In Defense of Molly Weasley: The Oft Forgotten Heroine of the Potterverse

As a lifelong Potterhead, I've read the entire Harry Potter series several times now, and I love being able to find something new about the characters each time I revisit them. Every time I reread the novels it's like coming home to a set of people who know and love you, and can't wait to make you feel welcome again. But now that the series is over, all the pieces are in place, and there's more time for reflection of the story's major themes and players, I've been bummed to see that Molly Weasley often gets overlooked in the lists of significant actors, and I want to take some time to point out why we all suck for disregarding her contributions.

Molly Weasely is a witch, homemaker, and mother of seven children. She consistently finds a way to provide for them on her husband's meager income plus a little clever magic and she never complains. She loves them fiercely and worries as any mother would. But she's also a fierce warrior who made a significant contribution to the downfall of the Dark Lord that I think gets overlooked too often: She gave Harry Potter, The Boy Who Lived, a place he could call home.

It's often very au courant in feminism to discount housewives as not making a significant contribution to the world and I can admit that I am sometimes guilty of that too. But rearing children is important work, and nurturing the hearts and minds of the tiny people who will later grow up to be contributing members of society isn't something to be taken lightly. I think this fact is especially significant in the Potterverse as it is Molly's warmth and love that help ground Harry as he battles his darkest demons, and tries to find his place within a larger magical plot that was set in motion the night his parents died.

In many ways, it is just as much Molly's mothering instincts as Dumbledore's council that sets Harry on the path of redemption as The Chosen One. On that first day boarding the Hogwarts Express on Platform 9 3/4, despite having four boys of her own currently enrolled, Molly makes Harry feel welcome and ushers him through his first solo encounter with magic. Over the years she sends him handmade sweaters catered to his likes and interests, and never forgets a Christmas or birthday. Picking up on the Dursleys' neglect, she invites him over to stay at the Burrow for weeks at a time every year, feeding him and providing for him out of the scant resources available to her own family. She mothers him and loves because she knows that he needs it, sometimes against his wishes. She sacrifices her own sense of safety to make sure that he is safe and cared for. And that doesn't even comes close to the fact that she raised seven children who were loyal and brave, all of whom came back to help him fight Lord Voldemort when the night was darkest. She killed one of his most loyal followers. She lost a son in his war.

Molly Weasley didn't have to give Harry anything, but she gave him everything anyway and lived to be the matriarch of a wide and happy family, safe from the threats that she had faced twice in one lifetime. She gave Harry a mother he could always come home to, and in that way, she's just as important as The Boy Who Lived.

Rereading Harry Potter: 10 Questions I Have About The Magical World

Because I'm a dirty cheater, I'm rereading the Harry Potter series in order to meet my Goodreads Reading Challenge goal for this year. (Too lazy to hit the library for new books!) I reread the novels every year, but this is the first time I've really been reading with a critical eye. I sped through both Philosopher's Stone and Chamber of Secrets but I as a Muggle fan of this amazing work of fiction, I still have questions about the mechanics of this universe. Here is a greatly condensed version of my running tally of enquiries for the first two novels:

Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone

1. Why don't we don't hear about Sirius Black until book three? In this novel, we see Harry be introduced to his magical roots, and Hagrid has to hastily give him the story of what made him famous. He gets the Sparknotes version: Lord Voldemort, the greatest dark wizard of all time, killed his parents and tried to kill him when he was only an infant, and inexplicably, he could not. Dirty old Voldy was reduced to a shell of his former self, and Harry was left with his scar. This is Harry's origin story. But, shouldn't the fact that his parent's very best friend betrayed them factor into that some how? Doesn't that little bit of information have a profound effect on the mythology of this story?

2. What happens to wizards who get expelled? We know that Hagrid was expelled in his third year, and that Dumbledore allowed him to stay on as Gamekeeper, but how does a situation like this play out for other expelled wizards? Hagrid's wand is snapped and he is forbidden to perform magic. Does that include other forms of magic like potion making or divination? Since getting expelled is essentially like flunking out of school, are there adult remedial classes for wizards who never finished school? Or are they forbidden from magic forever and encouraged to join the muggle world like squibs?

3. How is there is no faster magical way to find information than the library? Throughout the novel, we see Hermione sprinting to the library to research information. I understand that the magical world has largely shunned technology, but there must be a magical shortcut that works as the equivalent to a search engine. Not even an "Accio books about Nicholas Flamel" spell? That seems strangely archaic. I just feel like "because magic" should be a reasonable explanation. Why isn't it?

4. How do muggles get to Diagon Alley? Do muggle-borns' parents get an extra letter with instructions on how to get access the wizarding world so they can buy their newly minted magical child's school supplies? How does that affect the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy? Are they allowed to roam Diagon Alley during the term? Do their minds get wiped each year so that they can't go blabbing about their witch and wizard children?

5. How does this moving between portraits business work exactly? Is it limited to portraits in the same building? Or is it any portrait of the same person regardless of location? Since we find out later that the portraits can be used to deliver information, does that mean that all portraits of a particular person have all the knowledge of every other incarnation of that person? What happens when a new portrait is made? Can different portraits of the same person interact or does that rip a hole in the space-time continuum?

Hermione Granger Was Not Intersectional OR What S.P.E.W. Teaches Us About Feminism

I'm currently rewatching the Harry Potter movies, and because yesterday's discussion was still on my mind, I realized that Hermione Granger and S.P.E.W. are a great illustrative example of SIFWW! (Or I guess, solidarity is for magical beings...?) I'm not too mad about it because Hermione is amazing and I love her, and also she is fictional, but there are some really good parallels for how poorly we treat minority women and cultures in trying to "save them".

In the novels, after seeing some of the abusive treatment of house elves in the magical world, specifically Winky, house elf to Barty Crouch, Hermione starts the Society For The Protection of Elvish Welfare, aimed at helping house elves gain a living wage, among other things. If you've read the books then you know that house elves are essentially magical slaves who do housework, cleaning and cooking. Scratch that. They are slaves. They just don't seem to mind that much. 

Now, slavery is widely considered to be a bad thing without exception (because DUH) so I can't really be that mad that it never even occurs to Hermione that freedom might not be something that house elves want. But for house elves their "culture" for want of a better word, is that they remain tied to a specific family for their entire lives. The responsibility for that family passes down from elf to elf, and it's something they take great pride in. To be set free means not only disgracing themselves, but all of their elvish ancestors who came before them.

When Hermione sees Winky defending Barty Crouch even though he has made her confront her fear of heights at the Quidditch World Cup, all Hermione takes from the situation is that "Winky has been brainwashed" to defend him. And her limited experience with Dobby, who was ecstatic to have been set free, fuels her conviction that elves should all be freed, even though Dobby is the exception and not the rule, due to the fact that his former masters, the Malfoys, treated him like shit.

I think that's a pretty solid parallel for the way that western women assume that all veiled Muslim women are "being oppressed by the man!" or that they only adhere to their religion because they "don't know any better" even though for many Muslim women, veiling is a choice. Muslim women are not a monolith, and their choices do not exist in a vacuum.

The fact is that Hermione never once considers what house elves actually want. Other than Dobby, she has limited contact with house elves, and has no real understanding of why they are generally satisfied with their lives they way they are, and their place in the magical hierarchy. For example, while Dobby thrives in freedom, Winky falls into a tailspin, getting drunk on butterbeer in the Hogwarts kitchens. 

Ron, the only one of the main trio who grew up in the wizarding world, continues to tell Hermione that the elves are happy the way they are, and that SPEW will only antagonize them, but Hermione dismisses him as a bigot who is simply satisfied with a status quo that benefits him. Though that is probably partly right, it doesn't change the fact that Ron is more likely to understand the working relationship between wizard kind and elves, and has a more informed perspective. 

Ron's objections prove to be right however, when after discovering that Hermione has taken to hiding hand-made items of clothing in the Gryffindor common room to trick the Hogwarts house elves into being set free, they boycott Gryffindor entirely and refuse to clean it anymore, leaving the task to Dobby alone.

The only upshot of her campaign was that she alienated and infuriated the elves themselves. While she was busy knitting clothes to give them in order to set them free, the majority of house-elves are accustomed to their work, and seem to enjoy it. They regarded Hermione's actions as insults to their race. Thus, they refused to clean the Gryffindor common room any more, meaning that Dobby was the only one prepared to carry out this task. Already being free himself, he took all the clothes himself, wore most of them (making a tower of hats on top of his head), and passed some of the others on to Winky in the false hopes of cheering her up^[1]. Hermione was not informed of this development, as no one had the heart to tell her. [Harry Potter Wikia]

Hermione takes it upon herself to "free" the house elves without considering whether or not it was in their best interest, or something that they even wanted. The house elves reaction is similar to the push back that Muslim women give when told by western women that "they need to be saved from oppression". It's insulting to imply that they do not have the capacity to identify or deal with the problems of their culture on their own terms. Barging in and "fixing things" without any input from the culture you are affecting is harmful, unproductive, and ultimately alienating to that culture.

As we learn later in the novels, most house house elves just want to be treated with dignity. Kreacher, beholden to the noble house of Black, betrays Sirius in book five, because Sirius had always treated him abusively. That action led almost directly to Sirius' death. By book 7, after Harry inherit's Kreacher's services, he has learned to treat Kreacher with the dignity that he deserves as a magical being, and their relationship improves dramatically almost overnight. 

The problem isn't that Hermione wants to help. She has an amazing heart, and she is only trying to correct what she sees as a terrible injustice. But being Muggle born, there is an enormous cultural chasm that she hadn't yet figured out how to navigate. By trying to apply Muggle values of right and wrong to a magical perspective, she misses the nuances that makes certain values different or irrelevant in a magical context. Never once does she extend her knowledge of house elf's desires beyond the elves she interacts with directly, and she makes the fatal mistake of extrapolating their individual desires as the desires of the entire group. (Sound familiar...?)

So what can we learn from Hermione's mistake? Listen first. As an outsider, there is simply no way to fully understand the cultural practices of another group. And while certain things are objectively bad, dealing with those particular issues may not actually be at the top of that group's priority list. 

Let's be better allies to house elves and minority cultures. Listen first. Act second. And don't presume that as an outsider, you can ever know what is best for the people of a different culture.