I tried to write a free-style essay and not a rant, but maybe I didn't quite succeed... Sorry for my tone, and also for my bias against the story making this text less intelligible than it could have been, for people who feel the story is fine.
This is partly my response to the Snapedom February challenge: The Slytherin Sex God. The other part of it is sort of a continuation of the morality discussions I've been reading/joining on-and-off since last year (Cf. some thoughts on physical aggression, detached cruelty, bloodism-as-racism, and playing the race card or axis-of-evil card) and it's my attempt to, once again, tackle the question of why Snape (amongst some other characters) should be a Bad Apple no matter what he does, while James, Harry, Dumbledore etc. are Good Saviors of the World despite the things they do.
So. Why does Severus the Slytherin Sex God pose such a scary mental picture in some POVs?
And what's so wrong with him being mistaken for a "big man" of any sort?
Here, with a respectful nod to![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
mary_j_59, I want to propose an alternative way of examining the relationship between this character and his author. My main thesis is that we can look at these two entities as just that -- an author and her creation, nothing more, no biographical backstory invoked whatsoever -- and know enough to understand what's possibly going on in the Potterian fairyland. Why such a strong reaction by its author to this particular piece of fanon? He's just a character; why should anyone care? What is, in the end, the story that this author is telling, setting aside for a moment the question of whether or not she has accomplished that job in the text of her story?
Let's start by looking at HP's overarching structure.
This series may fail to be a few things we expected it to be when we first held PS/SS in our hands (such as a growth story, or a quest-for-equality story; YMMV). But whatever else it is or isn't, it's still clearly a redemption tale, in that it's a story where some evil things happen, and then some other things happen to set things right (or, at least, as right as things will ever get, a state of affairs good enough to merit the proclamation "all is well"). Now, we have entered the series fully expecting it to be a saga of Harry battling against Voldemort and eventually winning. And sure enough, on the surface level, that's exactly what happens. But the thing of it is, both Harry and Voldemort are so strongly fated to be what they are -- Harry is so Good™ that every single path into Evilness™ that he could possibly choose is made naturally inconceivable for him by a set of lucky circumstances (such as his family having been murdered by said Evilness), and Voldemort so Unsalvageably Evil that, even when given a chance to redeem himself, he is fated to throw it away as a matter of course -- that the tale ceases to be the tale of Harry and Voldemort, at some point, and ends up being more of a tale about Lily and Merope. By simple virtue of the fact that that's where things happen, by a character's "choice" rather than by some fated inner nature of theirs (which get "shown" in their choices -- there's a story-internal difference). So one mother who decided to die to protect her son gave us a world savior through this act. Another mother chose death "in spite of a son who needed her (HBP)" and this turned the son in question into a psychopath that's driven to humanitarian destruction.
And what's most unique about the HP adventure is that these contrastive stories of the two mothers and their fates are visibly linked to the romantic subplots involving each mommy-and-daddy pair, in the textual, causal domain of the story:
Merope fell in love with a rich, beautiful man who was horrible in character and didn't love her back at all. She drug-raped a false love out of him (or so we are instructed to infer without proof, because our hero and his mentor both agree that a rich, beautiful and arrogant man like him couldn't possibly impregnate a poor, ugly, desolate woman like her voluntarily), which was her first mistake, and then she was too smitten with him to keep on living after he came to his senses and dumped her, which is textually described as her second sin (Harry exclaims in disbelief, and then Dumbledore chastises him not to "judge her too harshly" as she was "greatly weakened" and "didn't have [Lily]'s courage" (ibid.) ).
Lily, OTOH, was a popular girl, and was romantically rather cold to both of her known suitors, Severus and James. Despite the fact that, according to JKR at least, she secretly had the hots for the boy hanging Severus upside down in the air for the crime of existing, as far as we can see in the text there is zero reference made by Lily to the effect of James' desirability. On the contrary, she states in front of our eyes (and, significantly, Severus') that she would rather go out with the giant squid in the pond than date James, even if taking his proffered hand came with the added bonus of him leaving one of her "best friends" alone... And that's the last we see of this couple-to-be interacting on screen. Next thing we know, they're happily married with baby Harry zooming around on a toy and shattering a gift from Lily's sister to her joy, because James' head has magically deflated and Lily has told him she's in love with him after all. And then, of course, we are told of Lily's sacrifice (which, truth be told, was something any decent mother would do, as JKR tells us and then in DH Narcissa forcibly reminds us), and how it mattered so much that her power of love instantly vaporized the heretofore undefeatable Dark Lord, and rendered an infant boy untouchable for this Evil superpower. Why? Well, seeing as James also died in a near-identical manner trying to stand between Voldemort and his wife and child, and this did no good for the wife whatsoever, it can only be because Lily was given the choice of stepping aside and out-surviving Harry, an option she willfully decided not to take. That choice was only hers to make because Severus had begged Voldemort to spare her life (DH), which request, on some unfathomable whim or another, Voldemort seriously considered granting for one fatal -- for him -- moment. (Cf. "The good and virtuous: Severus Snape and Cedric Diggory")
So that's what decided the destiny of the world, in each of the two crucial moments in the Potterian history. That Merope loved one man desperately and he didn't love her back. And then, that Lily was loved by two men (also quite unrelentingly) and she never definitively convinced either of them to stop loving her by letting him know he never stood a chance with her to begin with. So then, just as Lily's sacrifice is the antidote to Merope's Original Sin, so must James and Snape be the antidote to Tom Sr., functionally speaking. To be more precise, it was Lily ultimately marrying OotP-fighter James and not marrying Severus, the would-be Death Eater who was eventually to deliver a certain prophecy pertaining to two babies, that fated her to right the wrong of Merope having created Voldemort with her two sins. And this is not just some random parallel drawn on the character relationship diagram -- it's a causal relation straightforwardly narrated by the tale: it's only because the suitor that Lily didn't marry ended up having a boss who would hunt her family down and try to kill her baby, that Harry ended up getting the Love Protection that he got and was fated to save the world. Coincidence, yes. But a fortunate coincidence, definitely. And fairytales are largely made of fortunate coincidences.
So Lily's choice luckily happened to bring salvation to the world. Now, in your traditional fairytale-verse, you'd expect there to be some kind of a moral message here, like "Lily virtuously chose to love the ugly, awkward kid with the heart of gold, who desperately loved her yet still valued her free will more than his own desire, and she wasn't led astray by the image of a cute boy in shiny armor who'd easily be anybody's favorite (The Beauty and the Beast)," or "Lily decided against marrying a very rich man, because she had tender sensibilities and couldn't fail to notice how cruel he was towards those he considered below himself (Thumbelina)." But in the Potterverse, Lily chooses the extremely rich boy with nice ruffled hair and near-unanimous popularity, ditching the ugly misfit whose poor family background is specifically noted by the narrative on more than three separate occasions. Oh, but not because of those material or sexual disparities, of course! She made her romantic choice solely based on their difference in Moral Status™. I mean, it's obviously so: one was headed for Evil and the other was vehemently anti-Evil. The story says so, and thus it does claim to be a morality tale of some sort. Just, you know, not one that deals with any kind of morality we've ever heard of.
It's mystifying. This is some magical sort of morality, then, in essence. The two boys are each wearing a sign that says "Dark Arts" or "White Light," which are words denoting a new pair of concepts divorced from our ordinary notions of tolerance, equality, fair play, courage, resourcefulness, or thirst for peace. And Lily's job was to figure out which one was wearing which sign, and she picked the correct answer and saved the world. Hooray, Lily! But when her wifehood and consequential motherhood is such a crux of the entire story, you can't really keep from wondering what might have happened if she had somehow made the wrong choice. And you can't help but be thankful, I think, that her choice was such a no-brainer... The Evil Prince is the one that's sallow-skinned or pointy-faced, disliked by most, kind of pathetic, and (wow) wearing a bright green tie! Unlike most of the traditional fairytales, which tend to make us worry whether we can correctly kiss the frog, weep for the beast, etc., when we are put in the princesses' shoes IRL, the romantic heroine-driven adventure tale of HP is fundamentally soothing to our ears. It's a story of our Mother Love curing the world of scary evil things as a matter of course -- it's not so much a parable as it's feel-good food for the soul. That's why all the odds (factors irrelevant to the suitors' moral goodness, such as their wealth, popularity and physical looks) are stacked in favor of Lily making the right choice, as opposed to her having to correct the errors of Merope (who stole the beautiful, wealthy man-about-town that she didn't deserve) by being faced with the same trappings as she was and overcoming those temptations. The Potterian fairytale is giving us a free ride.
Of course, this whole thing -- the soothing power of the feel-good story -- can only work its wonders if we can take for granted the fact that James is obviously more desirable than miserable Snivellus. And that's where JKR the author clashes loudly with some of her most avid readers... To her mind, it seems, what she textually describes in the books should be enough to convince any sane reader that Snape as a romantic prospect would obviously be "a very horrible idea." Whether she's referring to the man's greasy hair, too-long nose, and tasteless/classless perpetual wardrobe by that statement, or she means the tempers and merciless tongue-lashings that the Vengeful Git™ is prone to dishing out on innocent students, she clearly seems to see her depiction of Snape as a less palatable picture, romantically-speaking, than her later depiction of James in OotP... And it seems as though this difference is important to her, judging by what happens to the two men in the books as well as what she says in interviews.
And really, that's no surprise when you think about it. Because while Sirius being seen as sexually desirable doesn't do anything to destabilize JKR's beautiful story structure, a significant contingent of her hardcore fans (most of this subgroup perceived to be female and heterosexual, some of them undoubtedly young girls like the pre-marital Lily) preferring Severus to James as a romantic prospect is a direct threat to the foundation of this soothing story. Sev the Snivelly was supposed to be the very antithesis of flashy Tom Sr.; he was created specifically to become the romantic trap (the boy with the Evil™ leaning) that no girl would be at risk of falling for, while James was created to be the morally Good™ husband-material that safely attracts all women without confusion. And this nice black-and-white distinction was supposed to save the world -- did save the world -- in the HP fairyland. When we start doubting those very premises of the story, it threatens to cause the whole Potterian lullaby to come crashing down on itself... You don't have to know anything about JKR the person to understand that this has to be an extremely scary thing indeed.
And so it's no wonder that HP's author becomes quite vehement in defending, both narratively and meta-narratively, not only the heroicness and desirability of James, but also the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad nature of Snape. The poor guy has to be both unambiguously undesirable (or, failing that, there needs to be something wrong with the psychological make-up of all women who love him, or else it has to be that they're just blinded by Alan Rickman's physical allure) and morally quite Bad™ in an unequivocal manner. And that latter part is also important to be tagged on there because, I mean, if he's materialistically undesirable and of sound(er) moral nature, then Lily will have saved the world by going for the superficial catch (wealthy, not ugly, appetizingly hygienic), and not by choosing the morally good guy over the bad one in any sense whatsoever. Which we really can't have, now, can we? Nor can we have Lily being in any danger of actually falling for Snape, and sending us into fear about our own romantic judgments. Or, maybe we can, as we fans of HP don't need this story to be either utopian or soothing (those of us who needed it to be those things haven't lasted past Cedric's, Sirius' and then Collin-Fred-Tonks-and-Lupin's bleak, gratuitous deaths). But apparently the author of these books can't live with a Snape that is either more desirable than James, or comparably virtuous/deserving-of-happiness in any shape or form except in his act of loving Lily.
Which... You know, she did write the story, and if that's the way she feels about her characters then she has every right to say as much, in the books or out of them... But unfortunately, the more she insists that that's the way she wants her characters to come across, the more she emphasizes her failure in making that happen in the actual depictive domain of her writing. I mean, because, it's not like she couldn't have written a story in which James is more rich and handsome than Snape and clearly shown (rather than just told, by use of the arbitrary words "Dark Arts" and "purebloodist racism") to be the less morally problematic of the two in anybody's eyes. She could have given us a Snape that's as undesirable to us as to JKR, just as she gave us an unambiguous Umbridge that inspires no Umbridgedom. Yet somehow, for whatever reason, she didn't write her story in that way. Or at least, to me it doesn't feel like she did, because every description of James we ever get reveals him to be so morally repugnant that I can't find him sexually the more attractive despite his charms (and I do generally prefer his physical appearance to Snape's, except for the parts of him that are supposed to look ugly just because they look too foreign for HP's national audience). So from my reader-POV this whole redemption tale is twisted like a pretzel... Which is fine by me, actually. Like I said, I don't need the Lily story arc to be the soothing tale of her Virtuous Choice redeeming the mistakes of Merope the Unenlightened Wretch (nihilistic cacophony rocks). But if JKR so strongly wants her story to have that specific effect, and if she so confidently believes to have succeeded in giving it that effect, then... I can only say she and I must have very different ideas about what constitutes desirable characteristics in men, both morally and sexually/romantically.
[NOTE] I hope I'm not out of line in requesting this: Let's please just talk about HP and JKR-the-author for the moment. Let's not talk about JKR the person, as her private life is not nearly as interesting to us fans of Snape or HP as the realm of her story-telling is.
[REFERENCES]
People quotes
Hover on a link to see the relevant quote and its timeframe. The words belong to JKR unless otherwise specified. Interviewers' words are marked by ( ).
Book quotes
HBP, Ch.13 / (ibid.) : "But she could do magic!" said Harry impatiently. "She could have got food and everything for herself by magic, couldn't she?" / "Ah," said Dumbledore, "perhaps she could. But it is my belief -- I am guessing again, but I am sure I am right -- that when her husband abandoned her, Merope stopped using magic. I do not think that she wanted to be a witch any longer. Of course, it is also possible that her unrequited love and the attendant despair sapped her of her powers; that can happen. In any case, as you are about to see, Merope refused to raise her wand even to save her own life." / "She wouldn't even stay alive for her son?" / Dumbledore raised his eyebrows. "Could you possibly be feeling sorry for Lord Voldemort?" / "No," said Harry quickly, "but she had a choice, didn't she, not like my mother --" / "Your mother had a choice too," said Dumbledore gently. "Yes, Merope Riddle chose death in spite of a son who needed her, but do not judge her too harshly, Harry. She was greatly weakened by long suffering and she never had your mother's courage. [...]"
...This is by far the most abundant use of the word "choose" in reference to important actions that we have encountered in all seven books. And it's interesting that Dumbledore says Merope might have become unable, rather than unwilling, to keep using magic to survive, but then turns right around and intimates, almost in the same breath, that she was culpable for her own death in any case. That it was her choice. Our hero agrees with this view, and this perception is never contested, to the end of DH.
Interesting, also, that when Ron feels too starved to keep following Harry in DH, this isn't Harry's fault at all; it's because of Gamp's Law of whatsis -- it's the universe's fault. Yet, in telling Harry about the plight of Merope, Dumbledore (who is extremely knowledgeable about how magic works) never refers to that little piece of information ("Ah, perhaps she could"), and instead frames the whole thing as Merope's refusal to raise her wand. The narrative agrees with this framing of that episode, because it doesn't make Harry recall Merope in sympathy, not once, over his long hungry exile in the cold, lonely countrysides.
DH, Ch.33 : "If she means so much to you," said Dumbledore, "surely Lord Voldemort will spare her? Could you not ask for mercy for the mother, in exchange for the son?" / "I have -- I have asked him --"
And then we have, in the next scene:
"She and James put their faith in the wrong person," said Dumbledore. "Rather like you, Severus. Weren't you hoping that Lord Voldemort would spare her?"
Er, he wasn't, no. That's why he was hoping Dumbledore would respond to his trust instead. Actually, Lily and James did put their faith in the wrong person, namely Dumbledore, back when they got recruited. If they hadn't defied Voldemort thrice in support of Dumbledore's war efforts, they would never have gotten their child hunted down to begin with. It was wrong of them to assume that Dumbledore would then feel responsible for their fate, and be devastated by their demise just as Snape would be, instead of being able to nonchalantly blame it on their own foolish misjudgments. Snape OTOH did not put his faith in his own previous master; that was precisely why he came running to Dumbledore, promising him "anything" in return for keeping the Potter family safe -- including his complete betrayal of Voldemort.
It's fascinating to note that Voldemort, in the meantime, was actually acting slightly more trustworthily than Snape had given him credit for. He went and proposed, to a Mudblood who had dared fornicate with a pureblood and produce a miscegenated child now threatening to vanquish him, that her life could be spared, unlike her pureblooded husband's. And he actually meant this choice he gave her -- that's how it counted as a genuine choice and could trigger Lily's Awesome Love Protection. If that's the way Voldemort ultimately tends to treat his pawns' most heartfelt wishes (see Pettigrew, see Bellatrix, see even the Malfoy family, of which not a single member did he kill), I have a hard time understanding how Dumbledore could possibly be a better human being than him, never mind "innately" better and allowed to be in the position of sagely instructing Harry to ignore the flayed baby crying for help.
Apologies
You can probably tell I appropriated an existing draft on my harddrive to fit the new challenge, and tacked on a new title. In other words I cheated. If things sound forced that could be why, I'm sorry. I don't have the energy to go back and fix it. Also, I wrote most of this before I read Mary's response, and my generalization about fans who appreciate Snape doesn't take into account the kind of complexity she talks about. For the record, I don't mean to say all Snapedom people find the man sexually desirable. (Though I do!! :P)
This is partly my response to the Snapedom February challenge: The Slytherin Sex God. The other part of it is sort of a continuation of the morality discussions I've been reading/joining on-and-off since last year (Cf. some thoughts on physical aggression, detached cruelty, bloodism-as-racism, and playing the race card or axis-of-evil card) and it's my attempt to, once again, tackle the question of why Snape (amongst some other characters) should be a Bad Apple no matter what he does, while James, Harry, Dumbledore etc. are Good Saviors of the World despite the things they do.
So. Why does Severus the Slytherin Sex God pose such a scary mental picture in some POVs?
And what's so wrong with him being mistaken for a "big man" of any sort?
a.k.a. Why, exactly, does Snape's creator hate him so much? - Take Two
Here, with a respectful nod to
mary_j_59, I want to propose an alternative way of examining the relationship between this character and his author. My main thesis is that we can look at these two entities as just that -- an author and her creation, nothing more, no biographical backstory invoked whatsoever -- and know enough to understand what's possibly going on in the Potterian fairyland. Why such a strong reaction by its author to this particular piece of fanon? He's just a character; why should anyone care? What is, in the end, the story that this author is telling, setting aside for a moment the question of whether or not she has accomplished that job in the text of her story?Let's start by looking at HP's overarching structure.
This series may fail to be a few things we expected it to be when we first held PS/SS in our hands (such as a growth story, or a quest-for-equality story; YMMV). But whatever else it is or isn't, it's still clearly a redemption tale, in that it's a story where some evil things happen, and then some other things happen to set things right (or, at least, as right as things will ever get, a state of affairs good enough to merit the proclamation "all is well"). Now, we have entered the series fully expecting it to be a saga of Harry battling against Voldemort and eventually winning. And sure enough, on the surface level, that's exactly what happens. But the thing of it is, both Harry and Voldemort are so strongly fated to be what they are -- Harry is so Good™ that every single path into Evilness™ that he could possibly choose is made naturally inconceivable for him by a set of lucky circumstances (such as his family having been murdered by said Evilness), and Voldemort so Unsalvageably Evil that, even when given a chance to redeem himself, he is fated to throw it away as a matter of course -- that the tale ceases to be the tale of Harry and Voldemort, at some point, and ends up being more of a tale about Lily and Merope. By simple virtue of the fact that that's where things happen, by a character's "choice" rather than by some fated inner nature of theirs (which get "shown" in their choices -- there's a story-internal difference). So one mother who decided to die to protect her son gave us a world savior through this act. Another mother chose death "in spite of a son who needed her (HBP)" and this turned the son in question into a psychopath that's driven to humanitarian destruction.
And what's most unique about the HP adventure is that these contrastive stories of the two mothers and their fates are visibly linked to the romantic subplots involving each mommy-and-daddy pair, in the textual, causal domain of the story:
Merope fell in love with a rich, beautiful man who was horrible in character and didn't love her back at all. She drug-raped a false love out of him (or so we are instructed to infer without proof, because our hero and his mentor both agree that a rich, beautiful and arrogant man like him couldn't possibly impregnate a poor, ugly, desolate woman like her voluntarily), which was her first mistake, and then she was too smitten with him to keep on living after he came to his senses and dumped her, which is textually described as her second sin (Harry exclaims in disbelief, and then Dumbledore chastises him not to "judge her too harshly" as she was "greatly weakened" and "didn't have [Lily]'s courage" (ibid.) ).
Lily, OTOH, was a popular girl, and was romantically rather cold to both of her known suitors, Severus and James. Despite the fact that, according to JKR at least, she secretly had the hots for the boy hanging Severus upside down in the air for the crime of existing, as far as we can see in the text there is zero reference made by Lily to the effect of James' desirability. On the contrary, she states in front of our eyes (and, significantly, Severus') that she would rather go out with the giant squid in the pond than date James, even if taking his proffered hand came with the added bonus of him leaving one of her "best friends" alone... And that's the last we see of this couple-to-be interacting on screen. Next thing we know, they're happily married with baby Harry zooming around on a toy and shattering a gift from Lily's sister to her joy, because James' head has magically deflated and Lily has told him she's in love with him after all. And then, of course, we are told of Lily's sacrifice (which, truth be told, was something any decent mother would do, as JKR tells us and then in DH Narcissa forcibly reminds us), and how it mattered so much that her power of love instantly vaporized the heretofore undefeatable Dark Lord, and rendered an infant boy untouchable for this Evil superpower. Why? Well, seeing as James also died in a near-identical manner trying to stand between Voldemort and his wife and child, and this did no good for the wife whatsoever, it can only be because Lily was given the choice of stepping aside and out-surviving Harry, an option she willfully decided not to take. That choice was only hers to make because Severus had begged Voldemort to spare her life (DH), which request, on some unfathomable whim or another, Voldemort seriously considered granting for one fatal -- for him -- moment. (Cf. "The good and virtuous: Severus Snape and Cedric Diggory")
So that's what decided the destiny of the world, in each of the two crucial moments in the Potterian history. That Merope loved one man desperately and he didn't love her back. And then, that Lily was loved by two men (also quite unrelentingly) and she never definitively convinced either of them to stop loving her by letting him know he never stood a chance with her to begin with. So then, just as Lily's sacrifice is the antidote to Merope's Original Sin, so must James and Snape be the antidote to Tom Sr., functionally speaking. To be more precise, it was Lily ultimately marrying OotP-fighter James and not marrying Severus, the would-be Death Eater who was eventually to deliver a certain prophecy pertaining to two babies, that fated her to right the wrong of Merope having created Voldemort with her two sins. And this is not just some random parallel drawn on the character relationship diagram -- it's a causal relation straightforwardly narrated by the tale: it's only because the suitor that Lily didn't marry ended up having a boss who would hunt her family down and try to kill her baby, that Harry ended up getting the Love Protection that he got and was fated to save the world. Coincidence, yes. But a fortunate coincidence, definitely. And fairytales are largely made of fortunate coincidences.
So Lily's choice luckily happened to bring salvation to the world. Now, in your traditional fairytale-verse, you'd expect there to be some kind of a moral message here, like "Lily virtuously chose to love the ugly, awkward kid with the heart of gold, who desperately loved her yet still valued her free will more than his own desire, and she wasn't led astray by the image of a cute boy in shiny armor who'd easily be anybody's favorite (The Beauty and the Beast)," or "Lily decided against marrying a very rich man, because she had tender sensibilities and couldn't fail to notice how cruel he was towards those he considered below himself (Thumbelina)." But in the Potterverse, Lily chooses the extremely rich boy with nice ruffled hair and near-unanimous popularity, ditching the ugly misfit whose poor family background is specifically noted by the narrative on more than three separate occasions. Oh, but not because of those material or sexual disparities, of course! She made her romantic choice solely based on their difference in Moral Status™. I mean, it's obviously so: one was headed for Evil and the other was vehemently anti-Evil. The story says so, and thus it does claim to be a morality tale of some sort. Just, you know, not one that deals with any kind of morality we've ever heard of.
It's mystifying. This is some magical sort of morality, then, in essence. The two boys are each wearing a sign that says "Dark Arts" or "White Light," which are words denoting a new pair of concepts divorced from our ordinary notions of tolerance, equality, fair play, courage, resourcefulness, or thirst for peace. And Lily's job was to figure out which one was wearing which sign, and she picked the correct answer and saved the world. Hooray, Lily! But when her wifehood and consequential motherhood is such a crux of the entire story, you can't really keep from wondering what might have happened if she had somehow made the wrong choice. And you can't help but be thankful, I think, that her choice was such a no-brainer... The Evil Prince is the one that's sallow-skinned or pointy-faced, disliked by most, kind of pathetic, and (wow) wearing a bright green tie! Unlike most of the traditional fairytales, which tend to make us worry whether we can correctly kiss the frog, weep for the beast, etc., when we are put in the princesses' shoes IRL, the romantic heroine-driven adventure tale of HP is fundamentally soothing to our ears. It's a story of our Mother Love curing the world of scary evil things as a matter of course -- it's not so much a parable as it's feel-good food for the soul. That's why all the odds (factors irrelevant to the suitors' moral goodness, such as their wealth, popularity and physical looks) are stacked in favor of Lily making the right choice, as opposed to her having to correct the errors of Merope (who stole the beautiful, wealthy man-about-town that she didn't deserve) by being faced with the same trappings as she was and overcoming those temptations. The Potterian fairytale is giving us a free ride.
Of course, this whole thing -- the soothing power of the feel-good story -- can only work its wonders if we can take for granted the fact that James is obviously more desirable than miserable Snivellus. And that's where JKR the author clashes loudly with some of her most avid readers... To her mind, it seems, what she textually describes in the books should be enough to convince any sane reader that Snape as a romantic prospect would obviously be "a very horrible idea." Whether she's referring to the man's greasy hair, too-long nose, and tasteless/classless perpetual wardrobe by that statement, or she means the tempers and merciless tongue-lashings that the Vengeful Git™ is prone to dishing out on innocent students, she clearly seems to see her depiction of Snape as a less palatable picture, romantically-speaking, than her later depiction of James in OotP... And it seems as though this difference is important to her, judging by what happens to the two men in the books as well as what she says in interviews.
And really, that's no surprise when you think about it. Because while Sirius being seen as sexually desirable doesn't do anything to destabilize JKR's beautiful story structure, a significant contingent of her hardcore fans (most of this subgroup perceived to be female and heterosexual, some of them undoubtedly young girls like the pre-marital Lily) preferring Severus to James as a romantic prospect is a direct threat to the foundation of this soothing story. Sev the Snivelly was supposed to be the very antithesis of flashy Tom Sr.; he was created specifically to become the romantic trap (the boy with the Evil™ leaning) that no girl would be at risk of falling for, while James was created to be the morally Good™ husband-material that safely attracts all women without confusion. And this nice black-and-white distinction was supposed to save the world -- did save the world -- in the HP fairyland. When we start doubting those very premises of the story, it threatens to cause the whole Potterian lullaby to come crashing down on itself... You don't have to know anything about JKR the person to understand that this has to be an extremely scary thing indeed.
And so it's no wonder that HP's author becomes quite vehement in defending, both narratively and meta-narratively, not only the heroicness and desirability of James, but also the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad nature of Snape. The poor guy has to be both unambiguously undesirable (or, failing that, there needs to be something wrong with the psychological make-up of all women who love him, or else it has to be that they're just blinded by Alan Rickman's physical allure) and morally quite Bad™ in an unequivocal manner. And that latter part is also important to be tagged on there because, I mean, if he's materialistically undesirable and of sound(er) moral nature, then Lily will have saved the world by going for the superficial catch (wealthy, not ugly, appetizingly hygienic), and not by choosing the morally good guy over the bad one in any sense whatsoever. Which we really can't have, now, can we? Nor can we have Lily being in any danger of actually falling for Snape, and sending us into fear about our own romantic judgments. Or, maybe we can, as we fans of HP don't need this story to be either utopian or soothing (those of us who needed it to be those things haven't lasted past Cedric's, Sirius' and then Collin-Fred-Tonks-and-Lupin's bleak, gratuitous deaths). But apparently the author of these books can't live with a Snape that is either more desirable than James, or comparably virtuous/deserving-of-happiness in any shape or form except in his act of loving Lily.
Which... You know, she did write the story, and if that's the way she feels about her characters then she has every right to say as much, in the books or out of them... But unfortunately, the more she insists that that's the way she wants her characters to come across, the more she emphasizes her failure in making that happen in the actual depictive domain of her writing. I mean, because, it's not like she couldn't have written a story in which James is more rich and handsome than Snape and clearly shown (rather than just told, by use of the arbitrary words "Dark Arts" and "purebloodist racism") to be the less morally problematic of the two in anybody's eyes. She could have given us a Snape that's as undesirable to us as to JKR, just as she gave us an unambiguous Umbridge that inspires no Umbridgedom. Yet somehow, for whatever reason, she didn't write her story in that way. Or at least, to me it doesn't feel like she did, because every description of James we ever get reveals him to be so morally repugnant that I can't find him sexually the more attractive despite his charms (and I do generally prefer his physical appearance to Snape's, except for the parts of him that are supposed to look ugly just because they look too foreign for HP's national audience). So from my reader-POV this whole redemption tale is twisted like a pretzel... Which is fine by me, actually. Like I said, I don't need the Lily story arc to be the soothing tale of her Virtuous Choice redeeming the mistakes of Merope the Unenlightened Wretch (nihilistic cacophony rocks). But if JKR so strongly wants her story to have that specific effect, and if she so confidently believes to have succeeded in giving it that effect, then... I can only say she and I must have very different ideas about what constitutes desirable characteristics in men, both morally and sexually/romantically.
[NOTE] I hope I'm not out of line in requesting this: Let's please just talk about HP and JKR-the-author for the moment. Let's not talk about JKR the person, as her private life is not nearly as interesting to us fans of Snape or HP as the realm of her story-telling is.
[REFERENCES]
People quotes
Hover on a link to see the relevant quote and its timeframe. The words belong to JKR unless otherwise specified. Interviewers' words are marked by ( ).
Book quotes
HBP, Ch.13 / (ibid.) : "But she could do magic!" said Harry impatiently. "She could have got food and everything for herself by magic, couldn't she?" / "Ah," said Dumbledore, "perhaps she could. But it is my belief -- I am guessing again, but I am sure I am right -- that when her husband abandoned her, Merope stopped using magic. I do not think that she wanted to be a witch any longer. Of course, it is also possible that her unrequited love and the attendant despair sapped her of her powers; that can happen. In any case, as you are about to see, Merope refused to raise her wand even to save her own life." / "She wouldn't even stay alive for her son?" / Dumbledore raised his eyebrows. "Could you possibly be feeling sorry for Lord Voldemort?" / "No," said Harry quickly, "but she had a choice, didn't she, not like my mother --" / "Your mother had a choice too," said Dumbledore gently. "Yes, Merope Riddle chose death in spite of a son who needed her, but do not judge her too harshly, Harry. She was greatly weakened by long suffering and she never had your mother's courage. [...]"
...This is by far the most abundant use of the word "choose" in reference to important actions that we have encountered in all seven books. And it's interesting that Dumbledore says Merope might have become unable, rather than unwilling, to keep using magic to survive, but then turns right around and intimates, almost in the same breath, that she was culpable for her own death in any case. That it was her choice. Our hero agrees with this view, and this perception is never contested, to the end of DH.
Interesting, also, that when Ron feels too starved to keep following Harry in DH, this isn't Harry's fault at all; it's because of Gamp's Law of whatsis -- it's the universe's fault. Yet, in telling Harry about the plight of Merope, Dumbledore (who is extremely knowledgeable about how magic works) never refers to that little piece of information ("Ah, perhaps she could"), and instead frames the whole thing as Merope's refusal to raise her wand. The narrative agrees with this framing of that episode, because it doesn't make Harry recall Merope in sympathy, not once, over his long hungry exile in the cold, lonely countrysides.
DH, Ch.33 : "If she means so much to you," said Dumbledore, "surely Lord Voldemort will spare her? Could you not ask for mercy for the mother, in exchange for the son?" / "I have -- I have asked him --"
And then we have, in the next scene:
"She and James put their faith in the wrong person," said Dumbledore. "Rather like you, Severus. Weren't you hoping that Lord Voldemort would spare her?"
Er, he wasn't, no. That's why he was hoping Dumbledore would respond to his trust instead. Actually, Lily and James did put their faith in the wrong person, namely Dumbledore, back when they got recruited. If they hadn't defied Voldemort thrice in support of Dumbledore's war efforts, they would never have gotten their child hunted down to begin with. It was wrong of them to assume that Dumbledore would then feel responsible for their fate, and be devastated by their demise just as Snape would be, instead of being able to nonchalantly blame it on their own foolish misjudgments. Snape OTOH did not put his faith in his own previous master; that was precisely why he came running to Dumbledore, promising him "anything" in return for keeping the Potter family safe -- including his complete betrayal of Voldemort.
It's fascinating to note that Voldemort, in the meantime, was actually acting slightly more trustworthily than Snape had given him credit for. He went and proposed, to a Mudblood who had dared fornicate with a pureblood and produce a miscegenated child now threatening to vanquish him, that her life could be spared, unlike her pureblooded husband's. And he actually meant this choice he gave her -- that's how it counted as a genuine choice and could trigger Lily's Awesome Love Protection. If that's the way Voldemort ultimately tends to treat his pawns' most heartfelt wishes (see Pettigrew, see Bellatrix, see even the Malfoy family, of which not a single member did he kill), I have a hard time understanding how Dumbledore could possibly be a better human being than him, never mind "innately" better and allowed to be in the position of sagely instructing Harry to ignore the flayed baby crying for help.
Apologies
You can probably tell I appropriated an existing draft on my harddrive to fit the new challenge, and tacked on a new title. In other words I cheated. If things sound forced that could be why, I'm sorry. I don't have the energy to go back and fix it. Also, I wrote most of this before I read Mary's response, and my generalization about fans who appreciate Snape doesn't take into account the kind of complexity she talks about. For the record, I don't mean to say all Snapedom people find the man sexually desirable. (Though I do!! :P)
I think you're also right in thinking Rowling's strong objections to fans' seeing Severus as virtuous or heroic or attractive in any way stem from her own vision of his role in the plot. They have nothing to do with the character as written, really. It's possible that, as Sigune said, she sees him simply as a plot device, not as a complex character that readers might admire or even identify with.
But I keep coming back to this: what one intends when starting to write a story, and what one achieves, are two different things. And, once the story exists, it exists independently of the author. The author must let go of the story and give up control. If the readers - or even a large minority of readers - then read the story in a way opposite to what the author intended, it simply means she failed in her execution. She doesn't have the right or the privilege of telling her readers that they are reading incorrectly.
Just my two cents!
She doesn't have the right or the privilege of telling her readers that they are reading incorrectly.
Well, she doesn't, but thank God she doesn't seem to live in this century (or even last century anytime after 1967) because if she had just written this series and kept completely mum about it we'd have no way of figuring out how on earth she ended up with this incoherent mess.
Plus, even though each person has their own interpretation and, I agree, each of them is equally valid, it's important to examine the social phenomenon that's going on in the world, where a huge number of children, young adults, and grown-ups alike (some of them even parents and educators, some even professional advocates for equality and tolerance) are taking in this story and viewing its moral messages as straightforward and unproblematic. If we went by our own readings alone, we couldn't possibly understand what might be appealing to those people, who seem to be getting things from the tale that we can't even begin to smell. And unfortunately I haven't encountered any Correct Reader™ of HP, other than JKR, that gives us a coherent enough explanation as to why they enjoy the story the way it is. Fans who stop their arguments at "Are you deluded? JKR agrees with us!" don't give us much to work on.
Whereas JKR's public comments provide all of us commonplace fen with an amount of primary source text that would make any scholar salivate. I haven't even gone through the tip of the iceberg yet, and still I was exclaiming my way through Accio Quote as things finally seemed to start making sense. As soon as we realize that we can deal with JKR-the-author's words while strictly keeping ourselves from tumbling into slandar or personal name-calling, we can dig up a whole fountain of information on how the HP story is in fact coherent, is what's I'm slowly and painfully (as reading JKR's words is painful) starting to realize...
Great essay. I haven’t comment earlier, because I can’t really organize my thoughts, so I’ll do my best here. The above part I quoted is the main reason I believe that I keep coming back to looking at the text, because so many people see it as a great example for equality and tolerance. It isn’t that simple.
I believe that many of here are of different backgrounds, where we ourselves have come against racism and prejudice. I bring this up, because I’m come across posts where people think they are the only ones, and tend to think that their interpretation is the right one. I’ve read statements, such as, “They don’t know anything about racism.” Statements like this tend to generalize, and assume that…well I really don’t know what to assume there.
When it comes down to it this is a fictional world, and it is really hard to compare it to many real life situations. People of certain backgrounds don’t hold superpowers, because having magic is a superpower. IMHO I think it is best to compare the Harry Power world with other fictional worlds, such as, Battlestar Galactica or The Xmen.
In real life I’ve come across people who say “All Slytherins are evil.”
On sites I read where a person wrote how many people tend to Romanize Snape and forget about his Death Eaters days. Someone here a few months back wrote an essay about how we really don’t know how active the Death Eaters were when Snape joined.
There are few other things I’ve read that assume that I interpreted the text the way the author intended, but I don’t remember.
What I’m trying to get to is that we all have different interpretations, and all of them equally valid. If people want to think of JKR world as such a great example of real life situations, go ahead, but just don’t expect me to.
btw...
I don't quite agree. Plot device, yes, but not just a cardboard one. It looks like Snape is plenty complex and she sees him that way. Just, you know, he's a complex character that we're all supposed to naturally want to "slap hard" despite the complexity. Personally I've never had an experience with any man or woman whose romantic interest in me I *liked* while their overall moral nature repulsed me, so I don't get that mentality at all...
I did want to discuss this phrase, however:
"She and James put their faith in the wrong person"
This phrase is especially telling, considering the change of Secret Keeper. Lily and James did put their faith in the wrong person, but not the person that Dumbledore thinks. (I'm assuming that DD doesn't know about the switch of Secret Keepers.)
This is straying from the original point, but Pettigrew's treachery serves as a mirror to Severus' own. Severus turns to the "enemy" to protect his unrequited love. They would have been safe unless Pettigrew's own betrayal had not effectively negated Snape's efforts. The real irony is that Snape would have made a better Secret Keeper than either Pettigrew or Black. Another example of Lily's poor choice of friends.
There's also the matter of the redemptive pattern. JKR confirmed to a fan early in the series that there is a redemptive pattern but did not follow that pattern to its natural conclusion. Snape sacrifices much to attone for his betrayal. However, he dies alone and in pain, never benefiting directly from his redemption.
Returning to the original point, I guess that bullying and messy hair are more attractive than brains, quiet resolve and steely will. Lily says to Snape that they are taking different paths, but I'm sure that one encouraging word would have led Severus to drop his "evil ways" and flock to her side. It's a somewhat nauseating concept to me, but it's another black eye in Rowling's moral universe. Lily (unbeknownst to her) had the chance to turn Severus around, and in losing that chance, she doomed herself and her future child to death.
Those who sneer at the idea of an appealing or attractive Snape have not scratched the surface of the book. They see Snape only as how his author has presented him. I'll grant that there are giddy fans who buy into an idealized Rickman!hawtsexgod version, but there are others who can make Snape loveable working only from what the author has provided. It's a tragedy that Rowling can laud the Black fans for their squeeing adulation of an essentially shallow and bullying character but condemn those who see past Snape's repellent physical and emotional exterior to the conflicted and anguished man who is also capable of being likeable in his own right.
Oh God, that's true! I can't believe I never thought about this in that way. Which is the kind of dramatic irony that adds depth to Lily's character arc, and it wouldn't actually negatively affect her heroic status in the end at all... It's unfortunate that that kind of a complexity (another example of this being that, had James and his gang been less hostile to Snape he might have been able to make some friends other than the Evil Slytherins -- or at least, that could be a possibility entertained by Harry at the point in time when he saw James & Sirius bully Snape in OotP) never gets explored in the moral universe of the HP story. The only type of complexity we ever get seems to be a Good Guy pitying or acknowledging a goodness in a Bad Meanie (Draco, Dudley) and turning forgivingly sympathetic despite all the bad things he'd done to him. Which is an awesome thing to do, but a Good Guy regretting his own action, or at least being morally conflicted about the necessary evils he has chosen, would have been even more welcome in DH...
To be fair, I'm pretty sure that she's warned people away from being too attracted to Sirius as well (I think that's the real context of the "bad boy" comment), even while admitting fondness for him herself. (FWIW I like Sirius as a character too, although that's different from liking him as a notional person.)
Just to devil's-advocate for a moment, I don't think we need to resort to fear as a reason for why some people find this idea anywhere from unlikely to downright ridiculous. I.e., it doesn't have to be because they are threatened by the idea that they reject it, so to suppose that this is the case for anyone who has not actually said so themselves is rather disingenuous. This is the sort of conjecture that gets "Slytherfen" (in its pejorative sense) levelled at us. ;)
(That said, one might plausibly count JKR among those who seem to be afraid of the idea, with that "very horrible idea" comment. If not fear, then certainly some kind of revulsion, which I think is "fear of contamination" when you come down to it.)
She drug-raped a false love out of him (or so we are instructed to infer without proof, because our hero and his mentor both agree that a rich, beautiful and arrogant man like him couldn't possibly impregnate a poor, ugly, desolate woman like her voluntarily)
Such as in the ever-popular one-night stand, which is still voluntary even if he regrets it in the light of day... but I'm not sure we were meant to think Merope was "ugly" per se. She was certainly not well-presented, but I don't recall her getting negative physical details, at least not in the systematic way some other characters do?
she never definitively convinced either of them to stop loving her by letting him know he never stood a chance with her to begin with.
While I agree with what you're saying -- she ought to have said this to one of them -- I find myself bemused by the idea that you can convince someone who is genuinely in love not to be so just by telling them "it ain't gonna happen." That may convince them to stop actively courting you (perhaps "should" convince, if they love you in the sense of truly desiring your happiness, whatever the cost), but "stop loving"?
the soothing power of the feel-good story -- can only work its wonders if we can take for granted the fact that James is obviously more desirable than miserable Snivellus.
*growl* I've seen some extremely juvenile exposition on this very topic, on how obviously this couldn't be so, ha ha aren't his attempts pathetic. It made me quite ill. I mean, we all have our ideas of what we do and don't find attractive, and that's fine. It's even human to be put off by the idea of someone being attracted to us whom we don't reciprocally find attractive. But the way I've seen it talked about often seems to betray an underlying sentiment "OMG it's fundamentally wrong for him to desire anyone simply because of the way he looks", which I find repugnant (on its own, never mind the fact that I do happen to find him sexy and such people totally missing out).
This is not to denigrate James, at least not physically. My mental picture of him is indeed good-looking, handsome. But so is a sports car; I still don't want one. It's nice to look at, but somehow the attraction wears off quickly, for me. My idea of Severus kindles a kind of longing, because he's fascinating. He's not pretty; "a face only a fangirl could love", one might say. But the more we like someone, the more attractive they become, or at least the more we overlook their flaws (if it's not a romantic feeling we have for them). When I look at my husband, I don't really *see* the bit of a belly he's got or the way he slouches (the better to make eye contact with me, my dear; he's about seven inches taller) or his sunken chest or his stubble where he didn't used to have to shave but every three days or (yes!) his tendency to oily hair. I see him, and I like to think that after a year and a half of analysis topping on several years of his being a favourite character, I am at least starting to see Severus.
(continued in next comment...)
When you fall in love with someone, they become beautiful. Whether a camera, or an indifferent stranger would agree with you is entirely irrelevant; they are beautiful, even if you never manage to convince them of the fact. Beauty which follows love is the most enduring beauty of all.
tasteless/classless perpetual wardrobe
lolwut? is about all I can say. Give me a Man in Black any day of the week. Even whatever "high collared" getup it is the canon Snape is wearing, skipping the whole frock-coat-and-white-shirt business that does, I admit, look so appealing in the films. You're talking to someone who loves seeing people do high Victorian gothic getups. What amounts to a Dracula suit is only going to attract me. ;)
it has to be that they're just blinded by Alan Rickman's physical allure
My own chronology was that I read the first book just before seeing the first movie. I'll admit that, while I thought he was witty and cool, I wasn't immediately attracted to Severus in the book, because he seemed to be that "icky red-herring" type, unattractive but turning out not to be the threat, because it was a fairly simplistic "kids' book" kind of lesson. So I can't deny that seeing Alan Rickman on screen did make me give a second thought to the depth behind what on the page was a fairly routine "mean, sinister" act. There's just something about seeing something in front of you outside your own head that does that. But although I like Alan Rickman, I don't actually find him that sexy, so he's not why I find the character sexy, except in the sense that he was a catalyst for re-thinking.
She could have given us a Snape that's as undesirable to us as to JKR, just as she gave us an unambiguous Umbridge that inspires no Umbridgedom.
LOL!
"She and James put their faith in the wrong person," said Dumbledore. "Rather like you, Severus. Weren't you hoping that Lord Voldemort would spare her?"
Er, he wasn't, no. That's why he was hoping Dumbledore would respond to his trust instead.
Well, he must have at least entertained the idea, or he wouldn't even have asked Voldemort at all. But he must not have been heartened by the answer he got, or, yes, he wouldn't have subsequently gone to Dumbledore.
never mind "innately" better and allowed to be in the position of sagely instructing Harry to ignore the flayed baby crying for help.
That OMG still makes me angry. Even if Dumbledore is technically correct and there is no help or comfort Harry can give him at this point/in this way, why on earth (or ethereal King's Cross) discourage him from trying?? It struck me as a compassionate impulse. Are we meant to think it's enough that Harry has it without needing to carry through on it in any way? WTF, nice idea there...
Especially for pointing out how problematic my title is -- you're completely right, my chosen words are very misleading. I actually meant to title it "Why is a sexy S. so scary to JKR" but then chickened out at the last minute, thinking that subject line might be too volatile. That's all I mean by those lines -- that the idea of Snape as desirable (specifically, more desirable than James) seems to be threatening to some very particular POVs -- or maybe even *one* person's POV, namely JKR's. (That's already a pretty strong negative comment I'm making, but I really have no other explanation for words like "Why do you love Snape? It must be bad boy syndrome. It's very depressing.") On second thoughts, though, what I chose was even more offending (and misleadingly so) to most fen who care about HP in their own way...
Attributing a heated reaction to fear, though, is not necessarily a put down I don't think; when I examine my own reaction to this Lily story arc, the racial message, the violence message etc. that I feel are rampant in the HP story, I feel the most apt word to describe myself is "scared." Those messages *threaten* me, and I feel terrified at the fact that so many people find the story soothing (which might be a derogatory way of putting it -- maybe a better word for it is "comforting") rather than frightening. So I do understand that if someone had some completely opposite view of HP, they might feel as "frightened" by some people calling Snape a romantic catch, as I am by people loving what we saw of James. Then it wouldn't be so hard for me to sympathize with some of the more aggressive Snape-haters. If it's fear-based, if it's an emotional reaction caused by the perception of something they hold dear being threatened, like the way I gnash my teeth at the visual of two purebloods lynching a halfblood.
And then there are fen who just think a sexy Snape is plain ridiculous, and that's a totally valid thing to think -- way more valid than my reading of him as lickable XD For all that I'm saying Sev is sexier than James, the fannish depiction of him as the proverbial Slytherin Sex God does send me rotfl-ing at times... I for one think the canonical Severus would be quite disastrous in bed, no matter if he had experience. He'd be too timid or too enthusiastic or too clinical or too *something* to make it an enjoyable experience for him or his partner... Though, that's the fun of it, in fanfics, to take him from that place we found him in canon and bring him out into the sun where he can enjoy sex and other creature comforts :)
Yeah.. he certainly doesn't have a refined, confident kind of sexual practice. There's just no place where he would have learned it. I don't know if I'd go as far as "disastrous", but I do love a fic where he starts out kind of awkward but is a fast, eager learner. ;)
I know... The concept of "love" is pretty strange in the Potterverse, and trying to follow how things are structured there makes you start using some pretty bizarre terminology. But I think the Potterian world does operate on a warped framework like that. I've talked about it elsewhere with you, and have yet to form this train of thought into a coherent shape, but I get this feeling that love in the Potterverse is so powerful and threatening (most of the times, unless when it's mommy-love or dead-male-friend-love) because it conceptualizes love as a zero sum game. You make people fall in love with you, or like you as a friend, and it's possible to do that, and therefore when people don't like you it's your fault rather than theirs. Loveless powerlessness is like poverty, and both are things to be laughed at and/or pitied (which isn't the same thing as "sympathized with"), as we see most vividly in the case of Snape. Harry being "wrongfully" laughed at and pitied (see Draco's comment about him being an orphan) is so because he's actually loved by many people in the WW. Not because laughing at lonely people is bad in and of itself. It being possible to *make* people love you is also the reason why women keep getting punished for trying to cheat, by using magic (Merope, Romilda with her chocolate attempt on Harry, the whole Veela race who are shown to actually be scary monsters with scales and beaks), and trying to force men to take notice of them. No, you're supposed to earn it, and in the Potterverse there's a very specific way of earning it... Sorry for rambling off into a tangent.
Wow... powerful (if depressing) idea.
Merope's physique
Coming back to this with HBP on hand--
Her hair was lank and dull and she had a plain, pale, rather heavy face. Her eyes, like her brother's, stared in opposite directions.
I don't know if this speaks more to my own ingrained ablism, or just how much in-tune with the HP ethos I'd already gotten by that point, but when I read that Merope was wall-eyed I instantly took that to be a quintessentially Potterian code for "unsalvegably unattractive" (despite the fact that, actually, yeah, there are quite a lot of people IRL who have strabismic eyes and are very attractive-looking).
Especially when that sentence followed the descriptors "lank, dull hair" (which reminds us of several other people whose hair was bad and whose ugliness was emphasized) and "plain, heavy face" (ditto). The paleness of the face is also something frequently associated with ugliness in the Potterverse; the beautiful and charismatic men do tend to be very Caucasian-looking, ergo paler-faced than, say, Dean, Severus or Dobby, but at the same time they tend to have a healthy, rosy complexion (which, again, tightens the knot of association between "physical/material well-being" and "deserved loveless powerlessness" that I mention above) -- with the exception of people like Voldemort and Bellatrix, whose brand of beauty/sexuality is specifically described as unnatural and toxic.
And then, in the words of the orphanage matron:
I remember she said to me, 'I hope he looks like his papa,' and I won't lie, she was right to hope it, because she was no beauty --
Those are the only physical references to Merope we ever get. The impression I got was that the story's message on this score was pretty unambiguous.
Re: Merope's physique
The problem, I think, is that JKR relies too much on telling instead of showing. It's curious, because she does a great job of painting James's flaws, but we're told rather than shown how he has matured. Of course he does show heroism in sacrificing his life for his wife and child, but we hear about that secondhand. We're told that he risked his life to save Snape from Sirius's prank, but we don't actually see that. Instead, we see him bullying Snape even after the "prank," which I had previously assumed had taught him some maturity. All the flashbacks that we see of James seem to show him acting like a jerk, basically.
I'm not quite sure why the author chose to portray him that way, when she could have easily added one or two short scenes of him acting heroically, or at least sympathetically. Maybe because his heroism is assumed from the beginning of the series, and the unsympathetic moments are to make him seem more balanced? The trouble for me is that the balance then swings too far in the other direction.
And somehow I get a feeling that Snape is the way he is because, if the author sees him exactly the way she's written him and sees a completely un-lovable man, then making him resemble James more or making James resemble never-striking-first Sev more would diminish the discrepancy in their desirability from her POV. Maybe they're fine the way they are, for her. Even in the 800 word prequel James didn't change in character. Which... Authorial intent or not, I'm awed at how consistently JKR depicts her characters as lifelike people. If she breathed such life into Severus by not understanding him at all, then I'm not going to question it, at this point.
Fairy tales
Pretty girl from a lower class background ditches her childhood best friend (who's poor, brilliant, and devoted to her) to marry the rich, arrogant, bullying aristocrat who'd made her friend's life miserable.
We know words for girls like that, don't we?
Which, now that I think of it, might be the real reason for some of Jo's names.
Because if we're tempted to think that way, we're immediately reminded that Lily turned down the Prince to marry the Potter.
(Nasty, common name, as Petunia would say.)
Part One of Two
One can look at HP as hinging on the choices that Merope and Lily made, as opposed to the destinies that Tom and Harry were set to follow, but there again, the question is whether choice really operates in the story. If one takes a fatalist view of the characters, Merope, a direct descendant of Slytherin himself, was damned at birth to be covetous and make evil, weak choices. Lily, not descended from wizards, presumably had more agency, yet she was no doubt a Gryffindor at birth, and thus fated to align herself with strong, fiery goodness. Because we are supposed to believe that Lily had the strength that Merope had not, Lily could give birth to a saviour, while Merope's child was doomed to damnation. This could be seen as less the result of choice, and more the playing out of their inborn natures.
Further, you are right that both Merope and Lily end up, one way or another, with a wealthy, popular, powerful, talented, handsome male. There is at least one important difference, however. Merope chose a completely inferior Muggle. Lily attracted that pinnacle of magical desire, a Pureblood. In a world where Muggles are, at best, the laughable butt of cruel jokes, where the ends are predetermined and justify any means, Lily is obviously superior just by being hitched to James, end of story. Merope married outside her culture, while Lily married its royalty.
To add insult to injury, Merope had to use force to get the filthy Muggle she wanted, while Lily seemed to be entitled to every wizard's love just by existing. Again, I imagine we are supposed to believe this is the inevitable result of their innate goodness at birth. Choice didn't start with Merope and Lily. Choice didn't ever exist in a meaningful way. This is the free ride throughout the books.
I don't think we are dealing with Beauty and the Beast here. In the traditional female fairytale-verse, Lily got the dream ending. Worthy girls merit the devotion of a handsome, rich, wealthy prince who falls in love with them for the amazing beings they really are, despite the fact that the girls appear humble and poor. This is the message of the Cinderella story: be yourself and the prince will come to your door bearing a slipper, no matter how lowly your birth. Living in modest circumstances is essential to the story. Lily was Muggleborn, which is about as low as you can get without being a Squib in the Wizarding World. Being not only a witch, but an uber-talented witch, was her Fairy Godmother. Her virtues were such that rich prince James was determined to pursue and have her. In the Cinderella story, Lily won. Got that, girls? Marry the rich and popular jock you deserve, ditch the emo bad boy dressed in black, and ridicule the wicked stepsister, which was the role played by overreaching Severus (and jealous Petunia).
As you say, the whole "bad boy" thing is why the idea of a sexy Snape is so repulsive to some. It goes against the fairytale told to girls. Think of your daughters! If some identify with the outsider and his uphill struggle, they are delusional and it's for their own good that they get their heads straight. The prom queen always hooks up with the team captain. Girls should try to be one of the popular ones. Losers to the curb (or kerb). "Stop going for the bad guy." It's a simple message, really. Very simple.
Part Two of Two
Unfortunately, we know almost nothing of Eileen's story. She may have been a Slytherin so unattractive she could only rope herself a Muggle. (I honestly think JKR's off-the-cuff remark that Cho Chang married a Muggle was one of those revenge moments, because who did Cho think she was, making the Chosen One uncomfortable? She'll pay.) Did Eileen die for her son? Who knows? One whole leg of the "Abandoned Boys" structure just doesn't exist, and the whole formation is unstable for it.
I still think JKR's fictional world can be divided into those who are greater and those who are lesser, and the division can be made at eleven years of age, and probably at birth. This viewpoint explains so much about the Harry Potter story. It also explains the diverging paths Merope and Lily took.
Re: Part One of Two
Although of course to us, he is the desirable, ah, prince, and don't we wish he'd show up at our doors... ;)
Racism, classism and the "cool" punkish vagabonds
Especially about how the James/Lily vs. Tom/Merope story fits right in with the conventional structure of Western fairytales. It's quite weird when you look at it that way -- and, you're right, that's the *only* way we can look at it because the only difference between 16-year-old James and the Tom Riddle Sr. we see on his horse is their magical status -- because this whole tale was supposed to be a tale of anti-racism, and the racism in question was supposed to be Muggle-targeted holocaust. And yet, Lily saves the world by being the nice Jewish girl who abandons her family's religion (and their existence, see her sentiment about the vase) and assimilates into the Totally Aryan Universe of "Colorblind" Goodness, as it were. Meanwhile Merope's sin lies exactly in her act of marrying "down" -- which you'd have thought wasn't supposed to be "down," by the standards of the Potterian Morality, but that's the structure of the story. It's bizarre, to say the least.
And I hear you on the determinism. I have a theory about females in the Potterverse, which makes me disagree to your view that they are also fated by birth with no possible merit of education -- at least I don't think they are to the same extent as males are, or in the same ways, but I haven't yet been able to organize that thought into a coherent shape. When I do I'll be counting on your counter-arguments.
Girls should try to be one of the popular ones. Losers to the curb (or kerb). "Stop going for the bad guy." It's a simple message, really. Very simple.
That's so true. But there's a weird twist to that message because, in the Potterian mating field, the rich, successful, and attractive prince charmings also tends to be a "punk" -- at least in the case of James and Sirius, as is specifically noticed by the boring Muggle policemen (800-w prequel). And that's the crux of the strangeness I think... because somehow, the Potterian mentality seems unable to help itself seeing punkishness as "dead sexy," and then it goes out of its way to make sure that we set our sights on the fake punks, and distinguish them from the actual punkish losers from the wrong part of the neighborhood (such as Spinner's End) or the world (such as Bulgaria).
Sirius on his motorbike is dead sexy and that's great because he's actually neither Muggle nor working-class. Similarly Mr. Weasley's flying Ford Anglia is the height of cool, because it's his pureblooded sons (and pureblooded-on-the-father's-side Harry) riding in it. Contrastively those Muggle officers' car is uncool and can't fly and gets toppled over to comical effect by the punkish-looking kids' fake drumsticks. Thus we're instructed to, essentially, tell apart the real drumsticks (which aren't magical enough to provide you with shiny Galleons) from those nice fake ones. That's like, "Fine, you like rap? That's a wonderful musical taste to have, but just make sure you go for the rich White kids rapping about how superior to ******s they are, and not those dirty punks (actual punks) living down-hill in *those* neighborhoods, if you know what I mean."
I want to cry. Or puke. Or possibly both. And clutch Snape and Petunia and Dobby and Griphook to my unworthy Muggle chest and escape to Australia (or my own country -- that will do nicely, as it doesn't seem to register to Hermione as being a part of the world connected to Britain, either).
Re: Part One of Two
... Choice didn't ever exist in a meaningful way. This is the free ride throughout the books."
Well....don't forget that what Dumbledore actually said was that one's choices **show** what one is; he never said one's choices *make* one what one is. That's entirely consistent with your description of the free ride and inborn natures. And that's what is so viciously cruel about these books: just consider all the talk about Voldemort's being marked by the circumstances of his conception and what a message the books send to all the little children whose families are not of white, perfectly conventional, upper- and middle-class. And they are being taught in our schools as moral lessons.