This is fascinating! Very thought-provoking (and seems to have provoked quite a bit of thought already . . .). I have a couple of thoughts of my own to add:
On the matter of JKR's hostile attitude to ambition, I think that there is one negative influence that needs to be mentioned: Margaret Thatcher. Far too twentieth-century for this essay, at first sight - but perhaps not really, as one thing she seems to have been trying to do was rekindle the kind of Victorian entrepreneurial spirit which so alarmed the authors you quote. Which has worked, to some extent, but because it went against the grain of more recent British history, it produced the eighties 'yuppie': a rather shallow growth, all too often typified by an 'I'm alright Jack' attitude and a willingess to be 'tough' to the point of cheating and callousness. Growing up then, I can remember the fairly relentless propaganda that a soft heart was for losers (when asked what your worst fault was in a job interview, for example, you were supposed to say 'an inability to suffer fools gladly') and that making money was the only worthwhile thing to do with your life - countered, of course, by propaganda from other quarters that anything BUT making money was acceptable . . . Judging by JKR's choice of career (working for Amnesty International, teaching English as a foreign language in Portugal) she belongs firmly in the latter camp. And thinking about this over the last day or so, I think this works as an explanation of Slytherin house. They are all 'ambitious' because they are all Thatcherites, and 'ambition' was the watchword of Thatcherism. It's the only force I can think of that groups into one body the 'cockney wide-boy' types, the working-class spivs fighting their way up the social ladder and sod anyone else (this doesn't quite encapsulate Snape, but I think we are agreed that Snape has got away from his creator and become his own man!) and the Hooray Henrys like Draco Malfoy, boasting of their wealth without realising how little they have done to earn it. And of course Thatcherism is right-wing, so she tacks on a bit of really right-wing nastiness in the form of blood prejudice, and voila! I'm sure there are a million and one holes in this, but I'm too tired to work them out now - I'll leave it for your consideration, holes and all! And I also realise that I have got a long way from the essay - sorry. But this schizophrenic attitude towards ambition is bad, because it does prevent it from becoming a more socially responsible force - for example, there is a constant lament by charities that wealthy people in Britain are much less inclined to support charities with their wealth than their counterparts in America - we get the Slytherins we deserve, perhaps?
On a lighter note, I have a nineteenth-century parallel for great literary fame leading to writing very quickly and not revising your works. A friend of mine, who is one of these people who will not read the books but want to know what happened, was asking me about DH. I said that I thought that it had been written far too quickly and not revised nearly enough, and that I thought that this was probably a result of trying to meet the publishing deadline and avoid leaks. 'Just like Walter Scott' he said!
no subject
On the matter of JKR's hostile attitude to ambition, I think that there is one negative influence that needs to be mentioned: Margaret Thatcher. Far too twentieth-century for this essay, at first sight - but perhaps not really, as one thing she seems to have been trying to do was rekindle the kind of Victorian entrepreneurial spirit which so alarmed the authors you quote. Which has worked, to some extent, but because it went against the grain of more recent British history, it produced the eighties 'yuppie': a rather shallow growth, all too often typified by an 'I'm alright Jack' attitude and a willingess to be 'tough' to the point of cheating and callousness. Growing up then, I can remember the fairly relentless propaganda that a soft heart was for losers (when asked what your worst fault was in a job interview, for example, you were supposed to say 'an inability to suffer fools gladly') and that making money was the only worthwhile thing to do with your life - countered, of course, by propaganda from other quarters that anything BUT making money was acceptable . . . Judging by JKR's choice of career (working for Amnesty International, teaching English as a foreign language in Portugal) she belongs firmly in the latter camp. And thinking about this over the last day or so, I think this works as an explanation of Slytherin house. They are all 'ambitious' because they are all Thatcherites, and 'ambition' was the watchword of Thatcherism. It's the only force I can think of that groups into one body the 'cockney wide-boy' types, the working-class spivs fighting their way up the social ladder and sod anyone else (this doesn't quite encapsulate Snape, but I think we are agreed that Snape has got away from his creator and become his own man!) and the Hooray Henrys like Draco Malfoy, boasting of their wealth without realising how little they have done to earn it. And of course Thatcherism is right-wing, so she tacks on a bit of really right-wing nastiness in the form of blood prejudice, and voila! I'm sure there are a million and one holes in this, but I'm too tired to work them out now - I'll leave it for your consideration, holes and all! And I also realise that I have got a long way from the essay - sorry. But this schizophrenic attitude towards ambition is bad, because it does prevent it from becoming a more socially responsible force - for example, there is a constant lament by charities that wealthy people in Britain are much less inclined to support charities with their wealth than their counterparts in America - we get the Slytherins we deserve, perhaps?
On a lighter note, I have a nineteenth-century parallel for great literary fame leading to writing very quickly and not revising your works. A friend of mine, who is one of these people who will not read the books but want to know what happened, was asking me about DH. I said that I thought that it had been written far too quickly and not revised nearly enough, and that I thought that this was probably a result of trying to meet the publishing deadline and avoid leaks. 'Just like Walter Scott' he said!