For all her bigotry, I don’t think Rowling is/was pro slavery. In the books that plot point is clearly meant as social critique against the imaginary wizarding society.
But after a while I guess the plot point got boring and it doesn’t make sense for the world to change because of some random school girl’s protest, so the whole thing was dropped.
Kinda like fridays for future. At first the reporting around it was like “Cool, the kids have something they getting political”, then it got boring and then society got hateful against it and then everyone just ignored them and nothing was changed by it.
It was prevailing thought at the time though too (~2000s), I remember my mates and I looking at activists with some measurable annoyance and disdain. I don’t think her attitude was so far out of whack with the general vibe
I thought that was the most realistic part of the books. How many hundreds of years of people crying out against slavery did it take for chattel slavery to be abolished? Sure, it would also have been realistic for there to have been more people opposing slavery, but as an initial reaction? Society would absolutely shit on her out of inertia.
My favorite part of Harry Potter is when Hermione tries to get everyone to oppose slavery and everyone’s just like why are you being so mouthy?
JK Rowling has views that were regressive for the 1800s. It’s amazing we didn’t see it sooner.
For all her bigotry, I don’t think Rowling is/was pro slavery. In the books that plot point is clearly meant as social critique against the imaginary wizarding society.
But after a while I guess the plot point got boring and it doesn’t make sense for the world to change because of some random school girl’s protest, so the whole thing was dropped.
Kinda like fridays for future. At first the reporting around it was like “Cool, the kids have something they getting political”, then it got boring and then society got hateful against it and then everyone just ignored them and nothing was changed by it.
I didn’t really interpret it that way. I took it as “look how annoying people who complain about social justice are”.
I don’t think she literally supports slavery but it was clearly an allegory for what she views as annoying activist types.
Rowling said on multiple occasions that Hermione is her “idealized self-insert”.
So I don’t think she’d use her own self-insert to say “Look how stupid people like me are”. Doesn’t really make sense.
She also said that she was Black, so I’m not sure how trustworthy she is on the subject
IIRC she said she never specified Hermione’s race, which is technically true. But at one point she did physically describe her to be fair skinned.
It was prevailing thought at the time though too (~2000s), I remember my mates and I looking at activists with some measurable annoyance and disdain. I don’t think her attitude was so far out of whack with the general vibe
She also randomly changes her mind at some point and agrees slavery is ok because the slaves said they don’t mind.
I did not enjoy the books back in the day and was not shocked when JKR was revealed to be a bigot.
I thought that was the most realistic part of the books. How many hundreds of years of people crying out against slavery did it take for chattel slavery to be abolished? Sure, it would also have been realistic for there to have been more people opposing slavery, but as an initial reaction? Society would absolutely shit on her out of inertia.
“oh those british aristocrats and their slaves”
No, see, the slaves like being slaves, we can’t force them to be free.