This is a very interesting discussion for me, and an illuminating one... Hope it's all right to hop in!
We've disagreed on the issue of power and love before, but now I'm finally starting to understand why we're seeing things differently. To reiterate: you and quite a lot of others think the HP story is a story of love vs. power. Heck, the story more or less *says* that it's talking about love vs. power, whenever it's doing the "telling" rather than the "showing." But me and a number of others disagree that that's the structural message we get from the tale.
You're reading this story as one about the conflict between love and power because your definition of love is what we would call genuine love in our own normal society. But the HP concept of love is demonstratively not so. Read the Merope story word for word: it *never* talks about the wrechedness and misguidedness of Merope having anything to do with her going against her beloved's willful choice. It never says her love was not "true" enough to make her want to think about Tom Sr.'s happiness rather than her own lust, but rather tells us that it's because she chose to concoct a "false" love in Tom as her method of attaining her love's object, that she ended up creating Monster Voldemort. Dumbledore says so. Slughorn supports his saying so, by adding technological trivia (the amortentia lecture). The *story* also says so -- because the second important catalyst that turned Voldemort into who he is was the fact that Merope was too in love, too smitten and heartbroken over Tom's departure, to lift her wand (use her *power*) in order to save her life. That's the structural message of that tale. Love is more powerful than the power of the power-stick, and therefore if you let the wrong type of love take over your soul, you end up using power to create evil, and/or failing to use power to prevent evilness.
Honestly, I really understand where you're coming from, because I, too, read that chapter in HBP and immediately went "OMG she raped him!" That's the normal reaction, I think, but the HBP narrative voice conspicuously refrains from mentioning Tom's free will in that scene. It's not the fact that the love of Merope was too self-centered to actually qualify as love that was the problem. That definition of love that we tend to want to apply comes from *our* own value system -- the one that thinks respecting the free will of others is very very important -- which is completely different from the HP ethos. Because in the HP world, the kind of love power that ignites and fuels positive reform is portrayed as Snape's "greedy" love for his unattainable beloved. He mended his ways and turned his love into a selfless love? Well, yes in terms of doing something that goes along with the beloved's wishes (protecting Harry), but in terms of romantic agentivity (the presence of the free *will* of the woman being loved) it's the exact opposite: By the time Snape's love turns into a Very Good Thing the beloved woman is in no position to tell him to quit loving her (unless she wants to die), and later, she *is* dead and has no power over Snape's love whatsoever. Nor any *will* of her own that Snape can respect if he so chose, in formulating his own love for her and his consequent interactions with her imagery (the patronus) or with the child she left behind. A man's love can't get any more "selfish" than that for a dead woman. But that doesn't *matter* because it's not respect of romantic free will that matters in evaluating love. (We are reminded of how James trying to coerce Lily by taking Snape hostage, and then later manipulated her by hiding his fights with Snape from her, did not ending up in their marriage producing another Voldemort.)
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Date: 2008-07-10 08:13 pm (UTC)We've disagreed on the issue of power and love before, but now I'm finally starting to understand why we're seeing things differently. To reiterate: you and quite a lot of others think the HP story is a story of love vs. power. Heck, the story more or less *says* that it's talking about love vs. power, whenever it's doing the "telling" rather than the "showing." But me and a number of others disagree that that's the structural message we get from the tale.
You're reading this story as one about the conflict between love and power because your definition of love is what we would call genuine love in our own normal society. But the HP concept of love is demonstratively not so. Read the Merope story word for word: it *never* talks about the wrechedness and misguidedness of Merope having anything to do with her going against her beloved's willful choice. It never says her love was not "true" enough to make her want to think about Tom Sr.'s happiness rather than her own lust, but rather tells us that it's because she chose to concoct a "false" love in Tom as her method of attaining her love's object, that she ended up creating Monster Voldemort. Dumbledore says so. Slughorn supports his saying so, by adding technological trivia (the amortentia lecture). The *story* also says so -- because the second important catalyst that turned Voldemort into who he is was the fact that Merope was too in love, too smitten and heartbroken over Tom's departure, to lift her wand (use her *power*) in order to save her life. That's the structural message of that tale. Love is more powerful than the power of the power-stick, and therefore if you let the wrong type of love take over your soul, you end up using power to create evil, and/or failing to use power to prevent evilness.
Honestly, I really understand where you're coming from, because I, too, read that chapter in HBP and immediately went "OMG she raped him!" That's the normal reaction, I think, but the HBP narrative voice conspicuously refrains from mentioning Tom's free will in that scene. It's not the fact that the love of Merope was too self-centered to actually qualify as love that was the problem. That definition of love that we tend to want to apply comes from *our* own value system -- the one that thinks respecting the free will of others is very very important -- which is completely different from the HP ethos. Because in the HP world, the kind of love power that ignites and fuels positive reform is portrayed as Snape's "greedy" love for his unattainable beloved. He mended his ways and turned his love into a selfless love? Well, yes in terms of doing something that goes along with the beloved's wishes (protecting Harry), but in terms of romantic agentivity (the presence of the free *will* of the woman being loved) it's the exact opposite: By the time Snape's love turns into a Very Good Thing the beloved woman is in no position to tell him to quit loving her (unless she wants to die), and later, she *is* dead and has no power over Snape's love whatsoever. Nor any *will* of her own that Snape can respect if he so chose, in formulating his own love for her and his consequent interactions with her imagery (the patronus) or with the child she left behind. A man's love can't get any more "selfish" than that for a dead woman. But that doesn't *matter* because it's not respect of romantic free will that matters in evaluating love. (We are reminded of how James trying to coerce Lily by taking Snape hostage, and then later manipulated her by hiding his fights with Snape from her, did not ending up in their marriage producing another Voldemort.)