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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   26704 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 22, 2024

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I agree, although in the Dursleys case it’s more Rowling’s resentment for her own class and the life she might have led had she not become poor by pursuing writing in London and instead become a suburban housewife.

You're taking it too seriously. It started off as a kid's book, with Harry being a retelling of Cinderella, in part. Of course the Dursleys are comic villains, they're the Stepmother and Ugly Stepsisters stand-in. Not just the Dursleys, think of their ghastly friends. When the books became A Phenomenon, then people started looking for Deeper Meaning (which I don't think was ever there) and J.K. did give a bit more depth to the characters (Dudley is growing out of being a bully, Petunia has genuine grievances as well as jealousy of her sister).

But looking for class critiques in the characters of the Wicked Stepfamily is like looking for the same in the pantomime versions (e.g. around the 9 minute mark here)

Everything in Britain is about class. You could try to write something that had nothing to do with it and it would still, inevitably in some sense, be about a particular class or its intersection with another. It would be like writing a story about modern China that had absolutely nothing to do with the CCP or Mao or the post-1948 makeup of Chinese society. You could try, but even in its absence it would be saying something. Everyone born in Britain exists within this system, everyone can clock everyone else, it is inescapable. There are things beyond it, but it still touches them.

You think? I can't see it myself. Obviously Rowling isn't upper class, but it's the Weasleys' life that's the obvious fantasy. Poor, shabby, but happy and with an old house out in the countryside. I suppose sour grapes are a possibility.

No, I’m not disagreeing with you at all; the Weasleys are the fantasy, the Dursleys are a suffocating hell.

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