JKR’s Absolutist Way of Seeing the World: Gryffindor and Slytherin
Source: JKR’s absolutist way of seeing the world: gryffindor and slytherin
Could you list me some good Slytherin traits (primary and secondary) and good Slytherin characters? There’s a Gryffindor being cocky around me and I am growing tired of him and his old ‘hurr durr Slytherins are villains’ speech
JKR doesn’t just tweak her world to make Slytherins looks bad. She tweaks her world to make Gryffindors look good.
Every time her Gryffindors do something suspect or shady, we gloss over it, or get reasons why it was justified. Dumbledore being ice-cold, manipulative, controlling? It’s okay, he’s literally saving the world, it turns out all right in the end and everybody eventually agrees with him. Arthur and Molly Weasley being political radicals who kinda seem to value their cause more than their kids? Never given emotional weight, and Voldemort is so evil and the Ministry so comedically corrupt that their position seems like the only sensible one. Hermione finds ways to torture Rita Skeeter, Marietta, and Umbridge, and it’s played as a joke every time.
Compare that to Horace Slughorn, the most broadly positive Slytherin character. He’s charming and a good teacher, but the book frames him as “collecting” famous or soon-to-be famous students so he can… name-drop them and ask them for future favors, I guess. He’s also a bit of a buffoon, which I think is very unfair. Like - okay, Ron is poisoned. What is more likely: Harry Potter comes up with a piece of potions trivia that he heard six years ago, or Slughorn, who has been a Potions teacher for decades, knows what to do in the case of a potion accident. But nah, Slughorn panics and Harry has to save the day.
I look at this guy and see a talented teacher, who loves teaching, who basically starts an extracurricular honors discussion group. And then he’s proud that so many of his ex-students decide to keep in touch with him. His decision to alter the memory where he tells Tom Riddle about Horcruxes is framed as vanity, but I see guilt. Slughorn must think that he failed Tom Riddle so badly as a teacher.
But at least he gets interiority of some kind. That’s more than I can say for Narcissa Malfoy, which is weird considering how insanely important she is to the plot. Fans have done a really good job filling in the holes in Draco’s redemption arc, because that is not work the books do for you. We spend so much time on Voldemort’s backstory, but I honestly couldn’t tell you why he does anything. (Does he want to belong? Does he like messing with people? Is he bored? Is this like… how he gets funding for his experiments?) And when Snape gets self-sacrificial it’s because “I sometimes think we sort too soon.” So he’s basically an honorary Gryffindor.
@sortinghatchats have started to sort the ethos of a work of fiction in their excellent podcast. If Harry Potter takes place in a Gryffindor universe, The Witcher, The Untamed, and The Good Place all take place in Slytherin universes, and have many, many heroic Slytherin characters. I would also add Buffy the Vampire Slayer to that list.
Unfortunately, the Harry Potter universe is actually too Gryffindor for me. I want my morality a little more nuanced, I want my writers to give a little more care and understanding to the characters the protagonists don’t agree with. And unfortunately, it sure looks like JKR’s absolutist way of seeing the world, and her trouble even comprehending people she doesn’t agree with, is something that spills out into the real world.
These books were important to me. And I like this system, I like laying it over the series and coloring it with a more complex moral system then I think it ever really had to begin with. It updates it for me.
I have mixed feelings about this post.
I totally agree that the portrayal of the houses was very biased in canon, one is the house of the heroes, the other the house of the villains or antiheroes and the other two houses practically don't even exist.
Regarding Slughorn, he actually remind me of one of my IRL teachers. That man loved bragging about his previous students and took credit for their academic success which was total bs. I spent two years with him as my teacher, unfortunately my final high school year was with him and if I had depended on his instructions, I would have never seen a university from the inside unless I got a tutor to do the work that idiot refused to do. I passed with a 96% mark because I depended on the notes of a previous teacher who left our school but was tutoring some of my friends. If he had actually taught me, I would have received the full mark. Funnily enough, during one of our monthly exams, two other students and I scored the full mark and our physics teacher told everyone it was because we followed his instructions to a t. I still am impressed with my self control back then, because I was very tempted to break out in mock laughter. So, I don't see Slughorn as a good teacher because he reminds me of that sorry excuse I had to endure. He may be smart for himself but a teacher needs to be able to transfer their knowledge onto their students.
I do agree that Rowling missed the opportunity to introduce us to more "good" Slytherins. Not bullies or junior Death Eaters. If I'm not mistaken Andromeda was a Slytherin but she seems decent, why didn't we get to know more about her? Regulus is celebrated as a hero but he is only a name on a piece of paper and his house elf's memory, we never got to see what he was actually like. Snape is obviously a good candidate for a good Slytherin but he is a grey character in the end and has his flaws, add to this how much hate he gets from one side of the fandom. Why couldn't we have a normal kid in Slytherin? Or at least some of them joining the light side during the Battle of Hogwarts? Or at the very least, there should have been more Death Eaters in other houses.
Then again, the problem is canon's limited point of view, we see most events and characters through Harry's eyes and are influenced by his like or dislike of them.
