Apologies, but it really took me THIS long to figure out why fandom's repeated chorus of "She RAPED him!" annoys me. She did; I know she did, there's no denying it. But it wasn't until this discussion thread that I realized the exact source of my discomfort with the case of Merope Gaunt:
http://community.livejournal.com/lv_hg_betrayal/55829.html?thread=164373#t164373 enchantedteacup: Yes, I originally thought that the similarities between Harry and Tom to begin with and the differences (from fate to begin with) in how they end up basically implied that JKR made Tom evil from the start, but the original differences kind of play a large role in why one turned out "good" and the other "bad"; choices are big, but some outside force is there too that decides what choices someone gets to make in the first place.
[Me] YES INDEED. It drives me mad that Merope is attacked for what she did when her basic choices were
1) Hitch a ride off Tom Riddle
2) Die
She knew no-one; she had no talents as far as we could see; she wasn't terribly attractive; she had no money; from the behaviour of the official sent out to check up on the Gaunts, nobody from the Wizarding World gave a monkey's about her welfare or was willing to take her in. This is why I do not think it implausible to argue that her only choice, if she wanted to survive, was to hitch onto Tom Riddle.
And in the end she was so ashamed of what she did that she committed passive suicide anyway. But, really, what else could she have done if she wanted to live? It really gets me that Merope's actions are presented as some sort of evil from which the fruit could only have been wicked. People who do wicked things to survive should not be judged in the same way as those who do wicked things for material profit.
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When you think about it, the case of Merope brings up the problem of Rowling's philosophy. "It is our choices that determine who we are": yes, but suppose you have no real choices? Suppose the only way you can survive involves having to hurt another human being?
In a sense it's brave of Rowling even to tackle this scenario; unfortunately, as soon as she's written it, and made it clear that Merope was at least partly spurred on by adoration of Tom Riddle, she then implies that Merope's actions were in fact evil by
1) getting Merope to commit passive suicide out of shame
2) giving Merope a child who is "born psychopathic"
It's an impossible dilemma. I can't excuse Merope's actions, they were selfish, but I think it harsh to condemn her as evil when one considers the situation she was in. Maybe we should ask Rowling what Merope should have done to ensure her own survival without ruining another person's life. Who knows, we might find that the Wizarding World had a Battered Witches Refuge! They were such a common feature of life in Britain in the 1920s, after all... :)