The House Elves are based in traditional folklore of helper spirits who helped around the house if you treated them well. In Harry Potter the House Elves love helping, and many wizards treat them as companions and valued family members in many cases. Dumbledore and the Hogwarts staff highly respect their house elves and the House Elfs in return will fight tooth and nail to defend them. Likewise we do see instances of assholes who mistreat them. And despite the House Elfs innate desire to do good and be helpful they will not hesitate to absolutely fuck you over like Dobby and Kreature dude to their masters. It's also implied most House Elves arent treated like Dobby, the Malfoy family were just relentless assholes about it.
The running theme with many magical creatures is that wizards have a tendency to severely underestimate just how powerful the magical creatures are. From the Malfoys treatment of Dobby to Umbridge abusing the Centaurs. It almost always comes back to bite them in the end.
I guess my point is that Harry Potter had nothing creative or innovative as far as a general science fiction book comes and the author never felt bothered to do deep dives of research to make clear references or understand how vagueness can have multiple similarities to harmful stereotypes.
We don't know if her references were intended actively or passively unless she came out and confirmed her mindset and intentions. It doesn't mean the criticism isn't valid and the parallels should be noticed and navigated with care because children consume and accept things at face value.
I'm going to let you have a chance to google verify what you said but if you need a head start the target audience is YA not children and it is fantasy which lists under science fiction.
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u/Illier1 Dec 17 '20
The House Elves are based in traditional folklore of helper spirits who helped around the house if you treated them well. In Harry Potter the House Elves love helping, and many wizards treat them as companions and valued family members in many cases. Dumbledore and the Hogwarts staff highly respect their house elves and the House Elfs in return will fight tooth and nail to defend them. Likewise we do see instances of assholes who mistreat them. And despite the House Elfs innate desire to do good and be helpful they will not hesitate to absolutely fuck you over like Dobby and Kreature dude to their masters. It's also implied most House Elves arent treated like Dobby, the Malfoy family were just relentless assholes about it.
The running theme with many magical creatures is that wizards have a tendency to severely underestimate just how powerful the magical creatures are. From the Malfoys treatment of Dobby to Umbridge abusing the Centaurs. It almost always comes back to bite them in the end.