleys also, is that they are very pro-Muggle, but as people have pointed out, they are pro-Muggle from a distance. Arthur basically does want to control Muggles. He'll protect them, but through the use of memory charms etc., which is incredibly intrusive. In fact that seems to be something he spends a lot more time doing than the Malfoys do. So while the Malfoys are the ones who are on the surface more racist and afraid of Muggles, Arthur is the one interfering with them more. The DEs at the WW terrorize Muggles in a way Arthur wouldn't, but in a way the DE torment is more honest. Arthur, by contrast, would approach a Muggle in a friendly way, but then mess with their mind out of kindness--though the kindness is really to his own people. *They* don't want to be discovered, so Muggles must be interfered with.
Come to think of it, isn't there some other explanation for why Muggles mustn't know about Magic that again speaks for Muggles, showing that Wizards have decided what's best for them and how they think for them?
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