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Okay, here's another thing I don't get
May. 11th, 2008 02:00 pm
I occasionally (very occasionally - but then, I don't seek this stuff out) come across HP fic where, in an attempt to redeem Petunia Dursley we're informed that her husband is a physically abusive dolt. Abusive to her, that is, and sometimes little Dudders as well.
I'll be the first to say that the treatment of Harry, as presented in the books (though I wonder sometimes if maybe it was originally intended as hyperbole, until JKR realized she wanted to write about Serious Subjects), but I'll note that we never actually see him hit the kid. Overblown threats, but no actual violence. (Which is not to say that it didn't happen, and certainly letting your kid beat up another kid isn't exactly being non-violent, but I'm trying to describe what the books say here.)
More importantly, though, whenever Petunia puts her foot down in any way - he listens. Remember that first chapter? He goes through a whole day of trying to ignore the strange happenings before finally deciding, nervously, to bring up the subject to his wife - nervously because he knows she'll be upset. SHE'S the one who pretends she's an only child - she got mad at him! He's not beating her up to maintain this silence. This might, in fact, be the only time in the series that he's presented as anything approaching a sympathetic, three-dimensional character.
We're told later in the book that he would have shipped Harry off to an orphanage, but didn't. Why? Because clearly his wife insisted on keeping him, for whatever reasons of her own.
Heck, when he tried to kick Harry out during book... what was it, five? All Petunia had to say was no, and he dropped the subject.
I think it's great that people want to flesh out some of that family. Terrific. But let's not all pretend that she was secretly a nice woman who was herself being abused. There's no support for this at all in the text, is there?
I'll be the first to say that the treatment of Harry, as presented in the books (though I wonder sometimes if maybe it was originally intended as hyperbole, until JKR realized she wanted to write about Serious Subjects), but I'll note that we never actually see him hit the kid. Overblown threats, but no actual violence. (Which is not to say that it didn't happen, and certainly letting your kid beat up another kid isn't exactly being non-violent, but I'm trying to describe what the books say here.)
More importantly, though, whenever Petunia puts her foot down in any way - he listens. Remember that first chapter? He goes through a whole day of trying to ignore the strange happenings before finally deciding, nervously, to bring up the subject to his wife - nervously because he knows she'll be upset. SHE'S the one who pretends she's an only child - she got mad at him! He's not beating her up to maintain this silence. This might, in fact, be the only time in the series that he's presented as anything approaching a sympathetic, three-dimensional character.
We're told later in the book that he would have shipped Harry off to an orphanage, but didn't. Why? Because clearly his wife insisted on keeping him, for whatever reasons of her own.
Heck, when he tried to kick Harry out during book... what was it, five? All Petunia had to say was no, and he dropped the subject.
I think it's great that people want to flesh out some of that family. Terrific. But let's not all pretend that she was secretly a nice woman who was herself being abused. There's no support for this at all in the text, is there?
