19 May 2011 - The Mad Filkentist (original) (raw)

06:02 am - House elves
I'm currently re-listening to the fourth Harry Potter book in the form of a German audiobook, and that reminded me of the questions I had about house elves. How did they come to be enslaved, and why is their status still accepted? Rowling isn't much of a world-builder, so she may not have any clear explanation of my own, but here's a possible explanation. The question has doubtless been discussed in fan circles, and I'd be interested in hearing about other theories.

My version: Centuries ago there was a war between the wizards and the elves of Britain. The elves were thoroughly defeated, and the wizards considered them too untrustworthy for a negotiated peace. They compelled the elves to accept slavery, enforced by a racially binding geas. The elves begged for an escape clause, and the wizards granted a cruel one: that if their owners gave them any clothing, the act would free them. This, of course, guaranteed that the owners wouldn't clothe them. Over the centuries, the elves were bred for subservience.

The idea of rights for all intelligent beings came late to the wizard world. There were no serious protests against the enslavement of the elves until the nineteenth century, and by then it was discovered that the combination of magic, selective breeding, and tradition made emancipation intolerable for elves. The opposition wasn't strong enough to get the wizards to undertake the long-term program that would be needed. House elves were just too useful.

Things continued this way until the late twentieth century, when for the first time a house elf named Dobby was freed and successfully adjusted to liberty, and a student named Hermione Granger made her first naive attempts at fighting the institution.

Harry Potter und der Feuerkelch, incidentally, translates S.P.E.W. with the outrageously forced "B Punkt Elfe Punkt Rrrr" -- at least that's the way it's pronounced. Is "Belfer" or "belfen" even a word? I can't find it in the dictionaries I've checked.